Is there any culture in which power structures aren’t systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture? Even a tribe of hunter gather has it’s cultural norms that regulate the power between the individuals.
I agree. I think there’s a whole lot of stuff deeply ingrained in the culture of every group.
I would expect that most people at LessWrong don’t have a problem with power structures provided they fulfill critieria like being meriocratic and a few other criteria.
It’s hard for me to understand your argument here, I expect that this would have to be a much longer discussion. I’m not saying that there aren’t some cases where power structures aren’t justified. But I think there are pretty clearly some that almost all of us would agree were unjustified, and I think that a lot of racial/historical cases work like that.
The point is that if you want to speak about power structures, discussing whether or not power structures exists is pointless. What matter is discussing how people should be justified and the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of allocating power.
Using SAT scores for college admissions is for example a way to distribute power. Decades ago people didn’t want as many Jewish people at universities and thus introduced character assessments into the mix of what matters. Today, the group of people that is argued to be overrepresented was extended and many colleges dropped SAT scores altogether.
Back then the argument was that Jewish people had too much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less. Now, the argument is that White people have to much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less.
If you just focus on the fact that there are power structures and not the benefits of for example distributed power to intelligent people who score highly on SAT scores, you won’t get a good view of the issue to think about good policy and do things like discriminating against Jewish people.
I agree. I think there’s a whole lot of stuff deeply ingrained in the culture of every group.
It’s hard for me to understand your argument here, I expect that this would have to be a much longer discussion. I’m not saying that there aren’t some cases where power structures aren’t justified. But I think there are pretty clearly some that almost all of us would agree were unjustified, and I think that a lot of racial/historical cases work like that.
The point is that if you want to speak about power structures, discussing whether or not power structures exists is pointless. What matter is discussing how people should be justified and the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of allocating power.
Using SAT scores for college admissions is for example a way to distribute power. Decades ago people didn’t want as many Jewish people at universities and thus introduced character assessments into the mix of what matters. Today, the group of people that is argued to be overrepresented was extended and many colleges dropped SAT scores altogether.
Back then the argument was that Jewish people had too much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less. Now, the argument is that White people have to much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less.
If you just focus on the fact that there are power structures and not the benefits of for example distributed power to intelligent people who score highly on SAT scores, you won’t get a good view of the issue to think about good policy and do things like discriminating against Jewish people.