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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5639 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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What do you want him to do, post FBI crime statistics for the millionth time? Then enter the heritability debate with the gaslighters again? It's boring.

One of the things I always respected about the Motte was the effortposters who were willing to research and put in the work on controversial questions. I find responses like yours extremely disappointing and out of place for what this community used to be.

At the very least, you could link to a past discussion on the Motte or somewhere else that you think did a good job rigorously interrogating the evidence and policy choices, while arriving in the neighborhood of /u/sleepyegg's assertions, so that those of us who are interested in high effort discussions and a free search for truth can have something to sink our teeth into.

One of the things I always respected about the Motte was the effortposters who were willing to research and put in the work on controversial questions. I find responses like yours extremely disappointing and out of place for what this community used to be.

It „used to be that way” and is not that way now, because the Motte did not reward effort posting enough. In my mind the reward for effort posting should be no more „evidence please” for the same dry topic; just go browse the AAQCs or some canonical blog posts, maybe from some of those effort posters who you chased away. If the mod feels the need to chime in, maybe they should chime in with links to some of those instead of demanding another poster do it. There's no point to having a debate if you can never make any progress.

Also, on the HBD race debate specifically, the controversy is much older than the Motte, and the same thing happens elsewhere with it. I'm convinced it was all sorted out by 1995 or earlier. It's not a particular failure of the Motte to fail to make progress on this topic. If anything, the Motte is better than most places when it comes to it. But what is more interesting to me than rehashing it again is looking at the meta question of, is one side operating in bad faith? I think so, probably. Which deflates my motivation to engage in the object-level debate with high effort.

If the mod feels the need to chime in, maybe they should chime in with links to some of those instead of demanding another poster do it.

We will demand posters follow the rules.

Alternatively, DM me to discuss rates since apparently you are dissatisfied with the level of effort being made by volunteers.

Maybe you haven't been exposed to any decent anti-HBD arguments. Personally, I think there probably is a genetic component to racial differences in criminality. However, I think that pro-HBD people often overstate their case.

@2rafa's recent post about Irish Travelers is interesting when it comes to the explanatory power of HBD.

There are also many examples in history of savage, unintellectual people later becoming great intellectuals without, perhaps, the genetic stock changing much. If one used a time machine to observe the founding Indo-European-speaking stock circa 2000 BC, one would probably find it hard to imagine that 1500 years later they would have descendants like Thucydides and Euclid. If one observed the Germanic people around 0 AD, one would find it hard to imagine that their descendants would include many of the world's foremost scientists and mathematicians.

There are also many examples in history of savage, unintellectual people later becoming great intellectuals without, perhaps, the genetic stock changing much.

You should look up some medieval descriptions of Vikings for fun reading on this. Or German writings about Swedes from around 1630 for that matter. That same genetic stock rather famously produced Alfred Nobel.

If one observed the Germanic people around 0 AD, one would find it hard to imagine that their descendants would include many of the world's foremost scientists and mathematicians.

1500+ years later. Which is about 75 generations. At just +0.01 SD per generation, that can add up to 0.75 SDs in that time. Which is 11.25 IQ points. Which is a rise from a mean of 88.75 to 100. This can be produced by having an average r=0.02 correlation between fertility and IQ during that time by the way. We're experiencing 5x that selection pressure in the opposite direction right now.

Any HBDer would readily agree melatonin level does not cause low IQ. With the right selection pressure with a certain amount of time African Americans would begin dominating science and engineering.

My understanding is that pre-civil rights America this was actually beginning to slowly occur before the 1960s did what it did to everything; fucking ruined it.

I mean look at the Scottish enlightenment. They went from knifing each other in mud huts to being the most intellectually developed nation on the world in like four generations.

Yes. Would you like to start a eugenics program in Africa? Where can I sign up?

Also, on the HBD race debate specifically, the controversy is much older than the Motte, and the same thing happens elsewhere with it. I'm convinced it was all sorted out by 1995 or earlier.

Look, I'm fully open to the idea that I'm totally wrong-headed on these topics, and I always try to keep the idea that I might be biased and believing what I want to believe in view as a possibility. But I genuinely think there are a lot of questions that a lot of HBD people I've interacted with seem ill-equipped to deal with.

For example, if I grant for the sake of argument that the average 85 IQ of African Americans is mostly genetic, and even the part that is environmental is mostly infeasible to change with ordinary interventions, I still have not heard a convincing argument in favor of segregation, which I have seen more than one HBDer advocate for.

