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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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When I discuss Critical Race Theory with leftists, I often make the point that, while I'd rather public schools not encourage students to speculate on the causes of racial disparities, I'd be amenable to a compromise where systemic racism is taught as one possibility, alongside cultural and biological explanations.

The response to this (when it's not an accusation of racism on my part) is that I'm just like the creationists who wanted their psuedoscience taught alongside evolution. This is kind of true, in that I am asking that ideas I like be taught alongside ones favored by the academic establishment. However, when you take social desirability out of the equation, HBD is more similar to evolution because it literally IS just applied evolution, and systemic racism/CRT/disparate impact/wokeness/social justice/anti-racism/whatever label we're using this week is analogous to creationism in that we have little direct evidence it exists, but we assume it must exist because the current state of affairs would make sense as its outcome, even though it would also make sense as the outcome of other processes.

I doubt that I'm the first person around these parts to say that the Pastafarian explanation for gravity (an invisible, non-corporeal Flying Spaghetti Monster physically pushes us onto the ground) has no less evidence supporting it than the woke explanation for half-Asian, half-white children having a mean IQ between that of Asians and that of whites (stereotype threat impacts them half as much).

I also doubt that I'm the first person around these parts to draw a comparison between creationists who acknowledge microevolution while denying Darwinism to leftists who acknowledge within-group heritability while denying between-group heritability.

However, a thought occurred to me today that frightened me, and my hope is that when I voice it, you will unanimously dismiss it as ridiculous, because if it's in any way true, then I'm going to be devastated.

What if the truth value of Darwinism had little, if anything, to do with its acceptance by the academic establishment, and the falsehood of intelligent design had little, if anything, to do with its rejection by the academic establishment? If truth was that important, we'd expect CRT to be seen as equivalent to creationism, but it's not.

You know the Schmitt meme about how all disputes can be reduced to friend vs. enemy? Well.. maybe that's what happened with the debate over evolution in public schools. Maybe evolution was pushed specifically because the religious right objected to it, and not because it was real. That evolution actually WAS real was incidental at best.

Promote evolution and CRT because they hurt the right. Eliminate intelligent design and HBD because they hurt the left. This is how a Schmittposter would describe what happened, and maybe that literally is what happened.

Please tell me I'm just mindkilled. I'm not being rhetorical here. I would find that reassuring.

It actually matters that evolution is real, yeah. If only because of the attack surface. A true (or at least unfalsifiable) position is harder to refute than a false one, and thus is a more useful weapon in the culture war. Not that CW is fully rational.

CRT is not pushed because it somehow diminishes the right. No, it fits more comfortably into a certain worldview. And because it’s about moral deserts, it has some level of unfalsifiability. This is pretty comparable to the intelligent design side of that debate—the right favored it because it was more comfortable under the axioms of Christianity, and left pushed back on it because “hey look, free points!”

You’re only half wrong- the scopes monkey trial, notably, centered around the teaching of evolution as a way to advocate eugenics, with the prestige press of the day painting it as a new Spanish Inquisition shutting down brave truth tellers.

If there was an agenda behind adopting belief in evolution, it was that of eugenics. We forget, today, just how much of a long-standing culture wars issue eugenics was in the Victorian era through the mid century, with opposition spearheaded by mostly-Darwinism-skeptical churches(and there’s a nearly 1-1 correspondence between these bodies’ stance on eugenics at the time and their stance on abortion today- much stronger than between their stances on abortion today and their stance on abortion in 1930) and support mostly the province of educated persons with secular rationale.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was kayfabe, with both sides of the case being backed by a local newspaper in order to generate publicity for a small town in Tennessee. (See Wikipedia)

I think there are two very different Christian lines of criticism of evolution. The position of the conservative faction of Anglicanism in Darwin's day, and of the Catholic Church until JPII's 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy, is roughly-speaking that evolution is unfortunate if true (because it makes eugenics possible, and because it makes atheism more intellectually respectable and therefore more dangerous) but nevertheless a proper matter of scientific enquiry, not theological debate. In England, the conservative bishops left the attacks on Darwin to scientifically-trained clerics like Sedgwick, who tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to attack him on scientific grounds.

The position that evolution should be rejected based on theological arguments is unique to the tradition of non-denominational American Protestantism that we loosely categorise as "evangelical". That is the position that was being pushed by the prosecution in Scopes, because that is what made the kayfabe show appealing to American culture warriors on both sides. (The culture war in question was mainline vs evangelical, which maps onto the modern blue vs red surprisingly well).

Evolution only hurts the right if the right actually is run by what Richard Hanania refers to as the Retard Right. The base truth of evolution does no violence to preferences for hierarchy, order, meritocracy, or limited government as political inclinations. As has been covered in plenty of depth by Catholic scholars, there isn't even an inherent contradiction between Christianity and evolution, although there is an obvious tension that needs to be resolved to avoid cognitive dissonance. The extent to which current year conservatism fights teaching evolution is the extent to which the Retard Right is in power. Speaking as a reformed shitlib, we build a better American right coalition if the Retard Right is disempowered - the kind of people that reject evolution because there are still monkeys are the kind of people that turn away the brainpower that's required to build a meaningful political project that builds rather than just destroying.

