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The way your comment was phrased ("Should China or some similar power of the time have meddled in the US civil war? Or maybe the War for Independence?") implied that other powers didn't in fact meddle in American affairs, so I wanted to point out that other powers did in fact intervene.

In my previous reply, I gave a "realist" explanation for this, that it was merely what great powers do. However, I actually want to step back from my previous explanation because I don't think it properly conveys the moral aspect of the conflict. Taiwan is a democratic nation that is de-facto sovereign, and China is a non-democratic nation. If you believe that democracy is good, that governments derive their legitimacy from consent of the governed, and that all people have inalienable human rights, then you should support the defense of Taiwan. If China tries to annex Taiwan, America should intervene and America would be in the right. In my view, "Why Die for Taiwan?" is the new "Why Die for Danzig?" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Die_for_Danzig%3F)

It's interesting that you mention the American Civil War. The father of the Chinese nation, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founded China upon his Three Principles of the People: nationhood, democracy, and social welfare, which he theorized from a famous line from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Unfortunately, Dr. Sun's vision has not become reality for China, but it is alive on Taiwan. I am an American of the Han ethnicity, and I believe that democracy is how governments derive their legitimacy. My dream is a democratic China, and Taiwan is a symbol of what China could be. If China sets out to annex Taiwan, I hope that Americans are willing to consecrate the ground of Taiwan so that Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People shall not perish from the earth.

Well, France meddled in the American Revolutionary War to hurt Britain. That's just the reality of what rival states do.

Taiwan has symbolic value. The CCP has made "reunification" a major part of its "platform" for decades, and a leader who accomplishes that will go down in history in the pantheon of Chinese leaders alongside Mao. So, a CCP leader seeking glory would attempt unification if he judges that China can win. On the other side, the US is Taiwan's security guarantor, and if the US lets China take Taiwan, the US will lose credibility with its Asian allies. Asian countries wary of China may recalculate the power calculus and feel the need to acquiesce to China. Taiwan is also a symbol of the democratic ideals of China's founding and proof that democracy is compatible with so-called "Asian values." Destroying Taiwan eliminates an ideological threat to the CCP's non-democratic legitimacy.

Strategically, Taiwan is an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that China wants.

I'm sorry. HN attracts a certain audience, and so do cryptocurrency companies, and some people from this audience tend to immediately pivot to "culture war" issues whenever allegations of racism arise. The priorities of some commenters on this submission are very misplaced.

For example, people can disagree on the merits of e.g. affirmative action, but if former CoinBase employees are alleging that lower-qualified white employees are being promoted in favor of higher-qualified black employees, then that's a serious matter that you ought to address before pivoting the conversation to other topics. Hiring bias is institutional racism, and allegations of such bias should be thoroughly investigated. But, it's probably easier for some people to talk about affirmative action, but harder for the same people to discuss promotion practices that are biased against black employees. I hope that people who feel eager to talk about the former are also prepared to address the latter.

Also seeing some of the comments, I would like to remind some people not to make racial equality issues into black versus Asian. Both groups experience racism (often different kinds of racism), racial equality is not a zero-sum game, and surely we can find good-faith solutions that help one group without pushing down another.

Cancelling student debt is an example of a moral hazard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard It sets a bad precedent and merely encourages other people to borrow money in the future, but does not solve the underlying issue of college costs. It also subsidizes unemployable degrees.

Promises to wholesale cancel student debt is populism. More specifically, it is left-wing economic populism that panders to the young upper-middle class for their votes. (Interestingly, Federalist Papers Number 10 predicts populist demands to cancel debts 200 years ago.) It's worth noting that Biden's plan, which cancels debt for people below a certain income, is somewhat more reasonable.

However, I do think that college expenses are a real issue. Education is important in society, and college is also a way for lower-class people to move up the economic ladder. Precisely because people can borrow money, colleges are free to charge exorbitant prices. Colleges then expand with amenities and market a lifestyle rather than a place to learn. They also expand with administrative bloat. I think colleges should be held accountable for their rising prices and where the money is going.

