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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.
Disproof by example: I'm most favourably disposed to genetic explanations of group differences in a few specific cases.
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%).
Austronesians, because they're essentially the only group with substantial Denisovan ancestry.
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.
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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.
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I have a different hypothesis.
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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.
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)
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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?
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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.
"Uncontested". I do not think that word means what you think it means.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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 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.
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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