astrolabia
1yr ago
Thanks. I have had the honest convos with people one on one and it has usually gone OK. But lots of my educated acquaintances have heard the basic claims about IQ and also a bunch of rebuttals or claimed debunkings. E.g. They think Gould's Mismeasure of Man showed conclusively that race realists were wrong.
I any case, I am talking about professional contexts, again where people explicitly disavow the possibility that differences in group outcomes could be possibly due to "inherent inferiority".
astrolabia
1yr ago
I've made those anti-collectivist arguments, but the reply is usually that these differences in outcomes are evidence of extreme discrimination, which is unjust and hurting our effectiveness.
As for Asians, they just double down on anti-black racism. Mentioning Jews just makes you sound anti-Jewish.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Thanks. At least in our case, there are enough non-white-or-asian-male candidates who apply, but are poorly qualified, to make your argument difficult.
A female colleague argued that of course non-white-or-asian-males require more resources to achieve at the same level (because of society).
astrolabia
1yr ago
I don't think "burden of proof" makes sense in the context of actually trying to solve a problem. But in any case, yes that is the usually tack that I or others take, suggesting that something like better elementary schools would eventually fix the problem. But then you've ceded that at equilibrium we should expect equal representation, so why not help speed up our approach to that equilibrium? Again, for competitive fields, arguing that the under-represented just don't care enough to try as hard is about as unspeakable as saying they're not as capable (see Damore).
astrolabia
1yr ago
Thanks, but in my particular set of institutions, there are almost no blacks at all, so it doesn't help. But otherwise I do like this line of argument.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I personally would prefer number 2, but I think OP's worry is that the most realistic choice is between:
A) Something like the current white majority that's partly woke, in which that wokeness is not catastophic, and
B) Different races, partly woke, in which the wokeness leads to ethnic spoils, persecution of whites, and general Brazilification.
It does seem like in Canada in particular there's room for some sort of third option, in which whiteness de facto ends up extending to the "white-adjacent", i.e. northeast Asians, high-caste Indians, and whoever else has the desire and ability to compete in a pseudo-meritocracy. I already see lots of affirmative action programs specifically for black & indigenous people.
Basically it seems plausible that there might be some sort of bifurcation between (whites and skills-based immigrants) vs (refugees and aboriginals).
I think by "ethnic spoils", OP is referring to the situation where most ethnic groups use their influence on government simply to deliver more resources to themselves. The word spoils here is used only in the sense of resources, as in "to the victor goes the spoils". India, Brazil, Iraq, Lebanon and most other multi-ethnic democracies have fairly dysfunctional governments in part because each politician is supposed to only serve their own ethnic interests.
Wokeness in Canada elevates this kind of activity to a virtue, and e.g. in job searches, it's considered a positive to have advocated for your own race's interests politically or institutionally. This is one way to show "commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion".
astrolabia
1yr ago
For instance a few years ago I think it was in Illinois that black lawmakers successfully lobbied to require black board members on all large corporations. But I think GP isn't making claims about particular ethnicities - rather he's talking about a bad Nash equilibrium where, once most other ethnicities are doing this, yours has to as well or it will be marginalized, crushed, or impoverished.
As for in job searches, a typical example would be that a latino job candidate will get points for having volunteered for a "Latinx in [their field]" organization that advocates for latinx interests.
I disagree. I think trying to imagine the internal experience of someone who seriously disagrees with you is a great idea. The risk is that you might take your own speculations too seriously without trying to corroborate them.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I can see how this could be deliberately misleading, but isn't what you're describing basically all of fiction? Also, I think that while any particular guess at another's internal state is likely to be wrong, simply coming up with a coherent hypothesis that explains someone or something's behavior is, imo, a good contribution if we're trying to understand that behavior without direct access to their internal states.
astrolabia
1yr ago
There's a slightly different portrayal in the Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amos.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I appreciate you trying to bring nuance to the conversation, but without some examples it's still not clear to me what sorts of things you disagree with HBDers about exactly. I think the most relevant question is the extent to which the gaps in intellectual achievement, employment in various professions, and crime rates could realistically be changed by policy interventions. Do you think you have a much different answer here than HBDers?
As far as I can tell, you're saying that heritable traits might be caused along the way by others treating people differently based on their phenotype, and if that differential treatment were to go away, the presumably so would the heritability. Is that a fair summary?