P.S. Jonah Goldberg has more writings here: https://thedispatch.com/people/4350832

Not the person you were replying to, but I am aware of the college affirmative action for minorities and the exemptions to the one-child policy. From what I understand, the current trend is that such policies are being rolled back as the Chinese government begins to force the assimilation of minorities more heavily.

(In case this is on your mind: As for college discrimination against Asians in America, although many people conflate this issue with affirmative action, it is actually separate. One must make the distinction between pro-minority affirmative action and Asian penalization relative to the white majority. Asian-American penalization relative to white Americans is morally comparable to the historical Jewish quota, and the justification that affirmative action corrects for historical injustices absolutely does not justify anti-Asian discrimination. Nevertheless, I am also against pro-minority affirmative action because it is illiberal, but it is orthogonal to Asian-American rights.)

A lot of the discussion of China revolves around treatment of minorities. I would also like to draw attention to oppression of the Han majority. One example is that the Chinese government blocks websites, even for trivial or oversensitive reasons. (China recently blocked https://scratch.mit.edu, the children's website where I was introduced to programming...) Another example is that the Chinese government performed forced abortions to enforce the one-child policy. Now in America, there is a complicated political debate over the morality of abortion that involves issues of fetus rights, personhood, and choice. However, it seems to me that whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, the one-child policy, which involves abortions that are not up to choice, is profoundly immoral.

I believe that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the right to freedom to voice opinions without government censorship and the right to partake in democracy (whether that be a direct democracy, a republic, or another form of democracy). Everyone in the world inherently possesses these rights, regardless of whether their government recognizes them. I wish for the government of China to recognize these rights, because human rights are Chinese rights.

I didn't realize this when I wrote my earlier comment, but something that I found disturbing was that you seemed okay with the prospect of your own children being discriminated against, since you merely "expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people." I certainly don't want my future children to be discriminated against. Why do you think that a future where your progeny are second-class citizens is a morally acceptable one?

Even if we suppose that America and China are morally equivalent (which I strongly disagree with), just out of the self-interest of yourself and your family, why would you prefer China over America?

My comment doesn't contradict anything that you're saying. I pointed out that America has made many grave mistakes, such as slavery, and that we can still improve America today. The words of the Declaration of Independence are an inspiration and mandate to work towards the goal of equality.

Our founding fathers were certainly hypocrites and flawed men, but that doesn't invalidate the truth of their words.

I agree with you that people in China deserve a standard of living similar to the West. I also think that people in China deserve to have more freedoms and a representative government, as opposed to a closed one-party bureaucracy. Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized, in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Now, China is also trying to expand its territory. I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples. I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.

This is a false moral equivalence. The US was founded on the idea that "all men are created equal." The US has made terrible mistakes, such as not immediately banning slavery and not extending voting rights to women, and the US still has room to improve today. However, the founding ideas of the US provide a mandate and inspire people to work towards a more equal society. I would greatly prefer the US over China as the world hegemon.

I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me. However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.

Another person replied to your comment and criticized you for interpreting my post in a certain way. (The reply is now flagged and dead.) I would like to make clear that the ACA-5 is absolutely one of the political issues that I am concerned about.

Thank you for your support. I do not know where you live, but one issue that I am concerned about is California's ACA-5, which seeks to bring back racial preferences to public universities and will be on the ballot this November. It is being framed as being pro-equality, but I am concerned that it will also enable universities to discriminate against Asian-American high schoolers.

One idea I've heard proposed is to instead ask a yes-or-no question, "Are you black?", so that universities can help increase black representation, but the important part is that they should not be able to find out whether or not you're Asian-American. At the very least, universities should not be able to distinguish between Asian-Americans and the white majority. The understanding I've heard is that WASP elites aren't necessarily concerned about other minority groups eating away at their influence, but they know that in a meritocratic system, Asian-Americans will outperform them, and therefore they use the "holistic admissions" system to keep Asian-Americans out of top universities (e.g. Ivy League schools) and therefore prevent Asian-Americans from reaching leadership positions and endangering their influence.

