Vivek leading with “Harvard says we have shitty personalities, and that’s our strength” may be one of the biggest own goals. He simultaneously reminded us he hates white jocks for getting the girls and wants to turn America into a cram school grind devoid of innovation. Sorry, Asia is totally stagnant with apocalypse TFRs.
The irony to me is that the elite pajeets want to build is basically the opposite of the nonconformist risk taker values of Musk, but he can’t recognize it because autism, trauma, and having some close pajeet friends in his past.
I’m incredibly familiar with Vivek type people and the math Olympiad. I went to a stem magnet school for the top 1% that was majority Asian, and we had the number one math team in the country.
Our athletes and prom queens were more accomplished, both as individuals and academically, than the “nerds”. They went on to more successful lives on the whole. The tiger mom cram school model of life Vivek promotes, of which I’m incredibly familiar, is toxic counter productive garbage.
Average people aren’t going to win the math Olympiad or go on to code at google. They are going to play high school football and get some ordinary job. Telling them to do Kumon all weekend is complete waste of time. You know what happens when you take someone of average IQ and try to cram school them all weekend into Harvard? I’ve seen it when I tutored at one of those places. The kids are miserable and they make no meaningful progress. These places track this stuff and they know it’s a scam, but tiger mom attitudes make it easy to scam these people.
The great thing about IQ is you know that it’s not striver ethic causing any kind of results.
We already have a country following the Vivek model. Korea. Everyone cram schools, 100% of people go to college, academic accomplishment is fetishized, and everyone’s dream is to go work for a big company churning out new versions of your phone.
It’s a got a gdp like half ours, stagnant growth, 0.7 TFR, and the highest suicide rate in the oecd. This matches what I observed in the tiger mom Koreans I went to school with, and they had the benefit of insanely high natural ability that they sadly frittered away on this stuff. Imagine how average people fair.
Vivek is a pump and dump con man with a very checkered past. He reminds me a lot of the guy at my high school that got caught cheating at the math Olympiad. His obsession over jocks and 90s sitcoms is so cringe he’s now seen as a joke by over a hundred million people.
As a tangent and on Vivek: yes, his rise to wealth is fishy, but not particularly evil or purely fradulent.
Axovant’s strategy was based on repurposing drugs that other companies had abandoned. The failure of their Alzheimer’s drug in clinical trials wasn’t fraudulent; it was a high-risk investment that didn’t pay off. Crucially, Axovant disclosed its trial results promptly and transparently, unlike companies that deliberately deceive investors.
Investors in the biotech field are well aware of the high-risk nature of the industry. Even though some suffered losses, this isn’t unusual for the sector, and it doesn’t indicate any fraudulent intent. Ramaswamy’s actions followed standard industry practices, and he remained a stakeholder in the company even after its difficulties, bearing some of the financial risks himself.
Furthermore, his later successes with Roivant and other ventures suggest his broader strategy in drug development holds merit. Failure is inherent in the biotech industry; not every drug will make it to market, and Ramaswamy’s approach to handling failure has been in line with industry standards.
Unlike Theranos, which was an iterative process involving many failed steps, which Elizabeth Holmes lied about, Axovant took the drug and did two big trials: one in DLB, the other in AD. We now know that both failed. But at the time investors thought they had a chance at better symptomatic help for cognition. This was a legitimate gamble. And when the trials failed, Axovant did (mostly) the right thing and disclosed the failure.
Even if Vivek is criticized as a fraud, it’s important to remember that someone of his background doesn’t just con their way into Ivy League institutions or successful careers. He didn’t have the privilege of buying his way in; rather, his academic and professional achievements attest to his capabilities.
Forumposter, thanks for your cool response. You raised insightful points, and I hope that I can change your perspective just a little. Apologies if there are any unclear sentences–I whipped this up on a road trip.
Regarding your first point about your familiarity with “Vivek-type people,” I am familiar with them too. Like you, I attended a demanding magnet school before going on to an eminent university. However, before this, I was a student at a typical American high school. The difference between the cultures of these two schools was night and day. Every anecdotal experience that you narrate, I can match with a contradicting lesson.
The reason your prom kings and queens excelled was likely selection bias. Magnet schools often require an entrance exam—often a test-based selection. Even if your school didn’t, magnet schools tend to attract a specific type of student. The prom queens in your school, or mine, aren’t necessarily representative of their national counterparts. I’ll give you this, though: one thing that the veneration of these figures in school teaches is that much of life is a popularity contest. True talent is often overlooked, while vanity takes precedence over skill. I don't care if people call me spiteful for brooding about the unfairness of life, because those who accept that unfairness is inevitable are just engaged in a self-defeating loop.
Since its founding, America has often spurned intellect in favor of machismo. While American culture tends to overlook intellectual prowess, paradoxically, the economy frequently rewards it. This dichotomy is especially evident in Black communities, where disciplined and academically inclined individuals are sometimes belittled as 'acting White' by those who embrace a more rebellious or 'thuggish' persona.
You nod approvingly at Harvard’s claim that Asians have “no personality” and are just workhorses. Meanwhile, those “no personality” types dominate schools like UC Berkeley—where there’s no affirmative action—and go on to revolutionize tech and other industries. Contrast that with the “personality-filled” white graduate who squanders an overpriced degree and then complains about student debt.
The greatest minds in history didn’t get there by mere chance. Pressure, after all, forms diamonds. It’s not an “either/or” situation, as Vivek advocates—he calls for an appropriate balance, not extremes. Vivek was a nationally ranked tennis player, and his USTA ranking of 5.0 (where many teaching professionals rank) further attests to his understanding of balance. His lifestyle suggests he knows how to maintain equilibrium—not subjecting people to a prison of scantrons but striking the right balance in academic and extracurricular endeavors.
In the U.S., especially for men, masculinity is highly performative. The status and economic benefits that come with it often clash with the technocratic vision needed for innovation. This disconnect is important to consider when discussing American education.
I don’t believe the U.S. needs cram schools or private tutoring centers, but it does need to drop the negative stereotypes associated with introverts and those focused on academia.
Your point about IQ is challenging to address. It’s a tough topic because, if certain subsets of the population are truly incapable of mastering higher-order skills, then efforts to "academize" pop culture may be futile and not worth the investment. But I disagree. People are not independent, isolated agents; they are influenced by culture, even with genetic predispositions in play. Even individuals with high potential need the right environmental stimulation and a nudge in the right direction. And let’s not forget that those with an IQ of 100 can excel academically—maybe not invent a Nobel-winning breakthrough, but they can still achieve a lot. Striving and effort matter.
