Is there a way to do this from reddit to themotte? I have it copied with working links to a word file, but when I copy it to themotte it loses the links, and it's a link heavy post
edit: nvm, I think reddit enhancement suite fixed this
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
I saw this post on /r/stupidpol and thought it fit with themotte. Reposted here with permission from the author, "GeAlltidUpp"
TAKING THE BLACKPILL ON CRIME:
It is estimated that 2% of all serious crimes in the US lead to convictions (Baradaran Baughman, Shima 2020 "Police solve just 2% of all major crimes" The Conversation). CBS reports that the national murder clearance rate has sunk to 51% (2022-06-01"Crime Without Punishment"). The Murder Accountability Project estimates that "at least two percent of all murders in the US are committed by serial offenders - translating to roughly 2,100 unidentified serial killers." With the clarification that "[this does not mean that] there are 2000 active serial killers but that there are at least 2000 who have gone unrecognized as being serial killers." Former detective Michael Arntfield, who has written 12 books on serial killers, puts the numbers of unidentified repeated murderes between 3,000 and 4,000. (Kenton, Lule (2021-10-16) "Up to 4,000 serial killers whose crimes rival Ted Bundy & Zodiac loose in US & map shows where they may be, experts warn" The Sun). European welfare states aren't always that much better. In my home country pf Sweden, 80% of all deadly shootings within criminal circles in the 1990s were solved, that figure has been lowered to around 25% (2022-08-24 "Så få skjutningar leder till fällande dom i Sverige" SVT). An investigative reporter who has studied modern crime in Sweden, states that "it's very easy to be a criminal in Sweden" (2020-09-19 ”Det är väldigt lätt att vara yrkeskriminell i Sverige” DagensNyheter)
Socialists, reasonable liberals, libertarians, and shitlibs, often protest against punitive efforts, due to the risk of prisons increasing the rate of reoffending. The effect of prisons increasing criminal tendencies has probably been overstated, and might even be negligible (Harding, D., Morenoff, J., Nguyen, A. Bushway, S. 2017. "Short- and long-term effects of imprisonment on future felony convictions and prison admissions". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. Oct 17; 114(42): 11103–11108; Al Weswasi, E., Sivertsson, F., Bäckman, O. et al. “Does sentence length affect the risk for criminal recidivism? A quasi-experimental study of three policy reforms in Sweden”. J Exp Criminol).
With that said, the concern is understandable, particularly seeing as research has shown that rehabilitative efforts leas to a greater decrease in recidivism than pure sanctions (i.e fines and jail without rehabilitative treatment)
(Lipsey, M. W., och Cullen, F. T (2007) "The effectiveness of correectional rehabilitation: A review of systematic reviews" Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci., 3, 297-320). Prison sentences almost always entail sanctions and rehabilitation.
The depressing thing is that despite the western world having spent an enormous amount of money on rehabilitative efforts for almost a hundred years, we've moved from a criminological majority opinion of "nothing works" to "nothing works well". (Sipes, Jr, Leonard A. (2016) "“Nothing Works” in Corrections Replaced by “Nothing Works Well?”" Crime in America).
Optimistic evaluations state that the best treatment programs can reduce recidivism by between 10 to up to nearly 40% (Lipsey, M. W., och Cullen, F. T (2007) page 303). Somber analysts have pointed out that the lower bound of 10% is probably the more realistic one (Sipes, Jr, Leonard A. 2016). Even these figures are possibly optimistic, seeing as only 2% of serious crimes lead to convictions, it is possible that a substantial amount of criminals who are deemed to be rehabilitated, in fact merely develop better techniques for avoiding prosecution over their lifespans.
