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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35578 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Charles Murray, and the based NPC question

The romantic view of a dissident involves a person who is simply temperamentally repulsed by the kind of bullshit others peddle, and courageously commits himself to it's refutation. But there is another less romantic, if still mildly endearing version. It's of the person who is fully programmed by what is said explicitly, but somehow deficient enough socially to completely miss the modifiers; the soviet diplomat who hears "Stalin values all legitimate criticism" and is oblivious to the meaning of "legitimate" so he writes him a letter on how communism must end. Hardly a Yudina.

This brings me to Charles Murray. Two days ago, Hanania published his magnus opus on Asian overperformance where he suggested that given the absence of a shared culture; asian overperformance must come from elsewhere. He then intuited that the cause must be a global Kendiist stereotype threat; powerful enough to penetrate North Korea, and maybe even the space time continuum to transform the Chinese before they were stereotyped.

Charles Murray reads the post and responds:

"I was so dumbfounded by this that I read it again to make sure that he really doesn’t mention genes. I’m still not absolutely sure that it isn’t an elaborate put-on. But if he’s serious…wow." Luckily, Ross Douthat was there to clarify things, replying "It's an elaborate put-on". Now think of how bizzare it is that literally the top player in the HBD sphere, is only mildly suspicious that a person positing psychological timetravel with chinese characteristics (admittedly as a potential detraction), might be speaking in jest.

Now you can imagine this guy hearing about freedom of speech from the moment of his birth, genuinely believing that everyone is on his side, and then publishing the bell curve without the slighest idea that it would be controversial. Now, kind of going in another direction - What if similar social deficiencies are present throughout the social science world, and much of what we think of as obvious woke censorship is actually complete social illiteracy?

This of course would complicate my understanding of the issues raised in my prior post. Maybe Henrich upon hearing that 6 year old Kenyan kids don't seem to recognize themselves in the mirror; consciously decides to not dig any further to avoid the gaze of the cathedral. Or maybe, he just doesn't understand that six year olds can answer questions. https://www.themotte.org/post/421/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/78627?context=8#context

here https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-east-asian-package

Say what you will about Kendi, but he’s given us a framework that can possibly explain the East Asian package. Can it be a coincidence that we see the highest levels of economic growth and mathematical success, and lowest levels of illegitimacy and other forms of anti-social behavior, in countries that are geographically adjacent, despite the limited cultural links between them? And that people from these countries show similar traits when they move abroad? Journalists and academics write papers about low South Korean fertility or remarkable Chinese growth over the years, or about Asian success in American schools, and look for local factors at work, without seeming to understand that they’re observing any kind of broader phenomenon. It’s like if scientists were trying to figure out the association between elevation and weather, and were coming up with an independent hypothesis about the relationship on each continent without ever attempting to synthesize various kinds of data into a more general theory.

Given that conservatives and anti-wokes more generally have done such a poor job of presenting a theory that fits what we see in the world, it is no wonder that Kendism has unrivaled influence. With our advanced modern state of understanding of social phenomena, it remains the only school of thought that has broad explanatory power.

Yes, the last paragraph gives it away as being a joke . It is implied that it is IQ. That is the joke

also his real views on Kendi:

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1636391983622270977

I think there is so much BS online that it becomes hard to even know what is real or not anymore.

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