Regarding your example of Korea, you are partly correct, but I would argue that developmental economics plays a much larger role than educational policy in explaining the differences. Comparing GDP between the U.S. and Korea to argue that America’s educational system is superior is misleading. Korea's pressure-driven educational system, epitomized by the single-exam focus for college admissions, cannot be directly applied to the U.S. We have a holistic admissions process, and Vivek isn’t calling for a rigid, single-exam system like the JEE or Gaokao found in other countries. Recall that his Twitter post encourages participation in extracurricular activities.
My school, for example, was a top performer at events like Regeneron’s ISEF and other science fairs. These are not your average “memorize and regurgitate” competitions. The level of innovation required is high, and while these events are not immune to cheating, the systemic issue is deeper. When a society rewards mediocrity, it breeds incompetence. The big problem, as you noted, is the inevitable lower quartile in society. The answer, however, is not to accept this but to elevate everyone’s condition to the fullest extent possible.
When conversations veer toward East Asian vs. American educational systems, many people highlight America’s supposed advantage in critical thinking. I find this dubious. After all, American academic culture largely derides intellectualism. Do you seriously believe that the average American is capable of scrutinizing information in depth, synthesizing it, or forming new conclusions? Can the average American clearly articulate their personal ideology? Do they know anything substantial about the history of our country, beyond vague, nationalist claims about “freedom”? Really, talking about “critical thinking” just sounds like cope. Its a nebulous metric to measure.
The culture of America, with its glitz and glamour, has often favored style over substance, and I remain bemused that it has not yet capsized.
American culture might have a slight edge when it comes to entrepreneurship and unconventional capitalist ventures, but even there, the obsession with success often ignores the intellectual work that fuels these endeavors. The cringe-worthy slogan “A students work for C students” sums it up perfectly—total nonsense. But of course, it’s the C students who love to repeat it, probably because they don’t have the mental tools to critically question their beliefs or analyze data in the first place. I’ll be generous and admit that maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to it, but it’s incredibly limited. The C student who becomes a boss is the one too busy to care about grades. By high school, they’re working on 15 projects, making a movie, trading stocks, or starting a business. School’s boring to them. They don’t buy the whole “shut up and learn now, do real stuff later” model. But this is a tiny, rare fraction of C students.
Even if Vivek is a charlatan masquerading as an intellectual, it doesn’t diminish the validity of his message. Erase the name “Vivek” from the post for a moment. Smearing his name doesn’t discredit the contents of his diagnosis.
Countries like Singapore, Korea, Japan, and China do show commendable innovation output, as ranking indexes suggest. I would dispute the absolute nature of your assertion that the aforementioned countries are dystopian stagnant ones. Their output supports the notion that an educational system designed to foster intellectual growth can lead to significant economic and technological advances.
At the very least, we must acknowledge the value that intellectuals bring to society. Even if this critique is seen as “nerd rage” against “jocks,” perhaps it’s justified. After all, it’s often the so-called nerds who have built civilization.
The outrage against Vivek is simply the outgrowth nativist or anti-Indian sentiments emerging in certain factions of the right. I would prefer these individuals be honest about their biases rather than couching them in the defense of America’s stagnating academic culture. And then, perhaps, we can have a critical debate about our country’s demographics.
My own school’s debate team topped the nation’s ranks, and joining the debate team proffered a certain status among students. Why should academic excellence equate solely to memorizing formulas? This misconception needs to be addressed. That’s what you and your ilk boil rigor down to. It’s a completely incorrect presumption.
There’s the overarching question of do we reward stability or risk. The latter is a hallmark of American entrepreneurship, while the former characterizes many immigrants who, having fled poverty, aim for generational wealth. The fear is that people are pursuing STEM careers solely for stability, rather than out of passion, but this is already happening in practice. My field—computer science—has seen a flood of graduates who aren’t genuinely interested in the field.
Good point about how Canada and nonUS Anglo countries have underperformed the US. I would also consider that the other Anglo countries have worse land use than even the US’s blue states. For example, Vancouver has the most expensive housing relative to income, worse than New York. Housing is about a third of personal income and transportation, which depends on how far you live from where you work, is another sixth. So, it’s a big deal for limiting consumption and investment. Basically, in other Anglo countries, you can’t build anything unless a local committee approves it, and that committee usually can say no or delay for hardly any reason.
To me, Nietzsche is more a mood than a coherent philosophy. It’s a fun mood, like listening to AC/DC when you lift weights. But I’m not sure it says a lot about immigration policy.
>Elon Musk artificially boosted the Nietzschean Vitalists, along with the rest of the far right, to increase turnout for Trump. After Trump’s victory, he has dumped them on their signature issue: immigration. All they can do now is impotently vacillate between complaining and coping for the next four years.
That's not my read on the situation at all. It seems like Vivek/Elon and a few others spoke out too hard on the immigration question and exposed their conceptual blind-spots wrt other things as well. JD Vance/Trump made more professional/non-commital statements that could be walked back.
>As you can see, H1Bs were generally higher under Trump, around 200k per year, than under Obama. Obama usually awarded between 85k and 172k H1Bs. Trump did not reduce the number, but kept it the same. Even if Trump cuts H1Bs in half, he will still be worse than Obama.
Check the first derivative. H1Bs started increasing in 2014 (Obama) and stalled and reduced in 2017 (Trump). Then they picked up again in 2021 (Biden).
Regarding the derivative, yes, H1Bs slightly decreased under Trump first term, and I expect them to decrease in Trump's 2nd term. If I was a single issue voter on immigration, I agree Trump is better than Democrats. I just don't think it's as black-and-white as people make it out to be.
I don't see how Trump's statement was anything but submission to Musk:
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them. I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program."
Vivek did the country a tremendous service by insulting whites the same way Republicans typically insult blacks for social pathologies caused in recent decades by economic immiseration.
I'm sorry for the effortpost; I would like to try out an idea or two here and see if they hold up. One, are all conservatives vitalists/organicists? Consider the Christianists (Matt Walsh), the culture cons (Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson), the white nationalists (Keith Woods, Nick Fuentes), and the tech bros (Hanania). None believe the components of the world link together mechanically, but think people can succeed if we magically use the power of belief.
