Negatory
2yr ago
Imagine being raised in modern America, educated in regular public school that teaches race-blindness and living in a society that treats MLK as a hero. Imagine being a Democrat who thinks Obama was a great president.
HBD did not confirm my priors. It doesn’t confirm the priors of the average person in the US. If it did, we’d be in a very different situation. People like Scott hate that their commitment to facts an interest in genetics leads to HBD. (Scott will write about the Manhattan Project being a Hungarian Jewish high school project but he’s not going to write about the other side of the genetic coin for all the obvious reasons.)
As a libertarian, I hate it because it’s nicer and easier to sell people on the benefits of freedom in a world where glaring racial disparities could be rectified by simply removing barriers.
So motivated reasoning (and social desirability bias) are in effect, but mostly pushing in the opposite direction than you think. Hanania criticizes all the HBDers who really do seem to lean in to what closely resembles trad racism, but even bad people can be right sometimes.
“Epistemic humility” is great, when it’s not used as a weapon to downplay clear evidence for inconvenient conclusions.
Negatory
2yr ago
The policy answer is race-blind policies that treat individuals as individuals and don’t create double standards for certain categories.
Race realism/hereditarianism/HBD is the explanation for why certain disparities will persist in a fair playing field.
This is basically the same situation as Damore faced. It shouldn’t be tenable for it to be a major scandal and firing offense to state well-evidenced facts about reality. The Overton Window has to shift.
Negatory
2yr ago
Man, that’s a good description of what a hollow and expensive victory it was.
But it was the strongest motivator for conservatives to try so hard for court control, and that is likely to pay dividends in other issues even if it hurts GOP elections (until they moderate down to safe/legal/rare).
Negatory
2yr ago
The fact that you don’t know (and nobody else does either) is kind of the whole problem.
History is full of great thinkers who were incredibly devout. Mostly because nearly everyone was religious and academic work and institutions were often formally associated with a church.
Which makes it all the more striking that we never quite got any good evidence for the god stuff (or alchemy, despite Newton’s best efforts).
I was raised religious. It was extremely emotionally difficult to honestly investigate the evidence for and against my beliefs. But that was the actually the hardest part, because once you don’t privilege the hypothesis the evidence points strongly away from religious factual claims.
There’s no polite way in most societies to indicate even indirectly that someone’s religion is obviously BS. It has a privileged position. Now there are exceptions like Christians criticizing Islam, or Mormonism being judged extra kooky, but overall religious people in the US are used to having thin skin about their sacred beliefs. We “militant” atheists even get lambasted by other nonbelievers for being unsophisticated and uncouth.
It’s actually the exact same dynamic as poking holes in the Santa story for kids—socially it’s unthinkable to puncture the collective myth. Don’t take that away from them! It’s a fun belief (used by parents to incentivize good behavior when they can’t observe behavior and without it being direct bribery).
Religious people tend to find that comparison extremely offensive, but that very reaction is the proof of the dynamic.
A spade is a spade. If your beliefs had strong evidence you could simply relish blasting apart my skepticism, same as any other internet discussion.
Me telling you your belief system is almost certainly BS due to a lack of evidence is me treating you like an adult who can employ reason and cares about having true beliefs. Anything else is the polite bigotry of low expectations.
Negatory
2yr ago
That is a level of optimism I don’t think is justified given the consistent trend the other way the last 50 years.
Sure, the current Supreme Court and many judges out there are sane on this issue, but the problem is a lot bigger than just the courts.
Negatory
2yr ago
You’re not helping your case by citing an example of using science to demonstrate the existence of something we can’t directly observe with our senses.
That’s exactly the process we’d accept for a religious phenomenon.
But what we actually observe is Sagan’s garage dragon and god of the gap excuses for why hard evidence doesn’t exist (that even believers find consistently compelling).
Negatory
2yr ago
Bayesian priors lean strongly towards some mental quirk, yes.
That’s why it’s important to have a good demon evidence for more than just say me to witness one time. Same goes for say Bigfoot or UFOs.
The bible is chock full of miraculous deeds to wow the crowd so don’t get cute by citing one verse. And that verse sounds pretty ironic based on the whole bit where Jesus did rise from the dead.
Negatory
2yr ago
Sprinting is the obvious one. Also marathons.
Why doesn’t white privilege from all the fancy coaching help them here? Does white culture really not highly prize athletic performance?
It’s pretty obviously not “blacks just like basketball so much more than whites” that explains black overrepresentation here.
