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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32869 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I'm mostly agnostic on HBD (though I lean pro) precisely because I don't believe the world would look all that differently if it went one way or another. My is that the majority of issues in poor minority groups are caused by culture: a lack of respect for education, marriage, rule of law, and unselfish cooperation with each other, and that these cultural elements are self-perpetuating and economically crippling. While innate intelligence does play some role in influencing whether a person will abandon or change these cultural elements, it's a minor role. People with a genetic predisposition for high IQ but a bad culture frequently end up in bad outcomes because they fail to learn or care about learning and never rise to their true potential. Similarly, low IQ people with a good culture often become productive workers and good people and beneficial to their community because they work hard and care about people. IQ plays some role, but culture plays a much larger role.

Society is filled with selfish intelligent people and kind unintelligent people of all races. But they tend to come in clusters, as culture perpetuates these traits separately from genetics (though still tending to run in families), so you see disproportionate amounts of selfishness and other negative cultural traits among certain races. Heritabile =/= Genetic, and the distinction is important because culture can change, while genes can't.

a lack of respect for education

I don't think jews have any more respect for education, marriage, rule of law, or unselfish cooperation (in fact, the stereotype, although not that accurate, is that they're selfish), yet they are nobel prize winners or accomplished mathematicians at 10x the rate of whites or asians.

Really? Because the stereotypes I'm familiar with involve Jewish mothers hounding their kids to excel and overachieve and never being satisfied with mediocre or average results (maybe I'm mixing this one up with Asian stereotypes, but I think it's true here to a lesser extent). Also, intellectual arguments and thought experiments about Jewish law, and respect for cleverness. And rather than being purely selfish, the stereotype I usually hear is that Jews are selfish in dealings with gentiles, but friendly with other Jews, preferentially hiring each other due to a sense of shared culture and nepotism. Which is probably even more beneficial for a subculture with enough power than general unselfishness would be. I don't know how truthful these stereotypes are, but to the extent they are true I would predict that they would lead to above average success.

I probably should've said elite whites and asians.

Jewish mothers hounding their kids to excel and overachieve

Is this more true for jews than asians, though? Because jews are much more overrepresented than asians in nobel prizes in comparison to global population.

Also, intellectual arguments and thought experiments about Jewish law, and respect for cleverness.

Second-generation atheist jews are still very intelligent, despite no jewish law. "Respect for cleverness" seems wishywashy.

the stereotype I usually hear is that Jews are selfish in dealings with gentiles, but friendly with other Jews

Friendlier, yeah, but not unselfish, the 'stereotypical jew' still screws over other stereotypical jews.

Like, none of what you claimed makes any sense in explaining '30% of technical nobel prizes despite 2% of us population / .2% of global population'.

You always have to be careful about controlling for confounders, but there's enough evidence in the same direction that I generally buy it. HBD is probably true, but my argument is that its effect is significantly smaller than the effect from culture, so it's not an important priority for addressing or using to explain gaps. It's not as simple as reasoning "Median househould income is $77k for white people and $46k for black people, but white people are smarter so everything is fine". If HBD is false then with equal cultures, and absent racism, the median income for black people would also be $77k. If HBD is true, then with equal cultures the median income with equal cultures might be $72k or something, something between $46k and $77k and closer to the latter than the former. The gap is caused by multiple factors, and there is significant progress that can be made, and most but not all of the gap could theoretically be closed. If HBD is true, then it will eventually be important to acknowledge as true so that someday if we reach the equilibrium we don't keep endlessly looking for racists and/or cultural issues, because the gap can't ever be closed completely. But at the moment there's so much other stuff going on that it's only a small piece of the pie.

If HBD is true, then with equal cultures the median income with equal cultures might be $72k or something, something between $46k and $77k and closer to the latter than the former.

It could be lower than $46k, if black culture was (before equalization) better than white culture, so equalizing.

But the big "advantage" of the cultural explanation is it's difficult enough to disentangle it from genetics that it allows HBD to be unfalsifiably denied.

But the big "advantage" of the cultural explanation is it's difficult enough to disentangle it from genetics that it allows HBD to be unfalsifiably denied.

While it's true that disentangling cultural factors is difficult when trying to explain the overall success of a group, it's a very big mistake to take this as active evidence against culture's importance. I'd also put myself into the "mostly cultural, somewhat genetic" camp. To me, none of the current evidence can plausibly refute the existence possibility (edit) of a society with a common culture in which no genetic group is far more or less successful than the others, with the genetic factors only showing up as numerical discrepancies.

In other words, under this model, even if pure HBD explains some differences in group outcomes, it does not explain the vast differences in poverty, criminality, etc., seen in our current society. Explanations based on cultural coincidence have plenty of well-known justifications for these, such as past prejudice resulting in persistent negative outcomes, or groups facing hardship becoming more successful through cultural selection. Why shouldn't the pro-HBD crowd have to similarly justify its position that higher a higher-IQ population (either on average or on the upper tail) will almost invariably result in a far more successful culture?