They all have to answer why whites are falling behind in America. The religionist says to get your heart right with Jesus with super willpower, and the culturalist says to believe in the right ideas and values with super willpower. The white nationalist says whites would flourish if outgroups on the bottom or top weren't holding them down, but this introduces questions that destabilize that outlook about whether life is a team sport or not, and whether we have responsibilities toward others. (Half of whites, by definition, have below-average intelligence.)
Hanania-style tech bro stuff is the most consistent and conservative of them all since it, having an Asiatic fetishization of status, worships the status quo as the status quo, even if those running institutions are without merit, corrupt, stupid, criminal, immature, unwise, nepotistic, or worse. They are supposedly justified since they had the will to succeed by any means necessary. It is also consistent with the economic opportunism of conservative practice when we strip away the dumb backlash marketing used during campaign season. But, when everyone is for sale, we eventually end up in a society like Russia or India where nothing works -- which is not what success holistically looks like, which means the tech bro idea of success is incomplete. Hanania is trying to square this circle with his Elite Human Capital idea. He will fail.
Vivek is particularly idiotic in that India was once the world's high-tech capital. (Textiles were the high-tech of its day.) It had 25% of the world's textile industry and did so with high-quality materials, excellent design, and top-tier craftsmanship. How did the English get the upper hand and destroy Indian textiles completely? Through spelling bees? Milton Friedman? We did it through mercantilism -- low or no taxes on raw materials like cotton, and for the high-tech stuff, bans, tariffs, regulated monopolies, military power, etc., the same way we destroyed the textile industry in the Spanish-dominated Low Countries. When we don't think of economics as a kind of warfare, those who do will eat our lunch.
Calling India the world's "high tech superpower" and saying it was destroyed through foreign interference is definitely a judo move. Don't buy it though. Military tech is the only tech that matters to me. If it can't be used to kill people, it's a luxury good.
It looks like H1bs went up during Obama years, and down during Trump years. Yes they were initially lower under Obama but increased throughout his presidency. I’m not sure how strong Elon’s grip on Trump is, the two are already starting to butt heads. Trump doesn’t like people thinking that Elon is the one in charge, and Elon is clingy and autistic. They’re also rivals in the private sector.
In my opinion, there are both whitepills and blackpills to this situation. The whitepill is that the right was United on this issue. 4 years ago half of conservative pundits would have staunchly defended the “based brown people”, while on Christmas and Boxing Day Elon fought a thermoplyaean struggle with a handful of former Democrat tech influencers. And in the end, he was forced to backpedal. The blackpill is that Elon’s dedication to “legal immigration” is worse than we thought it was during the election. He’s not just interested by profit motives, he’s emotionally invested and clearly took anti-H1B sentiment as a personal insult as an immigrant himself. Elon, despite growing up in the prime exhibit for White Nationalism being a good thing, views himself as an immigrant and not as one of many international Europeans. Furthermore, Trump obviously doesn’t care about the issue. He has been dead silent on it except for being
Indians beget more immigration than Mexicans due to their elite status and hyper-shitlib politics, but Mexicans pose a greater threat to racial hygiene. Indians are extremely endogamous for American standards and have very low birth rates, while Mexicans are very exogamous and have high birth rates (albeit this is changing fast). Indians threaten my line of work more than Mexicans, but Mexicans make life more miserable for everyone around them (until Indians start importing their 80 IQ cousins). It’s really a difficult and blackpilling choice. Indians seem to be more hateable based on the way they act online and they turn people into racists more often than Mexicans despite their mild manner in real life.
Yes, they went slightly down in terms of change over time, but not down in overall absolute headcount over the length of tenure. Trump's statement on H1Bs indicates that he agrees with Musk. I haven't seen him say anything anti-Musk. Throw me a link.
I don't believe in racial hygiene. Indian endogamy is dangerous because it indicates nepotism and ethnocentrism. The Mexican TFR is 1.80; it is slightly higher in the USA, but this is LOWER than the Indian TFR. You are comparing ELITE Indian TFR with WORKING-CLASS Mexican TFR, which is not indicative of how chain migration will play out.
Mexicans do not make life more miserable than Indians. Mexicans have no political power. I would rather have a job and avoid a bad neighborhood than have low crime and no job.
Trump's statement on H1Bs was a shoot-from-the-hip response in a late-night(?) phone call with infamously dishonest Jon Levine. It is still a blackpill though. If he was going to come out against H1B he would have done it by now, but he's decided to wait for it to blow over.
I say "everyone around them" in the case of Mexicans, so if you don't live around them then you don't really have to worry. We can run from Mexicans in a way we cannot for Indians, but Mexicans are still a welfare deficit in a welfare system that is moribund, and it is political suicide to seriously cut entitlements. Indians will, through their shitlibbery, vote and lobby for more welfare though. The best scenario would be to have a reliable Mexican satellite state to outsource this sort of labor to without having to deal with the consequences of demographic change, but it's never gonna happen. UAE immigration system is also obviously never gonna happen because of how demonized it is, but a war with Mexico would end with the absolute worst people making policy decisions and turning Mexico's problems into our problems instead of turning Mexico into our solution. All of this after an untold number of dead American soldiers, of course.
I don't have a passionate hatred of Trump over this. I think any logical person would do what Trump is doing. He's not an extreme ideologue. America First is a practical slogan to win elections. He cares about his family and his allies, not "the country" or "the white race." I find that people who hate Trump for being a fascist, or for betraying "the movement" generally have a clouded judgment of his motivations.
I agree that Mexicans use welfare, and in my opinion, the solution is to make welfare incompatible with family life. As in, anyone who wishes to get free money from the government should be shipping off to the middle of nowhere. But barring such reforms, welfare is a tax, and taxes are not as costly as scams, because they can be accounted for. Scams create volatility and decrease trust more than taxes, which hurts future investment far more and creates liquidity traps.
As you point out, politically, Hispanics are more likely to vote for welfare cuts than Indians.
A war with Mexico (not against, with) against the cartels would be easier and cheaper than what we are trying to do right now in Ukraine. You're overestimating the bravery of cartel boys. They are just looking to hurt weak people for money; they are like Iraqi forces in 2003. Paper tiger. Less than 1,000 American casualties, guaranteed. Put Erik Prince in charge of execution.