If you don't find that compelling, look to the facts of the history instead. The person I most associate with fierce opposition to teaching evolution was William Jennings Bryan, a Progressive that served as Wilson's Secretary of State and dedicated himself to nanny-state projects like Prohibition. Fighting about evolution predates the rise of quasi-Republican intelligent design advocates and it wasn't coming from the perspective of rightists - that it could be read as implying hierarchy is exactly why there was Progressive opposition to evolution.

No I think you are right and that's how societies decide what is true. Whatever hurts their enemies is true, until reality reasserts itself and everyone involved in the lie is dead or pretends they never believed it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

If you don't have a mouth you can't scream, even if you must.

Don't do this, even if it is amusing.

when the left controls the state it also means they get to control or set the religion , so of course you cannot expect any sort fairness. why would we expect the ruling class or party to be consistent in its principles

Because it's one of my highest moral values, and the only thing that makes me more upset than the lack of fairness is the refusal of most people to acknowledge the lack of fairness. I'm too autistic to handle a society built on lies. I'm glad I'm not in China, where I'd get myself sentenced to death for trying to change my legal name to "Tiana Man Square", but this is still far from ideal.

I'm too autistic to handle a society built on lies.

I have bad news. All societies are built on lies. Including the one you grew up in and all the ones in the past and future that you may like.

Consistency and fairness are not politically expedient in the now and therefore not favored by any practical political strategy. Virtue is the exception, sin is the rule. We live in a fallen world. Etc.

It's good that you recognize what is right, but you don't get to escape having to fight to keep doing so. Nobody does.

We can test evolution in real time. How can evolution not be real if antibiotic resistance is real? If bacteria evolve, then so should everything else, just more slowly. I personally can't see how eyes might evolve for the first time but I accept that it happened. For that matter, I can't see how an AI can distinguish between male and female eyes with 97% accuracy given only photos of the iris, yet that too has happened. Reality doesn't need to sound plausible, it only needs to be true.

Indeed, you must agree that evolution is true since you follow HBD. It makes too much sense. We know genetics is a thing, we can edit genes and they control traits singly or collectively(though we can't perfectly link every trait to a genes). We know Pacific Islanders tend towards obesity. We know Europeans aren't going to outrun blacks in a sprint at the Olympic level. We know certain ethnicities have a weakness to alcohol, others are better able to handle certain diseases. Why else did Europeans struggle conquering Sub-Saharan Africa until the mid 19th century? Intelligence follows suit - we can observe the results (blacks collectively having fewer STEM Nobels than Ireland, promiscuity, STDs, school results, criminality, national strength, the pleasantness/unpleasantness of many US cities). I conclude that Europeans and Asians are better at running civilizations than blacks are. There are gradations in 'what precisely do you mean by European, Asian and blacks (what about Igbos)' but broadly speaking, this is a natural conclusion from analysing history. If there are ethnicities who are taller or shorter, fatter or thinner, faster or slower, better or worse at resisting disease, tolerant or intolerant of alcohol there should also be people who are more or less suited to civilization.

I also agree with your Schmitt interpretation though. CRT is there to help the left and hurt the right, as is racism generally. But that doesn't mean evolution could be wrong.

I personally can't see how eyes might evolve for the first time but I accept that it happened.

Off topic, but this is my area so I can't resist.

The key thing to understand about the evolution of complex biological systems is that they didn't just pop up fully-formed. Instead, they evolved through a series of small changes to simpler systems. The changes which worked better than the original were passed on to the next generation, and the next generation had a more functional but more complex version of that system. The story of the eye's development goes something like this:

Billions of years ago, a cell contained some retinal. Retinal is a simple molecule that has a special property: when light hits it, one of its double bonds can switch between the cis and trans conformations. The cell can then extract energy (in the form of a proton gradient across a membrane) by flipping it back. Being able to harvest energy from light was a massive advantage, and this adaptation spread like wildfire. An explosion of thriving life turned the world purple.

Once cells had retinal, their internal chemistry would change depending on whether they were exposed to light. This allowed cells to adapt their behavior based on the presence or absence of light.

Fast forward to multicellular life. Organisms could save energy by having cells express only the proteins they needed for their specific functions. The PAX genes allowed for specialization of cells based on their location, and clusters of photosensitive cells evolved into the first eye spots. If an animal had two eye spots on different sides of its body, it could tell the direction of light, helping it orient which way was up.

Over time, eye spots became cup-shaped, allowing them to distinguish light from more directions. The deeper the cup, the better it could do this. Eventually, the cups closed over at the top, turning into pinhole cameras with images projected onto a layer of photoreceptors at the back. Organisms like nautiluses can see blurry images with eyes like these.

Finally, lenses made of clear proteins with different refractive indices came along. Selective pressure favored organisms that could see better, pushing for the development of lenses—specifically, lenses shaped to focus light more precisely onto the retina.

So that's how eyes evolved for the first time—through steady selective pressure stacking small adaptations, one after the other, all the way from basic photosynthesis to the human eye.

Reality doesn't need to sound plausible to be true, but it usually does end up making sense once you understand the driving mechanisms.