And as an aside, I find the name "phenotypic null hypothesis" to be a bad name for two reasons: 1) It's not descriptive, and 2) it seems to be playing a rhetorical game by calling itself the "null hypothesis". I prefer to discuss evidence for and against various claims rather than arguing about who has the burden of proof.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I think the conventional wisdom is that having only one big mass firing is much better for morale and productivity than more smaller ones, provided you can convince people that there isn't another mass layoff on the horizon. The idea being that if you have rolling layoffs, everyone stays in short-term, back-stabbing, cover-your-ass mode permanently, because they never know if they're being eyed for layoff.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I saw this as the province getting their way - they threatened to use the big stick, but didn't have to, and now schools are open again. But I don't know that much about the situation, nor if the province had to agree to anything else on top of not using the clause.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I see your point. I guess it's still not clear to me that the province is worse off than before they used the clause.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I think the simplest counter-argument is that, however hard it is to define, race is clearly a useful and relatively unambiguous word in many contexts. If your professor is comfortable saying anything at all about people of any race, e.g. "black people are stopped more often by police", it's not clear why it matters whether it can be defined biologically.
It's a strange bit of sophistry that people who spend all day making claims about disparate outcomes between races consider it unscientific, or somehow ontologically lacking, to make analogous claims in other contexts.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I totally agree about the abuse of power. I loathed the lockdowns and everyone's unthinking compliance, and got yelled at by strangers for taking my kids to the park during those first few weeks.
I still think the province didn't exactly "back down" in this instance. And following your point, to the extent that they further normalized the use of the notwithstanding clause, they gained power.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Have you seen Muana? The producers went to great lengths to involve the relevant ethnicity in the production. But the story is about a young woman who feels compelled to shirk her duties to her tribe, then questions authority, and goes on a mostly solo adventure to save the environment. The main character is basically Greta Thunberg.
To the extent that these different people actually have a different worldview, this must seem really subversive. Imagine a high-budget movie full of American celebrity actors, shot in America, with pitch-perfect cultural references, about how fulfilling it was to serve the state, written by the Chinese government.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I think Vikings are a bit of a counter-example to your thesis. It's well-known how destructive they were (in some time periods). Maybe it's because they're white, so no one feels the need to sanitize their history. And, the Icelandic sagas also let them speak in their own words, to some extent. Those stories are pretty much all about blood feuds and legal drama.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Yes, I meant Disney's Moana, thanks for the correction. Good point about the "the radicals are the real traditionalists" interpretation. The movie could certainly have been more unambiguously pro-modernity, i.e. if Moana had taught the tribe to accept electrification or homosexuality.
I guess I'd still say that the important thing is that outsiders are writing a story in which the current way of life of the tribe is presented as wrong and in need of change (even if it's back to the past). However, maybe Polynesians tell similar stories about the dangers of stagnation and giving up seafaring. So, you made me realize that the story could plausibly not be very subversive, depending on the details of Polynesian's self-conception, which I know nothing about. But it just seems to hit the favorite beats of Western progressivism in such a cliched and recognizable way that I doubt that that's the case.
astrolabia
1yr ago
"If you don't know what's wrong then I am certainly not going to tell you!"
I view this as the girlfriend trying to force the boyfriend to maintain a detailed model of her emotional state, and to proactively make sure he knows what he needs to do keep her happy. Simply telling him when and what she's unhappy about is much less work for him, but more work for her, and there will inevitably be opportunities to make her happy that neither will notice unless he's paying attention.
That phrasing might sound retarded, and sometimes girlfriends massively overestimate how easy it is to guess their emotional states, but sometimes I think it's a reasonable bid for more consideration.
astrolabia
1yr ago
Heh, could be. I have fights with my wife that go: Me: Just tell me what you want! Her: I can't, because you don't want to listen!
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. If Sequoia and others are willing to invest hundreds of millions of their own money into FTX, why should someone receiving charity expect to be able to do better due diligence? Why should they try? "Existential Risk" specifically refers to humanity's existence, not any particular replaceable entity that might go under.
astrolabia
1yr ago
I largely agree with your criticisms, but my impression is that most mainstream charities maintain a cultivated ignorance about their actual impact. I don't think much of our ability to define or measure the things we care about achieving, but at least EAs are pushing for a norm of trying to do so.
I've tried this a few times, and here's how it went each time:
Me: Aren't you just imposing a new hegemony in your own interests? Classical liberalism / colorblindness is a good compromise that avoids turning everything into a political race-to-the-bottom, at least for a while.
Them: We're liberating everyone from white supremacy and patriarchy. If your beloved meritocracy functioned at all, why are there so few black, indigenous, or female leaders in our institutions? Surely you don't think people from these groups are inherently inferior...?
Me, unwilling to commit professional suicide: No, no, of course not...
The debate has organically evolved so that the only rejoinder in almost any discussion involves acknowledging an on-average superiority in many professional fields of white men, which is literally a hate crime in my western country. Including East Asian and Indian men in my answer just begs the question about the remaining groups and they know it.
I've noticed in the last few years that my interlocutors are becoming quicker to ask the Unanswerable Question in these kinds of discussions, or even pre-emptively announce their rejoinder to anyone who might suggest such an idea.
If anyone has a suggested reply that won't get them fired or un-personed, I'm all ears.
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