My plan would be to sit down with the leaders of the cartels, offer them government positions, buy them off, and assassinate the rest, and then go Bukele mode. Bukele proved that this is easy, safe, effective. Nothing to be afraid of. If you actually travel to Mexico, you will realize there is nothing to fear here. Mexico's problems are easily solved. It's a really boring country.
Trump’s voters are mostly lower income working class Whites whose jobs are threatened more by Mexicans than Indians, and he has a penchant for punishing demographics who vote against him (ex: your average White tech worker) and that’s why I think he is looking the other way. I'm not sure exactly how much Indian-Americans benefit from scams and how much damage they do to the American economy, that would be hard to measure but I have a hard time imagining that it is comparable to the welfare deficit.
I don't doubt that we could end the cartel easily, and I agree with your propositions, but Mexico refuses U.S. Intervention and U.S. Politics demands that politicians make stupid performative gestures to avoid getting called a terrorist-negotiator or a war criminal or some other stupid term. The same issue arises with welfare.
The problem with scams is not direct damage, but indirect future losses from decreased investment. You can simply invade Mexico by pressuring them, and Trump demonstrated this. But you are right that there is no political will to do this and the bureaucracy makes it impossible. That's the problem with Asian bureaucrats: they make bold action impossible with Byzantine rule-following. It's already an out-of-control problem, but the invasion of the over-qualified makes the problem worse. Mexicans steal jobs from dumb people; over-educated bureaucrats castrate the system from the top down for their own nepotistic benefit. Apples and Oranges.
Most of the online Nietzschian anons are thinly veiled Zionists really. They will capitulate on every right wing issue when push comes to shove. BAP for example is a Romanian Jew that supports color blind meritocracy and wrote his PhD on Leo Strauss. He serves as a pied piper for gullible radical right wingers and steers them into a pro-Israel form of White supremacy.
@EternalPhilosophy: As a thinly veiled Zionist Jew, I'm glad that BAP, despite his abhorrent rhetoric, is secretly working for my team to deradicalize the right and safeguard Israel. This is a huge relief. Thank you for informing me, I was worried.
Yes, it’s an effective full spectrum approach. It’s why Ben Shapiro boosts BAPs books, they can disagree on surface level issues like eugenics, genocide, pederasty, and whether God is real. As long as they’re both loyal to Israel, they’re allies.
Wow I had no clue Ben Shapiro was openly hawking Bronze Age Mindset to his millions of fans. It seems to me like my people are much more intelligent and competent than I had previously understood. Godlike, even. Thank you for brightening up my day!
Yes, it’s one of many influence networks. Similar to Epstein’s network of prominent Israelis or Dennis Pragers network of Mossad assets like Marissa Streit.
I don’t know if I would describe it as “Godlike;” that’s a bit of a histrionic reaction to a neutral observation. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Leo Strauss is downplayed hard in mainstream circles. He was a right-wing radical anti-egalitarian and was mainly an anti-historicist, while neocons who succeeded him were strongly historicist in their worldview and causy.
BAP made one tweet encouraging meritocracy (within a state) as a temporary goal for white advocates, meanwhile he has made dozens of tweets critical of Israel and sometimes even glorifying Hezbollah. He “capitulates” on Israel far more than on race or immigration.
Not really. His ideology is only coherent when you realize his first priority is Israel. It explains his hyper fixation on people who attack Israel and why he does such base level shilling during elections.
Have you ever read BAP's books? Hell, do you even listen to his podcast? Where is this confidence coming from in calling his beliefs incoherent? BAP has never had a hyperfixation on people who attack Israel. A certain subset of people who attack Israel have a hyperfixation on BAP to the point where they encourage doxxing and mass reporting everyone who is even vaguely associated with him, and he responds to these people, but he has never had a hyperfixation on Israel attackers
If true, then at least you know what you're getting. I would rather be screwed from the front than from behind. But yeah, if I was a single-issue voter on immigration, maybe I would line up every four years to get back-ended by Elon and Vivek on the 1% chance that they will be better on that issue, or something.
Furthermore, the argument here is about H1Bs,not Mexicans. I clearly differentiate this; you are obfuscating, which is the mendacious Republican tactic I denounce.
Elsewhere in the article you suggest Musk would stand athwart mass deportations, suggesting that the Trumpist con extends to inaction with respect to low skilled immigration as well. I refuted this by posting the linked article and accompanying report. This is consistent with H1B increase. Thanks
COVID played a big role but much of the reduction predates the pandemic
The National Foundation for American Policy projects that the number of legal immigrants will decline by 49% (or 581,845) between FY 2016 and FY 2021 due to Trump administration policies. (From the FY 2016 total of 1,183,505 down to 601,660 in FY 2021.) How did the Trump administration reduce legal immigration by 49% without changing U.S. immigration law? The answer is by using executive and administrative authorities, some of which are being challenged in court.
BAP’s doctoral thesis is partially an attempt to conflate Nietzsche and Plato, and I think he follows in Strauss’s footsteps in this regard as Strauss tried to make the point that Plato’s later writings like Laws were partially an opticscuck and Plato was more like Critias than is admitted. Idk I never read him but that’s what I have been told
>Nietzsche’s primary contribution was to free us from metaphysics
Many people say this, but early modern philosophers influenced by skepticism, such as Montaigne, Gassendi, and Bayle, already did this. (Hume had eight volumes of Bayle in his trunk while writing the Treatise.) Speculative philosophy flourished during Romanticism, but neo-Kantian critical philosophy returned to dominate Germany at the end of the 1800s.
I'd say Nietzsche is more influential in promoting Lebensphilosophie, but he is not unique in this, either. (Simmel, Dilthey, James, and others moved in a similar direction.)
Love some parts of the post, hate others.
Vivek leading with “Harvard says we have shitty personalities, and that’s our strength” may be one of the biggest own goals. He simultaneously reminded us he hates white jocks for getting the girls and wants to turn America into a cram school grind devoid of innovation. Sorry, Asia is totally stagnant with apocalypse TFRs.
The irony to me is that the elite pajeets want to build is basically the opposite of the nonconformist risk taker values of Musk, but he can’t recognize it because autism, trauma, and having some close pajeet friends in his past.
I’m incredibly familiar with Vivek type people and the math Olympiad. I went to a stem magnet school for the top 1% that was majority Asian, and we had the number one math team in the country.