Reality doesn't need to sound plausible to be true, but it usually does end up making sense once you understand the driving mechanisms.

Except quantum physics, or so I am told!

Interesting, thanks for the explanation.

You misunderstand. I don't think evolution is wrong. I know it's true. I'm saying that its truth value may be incidental to its acceptance. It seems probable that if the acceptance of evolution were, somehow, going to hurt the left instead of the right, it never would have become accepted.

We know Pacific Islanders tend towards obesity

I don't think this is genetic. (Or, if genes contribute, it's not genes for hunger or nutrient absorption, but intelligence/behavior related genes that combine with their modern economic environment).

I think your thought is kind of true. To illustrate, consider Blue-team friendly pseudoscience, such as crystal healing, homeopathy, chiropractics, obsession with "chemicals" and "radiation" - not the real kind, like what supposedly comes from power lines and cell phones and such. That sort of thing.

IME, these kinds of pseudoscience get a moderately serious disapproval from the hard science types, and the mainstream culture attitude seems to be somewhere between, they might kind of have a point and it seems cool and interesting, and they're harmless nutters that we'll stick in a corner somewhere and ignore.

Meanwhile, pseudoscience that is perceived as friendly to Red team such as Intelligent Design gets the oh-my-god-terrifying-fascist-threat-to-our-democracy-kill-it-with-fire reaction from the Blue mainstream culture. More mainstream Reds seem to have the same reaction to it as the Blue team does to their pseudoscience - they're harmless nutters that we'll let do their own thing and basically ignore.

CRT in this view occupies an odd position as Blue-coded sociological pseudoscience that mainstream Blue is crazy obsessed with pushing. The Blues that aren't that into it take the position that it's all imaginary and nobody is really pushing it. HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.

Blue vs Red and pro vs anti establishment are almost orthogonal axes in political space (remember that the military, the police, small-town local elites, organised religion and Fox News are all objectively part of the establishment). Blue political activists are just as committed to the idea that they are the Voice of the People TM against the Corrupt Establishment TM as Red ones are.

"Crunchiness" including anti-vax is driven by opposition to big Pharma and big Agriculture, so you see it on the anti-establishment ends of both tribes.

(remember that the military, the police, small-town local elites, organised religion and Fox News are all objectively part of the establishment)

This can't be a general rule - look how often establishments get military coup'd in Africa. Do you mean specifically in America 2023?

Yes - I was pointing out the sorts of places where pro-establishment Reds hang out. The Red/Blue model is exclusively American - the urban/rural political divide exists everywhere, but there is no equivalent of the suburban White South in most countries.

"radiation" - not the real kind, like what supposedly comes from power lines and cell phones and such.

Real radiation does come from power lines and cell phones and such; but it's just low-frequency low-intensity EM, not ionizing radiation. And IMHO it wasn't crazy to fear possible health impacts anyway, a priori, so I'm glad we keep looking for a cancer link. It just seems like the harder we look the less chance of a link (and the lower the likely maximum effect size) we find.

Oh I know, I just didn't feel like typing up 3 more paragraphs on the difference between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing and the sources and effects of both etc.

Eh, I'm under the perception that Blue Tribe is pretty damn split on alternative medicine and pseudoscience. On the one hand, large swathes of Blue Tribe go all in on it, but on the other, the rest are kind of horrified at the harm it can cause. The Blues are lucky that the political polarization over COVID shook out the way it did, because now they can jettison anti-vax from their memeplex (where previously it was an alt-medicine mainstay that was causing Measles to resurge).

Similarly for the Red Tribe/conservatives, I have to wonder if anyone even pushes Intelligent Design anymore; am I wrong for saying that it always seemed like a way to smuggle God into the secular realm? But now that Christianity has been on the backfoot for so long, conservatives and the like don't really care for whitewashing their beliefs like that.

Polls that I've seen on this subject, like this one, indicate that there's basically no traditional partisan split on "alternative therapies" between Dems and Reps. (Note that this is from 2019, preceeding Covid.) Alternative healing has generally been neither a blue-tribe or a red-tribe thing, as a rule, though I'd say that at this point the "blues" have probably come down quite strictly against it and in favor of "only scientific method works, otherwise you're just injecting horse paste or something".

To be more exact, I wouldn't bet that there's much daylight between the overall approval rates of most types of alternative medicine between registered Republicans and registered Democrats. But I would bet that the great majority of people enthusiastic about most types of alternative medicine (possibly aside from things Covid-related) would code as highly Blue team based on their overall interests and values etc. They might not necessarily bother to actually register and vote for various reasons, or may claim to support one of the third parties more Blue/"crunchy" than the Democrat party.

Not even that; it's just the pronouncements of Scientific Authority.

I think strong opposition to 'alternative medicine' was, pre-pandemic, more of a græy-tribe thing; ["Alternative medicine has either not been proved to work,

Or been proved not to work."](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U)

(The past 3+ years have driven home the point that the gap between 'not been proved to work' and 'been proved not to work' is big enough to fit the Ever Given through edgewise.)

