Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.

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mullingitover 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race.

Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era.

Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'

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rayiner 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.

European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.

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mullingitover 20 hours ago | parent [-]

> You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.

Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures, and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? Or 'Roman culture' for that matter. I'm honestly lost.

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rayiner 19 hours ago | parent [-]

> Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures

Building steam engines, rockets, the Internet, etc.

> and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is?

European culture is one of the most well studied subjects in the world. It’s the culture that resulted from Roman colonization, followed by German conquest of Rome and the spread of Roman customs, language, law throughout Europe alongside Christianity. It’s why Slovenia and Spain both have a legal tradition built on Roman civil law. It’s why British law is full of Latin terms.

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mullingitover 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Ok so the yardstick for sorting cultures is purely inventions. Got it.

Also: European culture is a discrete thing you can either be in or out of, and it's a combination of legal system and language. In addition, the Romans were a homogenous group of people with the same language and customs, and they were Christian.

I've made note of this, thank you for clarifying.

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rayiner 17 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program.

Culture doesn’t need to be “discrete” or “homogenous” in order to exist. “Arab culture” also exists, despite regional variations. Law and language are critical aspects of society that indicate a shared culture despite local variations. Yes, during the relevant period, Romans were Christian. It became the majority religion in the roman empire by 400 AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_Christia...

European culture is one of the most well studied things in the world. You should read about it.

	▲	mullingitover 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program. But you’re saying that it’s the inventions that make certain cultures superior, the other stuff is just there to enable the inventions. So for example China is building far more advanced infrastructure and high tech equipment right now, thus their culture is superior to European culture. What’s your proposal to help European culture the level of advancement that Chinese culture has achieved ?

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TimorousBestie 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture.

No idea how you came to that conclusion. There are many counterexamples to this claim.

It’s not racism when, for example, some Koreans discriminate against each other on the basis of skin tone. It was racism when some Hutu did pogroms against the Tutsi.

I agree with mulling. Give up these language-games and just admit that you can’t be a culture realist without also indulging in a little race science.

	▲	rayiner 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Those examples are also about immutable characteristics. E.g. There is no reason to prefer lighter skin to darker skin other than irrational prejudice. It’s completely superficial and irrelevant. That superficiality and irrelevance is the very thing that makes it morally wrong. Culture, by contrast, is about how parents raise their kids. And that’s a choice. Treating culture as coextensive with race is just racism for leftists: https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/926/d5f/a334baf0d43cd480b3ea.... It’s horseshoe theory. And the implications of that theory are depressing. Your theory would mean that places like Bangladesh can’t fix themselves, because, according to you, their culture is a manifestation of their race and everyone has to accept it. That’s literally the same thing the Groypers say.
	▲	19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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