Our athletes and prom queens were more accomplished, both as individuals and academically, than the “nerds”. They went on to more successful lives on the whole. The tiger mom cram school model of life Vivek promotes, of which I’m incredibly familiar, is toxic counter productive garbage.
Average people aren’t going to win the math Olympiad or go on to code at google. They are going to play high school football and get some ordinary job. Telling them to do Kumon all weekend is complete waste of time. You know what happens when you take someone of average IQ and try to cram school them all weekend into Harvard? I’ve seen it when I tutored at one of those places. The kids are miserable and they make no meaningful progress. These places track this stuff and they know it’s a scam, but tiger mom attitudes make it easy to scam these people.
The great thing about IQ is you know that it’s not striver ethic causing any kind of results.
We already have a country following the Vivek model. Korea. Everyone cram schools, 100% of people go to college, academic accomplishment is fetishized, and everyone’s dream is to go work for a big company churning out new versions of your phone.
It’s a got a gdp like half ours, stagnant growth, 0.7 TFR, and the highest suicide rate in the oecd. This matches what I observed in the tiger mom Koreans I went to school with, and they had the benefit of insanely high natural ability that they sadly frittered away on this stuff. Imagine how average people fair.
Vivek is a pump and dump con man with a very checkered past. He reminds me a lot of the guy at my high school that got caught cheating at the math Olympiad. His obsession over jocks and 90s sitcoms is so cringe he’s now seen as a joke by over a hundred million people.
As a tangent and on Vivek: yes, his rise to wealth is fishy, but not particularly evil or purely fradulent.
Axovant’s strategy was based on repurposing drugs that other companies had abandoned. The failure of their Alzheimer’s drug in clinical trials wasn’t fraudulent; it was a high-risk investment that didn’t pay off. Crucially, Axovant disclosed its trial results promptly and transparently, unlike companies that deliberately deceive investors.
Investors in the biotech field are well aware of the high-risk nature of the industry. Even though some suffered losses, this isn’t unusual for the sector, and it doesn’t indicate any fraudulent intent. Ramaswamy’s actions followed standard industry practices, and he remained a stakeholder in the company even after its difficulties, bearing some of the financial risks himself.
Furthermore, his later successes with Roivant and other ventures suggest his broader strategy in drug development holds merit. Failure is inherent in the biotech industry; not every drug will make it to market, and Ramaswamy’s approach to handling failure has been in line with industry standards.
Unlike Theranos, which was an iterative process involving many failed steps, which Elizabeth Holmes lied about, Axovant took the drug and did two big trials: one in DLB, the other in AD. We now know that both failed. But at the time investors thought they had a chance at better symptomatic help for cognition. This was a legitimate gamble. And when the trials failed, Axovant did (mostly) the right thing and disclosed the failure.
Even if Vivek is criticized as a fraud, it’s important to remember that someone of his background doesn’t just con their way into Ivy League institutions or successful careers. He didn’t have the privilege of buying his way in; rather, his academic and professional achievements attest to his capabilities.
Forumposter, thanks for your cool response. You raised insightful points, and I hope that I can change your perspective just a little. Apologies if there are any unclear sentences–I whipped this up on a road trip.
Regarding your first point about your familiarity with “Vivek-type people,” I am familiar with them too. Like you, I attended a demanding magnet school before going on to an eminent university. However, before this, I was a student at a typical American high school. The difference between the cultures of these two schools was night and day. Every anecdotal experience that you narrate, I can match with a contradicting lesson.
The reason your prom kings and queens excelled was likely selection bias. Magnet schools often require an entrance exam—often a test-based selection. Even if your school didn’t, magnet schools tend to attract a specific type of student. The prom queens in your school, or mine, aren’t necessarily representative of their national counterparts. I’ll give you this, though: one thing that the veneration of these figures in school teaches is that much of life is a popularity contest. True talent is often overlooked, while vanity takes precedence over skill. I don't care if people call me spiteful for brooding about the unfairness of life, because those who accept that unfairness is inevitable are just engaged in a self-defeating loop.
Since its founding, America has often spurned intellect in favor of machismo. While American culture tends to overlook intellectual prowess, paradoxically, the economy frequently rewards it. This dichotomy is especially evident in Black communities, where disciplined and academically inclined individuals are sometimes belittled as 'acting White' by those who embrace a more rebellious or 'thuggish' persona.
You nod approvingly at Harvard’s claim that Asians have “no personality” and are just workhorses. Meanwhile, those “no personality” types dominate schools like UC Berkeley—where there’s no affirmative action—and go on to revolutionize tech and other industries. Contrast that with the “personality-filled” white graduate who squanders an overpriced degree and then complains about student debt.
The greatest minds in history didn’t get there by mere chance. Pressure, after all, forms diamonds. It’s not an “either/or” situation, as Vivek advocates—he calls for an appropriate balance, not extremes. Vivek was a nationally ranked tennis player, and his USTA ranking of 5.0 (where many teaching professionals rank) further attests to his understanding of balance. His lifestyle suggests he knows how to maintain equilibrium—not subjecting people to a prison of scantrons but striking the right balance in academic and extracurricular endeavors.
In the U.S., especially for men, masculinity is highly performative. The status and economic benefits that come with it often clash with the technocratic vision needed for innovation. This disconnect is important to consider when discussing American education.
I don’t believe the U.S. needs cram schools or private tutoring centers, but it does need to drop the negative stereotypes associated with introverts and those focused on academia.
Your point about IQ is challenging to address. It’s a tough topic because, if certain subsets of the population are truly incapable of mastering higher-order skills, then efforts to "academize" pop culture may be futile and not worth the investment. But I disagree. People are not independent, isolated agents; they are influenced by culture, even with genetic predispositions in play. Even individuals with high potential need the right environmental stimulation and a nudge in the right direction. And let’s not forget that those with an IQ of 100 can excel academically—maybe not invent a Nobel-winning breakthrough, but they can still achieve a lot. Striving and effort matter.
Regarding your example of Korea, you are partly correct, but I would argue that developmental economics plays a much larger role than educational policy in explaining the differences. Comparing GDP between the U.S. and Korea to argue that America’s educational system is superior is misleading. Korea's pressure-driven educational system, epitomized by the single-exam focus for college admissions, cannot be directly applied to the U.S. We have a holistic admissions process, and Vivek isn’t calling for a rigid, single-exam system like the JEE or Gaokao found in other countries. Recall that his Twitter post encourages participation in extracurricular activities.
