I have said this for a very long time. In America, we're constantly fed claptrap about various toxic immigrant groups. You know, "Hispanics are very family oriented!" And for Asians, especially Chinese, we hear "they value education." And yes, they send their kids to cram schools and all the rest. But they don't value education. They value credentials. That's it. 99% of the Chinese students in America (some 350,000 a year, another scandal) would happily take an A for no work if offered the choice. They'd think you were crazy to do otherwise. Only white people would have either the sense of honor or the genuine desire to learn to refuse such an offer.
One of the biggest barriers to sensible immigration policy is that white Liberals think everyone else thinks like white people.
Man...i took so much pride in learning the material and i watched so many people around me cheating in my engineering courses (previous years tests, straight phones out during class, Adderall scripts etc) only to graduate and be told "yeah so grab the project from last year, change the source data to our projects specifics, and put it in the databook."
Quite the wake-up call. Still glad for my own honor i didnt cheat but MAN has engineering been dumbed down (idk what i expected though, no need to reinvent the wheel every year).
"They are not staying at cram schools til 9 PM and then studying till 1 AM in order to cheat on exams."
Ummm, part of what they learn in cram schools is how to cheat. Perhaps not overt cheating, but how to game the tests. And yes, you CAN game the tests.
And you're missing the point. They do NOT value education for the sake of knowledge, but for what it can get them. Cram schools = good college = make money, have prestige. It has zero to do with knowledge for its own sake. Spending hours memorizing the 1000 most important words for the SAT isn't learning new words so you can better appreciate Tolstoy. They'll forget everything ten minutes after they get their perfect SAT score, because they never gave two shits about any of that knowledge.
I thought this was a terrific post. Even I, who like any sensible person thinks the blank slate nonsense, often fall into the trap of thinking it is pure chance that I happen to live in the prosperous west rather than in some Stone Age village or in the Congo. This inevitably leads to thoughts of how unfair things are. I need to be constantly reminded, by posts like this, that this is not the correct way to see things at all. It's like imagining 'the soul' of a mouse could be born into the body of a leopard, if only the wheel of fortune had done one more half-turn. Or even worse is the thought of being born into the body of a mole and being trapped underground. Ahh, claustrophobia!!
Well no, actually. Humans can't be born into the bodies of moles and mice have souls to match their genetic make-up. After all, 'souls' (let's call them that) emanate from genomes. Mice souls can't emanate from leopard genomes.
A closely related thought is, 'Thank goodness I was born on this planet, which is eerily well-suited to little ole me, rather than being born on some oxygen-less rock with a gravity that would squash me in seconds. Phew!'
What is actually weird about all this is that it is the atheist left who appear to believe most strongly in the religious idea of a free-floating soul, unconnected to the body. They manage to out-Christian Christians.
Anyway, as I said, this post laid all that nonsense out in the clearest possible way and hopefully it will stop me falling into the trap of thinking, 'Imagine if I had been born into [fill in gap]...', 'I' being just another term for my soul. Wonderful stuff.
I dont know that anyone actually believes in some free flowting soul thats plucked from the ether and put into a body. Its just "thank god im me and not someone else. I have an unearned destiny thats far easier than theirs". No need to believe in transmutation or anything spooky there, and its hard to argue you "deserve" your starting point in life (good or bad). The world view is just "things are the way they are and no one has any choice in their origin story". Seems non-controversial? Id think disagreeing with that is mostly just people talking past eachother.
Lol theres not much to it. Mt life is great, im lucky to have been born me compared to someone born into a family with shitty parents/starting point. If i have to have some sort of experience, im very glad its mine. Whats complicated? "You could only have ever been you" i agree with that, im just glad i could only be ME and not someone else is all (though i wish i was whoever gets to fuck kate upton tbh)
I think you've missed the only interesting thing about my comment (and the whole article), which is that where we are born and into what kind of society is very much not just random chance. Your genes will, to a large extent, be suited to the ancestral environment that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. going back milennia carved out. Why will you be suited? Because you inherit 100% of your genes from the people who carefully built your society.
