[rayiner]

> True enough but probably not relevant to anything. Every society is already a patchwork of families with different beliefs that date back centuries.

In most existing societies, that patchwork follows normal distributions centered around recognizable points. This is obvious even in the U.S. Sure, you’ll meet chatty people in rural Oregon and curt people in rural Georgia. But if you’re culturally calibrated to make small talk like in Georgia then you’ll piss off most cashiers in Oregon.

Once you acknowledge that these differences exist, you also have to acknowledge that these differences aren’t merely superficial. It’s not just food and dress, but also attitudes about honor, conflict resolution, trust, saving, debt, justice, and government. Look at Minnesota (historically) as compared to Scandinavia (from where a lot of Minnesotans immigrated). You can easily see the through lines connecting the governance of those places. You can easily see the differences in governance between Iowa and Alabama.

[roenxi]

If you bring in a bunch of immigrants it'll still have recognised centres to the distributions. That is literally how the US population was built. That is the thing about distributions, they form. It isn't possible to live in a place with other people and not start forming cultural links.

There isn't a question here that different people have different cultures and migration changes culture. Indeed, if we assume that migrants migrate to places with cultures that promote success then change the culture that'd suggest that migrants cause mean-reversion for the worse. But on the other hand that mean reversion happens anyway, cultures change anyway and migrants tend to be a bit smarter and more motivated than the locals so it is hard to really be certain.

It is still a bit of a non-issue that immigrants don't assimilate into something that doesn't really exist in an environment that was changing anyway. I wish more people from my own culture would assimilate into it a bit better and maybe keep to some of the good ideas a little more diligently. Or even just agree on what they were.

[rayiner]

> If you bring in a bunch of immigrants it'll still have recognised centres to the distributions. That is literally how the US population was built.

Yes, but the center of the distributions along various axes will shift. To give an example: I grew up in Northern VA, which in the 1990s was quite WASPy. One aspect of that culture was austerity: it was hard to tell the people worth tens of millions apart from upper middle class doctors and lawyers. Now, the influx of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East has totally destroyed that norm. Relatively discrete brick mansions are being turn down and replaced with enormous and ostentatious displays of wealth.

> Indeed, if we assume that migrants migrate to places with cultures that promote success then change the culture that'd suggest that migrants cause mean-reversion for the worse.

That’s the concern. And it’s not just “success.” But orderliness, egalitarianism, democracy, etc. Most societies are much less successful on all those fronts than America. The only direction we can really go is down.

[Levitz]

>It is still a bit of a non-issue that immigrants don't assimilate into something that doesn't really exist in an environment that was changing anyway.

The "something that doesn't really exist" is what allows immigrants to come in the first place, an accepting and tolerant culture. It's what allows women to walk home at 2 AM and what made people fight for gay marriage.

Does this nihilistic view of culture cut both ways by the way? Was Nazi Germany just fine culturally speaking?