Furthermore, college applications ask where you were born and where your parents went to university. Although there is an option to select "prefer not to disclose" for race, my parents were educated in China, and I was born in Japan (despite not even being Japanese anyway!), and I couldn't hide this information. Colleges should not ask this, as it allows them to discriminate against immigrant families, namely Asian immigrant families. China-related xenophobia may make such discrimination worse.

Right now, I'm in college. My dream in HS was to study programming language theory, and I wanted to get into a good university strong in type theory and constructive math. However, the admissions officers were laypeople who wouldn't have even heard of PL theory, and furthermore they negatively stereotype Asian-Americans who are interested in math or programming, or who have an academic focus. I want to make sure that other Asian-Americans in the same position that I was will get a fair shot at a good education.

If the justification of affirmative action is to "correct the harm caused by previous institutional bias," how is it justified that it discriminates against Asian-Americans when we've never held institutional power in America?

(I'm not sure if you're defending affirmative action or if you're just outlining its supposed purpose.)

Thank you for your reply. I think I understand this better now.

I'm cautious about approaching culture war threads, but I have to ask this question:

What is your definition of "neoliberalism?" To my understanding, it is a center-left economic ideology that promotes globalization, free trade, and cooperation between nations as a way to lift up the poor. Neoliberals might be critical of some of the policies that you point out (e.g. free college) due to implementation concerns.

However, isn't this orthogonal to one's attitude to culture war controversies? At least from my experience lurking r/neoliberal, the people there seem reasonable and don't seem to be the overzealous "outrage culture" types, but they perceive that "neoliberal" has become a negative label associated with center-left people who disagree with say, some of the policies proposed by Sanders.

I'm usually apprehensive about getting involved in these culture war threads; please understand that I'm not advocating for any political position, I just want to understand what "neoliberalism" means from your point of view.

For my supplemental essays, I wrote about the importance of PL theory for software engineering, where you want to design programming languages that increase programmer productivity and ensure correctness, therefore leading to less bugs (e.g. security holes) and a benefit to society. I basically tried to appeal to the applied motivation behind PL theory. I don't know if you would consider this to be a benevolent motivation, I mean, it's not reducing inequality or curing cancer or anything like that.

The reason why I applied to Cornell, CMU, and UPenn was that they all have strong PL departments.

CMU offers an undergraduate PL concentration where you learn FP and constructive math: https://csd.cs.cmu.edu/academics/undergraduate/principles_of... I believe I really would have benefitted from this.

The fact is that being a prestigious or elite school often goes hand-in-hand with having good professors and research. There is a certain unfairness, but it seems inherent that a "better" university would naturally have more resources and more professors would come there. But, we should have more top-level universities to accommodate more people. After all, top colleges are always claiming that they have to turn down qualified applicants every year.

Never in my comment did I advocate for policies that give Asians a leg up, and I'm curious to know which part of my comment you interpreted that way. I just want to be judged for my merits and passions without regard to any assumptions that come with my race.

Yes, I agree completely. Because I personally don't come from a poor background, I fell into the racist trap against my own race of forgetting about poorer Asians (who may also live in such neighborhoods, and may be bullied if they locally comprise of the minority). Thank you for correcting me and for downvoting (I assume).

I also agree that the current situation of having to write a touching essay for some WASP is messed up. To be fair, not all essays are sob stories and people actually warn that it shouldn't be all sob and you need to show how you grew, but the whole idea of essays and personality is so vague and subjective, and kids get so stressed over writing a good essay.

EDIT: Offtopic, but looking at your username, do you happen to be the author of the Haskell BEAM library?

