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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35394 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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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.

At least for me, accepting HBD was the first domino in a much larger chain of insight. At first, the IQ gap seems like the most important aspect of HBD and a lot of HBDers only really beat that dead horse of race and IQ. IQ is obviously relevant in weighing policy decisions like the extent of the Welfare State or understanding income inequality. In my classical liberal days, I became interested in HBD because I considered it to be a solid rebuttal to the argument that Capitalism is unjust because market conditions have led to persistent racial inequality. With the HBD premise, persistent racial inequality in social outcomes is not necessarily a market failure.

The IQ argument also helps the sort of Caplan-esque economic libertarianism. If you advocate for open borders with minimal welfare state, you can argue the former is a positive selection for IQ in the absence of a welfare state, but a negative selection for IQ in the presence of a progressive welfare state. It's a strong argument against the welfare state in the presence of relatively open borders.

I would call this sort of discourse HBD Level 1.

But the next step in the pipeline is to acknowledge what some have referred to as the "Iron law of heritability." It's not a question of whether or not a psychological trait is heritable, it's only a question of how much it's heritable. So well beyond IQ, we are now talking about all aspects of our personality including conscientiousness, conformity, religiosity, political inclinations, aggression, etc. which collectively should be considered vastly more important than the IQ question alone.

It also raises uncomfortable questions and leads to the "demographics is destiny" argument you'll see from the alt-lite or MAGA. Let's say you're a libertarian, and your ideological values are important to you - even more precious than your own children. You support open borders because it's economically efficient and a big step towards the ideal of free association. Well, with HBD we have to contend with the fact that open borders will bring people to your country who may simply not have the sort of personality that cares about your precious values. Are Hispanics, Africans, Indians, and Chinese going to realize the greatness of libertarian ideology with the same propensity as white and Jewish men? Probably not.

I would call this level of discourse HBD Level 2, and frankly I think most of the rationalist-sphere is stuck at this level of understanding of HBD. I say that because when it comes to the question of, if HBD is obviously true, why the hell are we denying it and acting the way we are as a society?, they will be far more likely to say, as you suggest, that this is simply an overcorrection of the moral lessons of the 20th century.

But that's still ultimately a Whig view of history and progress. "We learned the right moral lessons, we just haven't implemented them optimally. Sure, we've lost some knowledge along the way, but we can delicately integrate these rediscovered truths into the moral paradigm that has served us well." This is the mistake theory view.

HBD Level 3, which only a small number of people reach, and basically everyone I have seen at this level of discourse is in the Dissident Right, becomes conscious of the fact that HBD-denial itself, like all the highly regarded moral revelations of the 20th century, are the product of political competition and racial conflict.

The "great lie", as you put it, is not race and IQ; the "great lie" is much more all-encompassing and far-reaching in all corners of society. Looking back at history since the 1960s and before: the Sexual Revolution, Civil Rights, Holocaust Remembrance, the Cold War, War on Terrorism, Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, Diversity & Inclusion - all of it can and should be reinterpreted as contextual to political competition and ethnic conflict. Because tribalism is a coded behavior, and HBD pulls back the curtain on why society believes these particular "great lies" and shows that this tribalism is never going away. Even out greatest overtures towards moving away from tribalism have only been motivated by tribalism on the highest order.

That's not to say -everything- is a lie, but it is to generally move from mistake theory to conflict theory in rationalist parlance, and following the thread of HBD very well may get you there eventually.

"Level 3" has absolutely no evidence and makes no sense. The Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution happened because people didn't like the status quo. You seem to blame jews for things like the war on terrorism started by Bush,a white republican and supported by the majority of whites or the cold war that was about competition for hegemony between empires. Some jews studied psychoanalysis and anthropology so they are jewish plots? You seem to think that women, black people and lgbt people like not having rights and if it wasn't for the nefarious tribal all powerful jews they would not have tried to achieve change and better their condition and that all progressivism is not people having different values than you and campaigning for their ideas or interest but people being puppet of the enemy in a war against whites but how does it make sense? Many progressives are white and feminism helps white women too like lgtb acceptance helps white lgbt people too and white progressives agree with all the changes. The truth is that your ideas are incredibly unpopular and require an incredible amount of oppression and violence and totalitarianism to enforce, when people with your values are in power millions of people die, you don't think the Holocaust happened but it did.