My school, for example, was a top performer at events like Regeneron’s ISEF and other science fairs. These are not your average “memorize and regurgitate” competitions. The level of innovation required is high, and while these events are not immune to cheating, the systemic issue is deeper. When a society rewards mediocrity, it breeds incompetence. The big problem, as you noted, is the inevitable lower quartile in society. The answer, however, is not to accept this but to elevate everyone’s condition to the fullest extent possible.
When conversations veer toward East Asian vs. American educational systems, many people highlight America’s supposed advantage in critical thinking. I find this dubious. After all, American academic culture largely derides intellectualism. Do you seriously believe that the average American is capable of scrutinizing information in depth, synthesizing it, or forming new conclusions? Can the average American clearly articulate their personal ideology? Do they know anything substantial about the history of our country, beyond vague, nationalist claims about “freedom”? Really, talking about “critical thinking” just sounds like cope. Its a nebulous metric to measure.
The culture of America, with its glitz and glamour, has often favored style over substance, and I remain bemused that it has not yet capsized.
American culture might have a slight edge when it comes to entrepreneurship and unconventional capitalist ventures, but even there, the obsession with success often ignores the intellectual work that fuels these endeavors. The cringe-worthy slogan “A students work for C students” sums it up perfectly—total nonsense. But of course, it’s the C students who love to repeat it, probably because they don’t have the mental tools to critically question their beliefs or analyze data in the first place. I’ll be generous and admit that maybe, just maybe, there’s some truth to it, but it’s incredibly limited. The C student who becomes a boss is the one too busy to care about grades. By high school, they’re working on 15 projects, making a movie, trading stocks, or starting a business. School’s boring to them. They don’t buy the whole “shut up and learn now, do real stuff later” model. But this is a tiny, rare fraction of C students.
Even if Vivek is a charlatan masquerading as an intellectual, it doesn’t diminish the validity of his message. Erase the name “Vivek” from the post for a moment. Smearing his name doesn’t discredit the contents of his diagnosis.
Countries like Singapore, Korea, Japan, and China do show commendable innovation output, as ranking indexes suggest. I would dispute the absolute nature of your assertion that the aforementioned countries are dystopian stagnant ones. Their output supports the notion that an educational system designed to foster intellectual growth can lead to significant economic and technological advances.
At the very least, we must acknowledge the value that intellectuals bring to society. Even if this critique is seen as “nerd rage” against “jocks,” perhaps it’s justified. After all, it’s often the so-called nerds who have built civilization.
The outrage against Vivek is simply the outgrowth nativist or anti-Indian sentiments emerging in certain factions of the right. I would prefer these individuals be honest about their biases rather than couching them in the defense of America’s stagnating academic culture. And then, perhaps, we can have a critical debate about our country’s demographics.
My own school’s debate team topped the nation’s ranks, and joining the debate team proffered a certain status among students. Why should academic excellence equate solely to memorizing formulas? This misconception needs to be addressed. That’s what you and your ilk boil rigor down to. It’s a completely incorrect presumption.
There’s the overarching question of do we reward stability or risk. The latter is a hallmark of American entrepreneurship, while the former characterizes many immigrants who, having fled poverty, aim for generational wealth. The fear is that people are pursuing STEM careers solely for stability, rather than out of passion, but this is already happening in practice. My field—computer science—has seen a flood of graduates who aren’t genuinely interested in the field.
Good point about how Canada and nonUS Anglo countries have underperformed the US. I would also consider that the other Anglo countries have worse land use than even the US’s blue states. For example, Vancouver has the most expensive housing relative to income, worse than New York. Housing is about a third of personal income and transportation, which depends on how far you live from where you work, is another sixth. So, it’s a big deal for limiting consumption and investment. Basically, in other Anglo countries, you can’t build anything unless a local committee approves it, and that committee usually can say no or delay for hardly any reason.
To me, Nietzsche is more a mood than a coherent philosophy. It’s a fun mood, like listening to AC/DC when you lift weights. But I’m not sure it says a lot about immigration policy.
Agreed, there's nothing in Nietzsche about immigration restriction, but these people have appropriated the term.
>Elon Musk artificially boosted the Nietzschean Vitalists, along with the rest of the far right, to increase turnout for Trump. After Trump’s victory, he has dumped them on their signature issue: immigration. All they can do now is impotently vacillate between complaining and coping for the next four years.
That's not my read on the situation at all. It seems like Vivek/Elon and a few others spoke out too hard on the immigration question and exposed their conceptual blind-spots wrt other things as well. JD Vance/Trump made more professional/non-commital statements that could be walked back.
>As you can see, H1Bs were generally higher under Trump, around 200k per year, than under Obama. Obama usually awarded between 85k and 172k H1Bs. Trump did not reduce the number, but kept it the same. Even if Trump cuts H1Bs in half, he will still be worse than Obama.
Check the first derivative. H1Bs started increasing in 2014 (Obama) and stalled and reduced in 2017 (Trump). Then they picked up again in 2021 (Biden).
Regarding the derivative, yes, H1Bs slightly decreased under Trump first term, and I expect them to decrease in Trump's 2nd term. If I was a single issue voter on immigration, I agree Trump is better than Democrats. I just don't think it's as black-and-white as people make it out to be.
I don't see how Trump's statement was anything but submission to Musk:
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them. I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program."
Vivek did the country a tremendous service by insulting whites the same way Republicans typically insult blacks for social pathologies caused in recent decades by economic immiseration.
I'm sorry for the effortpost; I would like to try out an idea or two here and see if they hold up. One, are all conservatives vitalists/organicists? Consider the Christianists (Matt Walsh), the culture cons (Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson), the white nationalists (Keith Woods, Nick Fuentes), and the tech bros (Hanania). None believe the components of the world link together mechanically, but think people can succeed if we magically use the power of belief.
They all have to answer why whites are falling behind in America. The religionist says to get your heart right with Jesus with super willpower, and the culturalist says to believe in the right ideas and values with super willpower. The white nationalist says whites would flourish if outgroups on the bottom or top weren't holding them down, but this introduces questions that destabilize that outlook about whether life is a team sport or not, and whether we have responsibilities toward others. (Half of whites, by definition, have below-average intelligence.)
