University admission is political

On one side of the nature/nurture debate are the blank slate people (“anything can be taught to anyone”), on the other side are the innate intelligence people (“evolution made some people better at cleaning toilets”). This is of course a gross exaggeration bordering on complete misrepresentation. The truth might be somewhere in the middle, if this thing we call ‘intelligence’ is even just a one-dimensional spectrum.

We know that dendritic malformations result in visible cognitive impairment - a point for the innate group. We also know that teaching people to read letters makes them more literate - humanity didn’t suddenly evolve a new gene to be able to read. It was national education programs that allowed for literacy to spread throughout the world.

There are many subtleties to this question that I cannot hope to get into - epigenetics, for example, the study of which genes are activated, has upturned the idea of genetic determinism. So even if intelligence is ‘innate’ and genetic, it can be modified and so not so innate any more. A complex interaction between environment and genes creates the occasional expression of the intelligence that we (as in states and corporations) value. It is entirely possible that different environmental circumstances in different sequences are necessary to bring out ‘optimal’ performance in everyone. Many states and corporations don’t have the resources to invest in neurodivergent people to bring out the benefit for the whole group.

This doesn’t even get into the question of what is ‘optimal’ in terms of education policy like affirmative action. To me, that’s clearly a policy to prevent ethnic violence and national disintegration. That’s how it functions in India and Malaysia. But people lose the plot and think university admissions and these things are purely about merit - they’re not, they’re also about prestige and who is let into the prestige club.

An Ivy League degree is a signal. It tells people all over the world a particular thing - you know how to speak the language of the imperial center. That is powerful as fuck in an environment like Singapore. Who should get this power? Who should be the emissaries of Washington, essentially?

If I was a top-down policymaker who wanted to show off the diversity of my empire - which is often how empires signalled wealth to the outside world - “Look at all the different cultures I have collected.” and ensure their place as The Capital in the long-term. - I would pick a very biased affirmative action.

If I was a top-down policymaker who wanted to gut the minority community organization in my country, I would pick a very biased affirmative action.

Affirmative action is an odd thing to be opposed to in principle for me, but in my opinion, the policy hides a much more pernicious aspect of American empire. The assimilating majority merely needs to exist as a large gravitational body, and the smaller populations that orbit it have to maintain a safe distance or crash and get absorbed. But when state resources are invested in institutions like universities that are also held by the majority, what are minorities to do? How can they organize their own communities and foster talent and productivity within? Maybe affirmative action is the best way to do so. After all, it’s how one powerful minority has held onto its power.