You seem to blame jews for things like the war on terrorism started by Bush, a white republican and supported by the majority of whites or the cold war that was about competition for hegemony between empires.

There's plenty of evidence for Israeli interests being a major motivator in the invasion of Iraq.

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001 - 03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005 - 06 ) , told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002, that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

General Wesley Clark, the retired NATO commander and former presidential candidate, said in August 2002 that "those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid that at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel." In January 2003 , a German journalist asked Ruth Wedgwood, a prominent neoconservative academic and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board (chaired by Richard Perle), why the journalist should support the war. I could "be impolite," Wedgwood said, "and remind Germany of its special relationship with Israel. Saddam presents an existential threat to Israel. That is simply true." Wedgwood did not justify the war by saying that Iraq posed a direct threat to Germany or the United States.

In mid-May, Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister now serving as foreign minister, appeared on C N N , where he said that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and the United States "cannot sit and wait" while he builds a nuclear arsenal. Instead, Peres insisted, it was time to topple the Iraqi leader

The Israelis were also sending the US concerning intelligence about the Iraqi nuclear program, which turned out to be false after the invasion. They encouraged the war to advance their own strategic interests.

I agree with this but this is completely different than claiming that the war on terror and everything else after the 1960s should be interpreted as ethnic conflict (between jews and whites as implied) the people in power in the United States also had their economic interest in the region and the war was supported by many white people.

Indeed, Mearsheimer discusses this. He argues that it was a small group of neocons who started the drive to war, that Israel then egged them on. But these neocons were in love with and beloved by Israel. They had a heavy Jewish presence within their ranks: they were led by people like Wolfowitz and Feith, both Jews, 2nd and 3rd ranking civilians in the Pentagon respectively. And then there are people like John Bolton:

So much so, in fact, that in May 2006, the Israeli ambassador to the UN jokingly described Bolton as "a secret member of Israel's own team at the United Nations." He went on to say that "the secret is out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are at least six including John Bolton.

In the spring of 2002 , the Forward pointed out that Wolfowitz is "known as the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the Administration," and it selected him later in 2002 as the first among fifty notables who "have consciously pursued Jewish activism.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on September 15, 2001, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the United States and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan.99 Wolfowitz was so insistent on conquering Iraq that five days later Cheney had to tell him to "stop agitating for targeting Saddam."100 According to one Republican lawmaker, he "was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time. It was getting on the President's nerves.

It may well be uncharitable to say that Jews were using the Iraq War as a tool against whites. But there is a powerful pro-Israeli lobby group composed of Jews and gentiles with a fanatical love of Israel that ignores the interests of America to favour Israel's foreign policy interests. There are, as you said, gentiles who supported the Iraq War like CIA director Woolsey and Bennett. American Jews overall opposed the war more than the rest of America as of a 2007 aggregate of polls. But Israelis loved it, they were the only country that supported the war in polling. Would the otherwise inexplicable, illogical Iraq War have gotten off the ground if it weren't for encouragement from Israel and the Israel lobby? I think not.

Israel was the only country outside of the United States where a majority of politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war. A poll taken in early 2002 found that 58 percent of Israeli Jews believed that "Israel should encourage the United States to attack Iraq."4 6 Another poll taken a year later in February 2003 found that 77.5 percent of Israeli Jews wanted the United States to invade Iraq

If you look further, we have the Arabs causing the 1973 Oil Shock after the US bailed out Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Massive economic damage to the entire Western world. I won't say that the oil shock caused the whole 'what the hell happened in 1971' ongoing crisis but it certainly worsened things.

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.

Sure. HBD denial was established by and is maintained by the motivations of political actors, not random mistakes made by scientists and anthropologists. Those political motivations that gave rise to HBD denial are derived from ethnic conflict. That ethnic conflict is itself explained by HBD. Accepting HBD uncovers a deeper level of ethnic conflict than is generally understood.

