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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I won't say that this is a troll, since themotte has seen real people with such an opinion and it doesn't matter that someone is a new user when the entire site is new. On the other hand, this is certainly an inflammatory post without evidence, and doesn't belong here for that reason alone. Even though it does show some "evidence", the evidence is for something extremely narrow; the general claim

The answer is that excavations would be extremely hazardous to the false narrative that's been created and weaponized,

makes a very broad inflammatory claim that is not supported by the evidence provided, even if you were to assume it's true.

(And Nazis tend not to report evidence accurately anyway.)

I think the problem is that thanks to certain disgruntled former Mottizens and some other interested parties, there's a reputation floating around that the Motte is a refuge for right-wingers (and this means far-right, Neo-Nazis, etc.) so that anyone who is inclined to the far-right, Neo-Nazi, "Holocaust never happened", "HBD is real science that proves some populations are the natural inferiors to white people", types think that this is a refuge that will welcome them rocking up with "hey, anyone run the real numbers on the claimed death camps? you'll be surprised!"

It's the witch problem, as has often been discussed.

(Re: disgruntled former Mottizens, there's a certain person who hangs around on /r/Drama who likes to give their take as to why they were run off the Motte for bravely standing up to the right-wingers, instead of 'how I flounced off in a huff', and according to them this is a wretched hive of scum and villainy that probably at least hums the Horst Wessel Lied under our breath as we post).

For instance, I think the Lynn/Vanhanen IQ map is for the birds, especially since the 2012 version had to do some tidying up re: Irish IQ jumping up from 90 to 100 (the mainland still remains that bit smarter, even with the new colour codes however, Rule Britannia!) because the data is lousy. Lynn relied a lot on "I don't have IQ test results for this place, but the archipelago near it has this result, so that's close enough" and fudging bad studies.

So while HBD may exist, I think a hell of a lot of the conclusions drawn are jumping someplace that is not steady ground. Are African nations that naturally low in IQ, or is it test-taking ability? Are some of the results (e.g. China) cherry-picked because they only let their brightest take the tests? Do we have any reliable modern data?

We also put a lot of our eggs into the basket of "More IQ means better all round", when we're measuring mathematical ability mostly or solely. Being a whizz at maths does not necessarily mean this is the guy to run the country.

I agree with the criticism of Lynn's IQ measures, but the "More IQ means better all round" has held up pretty well, at least as far as "better intelligence" is concerned.

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