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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33490 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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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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