No i gathered what you sad and that, in no way, contradicts a deterministic world view. And it in no way contradicts the idea that one is lucky/unlucky to be who they were destined to be. We both agree "you" are derrived from your ancestors and genes, and "you" made no decision to become who you were born to be. Tbh idk where we disagree other than i think there is luck to be better off than someone else and you seem to not want to say that? How can one not be lucky/unlucky to be destined into a better/worse life than another entity if those words are to mean anything at all?
This idea if "ypur genes were destined to xyz" really just takes the deterministic, luck based worldview, and pushes it one step back in the chain of events. Fine, im destined to be me based on my genes, no luck in that step. Ill yield that position, but weve now just moved to a new arena of discussing luck for whose genes we were pre determined from, and agency is again removed from the equation. Right? A leopard IS lucky compared to a mouse when it eats that mouse regardless of the chain of events that brought them to that point.
Isnt your belief in free will far more dependent on the idea of blank slatism? The idea that someone, whose genetics and ancestral/environmental lines predispose them towards a path of negative actions being able to simply 'decide to be better' beyond their inherent capabilities? A deterministic philosophy is far more accepting of innate abilities/hierarchies.
I feel like your progressive friends cant understand your belief in a non-deterministic world view because it is impossible to map that onto reality and they dont have a religious hang-up about accepting the lack of free will?
One acts based on their cultural biases, genetic abilities, and past experiences. Free will is an illusion here. How could it be otherwise? Can you "choose" to believe something? If no, how could you "choose" to behave some way then?
Lack of free will doesnt need to result in a leftwing bias. One can be RW and all for retributive justice/hierarchal states in life while understanding the illusory nature of agency. If i withdraw behind the veil of ignorance my worldview remains largely unchanged. People respond to incentives, and allowing for heavy punishments of wrong doing, hierarchical structures with freedom of movement for the capable, and maximizing the concept of "actions have consequences" would maximize human flourishing for the most people. Theres really no "need" for free will in this equation.
Thanks again for the great article though i appreciate you makin me think. Its nice to hear from someone who thinks about these topics but still comes to a different conclusion. Instead of hearing about why you think progressives are fools for the deterministic worldview id love to hear a positive case made towards free will in any follow ups.
I have said this for a very long time. In America, we're constantly fed claptrap about various toxic immigrant groups. You know, "Hispanics are very family oriented!" And for Asians, especially Chinese, we hear "they value education." And yes, they send their kids to cram schools and all the rest. But they don't value education. They value credentials. That's it. 99% of the Chinese students in America (some 350,000 a year, another scandal) would happily take an A for no work if offered the choice. They'd think you were crazy to do otherwise. Only white people would have either the sense of honor or the genuine desire to learn to refuse such an offer.
One of the biggest barriers to sensible immigration policy is that white Liberals think everyone else thinks like white people.
Man...i took so much pride in learning the material and i watched so many people around me cheating in my engineering courses (previous years tests, straight phones out during class, Adderall scripts etc) only to graduate and be told "yeah so grab the project from last year, change the source data to our projects specifics, and put it in the databook."
Quite the wake-up call. Still glad for my own honor i didnt cheat but MAN has engineering been dumbed down (idk what i expected though, no need to reinvent the wheel every year).
"They are not staying at cram schools til 9 PM and then studying till 1 AM in order to cheat on exams."
Ummm, part of what they learn in cram schools is how to cheat. Perhaps not overt cheating, but how to game the tests. And yes, you CAN game the tests.
And you're missing the point. They do NOT value education for the sake of knowledge, but for what it can get them. Cram schools = good college = make money, have prestige. It has zero to do with knowledge for its own sake. Spending hours memorizing the 1000 most important words for the SAT isn't learning new words so you can better appreciate Tolstoy. They'll forget everything ten minutes after they get their perfect SAT score, because they never gave two shits about any of that knowledge.
I thought this was a terrific post. Even I, who like any sensible person thinks the blank slate nonsense, often fall into the trap of thinking it is pure chance that I happen to live in the prosperous west rather than in some Stone Age village or in the Congo. This inevitably leads to thoughts of how unfair things are. I need to be constantly reminded, by posts like this, that this is not the correct way to see things at all. It's like imagining 'the soul' of a mouse could be born into the body of a leopard, if only the wheel of fortune had done one more half-turn. Or even worse is the thought of being born into the body of a mole and being trapped underground. Ahh, claustrophobia!!