To me, none of the current evidence can plausibly refute the existence of a society with a common culture in which no genetic group is far more or less successful than the others, with the genetic factors only showing up as numerical discrepancies.

There's no need to "refute" the existence of such a society, because it does not exist, by observation.

In other words, under this model, even if pure HBD explains some differences in group outcomes, it does not explain the vast differences in poverty, criminality, etc., seen in our current society.

This model seems to be multiplying entities unnecessarily.

Explanations based on cultural coincidence have plenty of well-known justifications for these, such as past prejudice resulting in persistent negative outcomes, or groups facing hardship becoming more successful through cultural selection.

Not only do the two well-known justifications you just mentioned argue against each other, they also fail to conform with the observable outcomes. We know that some groups have bad outcomes whether being actively discriminated against or "helped". We know that other groups have bad outcomes when actively discriminated against and do much better when they no longer are.

There's no need to "refute" the existence of such a society, because it does not exist, by observation.

My apologies, I misworded that. I meant to express the possibility of such a society.

This model seems to be multiplying entities unnecessarily.

Occam's razor is a principle: it is not a universal law, especially in the social sciences with their confounders upon confounders. The simplest possible strawman HBD model of "higher IQ invariably implies greater relative success" can be easily refuted by the various pre-industrial empires that rose and fell from environmental factors, such as ancient Egypt, which could repeatedly reform around the Nile valley even when the government collapsed, or dynastic China, which couldn't survive contact with the industrialized West, or the Central and South American empires, which couldn't prove themselves one way or another before getting decimated by smallpox.

I'll admit that there haven't been so many clear counterexamples to the "naive HBD" model following the Industrial Revolution in Europe, although it would predict that China and/or Japan will ultimately prevail over the West. The cultural model would attribute the Industrial Revolution to the combination of an environment demanding industrial solutions and a society stable enough to develop them, where the societal stability came from historical and cultural happenstance rather than being predetermined by HBD factors.

Not only do the two well-known justifications you just mentioned argue against each other, they also fail to conform with the observable outcomes. We know that some groups have bad outcomes whether being actively discriminated against or "helped". We know that other groups have bad outcomes when actively discriminated against and do much better when they no longer are.

The two justifications can be aligned pretty easily with a basic path-dependence model: when one cultural group is threatened by another, it either fails to defend itself and becomes persistently unsuccessful, or defends itself becomes persistently successful, and this initial failure or success can be attributed to temporary environmental, military, or political conditions. Under this model, even if an unsuccessful group receives political or economic "help", it cannot become inherently successful unless its culture changes. (Thus leading to the old debate over whether and how culture can be intentionally changed.)

Occam's razor is a principle: it is not a universal law, especially in the social sciences with their confounders upon confounders.

It's not. Nevertheless, when you're willing to give yourself as many entities as you need to save your theory, you add nothing to the world's store of knowledge.

The two justifications can be aligned pretty easily with a basic path-dependence model: when one cultural group is threatened by another, it either fails to defend itself and becomes persistently unsuccessful, or defends itself becomes persistently successful, and this initial failure or success can be attributed to temporary environmental, military, or political conditions. Under this model, even if an unsuccessful group receives political or economic "help", it cannot become inherently successful unless its culture changes. (Thus leading to the old debate over whether and how culture can be intentionally changed.)

Yes, you can make this model. Can you, in principle, back it or refute it with evidence? If not, the model is vacuous. If you can.... well, does it fit with the evidence? I think it does not.

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But the big "advantage" of the cultural explanation is it's difficult enough to disentangle it from genetics that it allows HBD to be unfalsifiably denied.

That sword cuts both ways you know. I don't think it's any coincidence that the HBD and CRT appear to be two sides of the same coin, progressives, be they blue-pilled or red-pilled, will ties themselves in knots to avoid conceding that culture actually matters.

I think it's a lot duller on one side. Progressives who deny HBD are also adamantly against doing anything about black culture, and they'll deny culture as a factor except occasionally as a last-gasp defense against HBD. HBDers, on the other hand, have evidence that it isn't shared environment (which would include culture), though that evidence may not be as strong as they like.

I think HBD is true and relevant. If you want to blame culture, though, be my guest, as long as the suggested interventions are along the lines of "change the bad culture or remove people from it" and not "blame whitey for the bad culture and force him to prop it up".

Even though the modern progressive "blame Whiteness" position is full of holes, there's still plenty of room open for "cultural improvement" positions (which I am somewhat partial to myself), before going for the full HBD explanation. In the American context, positions in that direction have been espoused by both the black conservatives and the classical Marxists. Naturally, the big difference is in their prescriptions: the former call for the black population to adopt diligence and responsibility to lift itself up, while the latter consider the original prejudice, the current top-down progressive overtures, and the calls for "rugged individualism" to all be tricks to distract the oppressed from rising up against their real oppressors (i.e., the stupidpol position, although I've heard similar things independently from a vocal Marxist friend).

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