I continue to hold that the gray tribe was never really a thing. It was just the part of the blue tribe (and, by various cultural indicators, often the super blue part of the blue tribe) that, for various reasons, just didn't want to associate with the rest of the tribe.

I'd argue that the situation with the antivax movement supports the grandparent's point. Doctors and epidemiologists have always been against it but for the rest of the Blue Tribe the standard reaction was always "roll your eyes and move on" rather than TPTB doing everything in their power to crush it.

Obviously the red/blue coding isn't the only thing that's caused the change, but I don't think it's irrelevant either.

HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.

Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out. My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT. When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.

So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

Red's aversion to HBD is trivially easy to figure out. They are the true believers in both the civic religion and the old-time religion. The words on the paper do not say "after careful consideration of the available data we have concluded..." they say "we hold these truths to be self evident". Likewise, Jesus didnt say love your neighbor unless he is a nigger and therefore less intelligent than you. He said love thy neighbor.

I guess I would mostly code as one of those Reds that's modestly adverse to HBD. I don't quite agree with any of my siblings here. If I had to characterize my actual beliefs briefly, I'd say:

I think that color-blindness is the right way to run a society of fixed population size (immigration being a separate discussion). Even if HBD is strongly true, what of it? Capitalism and individualism has already proven to be mostly adequate at slotting people of varying skill levels into appropriate jobs, and giving appropriate punishments to individuals who commit crimes. I don't think we should discriminate by race at the society level at all - either to give an artificial boost to people who some may feel have been unfairly discriminated against in the past, or to artificially suppress people who, based on their race and HBD research, may be more likely to be less intelligent than average or more inclined to short-term thinking, i.e. more likely to steal, assault, murder, etc. If one race appears to be less likely to be CEOs and more likely to be murderers, and HBD suggests that this is likely to be a perfectly legitimate outcome given genetic tendencies, then I'd say society is working correctly and no intervention is needed.

I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high. Some have already called for a race war, which doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Perhaps I am a fool and it's already too late. But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.

I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high.

One of the things driving wokeness is differences in racial outcomes and the lack of any acceptable explanation for them aside from "The Man is keeping black people down". And wokeness increases racial tensions.

But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.

We did. The racial detente failed, and it didn't fail due to Nazis and HBD types. It failed because it didn't produce the racially uniform outcomes expected by those who don't believe in HBD. But I'm told that even if HBD is true it is not reasonable to expect blacks to accept statistically worse outcomes. In which case there is no peaceful solution, there is only conflict.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

It is very easy to figure out.

Red tribe defines itself as pro capitalist, and primary popular argument for capitalism is: "In capitalist society all are equal. The rich are succesful because they WORKED HARD, the poor are losers because they are worthless lazy scum. Stop whining and pull yourself by your bootstraps!"

(no one except nerds cares about economic calculation and efficient allocation of capital)

Acceptance of HBD torpedoes and sinks this talking point.

Now there are only two ways out:

a/ The winners are superior because they were BORN superior. Bow to your evolution given masters, peasant, and be grateful they let you live in their world.

(this means outright repudiation of last 250+ years of Western history in general and whole American national myth in particular, few people want to open this can of worms)

b/ The winners are superior due to their undeserved lucky strike, it would not be unjust to ask them to share some of their wealth with the less lucky.

(and this is even less acceptable to Red Tribe)

So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD

Conservative from 1963 could be comfortable with raw white supremacy, but would find all modern HBD science with its bell curves and IQ tables even more disturbing.

See this classic racist writing of the time.

The central question that emerges-and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

Impeccably polite, but pure and hardcore racism so far.

But, why? What makes, according to Buckley, "White community" the "advanced race"?

Nothing about "blood", nothing about "birth", nothing about genes, nothing about IQ.

It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro

It is mere "cultural superiority". While lazy negroes were eating watermelons, Southern whites were studying and learning hard.

So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

Yes, even to conservative racist in chief of the time, white supremacy is not something permanent and desirable for its own sake, but mere temporary expedient, a method of teaching and educating the black folks until they become as cultured and civilized as whites, especially southern whites.

When racism had such defenders, it is no surprise it ended on the trash dump of history.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

The obvious answer that comes to mind is that they're terrified of being called racist, and they have a few mental fig leaves that allow them to deny being racist - being colourblind, treating people as individuals, etc. To further torture the metaphor, HBD doesn't just remove the fig leaf covering the penis of racism, it gives it viagra and supercharges it. "Oh, yeah, black and brown populations are just genetically stupider and more criminal" - this is not the kind of belief you can hold and still pretend you are judging people by "their character, not the color of their skin."

I think that you have got that backwards. If the police are scrupulous about treating crime and punishment as strictly individual, there will be no racism apparent as the cases are investigated and prosecuted one by one. But compile national statistics and racial differences jump out at you. If you believe in individual justice and judging people by their character, not the color of the their skin, you just have to shrug and say "races really are different."

The trouble starts if you insist that the national statistics need to be race balanced. To make the national statistics come out race balanced requires fiddling the individual cases, convicting innocent white men, acquitting guilty black men, and doing the racist thing of telling an individual "we aren't going to judge your case on the actual facts, but on skin color, because we've a quota to fill."