Well no, actually. Humans can't be born into the bodies of moles and mice have souls to match their genetic make-up. After all, 'souls' (let's call them that) emanate from genomes. Mice souls can't emanate from leopard genomes.
A closely related thought is, 'Thank goodness I was born on this planet, which is eerily well-suited to little ole me, rather than being born on some oxygen-less rock with a gravity that would squash me in seconds. Phew!'
What is actually weird about all this is that it is the atheist left who appear to believe most strongly in the religious idea of a free-floating soul, unconnected to the body. They manage to out-Christian Christians.
Anyway, as I said, this post laid all that nonsense out in the clearest possible way and hopefully it will stop me falling into the trap of thinking, 'Imagine if I had been born into [fill in gap]...', 'I' being just another term for my soul. Wonderful stuff.
I dont know that anyone actually believes in some free flowting soul thats plucked from the ether and put into a body. Its just "thank god im me and not someone else. I have an unearned destiny thats far easier than theirs". No need to believe in transmutation or anything spooky there, and its hard to argue you "deserve" your starting point in life (good or bad). The world view is just "things are the way they are and no one has any choice in their origin story". Seems non-controversial? Id think disagreeing with that is mostly just people talking past eachother.
"thank god im me and not someone else."
I mean this genuinely, and in a non-confrontational way - I would be fascinated to understand what you mean by this.
Lol theres not much to it. Mt life is great, im lucky to have been born me compared to someone born into a family with shitty parents/starting point. If i have to have some sort of experience, im very glad its mine. Whats complicated? "You could only have ever been you" i agree with that, im just glad i could only be ME and not someone else is all (though i wish i was whoever gets to fuck kate upton tbh)
I think you've missed the only interesting thing about my comment (and the whole article), which is that where we are born and into what kind of society is very much not just random chance. Your genes will, to a large extent, be suited to the ancestral environment that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. going back milennia carved out. Why will you be suited? Because you inherit 100% of your genes from the people who carefully built your society.
No i gathered what you sad and that, in no way, contradicts a deterministic world view. And it in no way contradicts the idea that one is lucky/unlucky to be who they were destined to be. We both agree "you" are derrived from your ancestors and genes, and "you" made no decision to become who you were born to be. Tbh idk where we disagree other than i think there is luck to be better off than someone else and you seem to not want to say that? How can one not be lucky/unlucky to be destined into a better/worse life than another entity if those words are to mean anything at all?
This idea if "ypur genes were destined to xyz" really just takes the deterministic, luck based worldview, and pushes it one step back in the chain of events. Fine, im destined to be me based on my genes, no luck in that step. Ill yield that position, but weve now just moved to a new arena of discussing luck for whose genes we were pre determined from, and agency is again removed from the equation. Right? A leopard IS lucky compared to a mouse when it eats that mouse regardless of the chain of events that brought them to that point.
Pol Pot is the most vindicated man in modern history. We need a hundred Pol Pots to cleanse the Earth of the oppressors.
Isnt your belief in free will far more dependent on the idea of blank slatism? The idea that someone, whose genetics and ancestral/environmental lines predispose them towards a path of negative actions being able to simply 'decide to be better' beyond their inherent capabilities? A deterministic philosophy is far more accepting of innate abilities/hierarchies.
I feel like your progressive friends cant understand your belief in a non-deterministic world view because it is impossible to map that onto reality and they dont have a religious hang-up about accepting the lack of free will?
One acts based on their cultural biases, genetic abilities, and past experiences. Free will is an illusion here. How could it be otherwise? Can you "choose" to believe something? If no, how could you "choose" to behave some way then?
Lack of free will doesnt need to result in a leftwing bias. One can be RW and all for retributive justice/hierarchal states in life while understanding the illusory nature of agency. If i withdraw behind the veil of ignorance my worldview remains largely unchanged. People respond to incentives, and allowing for heavy punishments of wrong doing, hierarchical structures with freedom of movement for the capable, and maximizing the concept of "actions have consequences" would maximize human flourishing for the most people. Theres really no "need" for free will in this equation.
Thanks again for the great article though i appreciate you makin me think. Its nice to hear from someone who thinks about these topics but still comes to a different conclusion. Instead of hearing about why you think progressives are fools for the deterministic worldview id love to hear a positive case made towards free will in any follow ups.