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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2655 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 7, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Just saw this posted today.

https://twitter.com/AporiaMagazine/status/1654233104523968512

It's not just partially genetic. The difference in intelligence between two individuals is mostly genetic. Most people, including the credentialled, naively assume the opposite, thus coming to incorrect conclusions about many social problems. That's one reason it gets mentioned a lot here. The other, more important reason, is that the Motte is one of the only places where a reasonable discusssion about HBD is allowed to take place. If we wanted to talk about baseball, there are a million other forums for that.

My apologies, that was awkwardly phrased on my part. What I meant was that I do not understand how the observation that many environmental factors could also be driven by genetics is a counter-argument to the position that in-between group differences are partly genetic. Yet I very often see that happening in HBD discussions.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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