"Oh, yeah, black and brown populations are just genetically stupider and more criminal" - this is not the kind of belief you can hold and still pretend you are judging people by "their character, not the color of their skin."

Of course it is. The same way you can judge a marathon runner by their time and not the color of their skin, but damned if the top ones aren't black every time.

I think "hold explicitly" is a better way of phrasing it. People act in ways that suggest they actually believe in HBD all the time (even and especially on the left), but few of them will actively state that when asked.

You can hold it explicitly and still judge people -- individually -- by "their character, not the color of their skin."

If you watch 500 marathons and every time the winner is black, then when marathon #501 comes around and you’re getting ready to place your bets, you would be a complete moron to approach those bets with the attitude, “I have no opinion about which race the winner will be from. It could be the white guy this time, we have no way to know beforehand!” When surveying the slate of runners, you are completely justified in looking at the white guys and saying, “Bad bet, safe to ignore.”

Similarly, in societal terms, if I’m a recruiter trying to hire for a white-collar job, and I have to make a decision based on limited information, I would have to be a complete moron - or a liberal ideologue - not to utilize my understanding of probabilities gained from observation of previous outcomes. If the only information given to me about two competing candidates is that one guy’s name is Connor Przyewski, and the other guy’s name is Anquon Washington, I have to use outside information - like my observations of patterns - to supplement the explicit info I was provided. This means that I have to judge the candidates based on the information I have, which, if skin color has a demonstrated correlation with observable disparate outcomes, would include skin color as a useful proxy for important information.

In reality, you would have more information than just the applicants' names. This being a white-collar job, there would presumably be detailed resumes. You can judge the candidates based on that. Either the Black candidates' resumes would be weaker, or their resumes would be of a similar quality to Whites, but they would be underrepresented relative to the population.

Likewise with racial profiling in policing. A police officer usually has much more information than just race. In a true Bayesian inference calculation, race would end up mattering very little. Instructing police officers to racially profile would probably just cause them to give too much weight to race and ignore other relevant information. Note that even race-neutral policing results in Blacks being disproportionately arrested etc., because they commit crime at a higher rate than Whites.

My understanding of HBD, in general, is that the takeaway should be that a non-racially-discriminatory system will produce unequal outcomes, not that racial discrimination is justified. That is, the current system is non-discriminatory and disparate outcomes are because of HBD, not that the current system is discriminatory and that's fine because of HBD.

Similarly, in societal terms, if I’m a recruiter trying to hire for a white-collar job, and I have to make a decision based on limited information, I would have to be a complete moron - or a liberal ideologue - not to utilize my understanding of probabilities gained from observation of previous outcomes.

I don't think there's a magic bullet solution, but this is why I think legally mandated moronicism - so that everyone is equally a complete moron in this respect - accompanied with increased legibility into individual competence is the right approach. There should never be a case where someone's name or race is the only information given to you as a recruiter/hirer, and it should be punishable if you make some meaningful consequential decision in the case that somehow that were the only information given to you.

When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality

I blame Christianity for that one on the "mainstream" right. Until "we" shake free from the Abrahamic memeplex we aren't getting rid of "driving slowly in the leftism lane".

What do you expect to save you?

Neohellenistic religions? Atheism?

Some religious cult with even less of a pedigree?

How have those worked out already?

I blame Christianity

Why? When Christians gained power, they never ever tried to create world of free anarchist communes.

They built world of feudal kingdoms based on "divine right" "noble blood" and strict hereditary hierarchy and kept it this way for 1500 years.

christians upvoting this as if it does not prove that they are part of a corrupt religious tradition when the bible contains passages like this:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.”’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

“Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

Tabula rasa didn't spring out of the ether fully formed all on its own. Further major Christian and Muslim denominations are the prime sources of jackasses who value a person being of the faith over all other features of that person including class, nationality, ethnicity, race or even being a criminal or not.

Absolutely, Christians are fundamentally leftists.

I don't believe that you know what either of those words mean.

If you accept any egalitarian premises you are a leftist. Is it not the case that salvation through jesus and his sacrifice is posisble and was for everyone? That would seem to be a fundamentally egalitarian and open religious doctrine.

Oh no, has someone been hoisted by their own petard?

Very possibly.

The response to this (when it's not an accusation of racism on my part) is that I'm just like the creationists who wanted their psuedoscience taught alongside evolution.

Somewhat tangential to your question later in the post, but I was so saddened by seeing people I know post this meme the other day:

https://preview.redd.it/ukazfxdcn2ua1.png?auto=webp&s=5f4ebcbab0593b4432eb4bb1afaab9138caef5a5

It really made me feel honestly sad and worried for where we are, that people are honestly putting their pet gender theories, which don't seem to be based on anything more than definitional assertions and mob power, on par with physical science, and mathematics. They're claiming that their gender theories are "biology", but on what basis?

God, you're speaking my language. I hate this meme too. I could interpret it charitably by saying they're talking about intersex people, and not about people who choose to identify as they/them, but I've been around the block enough to know that that's what they're talking about.

I don't even have a freaking problem with trans people! I just want to live and let live! Transition as much as you want, this is America, etc. But the activists keep making things so difficult.