Accepting this exposes other such movements which have presented a veneer of universalist principles, but scratching the surface reveals similar, particularistic motivations.

What is the evidence for this?

This could go in a lot of different directions. But it should just be sufficient to acknowledge that accepting HBD is tarred as racist and therefore highly immoral. So the opposition to HBD frames their position in terms of ethnic conflict.

The concern is that accepting HBD will alter the relations between ethnic groups. The greatest concern is that racially conscious whites will mistreat other groups based on this information. But ultimately, the observation that HBD denial is rooted in the concerns of anti-racism is sufficient for my point.

But on a deeper level, it's hard not to notice the history of HBD denial broadly falling along the lines of Protestant Darwinists versus immigrant Jews. Nobody is more responsible for the hegemony of HBD denial than Franz Boas, and his crusade against Madison Grant is understood as an expression of an ethnic conflict. This was not a clash of unbiased scientists who merely had different interpretations of data. They were, both, heavily influenced by their identities and their own inherited proclivities. The Boas academic takeover of anthropology in the Academy was the direct result of this conflict, which continues to this day.

If HBD denial was not a result of this conflict, why do you think HBD denial became hegemonic in academia and public consciousness? Do you think scientists were just trying to find the truth without respect to their own identities and personal proclivities or ethnic interests, and they just happened to get it wrong at the global height of the eugenics movement? Or did they win a conflict underpinned by ethnic motivations?

It really isn't, given that this concern can also stem from a universalist worry about the consequences of white race politics.

You've conceded the entire point. That HBD denial is rooted in a concern for the consequences of white race politics (and it always has been, even pre-WWII). That is an ethnic conflict. A scientific issue is transformed into political dogma because of ethnic conflict. Rationalists aspire to approach HBD without regards to the underlying ethnic conflict. Level 3 approach HBD with the appreciation that they are entering the political arena of an ethnic conflict, as they are in the analysis of a large portion of other cultural phenomena that are generally regarded as bottom-up and emergent.

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Ditto, and Minotaur's comment didn't really make it clearer for me. I think that given that this is described as an understanding that "only a small number of people reach", it should have considerably more explanation than levels 1 and 2.

Jews wield blacks, feminism, and progressivism as tools against White power as part of an age-old tribal enmity and self-preservation instinct. All efforts at empowering women, promoting minorities, and generally furthering any progressive goal is accurately understood as an act of hostility toward Whites.

I am not necessarily advocating this view. I am explaining for Roco.

Oh absolutely. Many white people display the same level of victimisation complexes they accuse minorities of harbouring. What these people need to realise is that we minorities don't give a damn about how well or badly white people are doing or have any desire to put them down, we have enough problems of our own to fix to worry about.

We just want to do well for ourselves and promote policies that do that, any harm or benefit to white people is coincidental; no different to how when the gardener mows the lawn, dozens of insects get their lives upended, but the gardener didn't do this to hurt the insects or even think about them at all when mowing, he just wanted an aesthetic result that looks pleasing from the house window.

We just want to do well for ourselves and promote policies that do that, any harm or benefit to white people is coincidental;

So what? What does it matter to me, as a White man, if your negative impact on my life is intentional or an accident? Either way I'm going to support the White boot on your face forever until you leave.

And with outright hostilities like that you can't be surprised when we see you as an obstacle towards our own success and want to see you and yours removed from any and all positions of power and influence. It's a shame really because white people on average are generally more competent than most other ethic groups and having competent people running things is good for society as a whole, it's your culture that's screwed up to the point of no return.

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Contrary to what some people may think we really don't give a shit about whites, we just want policies that benefit us and ours. If white people are a hurdle in the way (as they sometimes are), then we want to get rid of them, if white people also benefit from the policies we want, then good for them.

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I agree with him putting it there but I can't speak for him to say why he did it. I'll leave his take on the Jewish Question for him to explain.

Ah, understandable. No worries. I know what he was saying so I could translate, that's all.

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