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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28196 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Really just said ~ "Only white people have a high enough IQ to form democracies".

I mean, I don't even find it useful to engage that assertion, but it is funny to contrast that with the take that I often see here that democracy in the west is now dysfunctional due to low IQ HBD dysgenics and only might concentrated in a single infallible strongman avatar can save us (Deus vult).

(+1 to aceventura's "History is longer than the last 70 years." which is approximately "read a book". I doubt the Greeks who invented democracy would've identified closely with your self identification on the HBD spectrum, you know, based on who they were geographically interacting with: southern Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, and Persia).

The IQ gaps have been investigated a lot more and the evidence regarding them is stronger. It is only natural to focus on them. The other things you mention are much more speculative, generally have a lot of room to plausibly be downstream of intelligence or culture, and are probably much less impactful than intelligence in any case. Sure we can acknowledge the possibility of genetic differences in other impactful traits, but that doesn't mean we can just assume that based on observing some difference between the population groups. In general I am wary about building castles of speculation on scant evidence, it might seem more sophisticated and cutting-edge but I think it's a much less likely to be true than something simple and well-tested.

As I suggested elsewhere in the thread, I think the burden of proof should be on the person who would argue that it works this way for every single animal except humans.

The real question is how strong the proclivities are and how effectively culture can enhance or curb them. That's a great question and I wish anyone were looking into it.

Did I argue otherwise?

FWIW I don't have a position on European genetic tendencies to hygiene, though I'd guess orderliness does come in when the subject expands to such things as keeping one's house clean. Who can say?

Don't recall where but I remember being flabbergasted by descriptions of pre-industrial European cities where all the roads, yards, etc. were just constantly covered in human and animal dung. Sometimes even indoors! The French in particular were noted for their penchant for pissing on staircases, also even indoors. Germans meanwhile were noted for fastidiously keeping interiors spotless. How much selection has taken place in the last couple hundred years, I cannot guess.

I feel like people take the wrong impression from those stories of historical roads covered in dung. Back then, all humans were a lot closer to nature so they were less grossed out by it. That dung was a sign of wealth. Animals were one of the most expensive things humans could owb, especially horses. In most societies, owning a horse made you a weslthy man. The manure was carefully collected and used for crop fertilizer.

It would have been mind blowing for most historical societies to see a European city with so many horses they cant even pick up all the dung. It would be like living in an oil field.

The Great Horseshit Crisis of 1894 is apparently an early example of fake news, but the price of horse manure in London dropped below zero at some point in the late 19th century, probably slightly after Carl Benz filed his first car patent in 1886.

Had people tried to run a city the size of 20th century London on 19th century transport technology, eventually there would have been a Great Horseshit Crisis. But we didn't and there wasn't. Van exhaust stinks, but per tonne-km (or ton-mile if you have to be perverse) of goods moved it stinks orders of magnitude less than horseshit. The Great Smog Crisis is real, but emissions control technology (and eventually the shift to EVs) is keeping pace with it in well-governed cities.

For a constant population and a roughly-constant material standard of living, high-tech urban societies are far more sustainable than traditional ones.

I was thinking earlier like medieval times, where it was less extreme but still gross by modern standards. I agree that most traditional societies are not very sustainable, we just forget about the ones that perish from massive crop failure.

I think your idea here is plausible, but I have trouble seeing how you'd isolate nature from nurture here for these axes without some industrial-scale twin studies that seem implausible.

Well, I think the burden of proof is much higher for the person who wants to argue that it works this way for every single animal except humans.

To your actual point though adoption studies seem useful.

A lot of HBD advocates in spaces like these do want it to just be about IQ, and a lot of people who call themselves pro-HBD will say it is just about IQ. It's one fracture on the DR regarding the Jewish Question, for example.

Arguing against specific highly spurious claims is very different to arguing that intelligence is the only feature of the mind that is inherited. In any case, you might add that the more anti-Jewish side of the DR is actually split between “Jewish IQ is a psy-op, see Unz, myth of American meritocracy, IQ stats from Brooklyn high schools in the 1930s don’t map to Israel” etc and “it’s real but it doesn’t matter because they’re also hereditary cheats, sex pests, clannish narcissists”.

Well, that perspective makes no sense and I've never seen it advocated; only implied by those who don't seem to know what they're talking about.

One sees it everywhere, even by those who otherwise denounce HBD.

The basic formula is: [My ingroup's positive attributes] are genetic, set in stone, impossible to imitate; while [ingroup's negative attributes] are the random result of circumstance or interest or are entirely mythical. [My outgroup's positive attributes] are random results of circumstance or interest, or are entirely fake; but [outgroup's negative attributes] are genetic, set in stone, impossible to improve or mitigate.

As I said, it doesn't make sense.

