[FRIAM] India

[Marcus Daniels]

There was this incident a few months ago where Scott Adams made unbelievable remarks about segregation.  Someone that was once sort of a cool guy, seemingly degenerated into madness.   In conservative circles in the U.S. there’s a strong resentment of Black Lives Matter, and one story that I have heard is about a mansion that the organization purchased, supposedly in the words one of the principles, using “White Guilt money”.    In Berkeley there were in fact many white people in the streets for days over the George Floyd killing, and some of that is probably just that.    At the same time, I know a bit about the city of Berkeley and have heard stories about how “white privilege” is weaponized by individuals who happen not to be white, but see that there is a lever they can use to get what they want even if what they want only serves their needs and not any greater cause of justice.   The pushback against affirmative action is similar.  Why should Asians that get top scores step aside for people that did not when it comes to admission to the best schools?   Will the people that displace them act like the individuals who cynically game the system or will there be a productive social process of equilibration?   I have not run into many people that are against these reallocation techniques that acknowledge the equilibration goal or the need for patience to make it happen.   They simply focus on the individual injustices of reverse discrimination.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2023 11:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] India

Hi Glen

In so far as the report of dropping the periodic table and evolution from the Class 10 syllabus, it is essentially a question of Hindu class and caste dynamics operating in India.

Traditionally, education / knowledge in India was the domain of the Higher castes like Brahmins (Pundits), the next caste beneath them (Kshatriyas) were warriors so didn't need much bookish knowledge as they also had Brahmins to advise them, the 3rd highest caste (Kayasthas) were scribes and scriveners so allowed to read books but not to apply them .. and so on. All the  castes beneath them were prohibited from reading books or acquiring Brahmanical knowledge - on pain of death.

Over the centuries by marrying endogamously the genetics of the various castes evolved to amplify the physical characteristics required for each castes' profession. The Muslim and then the British rulers of India were more than happy to allow this state of affairs to continue while they ruled as it kept the Hindus divided and segregated.

However, after India became independent in 1947, with the spread of universal education the Brahmins were subjected to intense reverse discrimination and negative reservations intended to curtail their education domination. With the infiltration of the lower castes throughout the education system the education standards of India have been pulled down to the lowest common denominator. To take a simple example which I cited earlier, a Brahmin student needs to score a 99+% percentile to get into a top engineering or medical college (scoring 250 marks out of 300 in a negatively marked exam) whereas a low caste (barely literate) student gets in even with a score of negative 50 out of 300, with over 40% of the students unable to score +ve marks.

The reasons these chapters are being removed has nothing to do with religion or creationism, and everything to do with the poor state of the Indian education system where the bottom students can't cope. The low caste Prime Minister of India (who has only passed Grade 4) claims to have acquired graduate as well as post-graduate degrees from top universities (which seem completely fake), Universities which he publicly admits he never set foot in, especially seems determined to pull everyone in India down to his semi-literate level.

Sarbajit

On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 9:29 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't follow Indian politics. But these seem scary:

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia
https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/04/religion-and-the-decline-of-freethought-in-south-asia/

India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

Again, going back to Sweet Tooth, the tension between having to sacrifice hybrids to get the 'secret sauce' for the anti-viral (or the cure) against a vegetarian ideology is interesting, flies in the face of naïve utilitarianism.

--
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