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Notes -
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
I think the insight, and I wish I knew who came up with it, is “for the vast majority of people, facts and arguments are not so much about true and false, but social signaling.” In other words, even for social scientists, being right isn’t nearly as important as being on the right side of social questions. And so when confronted with things that contradict a known dogma of the cathedral, they know better than to dig the truth out, as it means being branded a heretic and shunned, denied money, and so on. They don’t even necessarily know they’re doing it, it’s instinct.
I suspect the case of Asians is much like Jews in the West. If you create a culture with a background that prizes study and deep learning and hard work, you can subtly push the genetic needle in the direction of higher intelligence and hard work and dedication to your country and people. Confucian thought was popular in Eastern Asia for millennia (if memory serves, it was first taught in 500 BC), which gives it 2500 years to work on the intelligence and psychology of practicing Confucians. Judaism as we know it started around the same time, and thus would have pushed Jews toward the same killer apps — education (gotta read Moses, and argue about the legal implications of every rule), work, and cultural cohesion. To say East Asian people don’t share any sort of culture is just wrong, they share a history of Confucius, Buddha, and the Tao. They might not overtly share it, and don’t share it in the same way, but they do have that history.
Yeah, I get that. The whole point of my post was to wonder whether there are exceptions to this rule, or whether apparent exceptions were just people who got their signals wrong.
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