Some crime rehabilitative techniques increase crime amongst particular subgroups of offenders while decreasing it amongst others (Wilson, James Q., and Herrnstein, Richard J. (1988{1985}) "Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime" The Free Press: New York - First Free Press Paperback Edition, page 19; Kärrholm, Fredrik (2020) "Gangstervåldet" chapter 16 - referencing (1977) "Nytt Straffsystem" BRÅ, page 105). Knowing that you've placed the right subgroup in the right program, isn't always easy. As recently as 2016, Sweden had to disband treatment meant to increase empathy amongst pedophiles, because new research showed that it most likely increased the risk of reoffending ("Behandling för sexförbrytare kan ha ökat återfallsrisken"SR). To be fair, a similar effect exists within therapy, where roughly 5-10% are estimated to suffer more due to their treatment (Goldhill, Olivia (2016-03-20) "Therapy can actually make things worse for some people" Quartz;Snaprud, Per (2019-07-09) "Psykoterapi kan öka plågorna" Forskning och Framsteg)
Furthermore, crime can't be fought by simply increasing welfare and redistributing resources. I'm pro generous welfare, strong unions, and I even want to expropriate some businesses and move towards a planned economy or a market socialist one. So I'm not saying this to try and dissuade you from leftist politics, nor is any of this meant as an argument for cruel prisons or capital punishment. With that said, economic justice probably isn't enough to fight crime. To quote a book on the subject:
"Some people hate the welfare state, and have a tendency to blame it for crime. Others like the welfare state, attributing crime to not having more of it. I maintain that crime variation in industrial nations have nothing to do with the welfare state. In general, it is a mistake to assume that crime is part of a larger set of social evils, such as unemployment, poverty, social injustice, or human suffering. I call this the Welfare-state fallacy.
It is interesting to see partisans on this issue pick out their favorite indicators, samples of nations, and periods of history in trying to substantiate their assertions. We see all the economic indicators rising with crime from 1963 to 1975 [...] We see the same indicators changing inversely to crime in the last few years in the United States. We also note that most crime rates went down during the Great Depression.
I first realized that the welfare crime linkage was mistaken when studied crime rate change since World War II. Improved welfare and economic changes, especially for the 1960s and 1970s, correlated with more crime! I next recognized something was wrong with the hypothesis when I learned that Sweden's crime rates increased 5-fold and robberies 20-fold during the very years (1950 to 1980) when its Social Democratic government was implementing more and more programs to enhance equality and protect the poor [...] Other "welfare states" in Europe (such as the Netherlands) experienced at least as vast an increase in crime as the United States, whose poverty is more evident and social welfare policies are stingier. [...]
This is not an argument against fighting poverty or unemployment. Rather, it is an attempt to detach criminology from a knee-jerk link to other social injustice, inequality, government social policy, welfare systems, poverty, unemployment, and the like. To the extent that crime rates respond at all to these phenomena, they may actually increase with prosperity because there is more to steal. In any case, crime does not simply flow from other ills.”
A government report from Swedish crime prevention agency reached the same conclusion: "Developments in recent decades with significant efforts put into, for example, social- and labor market politics, taking place parallel with a strong increase in crime — gives a clear indication that improved economic and social conditions generally does not reduce crime." (my emphasis, SOU 1986:13 - translated from: "Utvecklingen under senare decennier med betydande insatser
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
Well, Sweden intentionally doesn't collect these kinds of stats, so it would be hard to prove. But I would suggest that the fact that they don't collect these kinds of stats is pretty damning. Where there's smoke...
So maybe not hard proof. But bayesian evidence, yes
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
Well, it was posted to stupidpol which has different social norms than themotte. But I felt that the quality of the post outweighed the stylistic concerns.
I could have made some minor edits (after asking for permission), and if there's a next time, I will.
But I would hope this doesn't prevent us from engaging with the meat of this post.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
The idea behind highlighting quality contributions is less to honor the author than to get more people to see something worth seeing. He would be happy to see more people engage with it (for this reason, he seemed happy to have me post it here)
What is the value of HBD being true?
I was talking to my psychiatrist about this. He seemed amenable to HBD, he has heterodox opinions, but he was curious as to why I was curious.
I think that most people at the motte generally accept that IQ scores aren't evenly distributed among groups, but what is the counter argument to: "Why does it matter?" and "in the past, when we've focused on differences, it ends badly".
Scott thinks it matters because he believes that our resistance to using IQ tests is based on the fact that favored classes do poorly. I think he's right; we have our (heavily discredited, but still used) hypothesis of multiple intelligences. And the Nazis developed their own hypothesis of multiple intelligences, "practical" and "theoretical", because they realized that their favored class "aryans" performed more poorly than their hated class "jews".
What do you think of the idea that multiculturalism needs a "great lie" in order to function? Subconsciously, progressive whites know that black people broadly aren't as intelligent; they downshift their speech around black people more than conservatives do. I don't think this is because conservatives are less "racist", but because they aren't willing to make themselves less competent to cater to black people. But what if it goes mainstream, and from subconscious to conscious? My most honest thought is, I don't know what comes next. Because I don't know, it could be worse. I have to admit that's a possibility. But I don't think we'll ever get a satisfying conclusion by lying. But I would like to harvest some thoughts here. Are we setting up for another holocaust if we push this mainstream, or is that just more nonsense?
