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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   28636 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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talked with Chomsky about racial intelligence differences

Now this is slightly interesting. "at least some of them know what they're doing and are just lying" is a thought that doesn't normally cross my mind not because it's not true, but because it's pointless to speculate about. I just provisionally assume that any given 'anti-racist' is a true believer in universal humanity. But of course they aren't. The "lore" after all, is fairly accessible for someone reasonably intelligent and curious.

I wonder how this looks from inside their own heads. Brave holders of esoteric truths vigilantly guarding the demos from dangerous knowledge?

As a True Believer in Universal Humanity, I hold the following Views on race/genetics/intelligence:

  1. The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist.

  2. There is not, currently, sufficient evidence to refute the null hypothesis.

  3. It is possible that sufficient evidence could exist in the future; however, the existence of such differences, even if proven, would not justify the conclusions drawn by the far right.

  4. If such differences exist, they do not make members of the less-intelligent groups less deserving of human dignity, any more than someone born to a more-intelligent group would become less deserving of human dignity upon suffering a head injury.

  5. The existence of a racial intelligence gap would mean that Nature herself is a racist, and those born with greater intelligence thus bear a disproportionate duty first to alleviate the immediate condition of those thus victimised by Nature, and second to develop and deploy some method of repairing the damage don by nature to those individuals.

This duty is not penance for having been born a member of a privileged group; it is the principle that If You Have The Means At Hand, You Have The Responsibility To Help.

The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist

This hypothesis is equivalent to what could be called the "Egalitarian Hypothesis"

The Egalitarian Hypothesis is that genes (technically alleles) which influence intelligence are distributed equally among all racial and ethnic groups.

From this perspective, it is more easy to see that you are unfairly privileging the hypothesis you like. The default hypothesis should be that intelligence is no different from any other measurable human attribute, such as height, eye color, and so on. Given that other human attributes are clearly NOT distributed equally among all racial and ethnic groups, the null hypothesis should be that it's the same for intelligence.

'Null hypothesis' does not mean 'most likely hypothesis'; it means 'the hypothesis that the thing for which we are looking does not exist.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis

Yeah but "intelligence is equally distributed among all human races" is a positive hypothesis of it's own, that's why you are effectively doing what he said.

There's an interesting contrasting series one could draw.

  1. Racial intelligence gaps are probably just real, as seen from all the IQ tests of different racial groups, the distribution of Nobels and technical achievement across the nations
  2. Even if they were not real and the gap in performance is due to culture, then much the same conclusions should be drawn (do not bring in people from low performing cultures - or commit to authoritarian mass-scale re-education and indoctrination programs to get them up to speed)
  3. If there is no biological or cultural effect on intelligence/achievement and it's just racism, then maybe white countries should just accept they're incurably racist since, somehow, their ambient racism field is still suppressing the achievement of POCs despite all these expensive affirmative action and DEI efforts. Perhaps oil and water just don't mix and they should be kept far away to minimize the effect... Or maybe 10x more money and effort needs to be spent on DEI? $1.2 Trillion wasn't enough, what about $20 trillion to sub-saharan Africa? Could the ambient racism field be tapped for power, how is it so effective at inducing dysfunction in blacks, even over long distances, even after great spans of time since whites had any influence? Is the racism field defending itself by getting Trump and other populists installed, is it too deep to root out?
  4. Maybe the only solution is genocide, to get rid of the ambient racism field?

I know this sounds sarcastic and dumb but if you take the premises and run with them under utilitarian human-dignity logic, that's where you end up. If white genocide raises world happiness by destroying the racism field and thus raising more black and brown bodies to high standards of living and achievement, isn't that then good? Revolutionaries in the 1960s debated this, some proposed the necessity of killing white babies to stop them growing up to continue the oppressive racist-capitalist system.

On the other hand, it would be much easier for the people with all the H-bombs and MIRV'd ICBMs to do the genociding... Or a transhumanist fix nowadays, I suppose. What does it even mean to make someone smarter and more capable with a transhumanist fix, is this ego-death, overwriting a personality, overwriting a whole racial group?

The exact mechanics of the racism field deserve much more study. This is an extremely important effect, if it's a real thing. Spooky action at a distance, across vast spans of time, very potent effect! And it seems to only 'work' when white people do it - Ottoman and Algerian slave-raiding and Japanese conquest/genocide doesn't seem to have the same effect white racism has on black and brown communities.

If the ambient racism field is just made up, then those who've been promoting and proposing the theory should be treated very seriously. After all, they would have overseen and promoted the waste of tens trillions of dollars, the misallocation and the miseducation of hundreds of millions based on a lie.

The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist

How does the null hypothesis have a place here and why do you get to decide what it is? We aren’t approving drugs here, we’re just trying to weigh two theories, it’s completely unfair to arbitrarily privilege the one you like more.

It's been a while since I took a science class, but IIRC every scientific investigation has to have a null hypothesis. Wikipedia says that the definition of "null hypothesis" is the hypothesis that no relationship exists—i. e., intelligence has no correlation with race.

You can set the threshold for rejecting the null hypothesis at any significance level you want. You have to set it quite high (by social science standards) to not reject it in this case, but if you're starting with the conclusion you want, that's what you do.

The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist.

There is not, currently, sufficient evidence to refute the null hypothesis.

When it comes to people in general who hold this position, you know, fine, it's not my business what they believe. But I absolutely do not want to hear from them their own (inevitably far more tenuous) theories regarding racial achievement gaps and the like. They can just sit back and be baffled, and if anyone asks them what to do about it, throw their hands up in the air because they have no idea.

But I absolutely do not want to hear from them their own (inevitably far more tenuous) theories regarding racial achievement gaps and the like. They can just sit back and be baffled, and if anyone asks them what to do about it, throw their hands up in the air because they have no idea.

I think that's an excellent point. If, as another poster stated, the "null hypothesis" is "the hypothesis that no relationship exists," and we are going to apply this kind of analysis, then there is zero basis to look at achievement gaps and blame white racism, "patriarchy" "colonialism," "the legacy of slavery" etc.

You've certainly got your soldiers lined up in an impressive defense in depth. But reality does not care.

If You Have The Means At Hand, You Have The Responsibility To Help.

Rejected. The able are not the proper slaves of the needy.

Alice is 5' 2"/157 cm. Bob is 6' 3"/190 cm.

Expecting Bob to get something off a high shelf for Alice does not make Bob Alice's slave.

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.

Rejecting the notion that the more able ought to help the less able is rejecting civilisation itself.

It seems to me that a tall man who isn’t allowed to decide when and where and if he fetches things for shorter people is just a step-ladder made of meat.

What if there are 10 Alice’s who genuinely need things fetched down on a constant basis?

What if there’s only one Alice but she abuses him and makes her dislike of him known on a regular basis?

What if Alice and her fellow shorties have subjected Bob to a constant campaign of psychological manipulation since birth explaining that his tallness is a privilege to be used for the benefit of the short, or indeed is actively oppressing them by causing shelves to be built which they can’t reach, for which we must repent by obeying them?

In many of these scenarios Bob appeared to be… let’s not call him a slave to avoid the noncentral fallacy, but certainly slavelike. Similar to an indentured servant.

In practice, what seems to happen is that ‘we’ or ‘society’ determine how much labour Bob is required to do for the underprivileged (in our benevolence). In which case Bob is not only their servant but even more so ours.

Civilisation does require this to some degree but the scales have tipped far too far in the last hundred years and the racial version has finally tipped far enough that all of us are Bob and we’re sick of it.

Rejected.

Yeah, I didn't get that either. The moral claim that the strong must help the weak is just that...a claim.

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