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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35437 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Pretty much.

Whether you think equality between persons and peoples is an important end-goal or not, you should still be very interested in actually figuring out the causal basis of the observed inequalities. ALL of the causes. You cannot solve a problem (or at least what we've labelled a problem) if you are very blatantly ignoring the main reason for it's existence.

The next step, however, is that we don't have the technology to address the core issue here and if we fully accept the fact that genes et. al. are huge determinants of outcomes like happiness, intelligence, health, wealth, status, etc. etc. etc., especially on the larger population level, then indeed we end up having to question the validity of the concept of agency at all, at least among those that fall beneath a certain point on various bell curves. And the classical liberal order and the philosophy of individual rights and autonomy hinge on the ideal that every person has agency and deserves to control their own life decisions until proven otherwise.

i.e. believing in HBD ends up forcing us to examine ourselves in light of this factor and merely believing we're 'superior' to someone else on this basis doesn't help us at all on the question of "what do we do now?"

So perhaps the objection to HBD needn't be based on how true or explanatory it is, but that the implications will only leave us with severely uncomfortable questions to examine with even more uncomfortable possible answers, which might be better to save for a later date when our tech is much improved. Not my preference, but arguably it's like drawing up plans to colonize the galaxy before we've even set up a presence anywhere beyond our primary planet: a fun question to ponder, but ultimately a task for later generations.

And the classical liberal order and the philosophy of individual rights and autonomy hinge on the ideal that every person has agency and deserves to control their own life decisions until proven otherwise.

How does ignoring HBD solve this problem? The phenomena remain. the demands for solutions remain. Relevance to the culture war remains. If we're going to continue fighting each other over racial inequities for the forseeable future in any case, why should that fight be conducted based on lies rather than the truth?

So perhaps the objection to HBD needn't be based on how true or explanatory it is, but that the implications will only leave us with severely uncomfortable questions to examine with even more uncomfortable possible answers, which might be better to save for a later date when our tech is much improved. Not my preference, but arguably it's like drawing up plans to colonize the galaxy before we've even set up a presence anywhere beyond our primary planet: a fun question to ponder, but ultimately a task for later generations.

I'm already willing to bite the deterministic bullet and say that the universe is causal so I can say the water is just fine over here. I'm not so sure that we'd be doing ourselves any favors saving this for a later date, how many more rocks can blank slatists turn over trying to cure the achievement gap before the possible sources of discrimination start sounding like blood libel? I genuinely think HBD denial may be an existential threat.

I genuinely think HBD denial may be an existential threat.

I'd rank it very very low on the list (as in, less dangerous than many other risks) if so. Certainly could argue that to the extent it hobbles our ability to deal with other problems and slows our species' social and scientific progress it makes us more susceptible to other existential threats.

I'm already willing to bite the deterministic bullet and say that the universe is causal so I can say the water is just fine over here.

The question is slightly less about whether the universe is causal... more about whether there's anything we can 'do' about the causal universe from the inside. The acausal universe I'd 'accept' because then we can probably agree there's nothing we can do to impact anything, since anything could happen to anyone at any time for no reason.

But assuming we come to understand the rules of the universe well enough to comprehend the way events follow from one another down to a, say, molecular level, does that mean we're capable of acting on it? That's the agency question I'm trying to bring up.

e.g. if we simply don't have the tech to influence particular outcomes, there's simply no point in pretending we have any say in the outcome at this point.

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