I think that recognizing that IQ differences are a thing would open the door to separating classes by aptitude. I think the primary resistance to this is that you'd see the wrong concentrations in the high aptitude and low aptitude groups. Currently, in CA, the new (old) thrust is that talent isn't real, aptitude isn't real. I think that a denialist approach will probably do damage by not challenging each type of student appropriately. And we have a tendency to be willing to disadvantage higher performing students, like cutting AP math classes because of "white" (asian) supremacy. We know that students learn best when around other students who are their peers in terms of academic ability. I don't think this would be persuasive to a hardened woke, though. I think that even if they knew IQ differences were real, and genetic, they would resist this because they would see it as harmful to low aptitude students.
Group differences in IQ being genetic could be a strong pro-welfare position. But that also makes me uncomfortable. Should we really make it even easier for the low IQ to further outbreed high IQ people? But I'm just rediscovering eugenics. Should that be a bad word? In the past, strong selection (cultural, and biological) probably led to Britain escaping the malthusian trap (see "Farewell to Alms" for more details). What could we accomplish if we again constrained reproduction to push for the kinds of traits that get shit done? Where I'm sitting, it looks like we're caught in a sort of trap. What problems could we solve if we tried to create better people? Maybe intelligent species die in their planetary crib because once they reach a level of sophistication supported by their biology, they engineer ways to decouple reproduction from the stuff that matters, and as a result, they fail to achieve anything more. They maybe succeed in creating a comfortable way of life, but not an innovative one. So, a society like ours, that favors Nick Cannons over Von Neumanns. Still working through this line of thinking, any thoughts?
White and Asian kids are being raised, from my view, to be sacrificial lambs. I see it as a modern, woke retelling of the White Man's Burden. If Black kids weren't raised to blame White kids, and to turn their feelings of inferiority into weapons, I think that would be good for them. And it would certainly be good for White kids to not grow up internalizing that any disparity is their fault. Same with Asians, they aren't even White but they get hit with this shit the most. But again, this isn't going to be convincing to a woke. Can this be framed in a way that they will understand? Or is that structurally impossible? My view of things is that the White guilt narrative allows White elites to outmaneuver other Whites by allying with non-Whites. If this is true, being completely correct means nothing as long as this alliance is paying dividends.
More generally, a principle I believe in is: it's much harder to solve a problem when you're deliberately ignorant to the cause. We didn't solve anything in the '60s, I think we put off the problem, and we'll have to pay, with interest, but I'm not totally sure the form this will take.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
I'm not a troll. I've been in the rationalist world for almost a decade.
Do we avoid talk like this? What was the point of leaving reddit, then? Should we self censor based on some fringe loons who hate read us? If someone wants to paint an awful picture of us, they already can.
Tell me why I'm so wrong and crazy, then. That's the point of the post
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
They did know that Jews were smarter, that's why they developed their own version of multiple intelligences. But you're right, it did nothing to dissuade them.
Does this mean that we need to waste another 60 years on interventions that will at best make things not worse, and then blame White kids (and punish Asians) in perpetuity?
But, you're right of course. White and Asian kids are on the hook for our current order, for the foreseeable future
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
It is, but color blindness as the official policy would have put this to cycle to rest. At least more so.
There is too much power and money up for grabs, so the people who want to perpetuate the cycle of abuse outflanked the people who wanted to transcend the cycle of abuse.
If I'm right that elite Whites are pivoting to minorities to beat other Whites, then there is no place for a suggestion that doesn't emphasize racial conflict.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
I agree, but I'm not the one saying it, it's something I hear a lot. I saw a YouTube comment on some race vid, and the guy's point was "so what if it's true, bad things happen when we notice". I wanted the strongest argument against that.
When you acknowledge hbd is true, they can stereotype you as "clearly they want bad things to happen to xyz". I think it's important to not inhabit our enemies stereotypes of us, and I genuinely believe that suppressing hbd leads to worse outcomes for black people.
