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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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While I disagree with Freddie deBoer on a lot of things, especially his ongoing war with his commentariat about gender, his thoughts on education seem pretty solid. His new post https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated is no exception, though he puts in a bit of boilerplate declaring on faith that of course groups can be equalized somehow, even if individuals can't, despite giving no reason to believe that of any particular group or groups. This seems a pretty paltry fig leaf, but oh well.

I suppose if I want to get more of his view on a way forward, I should read his book, The Cult of Smart, but I don't want to just now. Based on his blogging, he seems to think that moving money from smart, productive people to stupid, unproductive people is the best solution, but this doesn't solve the fundamental question of allowing people who can't contribute much economically to live in a worthwhile fashion that allows self respect.

My state legislature has been debating plans to fiddle about with small levers at the margins to make up for Covid losses and "improve education." The levers are very small indeed. An extra half hour in the day? More private bathroom stalls? The only topic that made some sort of sense was career and technical education. I've been thinking about one side of this, trying to help my husband fix a leak this morning, and reading some thoughts from Internaught at DSL lately about crumbling infrastructure. Every time I interact with a Trades produced physical object, I realize that they are made for the large, strong hands of a young man who has been working on manipulating physical objects with weight and mass for years and decades. This probably makes sense from a materials engineering perspective -- assume that a mechanic or tradesman will be interacting with the object, and it can be heavier, with a tighter seal, probably more durable. But it seems like something of a hard sell, getting people to work with these heavy, sturdy objects for decades at a time when they don't have to, and don't get much status out of it, and most people can't afford . Giving out money doesn't seem all that helpful when we're all living in a crumbling, unfixable physical environment, and the computers can do 80% of the writing, calculating, and art, but can't keep the utilities repaired.

I would like to see more emphasis on humans as embodied, physical, tool using beings, but am not sure what steps might lead in that direction. I was listening to a podcast the other day by a Waldorf kindergarten teacher who had started taking his classes on walks to the park all morning, every morning, and that it worked out very well for them, but this was a nice, safe forest park in a place with decent weather much of the year. I don't really know where to go with these thoughts, though. It seems like kids need more physical, sensory experiences, but it seems like a hard pitch, perhaps something to do with laptopping being high status and easy on the body, as is mentioned in the thread on class.

I find deBoer very frustrating.

He's a smart guy. He clearly articulates a lot of problems with leftist ideology, and he can speak to those problems more authentically than most critics because he is a leftist. An unapologetic, literal Marxist, not an "anti-woke ex-liberal" or a "disaffected gray triber" but someone who actually thinks most leftists aren't leftist enough.

And yet I feel like he circles around the truth and will sort of vaguely gesture in its general direction, but will not confront it because he cannot stand what he will see.

I say this as someone who has reluctantly concluded that HBD is largely true, and wishes it wasn't. I think that's where Freddie is at, except he can't make the leap from "It would be really unfortunate and sad if this were true" to "It's true."

A lot of his solutions are actually practicable even (especially) if HBD is true! He has a humane and realistic vision of a world where some kids just aren't ever going to be capable of doing higher math or engineering or much beyond basic literacy. But he cannot force himself to consider a gap beyond "individual differences," and we'll never be able to realistically adopt a model that accepts that some kids, by virtue of "individual differences," are just not college material, and also that by sheer unhappy coincidence most of those kids are non-white.

On the other hand, I don't see a realistic path towards acknowledging a reality - if it is reality - that not by coincidence, most non-white/Asian kids aren't cut out for higher education. So we are stuck. But Freddie seems particularly stuck. I wonder if in his heart of hearts, he doubts what he says publicly, or if he really is a true believer.

I think he's very similar on the trans issue. He can very accurately point out all the problems with trans ideology and the logical fallacies displayed by trans activists, except the central one. Maybe he really, truly believes TWAW, or maybe he just believes that the harm of denying TWAW is greater than the harm of admitting they are not.

In liberal countries, I am not sure that it really should matter much on the political level whether HBD is true. Even if it becomes widely accepted as true, in liberal societies that should not lead to any significantly different political policies. HBD being true would not justify race-based discrimination. Even support for affirmative action does not need to rely on the belief in racial equality. It can be supported on the grounds that certain groups of people were oppressed in the past, which leads to modern-day consequences for them.

As long as society stayed liberal, I think that probably little would change if tomorrow HBD being true became the dominant opinion. Now of course we have plenty of authoritarians here on The Motte who will be happy to argue that HBD being true is yet another good reason for why society should stop being liberal. I like living in a liberal society, though, so my ideal would be that people could argue about whether HBD is true or not while decoupling it from the idea of what political policies society should follow. Being a liberal, in my view the truth or falsity of HBD should have about zero impact on political policy. At most, if HBD became widely accepted as true, it would lessen the degree to which people would support race-baiting political programs which depend for their support on the notion of the white boogeyman. But I already do not support those programs, HBD being true or not changes nothing for me in that regard.

Let’s suppose in this theoretical scenario that an investigation reveals that despite making up 13% of the population, African-Americans comprised only 3% of all new hires at, say, IBM in the last fiscal year. When accused of racial discrimination, IBM rejects this and claims that their hiring practices are based on merit. They produce a bunch of paperwork to prove this etc. Since HBD is no longer tabooized in this scenario, a bunch of journalists, pundits etc. side with IBM and claim that their argument is sound. They provide a bunch of statistics, surveys etc. to prove this.

Then what? How do the supporters of liberal democracy react?

They react by saying "Oh, I guess you are not discriminating based on race, you are discriminating based on merit. Carry on then!".

Supporting liberal democracy is completely compatible with believing that HBD is true.

Only in theory.