To play the devil's advocate, if these poorer neighborhoods, which may correlate with race, have a culture that discourages kids who study, that might actually be an argument to take race into account, if there's say, a black applicant whose score isn't as good, but it's competitive and they came from a bad place and overcame the odds. Due to my own values and experiences, I'd empathize with someone who values intellectualism but has been kept down due to their outside circumstances. It's an unfortunate situation and I would hope that the kid's hard work pays off.

However, I think that this should stay as judging individuals and their circumstances and putting them in the context of the environment, and it should not justify wide-scale generalizations like secret quotas hidden with personality tests, etc. As you point out, such things further anti-intellectualism and penalize Asians and Jews for working hard.

(It would also be more productive to support people in those neighborhoods from the start, such as by supporting elementary schools, instead of waiting until college admissions.)

> I implore you, in the meritocratic tradition of the hacker culture, to speak out against affirmative action and support Asian kids who want to pursue these passions.

How are you unable to pursue your passions-because you didn't get into your first choice school?

I meant that people see Asians liking math or CS as a negative thing and it feeds into the stereotype of having no personality, when there's nothing wrong with liking math or CS.

> So, if I want to go to a good school, I shouldn't study computer science, even though that's what I want to do, just because of the way I was born?

Speaking of Asian stereotypes--going to a good school isn't really that important.

It's not so much that I want to go to a "good" school than that I wanted to go to a school where PL had a presence. It's about my interests, not prestige.

In fact, there were "good" schools that I didn't apply to because they didn't have PL, which in hindsight could have been a bad idea given the advice I've received to get a well-rounded education in undergrad and only specialize in grad school.

And being Asian has nothing to do with this. Non-Asian kids also obsess about prestige, going to the Ivy League, etc, but only Asians get the flak, which is where the racial double-standards come in.

Hmm, that thought never occurred to me.

I had assumed that having specific interests would help me because I knew exactly what the school had to offer (courses, concentrations) instead of a vague "I want to go to your school because it has good CS" / "I want to go to your school because it is prestigious," where other high schoolers may have difficulty thinking of what to say. However, the admissions officers probably never heard of PL, which hurt me.

But, how is wanting to go to a school because of its strength in PL theory any different from a kid who say, likes AI and applied to a school because it has a strong AI program, or a bio major applicant who's really interested in molecular biology or something? I wouldn't think that people would see these kids negatively. (I'm not trying to argue with you, you bring up a possibility that I hadn't realized and I want to consider it.)

College applications season is ending and decisions are out. I don't know about going in undeclared, but choosing a different major is a risk that can backfire if your classes and ECs don't match up with it and admissions officers see through it, or if it's hard to change your major to CS or transfer into the school that has it.

Thank you for the advice. Other people have told me this as well. I chose a school where PL theory has a presence so I can pursue my specific interests, but I expect that the undergraduate CS curriculum will also give me a well-rounded CS education.

I want to learn more about HoTT and constructive math, but I probably have to go to CMU to go deep into that.

At Northeastern, I'll probably explore systems programming languages (I know that Amal Ahmed published a foundations of Rust paper) and gradual typing.

I got rejected from Cornell, CMU, and UPenn, which are extremely competitive schools to be fair. But other people in my grade did get into Cornell. (I do not know whether anyone got into CMU or UPenn.)

I got waitlisted from Georgia Tech and UChicago, but they weren't top choices for me, so I don't mind.

Full disclosure: My ECs were weaker. I really liked my essay, but my mom claims that it gave a negative message that I didn't do much in school.

I wrote about how in the past, I didn't care so much about high school and was looking forward to going to college so I could do PL theory, but after watching a heartfelt anime called K-On, I realized how special high school was, and joined a club and made new closer friends there. By the way, thank you HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18787851 and may KyoAni (the anime studio that made K-On) recover from the massacre last year.

Okay, I just checked my Northeastern application submission:

GPA: 5.46/5 weighted

SAT Reading and Writing: 790

SAT Math: 790

SAT Essay: 19

SAT Math II: 800

SAT Chemistry: 800

P.S: As for California, you're not going to like this: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Articles/loyalty.pdf In order to advance in academia in the UCs, you have to sign a loyalty oath supporting affirmative action!