Tons and tons of American white boys, far outnumbering blacks, try as hard as they can to make it big in basketball and football.
Negatory
2yr ago
If your god can’t outperform masks what’s the point.
The medical interventions done in the Bible are not subtle.
Neither is the food replication.
But nowadays it’s just so hard to find a real miracle.
Negatory
2yr ago
Nobody here is saying environment doesn’t matter at all.
But also you can do comparisons where you try to control for environmental factors.
“Stress” isn’t going to cut it as an explanation for such a broad, consistent finding, which extends beyond African Americans specifically. For instance, I doubt it’s “stress” that causes whites to have lower math scores than East Asians in America.
Negatory
2yr ago
Markets work if they aren’t strangled and the Industrial Revolution didn’t arrive everywhere the same way.
Japan was closed off, then it rapidly industrialized, then after WWII it rebuilt and became a juggernaut until an aging population slowed things down.
China and Korea had a real bloody time of it. Then South Korea was able to rapidly grow with US protection and eventuality China loosened up on the central planning and also made significant gains. North Korea remains a basket case.
Now we see if they can possibly do anything to avoid population collapse…
Negatory
2yr ago
You’re switching from outcomes of various groups within America to globally at a country level, which makes it more complex.
North Koreans are shorter than South Koreans. We know pretty strongly that’s environment and not genes causing that difference. But when we can control for environment sufficiently and remove it as a barrier, as in the case of malnutrition, it’s probably going to be genes setting the upper limit on height.
Also we can now compare performance on international tests and observe outcomes for various immigrant groups around the world over time as well as at the country level. If there weren’t consistent trends then that would be strong counterevidence. But there are quite consistent trends.
Negatory
2yr ago
The classic response here is “why does god hate amputees?”
“Miracle” is a red herring. Can an actual effect be observed even if the mechanism isn’t understood?
If a claimed effect can’t ever be separated out from other causes then it sounds made up.
“Testimonies” of a phenomenon are a starting point for investigation, not strong evidence by themselves. The paper you linked to is about one lady.
If the power of god via the laying on of hands or prayer is so unreliable that it can’t be distinguished from other causes then that’s normally something we would judge to be made up. Faith healers will go on TV and touch people but no one’s showing studies over time where say, inexplicably, those people have a 35% better chance of outcomes relative to average. Or say Christian hospitals consistently outperforming secular ones. Or Muslim surgeons outperforming secular ones.
Robust studies showing consistent effects would signal there was something going on, even if we couldn’t directly detect the mechanism.
If the power was real and as effective as adherents claim the evidence would not be so shy about being observed. Biblically, the power of god gets demonstrated quite strongly but we can’t seem to get that to happen nowadays. The simplest explanation consistent with human behavior and the laws of physics is that it was just made up.
“I do a wishful thinking and sometimes magic happens that can’t be measured/observed by others” is not a strong approach to reality regardless of whether it’s associated with religion or not.
Negatory
2yr ago
I don’t think he’s playing dumb and I blocked him accordingly.
I’m not sure if you read the whole thread, but he denied nearly identical wording and shifted goalposts.
That’s not “talking past each other” that’s something else.
Negatory
2yr ago
He was a very early member of the rationality community and liked the practice of making bets.
Plus a tendency for conspiratorial thinking.
The election stealing and RussiaGate theories are likely going to be popular for decades, annoyingly. At least classic conspiracy theories weren’t so partisan.
Negatory
2yr ago
You can call me a liar if you want after I acknowledged I was insufficiently clear with my brevity.
I don’t significantly disagree with Walter and I was focused on routing things to where I do disagree, which wasn’t intended to be criticizing him.
Negatory
2yr ago
If faith healing actually worked it would be easy to prove. That you would shy away from it confirms the weakness of your position.
Some religious people will even say things like god won’t respond to tests or took back the holy relic because otherwise we wouldn’t need faith.
Whining about the replication crisis getting in the way of proving the Power of God is such a funny cope that is classic Motte.
If religion were so potent then heretics like me should be getting blown out of the water with evidence and/or burned by heavenly fire, like back in the biblical days.
Negatory
2yr ago
What is “spirit”? How does it interact with the physical world?
Jesus healed the sick by casting out demons. Or forgiving them for some sin.
Now we try mood stabilizers and antibiotics.
People having personal evidence in their own head is just not remotely convincing because there’s no check on BS or delusion.
