I commented on Mr. West's story: "To me, among the most striking facts is that "Mohammed" in all its variations is the most common name for newborn boys in England, Wales, London, Manchester, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, The Hague, Oslo, etc. A million migrants is a statistic, but a name is a concrete expression of specific human values and visions for the future."
More and more it seems to me that the public debate deals poorly with the question of cultural change, and displaces this question onto other questions which fail to resolve the underlying question of cultural change. Perhaps primarily because cultural change is fundamentally 'soft' and qualitative (though it can be measured via things like baby names) and thus fits poorly with the reigning modern episteme for which only measurable facts are really 'real.'
The Left are either relativists who hold that all cultures are equally good, or progressives who hold that increasing the proportion of non-Europeans in any society is good because it helps lessen the taint of 'whiteness,' slavery, colonialism, etc.
The Center-Left and Center-Right can point to spreadsheets saying that more people makes a bigger economy, and more is better ('One Billion Americans').
The Right dislikes or is unhappy about cultural change but often fails to articulate this in a comprehensible way. In the US, the Respectable Right is inhibited from acknowledging that they fear cultural change (because KKK/Hitler/White Supremacy), and feels compelled to frame the question entirely in terms of crime and economics, for which the Center and Left have ready rebuttals.
On the Hard Right, some percentage of people genuinely dislike non-white and non-European people, which then justifies their shunning and anathematization by the mainstream. But a much larger number (I believe) simply want to maintain their existing cultural values against rapid change (even before getting to whether the change is good or not), but have a great deal of trouble making this case in public--it is easily and unfairly dismissed as 'racist,' because the 'soft' and qualitative problem of 'preserving cultural values' has trouble fitting into the 'spreadsheet brain' that governs discourse for the Center Left and Center Right.
Muhammad is, it should be noted, an extremely common Muslim name. Between 6% and 7% of UK residents are Muslim, but between 2.5% and 3% of UK baby boys are named Muhammad or some other spelling of the name. Even assuming significantly higher Muslim fertility (say that 9% to 10% of baby boys are Muslim), that still means that between a quarter and a third of British Muslim boys are named Muhammad. And since many families have more than one child, the odds that any given Muslim family has a child named Muhammad are even higher. I don't think there's any equivalent among other British religious or cultural groups, where a single name has such extraordinary popularity.
Good essay, well-written and informative, thanks. I would like to hear discussion of what at least appears to be true: that the population in those societies still growing seems to be of people of considerably lower IQ (or however one measures cognitive ability) than the societies in population decline. If AI is as disruptive as it seems of jobs that can be performed by lower IQ cohorts, then how will that be handled? Could it be that the response to this sentence "the difficulty it poses to wealthy societies simply trying to maintain some kind of control and order around immigration without being wantonly cruel" will be that they quit worrying about seeming to be cruel?
I will decline to wade into the IQ wars at this time. But I will say that (a) it's not clear that AI is primarily going to take away jobs dominated by lower-IQ cohorts (more likely I suspect it will start with jobs dominated by the second quartile of the distribution); (b) it is never a good idea to jump to the conclusion that we should not worry about being cruel. "Seeming" is another matter, but that's not the word I used.
California attempted to enforce domestic interstate border control against the Okies during the 1930s Dust Bowl.
I believe the Okies are why Bakersfield, California, has its own school of country music.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/los-angeles-1936-bum-blockade-targeted-american-migrants-fleeing-poverty-and-drought-during-the-great-depression-180987022/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakersfield_sound
I commented on Mr. West's story: "To me, among the most striking facts is that "Mohammed" in all its variations is the most common name for newborn boys in England, Wales, London, Manchester, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, The Hague, Oslo, etc. A million migrants is a statistic, but a name is a concrete expression of specific human values and visions for the future."
More and more it seems to me that the public debate deals poorly with the question of cultural change, and displaces this question onto other questions which fail to resolve the underlying question of cultural change. Perhaps primarily because cultural change is fundamentally 'soft' and qualitative (though it can be measured via things like baby names) and thus fits poorly with the reigning modern episteme for which only measurable facts are really 'real.'
The Left are either relativists who hold that all cultures are equally good, or progressives who hold that increasing the proportion of non-Europeans in any society is good because it helps lessen the taint of 'whiteness,' slavery, colonialism, etc.
The Center-Left and Center-Right can point to spreadsheets saying that more people makes a bigger economy, and more is better ('One Billion Americans').
The Right dislikes or is unhappy about cultural change but often fails to articulate this in a comprehensible way. In the US, the Respectable Right is inhibited from acknowledging that they fear cultural change (because KKK/Hitler/White Supremacy), and feels compelled to frame the question entirely in terms of crime and economics, for which the Center and Left have ready rebuttals.
On the Hard Right, some percentage of people genuinely dislike non-white and non-European people, which then justifies their shunning and anathematization by the mainstream. But a much larger number (I believe) simply want to maintain their existing cultural values against rapid change (even before getting to whether the change is good or not), but have a great deal of trouble making this case in public--it is easily and unfairly dismissed as 'racist,' because the 'soft' and qualitative problem of 'preserving cultural values' has trouble fitting into the 'spreadsheet brain' that governs discourse for the Center Left and Center Right.
Muhammad is, it should be noted, an extremely common Muslim name. Between 6% and 7% of UK residents are Muslim, but between 2.5% and 3% of UK baby boys are named Muhammad or some other spelling of the name. Even assuming significantly higher Muslim fertility (say that 9% to 10% of baby boys are Muslim), that still means that between a quarter and a third of British Muslim boys are named Muhammad. And since many families have more than one child, the odds that any given Muslim family has a child named Muhammad are even higher. I don't think there's any equivalent among other British religious or cultural groups, where a single name has such extraordinary popularity.
Good essay, well-written and informative, thanks. I would like to hear discussion of what at least appears to be true: that the population in those societies still growing seems to be of people of considerably lower IQ (or however one measures cognitive ability) than the societies in population decline. If AI is as disruptive as it seems of jobs that can be performed by lower IQ cohorts, then how will that be handled? Could it be that the response to this sentence "the difficulty it poses to wealthy societies simply trying to maintain some kind of control and order around immigration without being wantonly cruel" will be that they quit worrying about seeming to be cruel?
I will decline to wade into the IQ wars at this time. But I will say that (a) it's not clear that AI is primarily going to take away jobs dominated by lower-IQ cohorts (more likely I suspect it will start with jobs dominated by the second quartile of the distribution); (b) it is never a good idea to jump to the conclusion that we should not worry about being cruel. "Seeming" is another matter, but that's not the word I used.
I do apologize, even reading it several times, my eye/mind saw "seeming" rather than "being."