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Come on, I disagree with all my friends.
Nybbler, Dase and I have asked you in other threads what your position is: lie, self-delusion, silence, or truth, but you refuse to answer. Going off heuristics, you have a propensity to attack the motives, associates and preferred policies (or lack of policies) of one side (which you believe to have the truth on its side) while defending the other. You just lament what you know to be true and the negative consequences that would result if this truth became more widely known. Honestly, what does your position look like to you?
Okay, just for calibration purposes, here is an example of an HBD comment from this thread. Do you think this is a good example of an argument well-founded on facts, solid evidence and intellectual rigor?
[EDIT] ...This thread turned into a bit of a free for all, but this comment and this one might be relevent.
It is an example of poorer quality of argument, but also I need to say I saw this argument repeated by anti-HBD people before. E.g. Vladimir Fridman claimed that slave owners selected for 'buffon-like' behavior in slave
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The comment is of low quality, and wrong. But that is no more a discredit to HBD than it is to right-wing ideology as a whole. Should that be banned and demonized?
I'm not interested in banning or demonizing anything.
What's the proper way to refer to race-essentialist people who explicitly use HBD as a fully-general explanation for all behavior and outcomes? As an example, this post from a bit ago:
...So that's a claim of straight bio-determinism, isn't it? It seems to me that these sorts of posts are most of the HBD posts I see, mainly because the more rigorous conversations got mined out years ago. Now, maybe my impression is wrong, and I think that sort of post is more common than it actually is because it stands out to me in a way more rigorous HBD posts don't. But this low-quality and wrong posting is what I'm actually objecting to, and not the rigorous version that confines itself to the evidence.
How about "your average far right mottizen with more concepts than sense"?
Although I may be unfair to them. Given the disconnect between how suppressed HBD is, and how scientifically well-supported it is, it’s no wonder that people try to “put HBD on everything”, just for the novelty. What other puzzling questions can be easily answered with something like HBD when the lies are exposed and the censorship lifted?
That's a possible option.
...This is the problem, though. The comment I linked is a person saying "it's all genetics", in response to a situation that we know for a certainty is environmental. Teachers used technique A, got good, verified results, but switched to technique B that gives very bad results instead, because the teachers find technique B more personally fulfilling. HBD has no plausible role in this conversation, but here it is anyway, because people find it easy and fun to apply.
Then when our grumpy friend drops the hammer on this obviously bullshit argument, which he predicted would be made in advance, more reasonable HBD people appear to interpret it as an attack on reasonable, evidence-based science.
If HBD leads to the proliferation of irrational, obviously bullshit racial hot takes, I think that's a problem. I think the best solution is to push back against those hot-takes, and the core logic behind them, and "put HBD into everything" is definately part of that core logic.
Sure, push back against those specific takes all you want. I have a problem with you saying things like ‘nothing good can come from [discussing HBD]’, not you taking apart flawed arguments. You'd immediately recognize your statements as indicating a wish to hide the truth if a progressive said it about one of your hobby horses.
I’m not going to condemn all hypergamy, cathedral, or anti-enlightenment talk (for example) because some take it too far (despite those concepts being a lot more dubious than HBD). We don’t even draw the line at things that are clearly false, so why here?
...and part of the problem is that there's two different arguments getting conflated.
"Put HBD in everything" arguments are generally poorly argued, and often motivated reasoning. I don't like seeing arguments of this sort, because they're low-effort, unsupported and inflammatory, without actually providing anything of value.
"HBD is useful" is coming from the common assumption that HBD in the narrow sense is pretty clearly true, and then asking what we do about it. This seems like an entirely legitimate argument to me, but I hold that, practically speaking, there is nothing particularly useful you can do with HBD. Spreading it isn't going to resolve our racial problems, because they're already too far gone. I could be wrong about this, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to debate. Part of the problem, though, is that spreading "HBD is useful" seems to also spread "Put HBD in everything", both here and in the general population.
I have a hard time imagining a symmetrical argument on my side that would fit the particulars, so this is hard to assess. I don't think it's true, though, because I don't see how anything I'm saying is properly understood as an argument to hide the truth.
Why is HBD held to this impossibly high standard? A large majority, at least, of all political theories are false, what's useful about those?
No offense, but this is your usual excessive pessimism. If nothing can be done, your way is just as pointless. From the POV of a guy who hasn't abandoned all hope, there's a good chance that publicizing HBD lowers the 'it's racist discrimination' pressure considerably. The truth is usually helpful in navigating the world.
'put HBD on everything' is to HBD as 100% environmental explanations are to well-supported environmental explanations. You're saying environmental explanations generally 'lack all usefulness' because you are annoyed by the blank state types, and legitimate environmental explanations 'help spread' crazy blank statism.
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What the hell are you talking about? I've answered all your questions - if there's anything I'm guilty of, it's probably being too willing to keep responding to people when I should just walk away.
Even in that thread you linked to, my statement was that I didn't think people would accept that some races are genetically disadvantaged, that realistically, even if it's true, it's never going to be accepted as factual, and that I don't know what the solution to that problem is. I did not say we should lie about it or cover it up.
I think HBD is probably true. Specifically: I think it is likely that there are racial differences in intelligence, and more specifically, that black people have lower IQs on average. I think it is also possible that some behavior (e.g., propensity to violence, short-term thinking, etc.) is also biological, though this is less clear.
