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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.
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.
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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