The Greeks actually wrote a lot about the conditions for democracy and what separated Greeks from barbarians in being able to do it.

The Virgin Nietzche vs ths Chads Aristotle and Plato.

I don’t think that’s what the person was saying at all.

The implication is that the culture of Afghanistan and Iraq and most of Africa and numerous other parts of the world, along with substandard intelligence, means that those places aren’t ready to be part of the better world.

This seems true.

If you were to say ‘ white people are clearly the most intelligent people, and the most innovative ‘ I would also agree and just kinda point to absolutely everything that they’ve accomplished (I’m Slavic - I don’t count) and how they’re the envy of the world.

I do believe the rest of the world will catch up - and I do believe if you steal a baby from some shit he country and stick ‘em in an average American home that they’ll just be like everyone else.

But why pretend they won’t be flooded with bad culture on top of bad genes on top of bad environment where they currently are and won’t accomplish much ?

My understanding of the HBD hypothesis is that the differences in outcomes across the world are, by a wide margin, mostly explainable by IQ differences in population. My understanding is that it's not a hypothesis founded or invoked with nuance, which is what you're trying to insert here. It's just trying to simplify complex geopolitical, domestic, and historical dynamics with "well, they're stupid". So please excuse me if my response to its invocation is equally terse and lacking in nuance.

Edit: Also, the thrust of my comment was more that it's funny to see the contrast of "Only white people are smart enough to form democracy" alongside (presumably) white people begging for the boot of autocracy to save them from the boogeyman.

My understanding is that it's not a hypothesis founded or invoked with nuance, which is what you're trying to insert here.

Disproof by example: I'm most favourably disposed to genetic explanations of group differences in a few specific cases.

  1. Sub-Saharan Africans, because of longer timescales of the main, H. s. s. component (100,000+ years of relative isolation in some cases), and because of very low hybridisation with Neanderthals (whereas everyone else has ~3%).

  2. Austronesians, because they're essentially the only group with substantial Denisovan ancestry.

  3. Shitty immune systems from those that didn't settle down until recently, because of the massive and sustained selection for plague resistance since we started building cities. I'm normally sceptical of recent-significant-change explanations, but this one has actually met the high burden of proof given the Columbian Exchange and the similar effects on Australian Aborigines, and it's a relatively-simple tweak compared to stuff "upstairs".

What's not there? I'm highly sceptical of any attempt to explain differences within Eurasia by HBD; the timescales of divergence are quite short, with in most cases significant gene-flow for the entire period, and we've all been civilised for long enough. That includes people going on about Near Easterners (except to the - relatively minor AIUI - degree that there's sub-Saharan African introgression) and, yes, Jews.

So I'm not really with @DradisPing about Iraqis being genetically unsuited to democracy, though I will note that he did also mention "deep culture" and I don't see anything wrong with that claim.

My understanding is that it's not a hypothesis founded or invoked with nuance, which is what you're trying to insert here.

Oh, no, there are a lot of nuanced HBD people who will talk to you all day about mitochondrial haplotype this and Y-chromosome that. Or there were, anyway, I haven't seen them around in a while; they just got called racists like all the others.

I speculate that people who want to talk all day about haplotypes are too, well, boring to draw that much controversy. If you're very interested in the science of genetics there might be a good conversation there, but most people are not. Moreover, people who want to talk about that will probably learn that the Motte isn't a great place for deep dives into genetic science. That sort of conversation requires a lot of specialised knowledge that most Motters don't have.

By contrast, people who enjoy making edgy generalisations about this or that racial group seem like they're optimising more for drama and controversy, and this is a better place to get that. It's the culture war angle. Diving into the arcane complexities of genetic science is interesting, but it's not incendiary. It doesn't pick fights the way that its edgier cousin does.

Naturally get more of the latter type.

Or there were, anyway, I haven't seen them around in a while; they just got called racists like all the others.

I have a different hypothesis.

  • -10

If that's your definition of nuance, then I'm sure phrenology and alchemy are right up your alley as well.

There's the difference between HBD as-in "Human genetics drift over time as populations are isolated, let's explore those differences" and HBD as-in "The genetic differences between populations can explain why the world looks like it does today[1]." Too often the former acts as a Trojan horse for the latter, and I guess people can't be trusted with the responsibility of communicating with nuance so they get called racist.

[1] Nearly every grand-theory-of-everything of why the world looks like it does today gets laughed out of any room with people who capable of deep critical thought in adjacent topics (see how anthropologists feel about Guns, Germs, and Steel) - HBD is not unique in this regard.

Edit: To add, the invocation of HBD in this thread was of the latter type, and not of the former type.

  • -14

see how anthropologists feel about Guns, Germs, and Steel

My understanding was that GGS was deprecated because it got objective facts wrong about the subjects it purports to address, not because it was ambitious in scope.