“Scientific” as a modifier for “evidence” is a red herring. If there were actually good evidence via say a record of paranormal activity that’s a Nobel prize waiting to happen.
Negatory
2yr ago
You can subsidize the underclass without wrecking meritocracy and lighting money on fire for interventions that won’t work.
Keep in mind in the essay Hanania lists Murray as a good example, not a dumb HBDer. There’s also decent evidence that appeals to my libertarian biases that the various government interventions hurt more than they helped. Sowell writes a lot about this.
So if all Hanania is saying is “be like Murray and not an edgelord” then I don’t disagree with that, I’m just confused a bit by how he framed his essay.
I gotta say it’s a bit funny to think HBD types as unaware of the racial imbalance in “mostly peaceful protests” and such.
Negatory
2yr ago
You put it very well.
I got the sense Hanania was punching down against his younger self and all the dumb conservatives that annoy him. I don’t really come away from the essay understanding what his preferred approach is.
What’s funny is Hanania has quite literally written about his autism as a super power so it’s really full circle.
Negatory
2yr ago
Ignoring race, poverty doesn’t stick nearly so much as genes, so all of your examples about generational issues don’t imply what you want them to.
Again ignoring race, your example about poor education over generations is even more unfortunate, given what a strong proxy that is for intelligence.
Some people just aren’t tall. On average, their offspring probably won’t be very tall either. Height and intelligence are both highly heritable and assortive mating tends to reinforce these things.
Moreover, we have multiple examples of groups that faced intense discrimination and disadvantages and it took a generation or two to catch up or exceed society averages, not centuries. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants that came to the US did not tend to come from privileged positions and suffered a great deal of adversity. They do pretty well for themselves.
The classic example is the Ashkenazim, a group of Jews that ended up being evicted to northern Italy, having a genetic bottleneck (and some admixture with the locals), moving into Central Europe for some centuries and growing in size, and then being forced eastwards through Europe all the way to Russia. Centuries of near-constant persecution. Many cases of having to move and start over. Intense generational trauma.
And yet that adversity hasn’t stopped them from being so successful in so many places and fields that it fuels conspiracy theories that are popular on both left and right. Even right here on the Motte if you can believe it.
It’s not a coincidence the Ivy League discriminated against Jews as it more recently has against East Asians.
The mounting evidence is a combination of evermore time, money, and effort trying to rectify gaps and that not working, various twin and adoption studies shedding light on the balance of nature vs. nature, and progress on genetics.
The issue and underlying science is a lot bigger than the sustained achievement gap of one particular minority in the US. The politics sure does revolve around it though.
Negatory
2yr ago
You’re implying investigations didn’t happen regarding allegations made.
A lot did. Are there significant allegations that weren’t?
Nowhere did I say investigations shouldn’t happen. That’s a pretty stupid stance.
It’s not specifically about TTV’s claims, they’re just the example of the day for a class of people and groups who did make strong allegations, which fell apart upon investigation.
A lot of investigations happened and a lot of people out there failed to update when the allegations could not be substantiated.
Overall, I’m not going to engage with someone I see consistently misrepresenting my positions after I try to correct a misunderstanding.
Try harder or don’t, I’m just giving you notice.
Negatory
2yr ago
You don’t get past the radioactivity without shifting the Overton Window re: point 1.
Let me reemphasize that I also agree with the criticisms he made re: points 2-4 in his description.
What I’m not understanding is how to get point 1 to be commonly accepted based on what he wrote.
standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting
These are great. Would be a shame if we stopped using them because of incorrect beliefs about the root causes of group differences…
I don’t see how we get back to that glorious past without a broad acceptance of point 1. I’m not sure what Hanania calls that (race realism?) to separate it from HBD (2-4), but it seems trying to downplay it hasn’t worked and won’t work.
Negatory
2yr ago
I’m using “half life” metaphorically. I’m not literally saying there is a causal mechanism directly affecting every plot the way it works in chemistry.
An MKUltra today would be far less likely to either get off the ground or remain covert for the reasons I outlined. That the actual MKUltra was exposed by the dint of luck back in the day does not challenge what I am trying to relate.
This is probabilistic thinking applied to evaluating incomplete evidence. The environment has changed a lot in 50+ years and so directly mapping plots of yore onto potential plots today is a faulty model because the priors are not updated sufficiently.
All those stats you cited prove systemic racism, which we need a progressive government to eradicate.
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