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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32894 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I have been convinced of the truth of HBD mostly by 1) first-hand exposure to stereotype accuracy, i.e. life experience 2) reading scientific papers 3) appreciating the sheer intellectual vacuity of blank slatist rhetoric. That isn't, truth be told, knockdown evidence to any but a very scrupulous observer with a good eye for inconsistency. In principle, human societies are dysfunctional enough that we could be missing trillion dollar bills on the sidewalk, neglecting low-hanging fruits of environmental interventions that semi-randomly and without notable spikes in investment produce outstanding talent; the world could, in broad strokes, look very similarly to how it looks and yet not work according to theories of hereditarians. (Ironically, the near-universal institutional HBD denial despite widespread, traditional conviction that children inherit traits of their parents is evidence enough of our societies being too dumb and diseased to figure out good policies).

Still, if we do not assume a hopeless scenario of that sort, I'd have expected:

  • Very efficient interventions that are surprisingly simple, like drinking deionized water or never calling your child a dumb little shit once. Probably only practiced in closed elite environments (and kept secret/discouraged for plebs).

  • Following from that, stronger and increasing correlation of class and intelligence, as well-off people (who are already motivated to force their children into grueling training, IME) figure out the best regimens to get their dynasty an edge over competitors. After all, my main reasons to not be a hereditarian had been anecdotes about early life training leading to eminence in adulthood (Polgar! Sidis! Wiener! Mill! Mozart!) – surely with modern data and scientific methodology something better could be found.

  • Far different distributions of traits: lack of positive manifold, strong culture-bound (and ethnicity-blind) talent density, and more «comic book» style individuals with specific hyperdeveloped abilities.

All in all it'd be a pretty optimistic world – one where we're close to figuring a somewhat cheap method of universal cognitive and physical enhancement. It's a wooey world of the psychedelic revolution. I'd not be against living there.

Very efficient interventions that are surprisingly simple, like drinking deionized water

Why? As far as I know that's only going to destroy your teeth.

Duh, that's what the elites want you to think!

I was a birdbrain and didn’t actually read the context for some reason, haha.

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