I've committed to Northeastern. I also got into UMD and Purdue, but Northeastern was the strongest in PL theory, and FP and PL culture influences the undergraduate curriculum through Felleisen's teaching philosophy.

I am an Asian-American high school senior who is nearing the end of the college admissions process.

I am so frustrated and angry that there is this discrimination, and people defend it. I feel that people don't take racism against Asian-Americans as seriously as racism against other groups.

Here's more about me. Like many people on HN, I'm a programmer. I'm interested in functional programming, programming language theory, and type theory. These interests caused me to discover pure math (such as category theory), and although I do not know as much about math than about programming, I want to learn more because I find these ideas elegant and beautiful. (For example, the Curry-Howard correspondence, which links programming to logic through the idea that programs are proofs, or HoTT, which gives types higher-dimensional structure based on the idea that equality types are the isomorphisms of an infinity-groupoid.)

I applied as a CS major to several colleges where PL theory had an academic presence, and in my supplemental essays, I discussed my interests and my desire to work with professors and do undergraduate research. I have competitive stats. Although other kids in my school got into my "reaches" (e.g. Cornell), I got rejected, but luckily I got into some "match" schools that did PL theory.

It's hard to say if affirmative action made a difference. Maybe if my application were exactly the same, but I weren't Asian, I would have gotten in, and if my application were the same except that I got an A instead of a B+ in a class, I would also have gotten in. I got waitlisted from some highly competitive schools, so I could have been on the edge. A big part of me not knowing how much my race would have made a difference is how non-transparent college admissions are. It's left up to some nebulous idea of "fit" decided by a group of people sitting at a table, who only have a few minutes to spend on each applicant.

But, what bothers me is the stereotypes. They've turned liking math and CS into a bad thing, at least when it's an Asian kid who's doing it. People defend affirmative action by saying that there are simply too many highly competitive Asian kids who want to study computer science. So, if I want to go to a good school, I shouldn't study computer science, even though that's what I want to do, just because of the way I was born? Among non-CS people, CS is probably seen as the stereotype track to get a high-paying job (and cynically, perhaps it's a popular major for this reason), but hopefully on a site such as HN, people will be more empathetic to the appeal of CS.

I'm also frustrated because most people probably don't know how math really is like. People just see it as nerdy word problems, and they've never heard of ideas like constructive math, programs-as-proofs, Cartesian closed categories, etc that I've become so intimate with. Why is it bad that I love math? Shouldn't you encourage me to learn this? I guess it's similar to the old stereotype of the "nerd" with no social skills, except with a racial element now.

It's a Catch-22 because people hold Asians to a higher standard, so we need to get higher grades and test scores to be competitive, then that feeds back into the stereotype that we are overly studious and have no personality. There is no winning for us in this game. Isn't it an objectively good thing to do well in school? If it were someone who weren't Asian, people would see high scores and grades as a positive thing or even cheer it on as a sign of increasing equality. Like all competitive high schoolers (of all races), we must play the game of having loads of AP classes, etc, but people specifically see Asians doing this as a negative stereotype.

But, on the front of us studying too much and not having personality, if you play an instrument, people will assume that you're doing it because your parents made you, or because of college admissions. Music is truly a beautiful thing and I experienced just how heartfelt it can be. (Sidenote: Watch Hibike! Euphonium or Your Lie in April!) But, just like the universal language of math, people have somehow turned Asians practicing the universal language of music into a bad thing. I can't imagine stronger proof of not being a robot, of being human, than experiencing how music can move you.

I implore you, in the meritocratic tradition of the hacker culture, to speak out against affirmative action and support Asian kids who want to pursue these passions.

EDIT: In fact, "affirmative action" is a euphemism. It's a vague-sounding term (an action that affirms something?) because people don't want to say "racial discrimination." Words have power to influence people, so I should start calling it what it is.

(FYI, the author, Abigail Thompson, is a woman.)