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I'm surprised that more people here aren't talking about Scott ripping off the bandaid in his latest series of posts, which very much take an IQ-realist and pro-Lynn stance, and without really mincing words about it.
Scott has tip-toed around the topic in the past, largely playing it safe. There was some minor controversy almost half a decade in the past when his "friend" (one who had ended up marrying Scott's enbie ex Ozzy) leaked private correspondence between the two of them where Scott explicitly acknowledged that he believed in population-wide IQ differences but felt he couldn't speak up about it. Going back even further, on his now defunct but archived LiveJournal, he outlines his harrowing experience doing charity work in Haiti, where the sheer lack of common sense or perverse and self-defeating antics from the populace knocked him speechless.
I note (with some pleasure) that Scott raises some of the same points I've been on record making myself: Namely that there's a profound difference between a person who is 60 IQ in a population where that's the norm, versus someone who is 60 IQ due to disease in a population with an average of 100.
What's the wider ramification of this? Well, I've been mildly miffed for a while now that the Scott of ACX wasn't quite as radical and outspoken as his SSC days, but now that he's come out and said this, I sincerely doubt that there are any Dark and Heretical ideas he holds but is forced to deny or decline to defend. It's refreshing, that's what it is. He might not particularly delve into the ramifications of what this might mean for society at large, but he's not burying the lede, and I have to applaud that. It might we too early to celebrate the death of wokeness, but I think that the more milquetoast Scott of today being willing to say this matters a great deal indeed.
I know I gave my initial reaction below but let me distill my thoughts a bit more:
The reason a post like this from Scott rubs me the wrong way is because I think it undermines a lot of Scott's own writings, and in particular his defense of Institutions. Scott knew the truth about HBD all along, but his public position was still in compliance with HBD denial. He never publicly challenged the wrong consensus, and he drove truthful criticism of the mainstream consensus from his own community- essentially banning it. So even though he privately believed in HBD he still publicly acted like an HBD denier. This is very significant in understanding Culture War and the fallacy of Mistake Theory.
Scott didn't change his public position due to any new argument or new data, he's citing the oldest data there is. His public position on the issue is only changing because the culture war is shifting. Scott should be considered among the highest percentile intelligent, good-faith intellectuals with expertise in the soft sciences. But he still basically enforced the consensus while privately knowing it was wrong, until the political conflict underpinning Culture War took a significant turn.
It is about political conflict, that was what drove Scott's behavior before on his issue, and that's what is driving it now. Institutions are unreliable, it is absolutely possible for something as asinine as HBD denial to exist as consensus in institutions because, at the end of the day, even the best of them are just like Scott and have a million reasons to not put themselves at risk by pointing out the emperor is naked.
I'm kind of curious about your response here, so I'm hoping you'd be willing to make it more concrete. Can you pick out the top one to three posts from Scott that you think are contradicted by his current position on HBD?
I'm not sure if I follow on the connection between HBD and Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory. Surely, the following can both be true: 1) IQ differences between groups are real and explained in part by genetic differences, and this affects the kinds of societal institutions that can be successful, and 2) it is better to treat policy disputes as debates where facts and evidence could theoretically make everyone converge to the correct prescriptions for society (mistake theory), rather than treating them as a war (conflict theory.)
Heck, going back through Scott's original Conflict vs. Mistake article, I find:
Most of that, except maybe the part about voters seems completely compatible with HBD. Even taking the voters into account, through a combination of voluntary eugenics, and public education you could theoretically raise the societal IQ and show that mistake theory is a possible path to a successful society.
That conflict vs. mistake article is pretty wild to go through.
Not, "mistake theorists believe that black people are dumber, but hide their power levels because doing otherwise would mean sticking their necks out."
...an almost exact summation of why the technocracy supported anti-HBD views. And the only way to get Scott to reveal his true thoughts was to change who was powerful. No amount of debate and convincing would have worked - he was already privately convinced, after all.
I reject the idea that there is a hard binary - you can believe that mistake theory is right for some circumstances for some people and conflict theory in others. When I talk to my dad about how stupid DEI is, he is receptive. When I argue with my brother about HBD... well it's just a bad idea. Thanksgiving dinners are a lot more pleasant if I just accept conflict theory on that one and recognize the only way to change anyone's mind is to simply win a presidential election first.
Why is it a wild read? You seem to be saying Scott is part conflict theorist, but I don't think you've argued it well.
A mistake theorist does not lie down on a train track to kill himself. He will move out of the way of an oncoming train. A mistake theorist will not try to have a discussion with a train. Likewise, a mistake theorist knows that conflict theorists exist. He will probably not try to have a discussion with them.
Know the difference
For Scott to "be a Conflict theorist on some things" you would need to demonstrate that he believes his opponents to be the enemy, in the #2 sense. I think you've only demonstrated that he does not lie down on train tracks.
He himself is someone who could only be modelled by conflict theory - his public actions and stated opinion were not motivated because he was mistaken about HBD; he misrepresented his own beliefs because the dominant intellectual paradigm prevented the technocracy (ie Scott) from publicly advancing the most accurate viewpoints or influencing policy in a logical direction. He could only be 'convinced' by a display of political power by the opposition. This is exactly the situation presented by the conflict theorist in the quote I pulled.
Oh, this doesn't make Scott a Conflict Theorist (Know the difference between #1 and #2). This just means the Conflict Theorist's description of reality is correct - Power is power.
Agreed. I was trying to say that the post was wild because in retrospect because many of the conflict theorist's beliefs seem justified in retrospect, and that Scott's own revealed behavior is a repudiation of his (and, admittedly, my own) naive inclination towards mistake theory as a descriptive model.
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