Hanania-style tech bro stuff is the most consistent and conservative of them all since it, having an Asiatic fetishization of status, worships the status quo as the status quo, even if those running institutions are without merit, corrupt, stupid, criminal, immature, unwise, nepotistic, or worse. They are supposedly justified since they had the will to succeed by any means necessary. It is also consistent with the economic opportunism of conservative practice when we strip away the dumb backlash marketing used during campaign season. But, when everyone is for sale, we eventually end up in a society like Russia or India where nothing works -- which is not what success holistically looks like, which means the tech bro idea of success is incomplete. Hanania is trying to square this circle with his Elite Human Capital idea. He will fail.
Vivek is particularly idiotic in that India was once the world's high-tech capital. (Textiles were the high-tech of its day.) It had 25% of the world's textile industry and did so with high-quality materials, excellent design, and top-tier craftsmanship. How did the English get the upper hand and destroy Indian textiles completely? Through spelling bees? Milton Friedman? We did it through mercantilism -- low or no taxes on raw materials like cotton, and for the high-tech stuff, bans, tariffs, regulated monopolies, military power, etc., the same way we destroyed the textile industry in the Spanish-dominated Low Countries. When we don't think of economics as a kind of warfare, those who do will eat our lunch.
Calling India the world's "high tech superpower" and saying it was destroyed through foreign interference is definitely a judo move. Don't buy it though. Military tech is the only tech that matters to me. If it can't be used to kill people, it's a luxury good.
Absolutely correct
Well, also political control. India’s ability to adapt to technological change was hampered by British Imperialism.
It looks like H1bs went up during Obama years, and down during Trump years. Yes they were initially lower under Obama but increased throughout his presidency. I’m not sure how strong Elon’s grip on Trump is, the two are already starting to butt heads. Trump doesn’t like people thinking that Elon is the one in charge, and Elon is clingy and autistic. They’re also rivals in the private sector.
In my opinion, there are both whitepills and blackpills to this situation. The whitepill is that the right was United on this issue. 4 years ago half of conservative pundits would have staunchly defended the “based brown people”, while on Christmas and Boxing Day Elon fought a thermoplyaean struggle with a handful of former Democrat tech influencers. And in the end, he was forced to backpedal. The blackpill is that Elon’s dedication to “legal immigration” is worse than we thought it was during the election. He’s not just interested by profit motives, he’s emotionally invested and clearly took anti-H1B sentiment as a personal insult as an immigrant himself. Elon, despite growing up in the prime exhibit for White Nationalism being a good thing, views himself as an immigrant and not as one of many international Europeans. Furthermore, Trump obviously doesn’t care about the issue. He has been dead silent on it except for being
Indians beget more immigration than Mexicans due to their elite status and hyper-shitlib politics, but Mexicans pose a greater threat to racial hygiene. Indians are extremely endogamous for American standards and have very low birth rates, while Mexicans are very exogamous and have high birth rates (albeit this is changing fast). Indians threaten my line of work more than Mexicans, but Mexicans make life more miserable for everyone around them (until Indians start importing their 80 IQ cousins). It’s really a difficult and blackpilling choice. Indians seem to be more hateable based on the way they act online and they turn people into racists more often than Mexicans despite their mild manner in real life.
Yes, they went slightly down in terms of change over time, but not down in overall absolute headcount over the length of tenure. Trump's statement on H1Bs indicates that he agrees with Musk. I haven't seen him say anything anti-Musk. Throw me a link.
I don't believe in racial hygiene. Indian endogamy is dangerous because it indicates nepotism and ethnocentrism. The Mexican TFR is 1.80; it is slightly higher in the USA, but this is LOWER than the Indian TFR. You are comparing ELITE Indian TFR with WORKING-CLASS Mexican TFR, which is not indicative of how chain migration will play out.
Mexicans do not make life more miserable than Indians. Mexicans have no political power. I would rather have a job and avoid a bad neighborhood than have low crime and no job.
Nvm, the thing I saw about Trump and Musk butting heads was fake https://www.yahoo.com/news/supposed-trump-post-telling-elon-181603248.html
Trump's statement on H1Bs was a shoot-from-the-hip response in a late-night(?) phone call with infamously dishonest Jon Levine. It is still a blackpill though. If he was going to come out against H1B he would have done it by now, but he's decided to wait for it to blow over.
I say "everyone around them" in the case of Mexicans, so if you don't live around them then you don't really have to worry. We can run from Mexicans in a way we cannot for Indians, but Mexicans are still a welfare deficit in a welfare system that is moribund, and it is political suicide to seriously cut entitlements. Indians will, through their shitlibbery, vote and lobby for more welfare though. The best scenario would be to have a reliable Mexican satellite state to outsource this sort of labor to without having to deal with the consequences of demographic change, but it's never gonna happen. UAE immigration system is also obviously never gonna happen because of how demonized it is, but a war with Mexico would end with the absolute worst people making policy decisions and turning Mexico's problems into our problems instead of turning Mexico into our solution. All of this after an untold number of dead American soldiers, of course.
I don't have a passionate hatred of Trump over this. I think any logical person would do what Trump is doing. He's not an extreme ideologue. America First is a practical slogan to win elections. He cares about his family and his allies, not "the country" or "the white race." I find that people who hate Trump for being a fascist, or for betraying "the movement" generally have a clouded judgment of his motivations.
I agree that Mexicans use welfare, and in my opinion, the solution is to make welfare incompatible with family life. As in, anyone who wishes to get free money from the government should be shipping off to the middle of nowhere. But barring such reforms, welfare is a tax, and taxes are not as costly as scams, because they can be accounted for. Scams create volatility and decrease trust more than taxes, which hurts future investment far more and creates liquidity traps.
As you point out, politically, Hispanics are more likely to vote for welfare cuts than Indians.
A war with Mexico (not against, with) against the cartels would be easier and cheaper than what we are trying to do right now in Ukraine. You're overestimating the bravery of cartel boys. They are just looking to hurt weak people for money; they are like Iraqi forces in 2003. Paper tiger. Less than 1,000 American casualties, guaranteed. Put Erik Prince in charge of execution.
My plan would be to sit down with the leaders of the cartels, offer them government positions, buy them off, and assassinate the rest, and then go Bukele mode. Bukele proved that this is easy, safe, effective. Nothing to be afraid of. If you actually travel to Mexico, you will realize there is nothing to fear here. Mexico's problems are easily solved. It's a really boring country.