I believe that much of the resistance to tracking students differently based on ability is based on the idea that if x percent in the advanced or remedial track doesn't match the gen pop, then it must be racism. Therefore, we must not individuate. If it was common knowledge that hbd was true, then we could allow kids to be grouped by ability in a way that would allow them to be taught more effectively.
Or, maybe they're just rationalizing, and they'd be against that regardless. But they'd have to be honest.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
I think there's a danger to putting off a problem with the view that it will eventually be (probably) solved with technology.
We're a long ways off from there really being no way to make money if you aren't substantially brighter than average. My plumber makes 250k, he's been doing it a while but his company is just him and two other guys.
I think that if we separated kids by ability and slotted them into tracks that lead to realistic career choices, you could have a lot of very successful Black and White tradesmen, foremen, etc.
But first, we'd have to admit that aptitude is a thing, and that not everyone can grow up to be a physicist. We make perfect the enemy of the good, and it's mostly the underserved who pay for it.
I'm definitely at 3. I think there's too much invested in the illusion for it to fail. White elites can pivot to the anti-White resentments of certain minorities to outcompete other Whites. Arguments about truth are irrelevant, even harm to the very groups we claim to be protecting is irrelevant.
As long as that coalition is a source of power, this stuff can't be used to help anyone.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
Man, those links are a trip. If I showed those to anyone back in the '90s, they'd think it was something a White supremacist put together.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
Thank you. I agree that the argument that it foments race hate falls flat when you take into account that the people saying this are pushing race hate.
Sometimes when I'm researching random shit I'll tell him about it.
He can be a useful sounding board. Basically an NYT liberal, but heterodox enough to be able to have certain conversations. It helps ground me.
You think this is the chief value? Or is this just your own hangup? I almost married a black chick, even though I believe in hbd. I can see a lot of cultural and political effects that are far more important than snark snark autism snark.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
I think my psych is an odd one. He doesn't buy the multiple intelligences hypothesis, or a lot of the other stuff he's supposed to. He doesn't see trans clients anymore, because he's skeptical of the affirmation first model, and feels that psychs are put in a no win scenario.
He told me a story about a friend of his, another psych, who works at a hospital. One of his friend's residents had a trans patient that wanted to surgically transition. The resident wasn't sure what to do, so he asked her. She said she wasn't sure either, and referred the case to their gender center (or whatever they call it now). She was informed, in no uncertain terms, that if they ask for it, they get it. Then she found her responsibilities curtailed. So he doesn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
He believes in hbd, and believes that the black community has been taught to externalize their problems.
He's also really critical of feminists, after he clashed with them on campus because of sex based research into the brain that he was doing. He buys into red pill-lite ideas.
He's still mostly a NYT liberal, but he has to keep his mouth shut about a lot of topics (and has plenty of stories about how he's gotten into trouble because he couldn't)
I think you're right about the trajectory of the field. If I had to get a younger psych I probably wouldn't bother. They won't let guys like that in anymore.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
There is an argument I'm using it wrong. Sometimes I talk about myself, but sometimes I'm in something of a holding pattern and talk about nonsense. I like to test halfway formed ideas, and his responses tell me when I'm being crazy and when I've legitimately noticed things that are true. I used to have a lot of guilt and shame about realizations I've had, and when he semi confirms something, it helps to ease that feeling.
I'm entering a new field, and once I've fully acclimated I will probably stop seeing him. But right now, it's comforting
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
She did know my beliefs, I developed them halfway through our relationship. Well, I had suspicions at the start, and found confirmation partway through.
It was dicey at first, but she was open to it. It helped that she knew me by then, and that it wasn't a "my pure hu-white blood" thing.
SeeeVeee
1yr ago
He's well aware. I've been seeing him for a long, long time, and he trusts me somewhat at this point.
When he's going to talk about something that he knows could get him in trouble, he says it in a way that I know he's saying it against his better judgement. But he isn't telling this to most patients, he's told me that he knows he can't say this stuff with most of his patients.
But he has a history with heterodox stuff, and I think he likes it.
In the beginning he didn't tell me this kind of stuff, and he didn't share much about himself. But I think he ditched the typical psych stance because he thought he could better reach me by being more honest. And I think that was the right call, it's a large part of why I feel I can trust him
I've heard about people doing this with extremely wealthy, famous people. Just send an invitation and wait for the assistant to send you a "can't make it but thanks" gift. Dunno what the success rate is, but it's funny
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