Like, I'm fully aware of the "13% of the population commits 50% of the murders" argument, but surely if we were just genuinely tough on crime and caught the bad eggs, there would be no reason for segregation, since the vast majority of African Americans are not murderers? Like, if you just look at averages and standard deviations, then the smartest non-outlier African American in the United States has an IQ of 145. I don't understand why we need a system that segregates that IQ 145 person away from everyone else, just because 1% of his same race cohort are murderers or whatever.

I kind of just don't see why the Steven Pinker-style of HBD-aware liberalism isn't still possible, even if HBD turns out to be 100% true? Do you really assert that we've known since 1995 that such a system was and is impossible with any realistic social arrangement?

Segregation has some issues because very clearly you have some Africans perhaps even well over 50% that do not cause any issues and are perfectly fine mixing with the rest of society.

The best evidence for segregation is America spends an insane amount of money to do segregation without doing segregation. This is essentially all housing regulations in America. Minimum lot sizes, building restrictions, etc that are all designed to make sure poorer people can not get into your neighborhood. It’s car culture. If you look at relatively homogenous populations - pre-19th century Europe, Tokyo, Buenos Aires they all build a lot of dense urban housing. All the cities built after the Great Migration in America are essentially suburbs connected to each other. With local coordination to keep low income folks out of their communities. Sure you can disagree with this argument. You can say it’s just the car and people like backyards. That I guess is viable. Tokyo largely developed posts-car and is dense.

Completely changing how people live (cities to restricted suburbs) is a huge amount of gdp and utility. It’s big enough to justify explicit segregation.

You can honestly just change any argument wokes made for racism caused bad things and instead attribute it to lower class black people bad behavior and then add up all the mitigating costs the rest of the society does to avoid mixing.

I think it’s fairly obvious the US spends trillions per year to achieve segregation without explicit doing segregation. Private schools would barely exists if segregation was legal.

They don't want poor white people in those neighborhoods either, you know. Far less than they want wealthy blacks.

I don’t think they care much about poor whites. Tokyo and Buenos Aires are fine intermingling and it’s nice having plumbers etc around.

Tradesmen often report feeling unwelcome in UMC neighborhoods- and they're not even particularly poor.

Socially sounds true. I tend to believe we have defacto segregation in the US thru the zoning code. I don’t think plumbers would cause rich neighborhoods to set up zoning to exclude a plumber from moving in. But socially a plumber and a hedge fund manager wouldn’t go to the same dinner parties. And the rich do tend to not mind poor people in the same social class being around. I know fallen rich who bought the poorest house in a wealthy neighborhood after divorce and socially they still went in the same groups.

For example, if I grant for the sake of argument that the average 85 IQ of African Americans is mostly genetic, and even the part that is environmental is mostly infeasible to change with ordinary interventions, I still have not heard a convincing argument in favor of segregation, which I have seen more than one HBDer advocate for.

Sleepyegg didn't argue for Jim Crow, and you pled for him to include basic race-differences fact links in his post.

For example, if I grant for the sake of argument that the average 85 IQ of African Americans is mostly genetic, and even the part that is environmental is mostly infeasible to change with ordinary interventions, I still have not heard a convincing argument in favor of segregation, which I have seen more than one HBDer advocate for.

We can't have this discussion properly when you aren't actually willing to grant the basic race facts. You don't just grant for the sake of the argument here; you must grant for the sake of reality. Then we can talk about policy. The way it works, though, is that when we try to establish the facts, we get shouted down. So there is no point and there can be no discussion. The facts remain the facts, and the fact remains that the facts remain denied.

Like, I'm fully aware of the "13% of the population commits 50% of the murders" argument, but surely if we were just genuinely tough on crime and caught the bad eggs, there would be no reason for segregation, since the vast majority of African Americans are not murderers?

That means someone has to die before we act, and we also have to be tough on crime, which is ugly and anti-liberty.

I kind of just don't see why the Steven Pinker-style of HBD-aware liberalism isn't still possible, even if HBD turns out to be 100% true? Do you really assert that we've known since 1995 that such a system was and is impossible with any realistic social arrangement?

No, we have known that the facts about race differences are as sleepyegg stated. We also know race blind liberalism is possible, since the United States lives under it (and to some extent Europe). Do you like the system?