I find myself going back and forth between "you've been mind-killed" and "IQ doesn't actually measure the thing that IQ fetishists like to pretend it does". I won't go so far as to say "IQ doesn't exist" but I do believe that an inclination towards academics is not the same thing as being smart or competent. I've had way too much first-hand experience with "switched on" boys from the hood and retards with advanced degrees from prestigious schools to buy either background as a reasonable proxy for intelligence.

Meanwhile the cynical bastard in my wants to believe that Id Pol is what people resort to when they are not secure in their own identity, which is why it's loudest advocates always seem to be some sort of sexual deviant (IE Gay, Trans, Furry, Pedo, Antinatalist, Etc...).

There's definitely a lot of IQ fetishism in the HBD community, but the basics are true. IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less. Doesn't make people motivated, moral or wise. Does correlate well with low crime and high achievement, because our society uses academia as a status-sorting mechanism. But all that's circular, IQ measuring the ability to satisfy the social sorting mechanism makes IQ predicting social success pretty obvious.

It's certainly not the be-all and end-all of society, nor should it be. Put a high-IQ anti-racist in front of an urban scammer and see who leaves with whose money.

As to "loudest advocates", I have a theory. Any group of any sort is going to have a bell curve of usefulness to the group. Roughly half the people contribute, the other half consume. This is true of sports teams, national societies, knitting circles. The people making big noises about group membership are either those competing for leadership of the group, or the most marginal members. Makes sense if you think about it.

To put it in military terms, the guys wearing the garish, threatening veteran T-shirts are rarely the dudes who saw action.

Does correlate well with low crime and high achievement, because our society uses academia as a status-sorting mechanism. But all that's circular, IQ measuring the ability to satisfy the social sorting mechanism makes IQ predicting social success pretty obvious.

This is a mechanism i hadnt really considered but once stated explicitly seems intuitive and obvious. Academics assign worth based on academic aptitude because academics like academics.

...To put it in military terms, the guys wearing the garish, threatening veteran T-shirts are rarely the dudes who saw action.

Good point

IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less

Do you think being smart or dumb is just a matter of academic potential with no other practical real-world effect? Or you, like Hlynka, think IQ doesn't really measure intelligence?

Not sure exactly what you're asking?

We can get into weird definitional debates about what exactly "intelligence" is. I would argue that it doesn't really matter, because intelligence is whatever the social sorting mechanism decides is intelligence, which is currently academic, and that's what IQ measures. We only fetishize IQ because it predicts one's potential to rise in society. That said, it's the best test we have of raw brainpower (however we define that), and I believe I am reading the science correctly to say that particularly the g-loaded parts of IQ tests seem to measure that pretty well. There are aspects of (arguably) intelligence, verbal, musical etc. that are correlated with IQ but not at all perfectly.

But as a great generality, for the layperson, I would say IQ = smart is probably close enough to be useful. Just so long as we don't presume that means IQ = not terribly flawed human beings with all the same problems as everyone else, just smarter. And obviously, intelligence in any valid measurement will have all sorts of real-world effects.

When you say "IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less", you seem to be saying it doesn't have all sorts of real world effects that aren't mediated by academia. But it's clear to me that what the layman calls "smart" and "dumb" do have non-academic effects, as quips like "He's so dumb he couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel!" demonstrate. So my question was whether you were denying that, or denying whether IQ tests measured "smart" and "dumb". But it seems to be neither, so I'm not sure what you mean by "IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less".

I also don't think (US or Western) society fetishizes IQ; in fact, it denies its importance, both theoretically and practically (e.g. in that the SAT is being de-emphasized and its ceiling has been lowered). It does fetishize academic achievement.

I didn't say it doesn't have real world effect, only that it is measuring something other than what is claimed.

I would also argue that the degree to which the Ivy league denies the importance of IQ and the SAT is directly proportional to the number of slots they see being as having been "stolen" from jews and wasps by chinks and niggers.

Asians, yes, that makes sense, but Black people benefit from dropping the SAT more than any other group.

White people conceivably benefit from the lowering of the ceiling of the SAT.

More comments

I do believe that an inclination towards academics is not the same thing as being smart or competent.

Is this about IQ? IQ doesn't measure "inclination towards academics." The relationship is confounded by all sorts of things, like agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Good IQ tests are inductive reasoning problems that can be given to naked spear-wielding tribesmen in savage jungles who have never heard of a school or university, without cultural bias, because they are testing aptitude in cognitive skills that are (a) common across humans and (b) correlated with capacity for other cognitive skills. An Amazonian wild man might not be able to read, but we can estimate his ability to quickly learn to read based on his IQ score in pattern-recognition problems.

Is this about IQ?

Yes. Im saying that i dont think IQ measures the thing IQ fetishists think it measures. IE intelligence. I think it measures academic aptitude.

I think that there is very little that is scientific about the social sciences and view your claims of what a "good iq test" does with extreme skepticism.

Yes. Im saying that i dont think IQ measures the thing IQ fetishists think it measures. IE intelligence. I think it measures academic aptitude.