What I do not know is how strong this effect is, or what the actual variance is. I think some "strong HBD" proponents take it to the extreme of believing, essentially, that blacks are incapable of functioning in a modern civilization, and that we should segregate for the greater good. This I believe is wrong both factually and morally.
I also think individuals should be treated as individuals and allowed to prove themselves on their own merits. I think some people are irrationally prejudiced against other races, and this is bad.
So what is it you think I have not stated or been honest about? Or are you just complaining because I haven't "accepted the truth", taken the blackpill, and become a "race realist"?
We all agree (you, FC, dase, nybbler and I) that HBD is true. ( @HlynkaCG has chosen delusion, special category).
We disagree on what to do with this knowledge. The latter group support disseminating it/telling the truth, while you and FC, from what I can tell based on your behaviour, have adopted a ‚don‘t tell‘ policy. This manifests in a stream of arguments on why dissemination is impossible/undesirable and attacks on the moral character of ‚HBD-ers‘, etc.
Consider the possibility that you have allowed your disgruntlement to force upon you an interpretation that isn't actually present if you read what I (and others) have actually said. Though I cannot speak for FC.
My policy is not "don't tell" though certainly I don't go around in real life or blasting on Twitter the Good Word of HBD. I have never advocated that we should all politely pretend to believe pretty lies.
Where do you see a "stream of arguments" ? The once or twice it's come up before? I respond to a post and it's "a stream of arguments," I might not respond to every single post and you accuse me of "refusing to answer." Come on, dude.
I don't think it's impossible - just difficult. Undesirable? Not really, I am always in favor of the truth being known. But I don't know how we get to a society that peacefully adjusts to a reality like that (if it is reality). Acknowledging a problem is not saying "Therefore we should ignore it and pretend." That is a projection on your part.
I only attack the moral character of the folks who use HBD as a justification for their racial animosity. I do think actual racial prejudice (not believing that HBD is true, but prejudging or mistreating an individual based on his race) is immoral. Be salty about that if you like.
Let‘s get the slapfighty parts out of the way first: I am neither „disgruntled“ nor „salty“, just disappointed. And ‚projection‘ is overused at the best of times, the ‚I know you are, but what am I‘ of the debating world, but your use here doesn‘t even make sense. What opinions do I hold, that I project onto you? An ambivalence towards the truth? Where? I do not think people are incapable of processing the truth.
Onto your ‚stream of arguments‘ where you, imo, „align yourself with liars‘:
presenting HBD as pseudo-scientific
questioning why anyone would wish to proclaim the truth, including their motives, preferred policies, associates and intellectual forefathers
defending HBD censorship (on the sub that one time)
claiming that there is ‚no easy way forward‘ and that expecting people to accept the truth is ‚unrealistic‘
Telling the truth is the easy way forward. You ostensibly can‘t go forward, you‘re stuck in place, refusing to answer or move. From a distance, you do move somewhat. Backwards.
I suspect we are at the point where continuing to be very precise and specific and detailed in what I do and do not think will continue to be fruitless, because you are already at the point of making things up about what I do and do not think, but I will give it one more go:
Do you deny that it's abused in a pseudo-scientific way? That doesn't mean there is no legitimate science behind it, but the same applies to things like AI and transgenderism and gun control - there is a lot of science and a lot of pseudo-scientific hot takes based on half-understood kernels of fact.
I didn't do this.
I think a lot of HBDers lack humility or self-awareness: they know blacks have lower IQs on average and think they can state with certainty (though they don't actually understand what science there is any better than the average I Fucking Love Science person understands Newtonian physics) that this is a complete explanation for black poverty, black criminality rates, black educational outcomes, etc. It is what it is, it's biological, we should just "recognize reality" and wash our hands of it.
I do not think everyone who wants to "proclaim the truth" is a white nationalist, which is the reductionist claim you seem to be driving at. I do think HBD is a very convenient rhetorical tool that white nationalists are happy to use.
If any one topic was becoming insanely annoying and taking over every thread for weeks on end, I'd probably be provisionally in favor of a moratorium on it again.
Get over it.
Correct, I do not think there is an easy way forward, and I do think it's unrealistic to think most people today will accept that some races are biologically inferior. I think the idea of racial equality in the innate, born sense and blank slateism has the power of religious conviction for most of liberal Western society, and thinking that we should just "proclaim the truth" until they believe it sounds like tilting at windmills to me. Not that I don't respect a good windmill tilt, but even if you are Galileo, recognize that you are Galileo. (And yes, I know the Galileo story itself is more complicated, work with me here.) And also, I am not convinced that the HBDers, especially the "Hard HBDers," actually have rock-solid science on their side, whereas you apparently think this is unambiguously the side of truth and virtue.
That doesn't mean there is no path towards accepting unpleasant truths, but I stand by my position that I'm recognizing a bitter pill, not pretending it doesn't exist.
No, of course it's abused, like every true thing. Of course people who believe it will pretend to know and understand more than they really do. Something being abused and ‚I love science“-ed does not make it pseudo-scientific.
By your own admission it is true, so convenience is neither here nor there. How convenient for nazis that physics allowed them to build rockets.
I don‘t get over censorship of the truth. I honestly don‘t know why you feel I misrepresented you, we seem to be in perfect agreement on what your positions are.
You already agreed it is the side of truth. Is there a gap between the side of truth, and the side of virtue ?
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