Trump’s voters are mostly lower income working class Whites whose jobs are threatened more by Mexicans than Indians, and he has a penchant for punishing demographics who vote against him (ex: your average White tech worker) and that’s why I think he is looking the other way. I'm not sure exactly how much Indian-Americans benefit from scams and how much damage they do to the American economy, that would be hard to measure but I have a hard time imagining that it is comparable to the welfare deficit.
I don't doubt that we could end the cartel easily, and I agree with your propositions, but Mexico refuses U.S. Intervention and U.S. Politics demands that politicians make stupid performative gestures to avoid getting called a terrorist-negotiator or a war criminal or some other stupid term. The same issue arises with welfare.
The problem with scams is not direct damage, but indirect future losses from decreased investment. You can simply invade Mexico by pressuring them, and Trump demonstrated this. But you are right that there is no political will to do this and the bureaucracy makes it impossible. That's the problem with Asian bureaucrats: they make bold action impossible with Byzantine rule-following. It's already an out-of-control problem, but the invasion of the over-qualified makes the problem worse. Mexicans steal jobs from dumb people; over-educated bureaucrats castrate the system from the top down for their own nepotistic benefit. Apples and Oranges.
You can ally with one cartel to crush the other. This isn't hard.
Most of the online Nietzschian anons are thinly veiled Zionists really. They will capitulate on every right wing issue when push comes to shove. BAP for example is a Romanian Jew that supports color blind meritocracy and wrote his PhD on Leo Strauss. He serves as a pied piper for gullible radical right wingers and steers them into a pro-Israel form of White supremacy.
@EternalPhilosophy: As a thinly veiled Zionist Jew, I'm glad that BAP, despite his abhorrent rhetoric, is secretly working for my team to deradicalize the right and safeguard Israel. This is a huge relief. Thank you for informing me, I was worried.
Yes, it’s an effective full spectrum approach. It’s why Ben Shapiro boosts BAPs books, they can disagree on surface level issues like eugenics, genocide, pederasty, and whether God is real. As long as they’re both loyal to Israel, they’re allies.
Wow I had no clue Ben Shapiro was openly hawking Bronze Age Mindset to his millions of fans. It seems to me like my people are much more intelligent and competent than I had previously understood. Godlike, even. Thank you for brightening up my day!
Yes, it’s one of many influence networks. Similar to Epstein’s network of prominent Israelis or Dennis Pragers network of Mossad assets like Marissa Streit.
I don’t know if I would describe it as “Godlike;” that’s a bit of a histrionic reaction to a neutral observation. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Leo Strauss is downplayed hard in mainstream circles. He was a right-wing radical anti-egalitarian and was mainly an anti-historicist, while neocons who succeeded him were strongly historicist in their worldview and causy.
BAP made one tweet encouraging meritocracy (within a state) as a temporary goal for white advocates, meanwhile he has made dozens of tweets critical of Israel and sometimes even glorifying Hezbollah. He “capitulates” on Israel far more than on race or immigration.
Not really. His ideology is only coherent when you realize his first priority is Israel. It explains his hyper fixation on people who attack Israel and why he does such base level shilling during elections.
Have you ever read BAP's books? Hell, do you even listen to his podcast? Where is this confidence coming from in calling his beliefs incoherent? BAP has never had a hyperfixation on people who attack Israel. A certain subset of people who attack Israel have a hyperfixation on BAP to the point where they encourage doxxing and mass reporting everyone who is even vaguely associated with him, and he responds to these people, but he has never had a hyperfixation on Israel attackers
The Democrats are equally captured by Asian and Indian interests, if not more. Many of Biden’s appointees were Asians.
If true, then at least you know what you're getting. I would rather be screwed from the front than from behind. But yeah, if I was a single-issue voter on immigration, maybe I would line up every four years to get back-ended by Elon and Vivek on the 1% chance that they will be better on that issue, or something.
Not done reading but Trump did indeed reduce net migration first term https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/07/21/trump-cuts-legal-immigrants-by-half-and-hes-not-done-yet/?sh=4bf3e506168e
Furthermore, the argument here is about H1Bs,not Mexicans. I clearly differentiate this; you are obfuscating, which is the mendacious Republican tactic I denounce.
Elsewhere in the article you suggest Musk would stand athwart mass deportations, suggesting that the Trumpist con extends to inaction with respect to low skilled immigration as well. I refuted this by posting the linked article and accompanying report. This is consistent with H1B increase. Thanks
That was due to COVID. Unless you expect COVID to happen again, that is not relevant.
COVID played a big role but much of the reduction predates the pandemic
The National Foundation for American Policy projects that the number of legal immigrants will decline by 49% (or 581,845) between FY 2016 and FY 2021 due to Trump administration policies. (From the FY 2016 total of 1,183,505 down to 601,660 in FY 2021.) How did the Trump administration reduce legal immigration by 49% without changing U.S. immigration law? The answer is by using executive and administrative authorities, some of which are being challenged in court.
@BLANK: I never thought I would be accused of being "quiet"! LET ME TRY WRITING LIKE THIS, MAYBE THROWING IN SOME SWASTIKAS TO GET ATTENTON?
I distinguish between moralism and metaphysics, but from a Nietzschean view it's understandable to conflate these.
BAP’s doctoral thesis is partially an attempt to conflate Nietzsche and Plato, and I think he follows in Strauss’s footsteps in this regard as Strauss tried to make the point that Plato’s later writings like Laws were partially an opticscuck and Plato was more like Critias than is admitted. Idk I never read him but that’s what I have been told
If you don't want to read his book you can read my commentary here:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/costin-alamarius-philosophy-mob-left
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/lawgiving-and-philosophy
>Nietzsche’s primary contribution was to free us from metaphysics
Many people say this, but early modern philosophers influenced by skepticism, such as Montaigne, Gassendi, and Bayle, already did this. (Hume had eight volumes of Bayle in his trunk while writing the Treatise.) Speculative philosophy flourished during Romanticism, but neo-Kantian critical philosophy returned to dominate Germany at the end of the 1800s.
I'd say Nietzsche is more influential in promoting Lebensphilosophie, but he is not unique in this, either. (Simmel, Dilthey, James, and others moved in a similar direction.)