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I'm not sure what to make of this hostility towards the article. What about it is wrong, exactly?
By normie ideological purity standards sympathy for incels from a man is misogynistic. Pro-HBD guys like Razib Khan and Stephen Hsu are racist. By objective measure standards, wanting smart and beautiful people to have more children is eugenic.
Reaching verboten conclusions through 'rational means' on topics long decided by the 'ruling class' doesn't protect you from the consequences. Even if you always imagined yourself an enlightened rationalist far above the boorish outcasts that, unlike you, must have reached these very same racist conclusions through some dark age anti-rationalist sorcery.
Though I doubt this will lead anywhere, as this sort of reporting is usually just about petty politics and interpersonal relations between the uncool kids from school, I wouldn't mind it actually doing some damage. Why should this group of smarts be exempt from the contempt of mainstream society? They have certainly proven themselves to being no better morally.
It seems like some humbling is in order. After all, the very same 'rationalist sphere' in question has proven time and time again that they stand firmly behind the principles of 'racism bad', 'misogyny bad' and all the rest. By what mechanism do they propose to defend themselves after their better part falls firmly on the wrong side of these things? Like, does it need spelling out to these big brained luminaries of ours? You can't call an entire race of people stupid just because you understand statistics and studied psychology. It doesn't matter how nuanced and detailed your blogpost is. Some wordcel is just going to copy paste your conclusion and now you're no better than the evil racists you spent 15 paragraphs trying to distance yourself from. And you know what? The wordcel is right! You did reach the same conclusion, after all.
Here is a Twitter thread listing some of the factual inaccuracies. https://x.com/ohabryka/status/1802563541633024280
Hsu claims no knowledge of cognitive differences between races caused by genetics. Has he said something different elsewhere? https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-controversial-views.html
To use Hsu's own words in a different context:
Sorry, Hsu, but claiming a neutral position on certain topics doesn't cut it.
Maybe as I grow older I also grow more stupid but I feel like a lot of people really needed that article by Eric Turkheimer on why race science is objectionable. Claiming that your interest is purely scientific or whatever isn't good enough. Because the wrong discoveries can do a lot of damage. You need to meet the moral/ideological/philosophical underpinnings of the progressive worldview head on. Otherwise you have no relevant objection to them crushing you when you go too far astray.
I don't understand what your point is and want to clarify that the video part of your quote is made up and not the kinds of questions he is referring to.
Are you accusing Hsu of having an interest in HBD? If so, based on what?
I had hoped that it was obvious to everyone that the part in bold was added by me. Though that may be an error as I just assumed people would read the link given to Hsu's blog. People are obviously more quick to comment than that, sadly.
It's exactly the kind of question he is referring to. A different example of his, given in an interview were he was asked about his views and the characterization as being racist he says, paraphrased:
The point I'm making is that being open to everything obviously isn't allowed. You can't be agnostic on sacred matters and Hsu knows this. In my view he's just trying to weasel his way out since he's too proud to outright lie like Turkheimer or that he knows how ridiculous die hard environmentalism is.
Just casually scrolling through his blog. He did a fun interview with Razib Khan where they go over some of their shared interests together, population genetics included... I mean, yeah the guy is not a culture warrior and I think he very adamantly doesn't want to become one. But depending on your definition of HBD the guy is very interested in differences between humans. Just not in a way that's incendiary to his career.
What reason is there to think he is unsure that the Holocaust happened?
Population genetics is not HBD. That is not what is getting him called racist.
You're not getting the point, which is that there are certain things you are not allowed to be uncertain about. Claiming that you're a physicist and that you hold to some uncertainty principles isn't an excuse for the true sacred cows. To exemplify this I took a quote from Hsu and applied it to the holocaust.
"Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations"
As I already said, and wish you would have read: "I mean, yeah the guy is not a culture warrior and I think he very adamantly doesn't want to become one. But depending on your definition of HBD the guy is very interested in differences between humans. Just not in a way that's incendiary to his career."
You're playing definition games here. Hsu himself says that there are people calling him racist. He does research into intelligence and has no problem with things like IQ. He has interest in population genetics and doesn't rule out a hereditarian perspective. Long story short, he's on a lot of thin ice. He's basically everything an HBD person would be if they were trying to hold down a job at a university. Now, is he? I don't know or care. It's irrelevant to the fact that he is doing too many suspect things. Which is why he is a good target for our fine folks in urbanite journalism.
As an aside: I'd appreciate if you stated your intentions here. I don't care to write every point twice. I also don't care to meet your personal definition for words after I explicitly state that there's an obvious issue with definitions of words going on.
Who uses that definition of HBD? HBD refers to socially relevant differences. Population genetics is based on possibly inconsequential differences that are nearly universally accepted. HBD doesn't even refer to differences in skin colour which are totally uncontroversial. Even if you want to define HBD this way, how is that relevant? No one is calling him racist because he's interested in population genetics.
I get your point. I'm just criticizing other things you've said.
The guy you are arguing with is a literal Nazi who wants to convince moderate 'race realists' that they are really Nazis too. It's why he plays these weird definitional games that mirror those of progressive activists.
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