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I don't think that describes the ordinary HBD type, though it does describe some of the louder ones. The ordinary HBD type believes in meaningful racial differences in intelligence and thinks it's a bad idea to implement racial discrimination to correct for this.
It's probably worth making a distinction between "political HBDers" and "factual HBDers", but as you say, the political ones are the loudest here, by far. I don't think this says anything about the factual HBDers, other than that they're relatively invisible in most conversations where HBD comes up, so they aren't the central example of an HBDer that comes immediately to mind.
I used to use the label "alt-right"; it was a snappy, effective label, and there was a time when one could reasonably argue that the 1488 types really were a small minority within it. But the media and the 1488 types worked together to grant the latter de-facto control of the label, so I stopped using it. I could make a strong argument that the 1488 types have no claim to the label, but at some point other fights take priority.
I'm in Nybbler's "ordinary" category, and I've just mostly stopped engaging when like clockwork you make yet another one of those "actually people who purport to believe in HBD are Stormfronters" subthreads. It is tiresome to have to repeat the same arguments (against the backdrop of the affect-loading "actually they are eugenicists which is progressive" "Hitler was vegan" etc chorus that tends to come out of the woodwork) when it seemingly generates no correction or even acknowledgment from you.
I am also in the ordinary category, modulo small amounts of uncertainty. I disagree with some of the other "factual HBDers" in that I don't think the knowledge actually benefits anyone, but it or something very much like it appears to be straightforwardly true. I certainly do not think that I or you or the other people objecting to my use of the term are stormfronters. I don't remember most of these people talking about HBD all that much either; judging from my own experience, it seems to me that there's not all that much left to say. If we're not going to use the knowledge to discriminate, and we don't have gene therapy for intelligence yet, and we can't use the knowledge to publicly argue against our current racial politics because for fear of instant incineration by normie society, about all it does for us is give us high confidence that attempts to "fix" a misunderstood problem almost certainly won't work.
On the other hand, I don't recall making threads about HBD like clockwork; maybe you're refering to the long-running debate over whether the WNs are descended from conservatism or progressivism? And I definately remember seeing a bunch of threads about how HBD means that racial discrimination is a good thing, though again not from any of the people responding in this thread.
For what it's worth, this thread has demonstrated to me that using "HBDer" as a shorthand for WNs is a bad practice, and I'll try not to do it in the future.
There's a profound epistemic benefit to learning about HBD as a scientifically sound framework. It gives a man grounds for confidence about two very important matters, namely that a) despite disagreeing with the apparent common sense about some observable facts, he is not insane or evil, and b) a near-totality of respected and publicly visible people, in a highly transparent, individualist and relatively very democratic society, can be gaslit or intimidated into perpetuating a regime of blatant lies; even though those lies were not so long ago known to many to be just that.
This is quite sufficient to justify informing people of it.
I have an extremely strong revulsion for gaslighting. I viscerally experience it as intrusion into the brain, and into that which brain exists for; tentacles, spider legs, ovipositors, horsehair worms, larvae with mechanically clicking jaws, the assertive writhing mass of wiry, greedy, fecund alien appendages trying to violate soft tissues of my mental organism and remake it into a host for its own designs, into a consumable devoid of inherent worth. I dimly guess that's how many victims understand rape.
I think lying to people, with a serious intent to mislead them, is wrong, though this definition covers too much to use heavy words. To mislead them about themselves is, generally, an evil act. But, worst of all, to make them stop believing in a significant real facet of their goodness and ability to appreciate good and true within and without themselves – this amounts to an act of gratuitous violence; an attempt at mutilation worse than crippling the body. I feel that Christians get it right when they identify the principal source of evil and misery and distortion in the world as The Father of Lies, and exactly for this reason.
I've rewritten this section several times now; I seriously don't know how to express my attitude, except simply: when I notice a person trying to knowingly gaslight me (or even someone else) about anything not utterly trivial, I start thinking of a suitable pretext to kill that creature. I give up always, but not because I believe that impulse is wrong.
Alas, you and Hlynka (and to an extent Amadan) are now, it seems, erecting your own regime of gaslighting here, what with these «political HBDers» (rather, regular White Supremacists) advocating for racial discrimination all over the place; so pervasive that simply gesturing at the subreddit name suffices to make the argument.
How ... good is this kind of poetry in practical writing? Loose analogies to visceral, easily understood ideas. Most very good writers do it, at every level - you, moldbug does it, scott does it... But does it really communicate anything? "Mechanically clicking jaws" are 'bad', and HBD-denial and shame-transmitted memeplexes are bad, but there's not really a deeper relationship between then than 'bad'. (there's ofc something to 'parasitic organism ~ parasitic memeplex' but is 'ovipositor' really characterizing it?) And to the extent those analogies persuade, are they persuading on incorrect grounds, sowing the seeds for mistakes in the future even when the original conclusion is true?
(I'm not actually sure what the answer is)
I know that Jungian typology(and MBTI by extension) is not exactly well-respected scientifically, but these sorts of things are very obvious when you learn it- it's because these people are intuitive types (or engaging in intuition, at least), and such analogies naturally come to them, while they might suppress judgement in the form of thinking more than needed. However, some elements are easily translated to OCEAN, and being very intuitive always means being very imaginative, as a faucet of openness to experience. So you say there is no deeper relationship, and that's true from a thinking point of view, but not from an intuitive point of view.
The easy counterargument is what you refer to as 'the intuitive point of view' is mostly factually wrong and misleading. Both 'being misled' and 'botfly' are unpleasant. And unpleasantness is intuitive. So they're both similar in that way. When I say deeper I mean anything that isn't already covered by "both are bad and both try to hide from you"
Well, it can still be factually wrong, but like with everything else, it depends on how the person says something. In this case, it's not claiming any fact, just drawing an association which in itself is true.
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