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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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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.

wanting smart and beautiful people to have more children is eugenic

Using truly the broadest possible interpretation of a dictionary definition, sure. But we all damned well know that isn't what is being alleged when someone is called a eugenicist.

If you are out in public airing your view that it's an inherently good thing that smart and beautiful people are having more children then you are a eugenicist. The implications of what you have to think and believe to say such a thing are obvious.

Almost everyone thinks this though. It's just one of those things that people generally agree on but people get uncomfortable if you're too explicit about it.

Let's be precise.

The argument that high-IQ women should either get married and start having children as a first step after graduating from college, or avoid going to college altogether and focus on becoming mothers, i.e. that society should incentivize them to do so, I think it's fair to say, counts as borderline dissident among middle-class college-educated normies today. It doesn't count as 100% badthink maybe, but it's close. Ultimately this is the essence of positive eugenics.

Negative eugenics, i.e. the argument that the fertility rate of low-IQ people should be curbed in various ways, on the other hand, is definitely outside the Overton window. Yes, you can argue that liberal policies pertaining to abortion and birth control actually have this effect in the real world, but I doubt they actually reduce the relative fertility rate of low-IQ people as compared to that of high-IQ ones, so there's that.

Also, it's fair to say that, to the extent eugenics is dismissed as deplorable junk science by the Guardian-reading demographic, it is done so because it's interpreted as an outgrowth of White supremacism.

White middle class people having one kid is morally irresponsible in the age of climate change and economic precarity, brown people having kids in a warzone is proof that we need to open our borders and wallets to alleviate human suffering. Liberals get squeamish at any suggestion that abortion be extended specifically to populations with current, let alone future, suboptimal life outcomes. Any suggestion that abortions be subsidized for poor (brown) people or for mentally ill is met with cries of racism, and that instead their choice to carry a crack baby to term should be supported now and forever with more social welfare.

Ultimately it is pretty easy to drill down the opposition to (current thing) purely on the grounds of 'the people I hate love it'. To be fair, the right is super guilty of this too. White supremacists (larpers or not) get tied in knots when informed that abortion rights means you get less black or brown criminals ala Piketty, and there are exceedingly few white babies being aborted these days. White girls use contraceptives and aren't afraid to request condoms, black girls use their (shitty) math skills.

My only nitpick is that you seem to be assuming that there's an overlap between racists and social conservatives. I doubt that is, or even was the case.

Yes there is. Old not-terribly online people.

I assume you mean Boomers? Because I doubt there was ever significant racism present among them.