Also, I personally don't argue for Jim Crow and don't know any serious HBD people who do. I would prefer a holistic class based system where race differences are accepted, and races assort into classes in proportions which accord to their talents. Blacks would not be bared from the nobility, but would probably only be a small percent of it, and that is expected based on their racial averages. This is anything but a normal HBD belief, though. It's more like Moldbug multiplied by HBD; most HBD people are slightly racist liberals who just want to be a little more tough on crime and restrict immigration. I would like a society which is run by and for its nobility, which competes against contemporary peasant states by attracting a lower class willing to accept explicit subordination based on superior economics. Its values would be truth, beauty, human flourishing, and biologically improving the human species.

We also know race blind liberalism is possible, since the United States lives under it (and to some extent Europe). Do you like the system?

I mean, isn't the complaint that it isn't actually race-blind? Either because we're too lenient on black defendants, or because of affirmative action and DEI?

My preference as a heterodox libertarian would be for a race blind system that actually punished people where appropriate. If that means a higher percentage of black people end up in prison, so be it. So yes, I like the theoretical idea of race-blind liberalism, more or less.

We can't have this discussion properly when you aren't actually willing to grant the basic race facts. You don't just grant for the sake of the argument here; you must grant for the sake of reality. Then we can talk about policy. The way it works, though, is that when we try to establish the facts, we get shouted down. So there is no point and there can be no discussion. The facts remain the facts, and the fact remains that the facts remain denied.

I don't think I've ever shouted anyone down for anything here on the Motte.

Don't get me wrong. I've been working my way through books recommended here and elsewhere. But it is slow going, and I'm not yet fully on board with HBD in its most common form here.

My biggest hang up has always remained that I just don't think that establishing the facts of HBD should have much effect on public policy besides immigration. We have the people inside of the country that we have. We can do some amount of voluntary eugenics under a libertarian/liberal regime, but even changing my view to agree with the common HBD consensus wouldn't really change anything about how I think society should be organized. I had already priced in that some people are naturally going to be more violent, or stupid, and I still think we should treat them as individuals and let them rise or fall on the basis of their own merits.

We have the people inside of the country that we have.

Yes, you do. United States demographics are in a fail-state currently. It's sink or swim. Swimming might be what Trump campaigned on. But ultimately I think there's too many millstones around the neck of the great United States to stay swimming. Trump is failing. He will be replaced by Newsome.

We can do some amount of voluntary eugenics under a libertarian/liberal regime

You don't have a libertarian regime, you have a carceral surveillance state designed to exalt the proletariat of the world at gun point. From a justice point of view, I bet I could find 10 sentences handed out today alone that are more unjust than a hundred sterilizations of a hundred criminals each with rap sheets a mile long and a dozen baby-mommas.

wouldn't really change anything about how I think society should be organized. I had already priced in that some people are naturally going to be more violent, or stupid, and I still think we should treat them as individuals and let them rise or fall on the basis of their own merits.

I agree with you, I just think we need a state that values beauty, truth, and human improvement over equality, safety, and comfortable lies. And this implies an aristocracy and a massive social reorganization.

My preference as a heterodox libertarian would be for a race blind system that actually punished people where appropriate. If that means a higher percentage of black people end up in prison, so be it. So yes, I like the theoretical idea of race-blind liberalism, more or less.

This is my preference as well as a leftist liberal. One major problem is that anyone who has this opinion of "so be it" is deemed to be ideologically indistinguishable from Nathan Bedford Forrest by mainstream liberals who disproportionately influence public conversation about this, if not actual public policy. I haven't been able to figure out a way to fix this.

Mandate low-income subsidized rental housing preferentially for blacks who are reintegrating to society after prison parole in all leftist liberal communities. When there is white liberal flight from the area, keep expanding the program to the new areas they are escaping to. Fund the program with local property taxes. Call it an expansion of Section 8 housing vouchers.

Either we will have very rehabilitated black parolees, or we will have a change in liberal opinion on race blind systems.

This proposal is silly, since you're already taking people who have been selected for a particular trait and putting them in a particular place. Let me put it to you, do you think there would be much white flight if you instead selected for blacks with relatively high SAT/ACT scores or who had Bachelor's degrees?

Even if that group is a smaller one, I think you must understand on some level that there are good eggs and bad eggs, even in a highly crime-prone group like that.

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