The facts it got objectively wrong aren't accepted as objectively wrong by anyone except online far-right autists. My impression is that it got depracated because it was meant to be compatible with 90's liberalism, which itself got depracated.

Welp, that's outed me as an online far-right autist, I suppose. (tongue very much in cheek)

The facts it got objectively wrong aren't accepted as objectively wrong by anyone except online far-right autists.

Lol, whut?

You might want to read what /r/askHistorians thinks of Guns, Germs & Steel and if you think that subreddit is full of ”online far-right autists” I suggest you check in for psychiatric evaluation for massive delusions.

Took a quick look at a few of those it's pretty much what I expected. A lot less "the facts he's basing his case on are objectively false" and a lot more "I don't like his framing". Though to be fair GGS isn't that good about making a facts-based case, and tries to make up for it with storytelling, so... fair enough I guess?

There's the difference between HBD as-in "Human genetics drift over time as populations are isolated, let's explore those differences" and HBD as-in "The genetic differences between populations can explain why the world looks like it does today[1]."

This is not the difference between 'nuance' and 'not-nuance', this is the difference between 'crimestop' and science. It is in a way similar to the Catholic Church's acceptance of heliocentrism as a mere 'calculating device'. 'Nuance' does not require that what you are studying have no effect on the real world.

Alright Jordan Peterson, let's shift the debate to the definition of the word "nuance".

My core point stands uncontested. HBD the theory hides behind HBD the science in order to try to gain legitimacy as a "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" despite every "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" being half-baked and not capable of standing up to any critical analysis.

  • -11

My core point stands uncontested.

"Uncontested". I do not think that word means what you think it means.

HBD the theory hides behind HBD the science in order to try to gain legitimacy as a "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" despite every "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" being half-baked and not capable of standing up to any critical analysis.

Error on top of error. It is not enough to merely declare that every "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" is half-baked. Nor does it matter that something does not stand up to "critical analysis", if you mean that in the postmodern sense. And certainly it is not a mark against HBD that it tries to explain aspects of the world.

the theory hides behind ... the science in order to try to gain legitimacy as a "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is"

Many such cases: this is a generic problem, IMO, with several branches of science, maybe even every branch with immediate political impact (also economics, epidemiology, climate science, [group] studies). I don't think you're wrong that this even happens to HBD folks who are probably diametrically opposed to plenty of those other examples.

I don't know of a generic strategy to counteract this human failing: my first recommendation would be to reject claims that "the science is settled": the scientific process is never truly settled. But if you go too far in the un-trusting direction, you'll start questioning the concept of childhood vaccinations or jet fuel melting steel beams.

you'll start questioning the concept of childhood vaccinations or jet fuel melting steel beams.

TBF, the conspiracists are right that jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel (not without a proper burner, anyway). Their mistake is in assuming that you need to melt structural supports in order to make them fail; in actual fact, steel loses most of its strength well before it actually melts.

Reminds me of a bad habit among amateur analysts trying to calculate explosive yields: not knowing the difference between pulverisation (shattering something into dust) and vaporisation. Lots of people see "the building isn't there anymore" and then blithely plug in the specific heat and heat of vaporisation for the entire mass of the building, which is a drastic overestimate because it takes a lot less energy to pulverise than to vaporise something.

Nearly every grand-theory-of-everything of why the world looks like it does today gets laughed out of any room with people who capable of deep critical thought in adjacent topics

Cool, I'm glad you found a way to dismiss a whole belief system based on how you imagine the relative status of people who believe in it compared to those who don't. I'm sure there's no need to engage with the object matter on this, your preconceived ideas are probably 100% right about everything.

Yes I often dismiss whole belief systems, because there are many quite shit belief systems - history is filled with them. I recommend you spend as much time engaging in the same practice, lest you become a lemming in someone else's schemes.

how you imagine the relative status of people who believe in it compared to those who don't

I don't know what this means, but yes, I do tend to hold those in lower regard who fall prey to believing in shitty belief systems. But, since I'm not a misanthrope, it's more of "pity" than "hate". I look at the pictures of cultists clutching onto empty goblets sprawled around tents and I feel sad, but then I see the children in the photo and I feel angry. It's more complex than what you're trying to paint me as.

I'm sure there's no need to engage with the object matter on this, your preconceived ideas are probably 100% right about everything.

I do engage. Like my example, I read Guns, Germs, and Steel - but then I also read the criticisms and appreciated those just as much if not more than the original source material. And then I adjust my priors.

  • -12

Yes I often dismiss whole belief systems, because there are many quite shit belief systems

And yet you hang on to socialism.

Lmao sure bud. If your definition of socialism is any governmental economic system that punishes rent seeking and rewards productive economic activity then sign me the fuck up and mail me my card - because that's pretty much all I stand for.

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