"Intelligence" is a very vague term. It's like asking "Do changes in price indexes measure inflation?" Well, the ordinary concept of inflation is vague, both in the sense that people often are unsure what they mean by it, and in the sense that different people use the term in different ways.

We can compare this with terms like "length", "temperature", or "weight", which are vague when taken out of their usual contexts (e.g. into the more alien parts of physics or into continuous mathematical spaces) but pretty clear in a particular context.

Since "intelligence" itself is vague and ill-defined, even in simple contexts, there is a case for thinking of IQ as what Rudolf Carnap called an "explication" of intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explication#Carnap's_notion_of_explication

IQ matches a lot of things that we'd expect from general intelligence, such as the ability to learn concepts, manipulate relatively large numbers of abstractions at the same time, or solve familiar types of reasoning problems quickly. It also extends into applications where "intelligence" is too vague a notion, such as quantitative comparisons and predictions. However, since IQ has more precise content than "intelligence", it's wrong to say "IQ = intelligence".

Ok let's put it this way.

I have known people with ostensibly room temperature IQs who were simultaneously astute observers and efficient problem solvers. I have also known people who supposedly had IQs in the 150+ range who were effectively retarded and incapable of functioning without strict supervision.

From this one can draw at least one of two conclusions. either IQ tests are not nearly as reliable and universal as they claim to be. Or IQ is not measuring the thing its advocates like to claim it does.

I have known people with ostensibly room temperature IQs who were simultaneously astute observers and efficient problem solvers. I have also known people who supposedly had IQs in the 150+ range who were effectively retarded and incapable of functioning without strict supervision.

Did you measure the IQs under controlled settings in either case?

No, I didn't, and it is readily apparent that the so called "social scientists" didn't either.

How could the ability to do Raven's matrices measure only "academic aptitude" and nothing to do with core mental processing power?

Meanwhile the cynical bastard in my wants to believe that Id Pol is what people resort to when they are not secure in their own identity, which is why it's loudest advocates always seem to be some sort of sexual deviant (IE Gay, Trans, Furry, Pedo, Antinatalist, Etc...).

An absurd and unsupported claim, as per usual. Focusing only on white identity advocates, I find prominent figures such as Jared Taylor, a devoted family man with, as far as I’m aware, a spotless personal reputation and no signs of deviance - sexual or otherwise - whatsoever. Ditto for Taylor’s star writer at American Renaissance, Gregory Hood, who lives in rural West Virginia with his very normal family. Ditto for Peter Brimelow, Henrik Palmgren, and scores of other identitarian figures I could name. Not a sexual deviant among them.

And then expanding out to prominent black identitarian figures, I find guys like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, who, despite any of the negative things I can say about them, are similarly devoted family men with normal wives and normal sex lives, as far as I’m aware. You can, of course, nut-pick the weirdoes and deviants in any movement - many here would gleefully oblige if asked for example of “Trad-Con” luminaries who have turned out to have scandalous secret sex lives - but I think an unbiased observer would find your claim mostly unsupported.

They must not be that loud if I've never heard of them.

Or…. have you considered that you might just be completely out of touch with the movement that you comment on constantly? Like, you claim to have interesting things to say about white identitarians, and yet you don’t know who Jared Taylor is? The guy who used to routinely be invited on mainstream news programs to discuss white advocacy? And you don’t know who Coates and Kendi are? I’m sorry, but it’s difficult to take seriously your commentary on this issue when you constantly demonstrate that you lack familiarity with a lot of the figures and issues involved.

I considered it and dismissed it as inconsequential as I had specifically called out "loudest advocates" IE those who someone who is not closely following the movement could be reasonably expected to be familiar with.

First off, two of the men I named - Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi - are massively influential authors and commentators, both of whom have been lavished with money, praise, attention, and a cultural megaphone by both public and private power centers. The white nationalist guys I named, with the exception of Hood and Palmgren, were all recognizable to the general public for at least a decade and, as I mentioned, used to be invited on mainstream news programs and have their books reviewed by mainstream publications. These are not obscure figures.

More importantly, though, none of that is even relevant, because you do claim to be familiar with the movement. You’re constantly banging on about how you understand the true psychology of identitarians, how you’ve figured us out and you understand us better than we understand ourselves. You have your big Unified Horseshoe Theory of Identity Politics, which for some reason certain people here take seriously. Yet whenever you’re pressed to actually defend specific claims you make about specific individuals or their ideas, you retreat to mumbling or claim that you’re just a normal guy who can’t be expected to keep track of the specifics of a movement you’re not a part of. Well, okay, it’s fine that you don’t know who Jared Taylor is, but it ought to make it pretty tough for anyone to take you seriously the next time you start spouting off about how all identitarians are an undifferentiated mass.

Or…. have you considered that you might just be completely out of touch with the movement that you comment on constantly?

Of course, I have. Afterall the only place I really interact with race-essentialists on a regular basis is here on the theMotte, which is why I made a point to specify "the loudest" (IE the people who actually make enough noise to be recognized outside identitarian circles) and not some other metric like "most popular" or "most influential".

I find myself going back and forth between "you've been mind-killed"

He's asking whether or not he's mind-killed because he thinks the Blues were in favor of teaching evolution because it benefitted them politically, rather than because they thought it's true. Is that what you're agreeing with, or are you focusing on HBD?

