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This thought experiment is perhaps "overfitting to a desired conclusion," (and is certainly an unsubtle allegory) but I want to see what other people think. Where else has this comparison been drawn?
In a world where moral status (or, as you will soon see, we could call it moral stature) is defined by a person's height, what might we expect?
Well one thing is it would be very rude to point out that people have different heights. To minimize cognitive dissonance, we would notice that rulers and yardsticks are banned, or at least tabooed. The taboo of course has justification:
I think they definitely would not go around saying "tall people are morally better." And if you tried to gently tell them "Well you certainly act like they are: tall people make more money and have better life outcomes! And you don't call it unjust!" they will probably get angry and call you evil for suggesting that people have different heights. They will say, the injustice is that life outcomes are inequal among the abled and disabled; between men and women; between supposed racial groups; and so many other axes.
They seem to be making a category error. How can a fact of height differences be evil? So you smuggle a ruler into the room. And you point out that Alice is in fact taller than Bob. "It is just an empirical fact" you say. Of course the reply will be something like, "You think your words are disentangled from context, but the social function of your sentence makes a moral claim." This response is inevitable, even if you bookend your remarks with the notice: "THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THIS CLAIM IS TO POINT OUT EMPIRICAL FACT"
At first you think, well its society's social context that is smuggling in the moral "oughts." The problem is certainly not with reality. But then you realize they are kind of right? The social function of this claim, indeed has moral content. In this society, height simply is the gauge of moral status. Stating otherwise doesn't make it go away, just like saying 2 + 2 = 5 doesn't make it true -- that's reality for you. It's at this point you realize your neck is getting a bit strained, because you're constantly looking up -- everyone else in this room is very, very tall. These arguments evolved in Tall Clubs around the nation and are handed down from the credentialed Tall to the less-credentialed mid-statures.
It makes you wonder why all of their interventions to the low-status involve treating symptoms and correlates, instead of identifying how to change the moral valuation, which is the root cause of it all.
So by now most of you are thoroughly short on patience, having realized immediately that "height = intelligence." But the real point: the academic and intellectual authorities that are loudest about the problem are the ones stringently enforcing the taboo holding it all up! Is that a coincidence?
As other pointed out, this is flawed. In today's world it is not intellect, but other signifiers that are seen by large part of society as moral as opposed to immoral. People do not consider it rude to tell to other people that they are sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-vaxxers, fascist and many other things despite their intellect. Talking about intelligence points toward your racism, and it does not matter if you are an academic or construction worker on his break.
The Sailer line is "progressives don't believe in IQ but know they're smarter than conservatives". And progressives do in fact cite studies that say right wingers have lower IQ (and lower openness), the only time I've seen this permitted without comment.
A cynical person might say that how people inveigh against sexism/racism/otherism is meant to demonstrate higher learning and intelligence. Think about the increasingly arcane examples of racism, backed by scholarship inaccessible to the public.. Think about the claim that most people are basically blind because they haven't figured out the underlying structures that shape society. Think about the defense of trans activism: sex is way more complicated than you think prole - you're not qualified to have a take. And oh god, the fucking jargon, that old shortcut to appearing smart.
Intellectuals are arguably the highest status people in progressive spaces, even if we think that the fields they love are not particularly rigorous or g-loaded.
This is exactly my point, you cannot be racist towards racists. It was seen many times, like when activists called black ICE agent as nigger with hard r, or when they force a closeted conservative homosexual out of the closet with a glee, or when they are openly misogynistic etc.
I'd say that intelectuals in general were considered high status historically. I live in post Austrian Empire sphere, where not having masters degree as part of your official ID is seen as shocking and strange - you immediately gain status just by having that. Getting education, parroting correct opinions and then getting cushy government job - or at least something government adjacent is age old tradition for all systems.
High status isn’t necessarily a hallmark of importance. In industries like finance, I remember having a talk with someone who point blank told me “… we know people’s grades and degrees are bullshit. Grade inflation was a thing even at the time I was going to school…” This is a guy who manages a $1.4bn credit portfolio for a living. He didn’t mean degrees are worthless inherently but they’re effectively worthless if you haven’t been on the proving ground. They want to see your expertise in ‘applied’ knowledge, not complex mathematical formulas you can recite from some obscure paper or textbook. The best people (and indeed the most intelligent as well) are far from being those who have the most educational badges next to their name. A lot of people who stay on that side of the fence are those who can’t make their ideas work out in practice, because if you truly had some unique and differentiated idea from everyone else, why wouldn’t you go out and make something of it? And so the conversation always end up being chaired by the D team who goes around bloviating about the importance of this and that, but all they’re really doing is creating this mental landscape of “toy” environments where they hypothesize about the interactions between these toys as if they’re representative of reality and they’re not.
In truth, the proof is in the pudding. “Talk is cheap, show me the code.” - Linus Torvalds. In the end, put up or shut up.
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