You seem to think that HBD is silly, but also that the claim that differences in outcome between groups are primarily caused by oppression is silly. And that's fine! My point is that the strong preference in polite society for one over the other is hard to reconcile with evolution being similarly preferred over intelligent design unless one takes the Schmittpill.

("Preferred" is putting it mildly, since we're talking bans and blacklisting, but I'm too tired to think of a better word.)

I do and I do, because I believe that the primary driver of differences in outcome between groups is cultural. "My daddy taught me X" (or failed to teach me X) may be hereditary, but it is not genetic. Accordingly, the HBD-Tards stated preference for politeness is a trap, there trying to convince honest actors to play nice while they play dirty.

  • -16

It seems to me like most things a single variable explanation is incomplete but also that one explanation can in fact enforce another.

For example, why do some cultures promote X and not Y? Some of it is explained by historical events which was influenced by geography and resources. But culture was also surely influenced by the people themselves which includes hereditary genes. But at the same time, culture influences which genes are passed on (because culture influences which males successfully reproduce) therefore strengthening the relationship between culture and genes.

This is very difficult to believe for those of us who taught ourselves out of being in one cultural domain and into another, and we're able to do so for reasons of either intrinsic capabilities or pure random chance.

Define what you mean by "cultural domain" in this context

Cultural environment that encompasses a class. Underclass, working class, middle class, educated middle class, professionals, upper middle class all have vastly differing cultural environments and changing between them is possible - while changing your class fundamentally is not, due to the impossibility of changing the past, but you can pass and learn things that you aren't taught by your parents or those ein your environment, things you learn by yourself due to your intrinsic ability and inclination.

but you can pass and learn things that you aren't taught by your parents or those ein your environment, things you learn by yourself due to your intrinsic ability and inclination.

You realize that this implies an internal locus of control and thus falsifies a good chunk of the bio-determinists so called evidence do you not?

Internal locus of control doesn't refute biological influences on distributions of likely and possible outcomes over a population in aggregate.

the primary driver of differences in outcome between groups is cultural

I also suspect that this is true, but it doesn't require scepticism about IQ or even not thinking that hereditary IQ is a major determinant of academic or commercial success at an individual level. A large part of group differences is not statistically explained, and many explanatory factors (like agreeableness and conscientiousness) have a cultural aspect to them.

Of course, a HBD theorist might say that cultural differences are themselves largely genetic in origin, but I would want to look at twin studies, adoptee studies, and similar evidence before believing that.

That would be an argument against genetic determinism rather than in favor. Thus undermining the wider HBD position.

Yes, my point is that scepticism about HBD doesn't require scepticism about IQ, scepticism about IQ being largely (or even mostly) genetically determined, or scepticism about IQ being an important factor in life outcomes.

And my point is that my skepticism of HBD largely stems from my skepticism of IQ. Like I said above, I've had too much first-hand experience with both ends of the bell curve to buy that IQ is anything more than a very loose proxy for actual intelligence.

Accordingly, the HBD-Tards stated preference for politeness is a trap, there trying to convince honest actors to play nice while they play dirty.

Knock it off with "HBD-Tards."

What if the truth value of Darwinism had little, if anything, to do with its acceptance by the academic establishment, and the falsehood of intelligent design had little, if anything, to do with its rejection by the academic establishment?

I would say you're not entirely right - but you're not wrong either. I don't know where exactly the genuine belief in truth ends and the "get the outgroup" begins, but somewhere along the line it turned into that. I don't think it started that way. I think that in the early 20th century, the people who were fighting for evolution to be taught (at great social risk, I might add) were doing it because they genuinely believed that it was the truth and it was important. Otherwise they wouldn't have been willing to risk the costs they did. But by the time you get to the early 21st century, I think it was 90% dunking on the outgroup. Like yeah Richard Dawkins may believe he's fighting a genuine battle for truth (as much as he was an insufferable cock about it), but he was in the minority of his faction. Most were smug internet posters going "haha young earth creationists are so dumb, am I right guys!?".

My great-grandfather was a blue tribe geologist who volunteered to be a science witness in the Scopes Trial, and my grandmother (blue tribe) had many books about it. One anecdote which always struck me was that the Yankee reporters expected to find drooling hicks raving about it all over town, but when they got to that little town they found folk with knowledge of Hebrew and Greek who put forth reasoned arguments in calm tones.

And this still regularly happens- creation scientists are polite, literate, retired petroleum geologists with political views that are much calmer than the median extremist.

And when they were gainfully employed petroleum geologists, they did petroleum geology based on the assumption that earth is 4.6 billion years old and the geological column (including fossils) was laid down the way the heathen textbooks say it was. Otherwise they wouldn't have been very good petroleum geologists. Their commitment to creation science is entirely performative.

The fact that the oil and gas industry is politically aligned with people who claim to reject modern geology for biblical reasons is hilariously funny, but significantly less shocking than, say, Churchill ending up politically aligned with Stalin.

This also goes to the point that Brett Devereaux of acoup.blog is repeatedly making - people in the past generally believed their own religion. In the early 21st century, when you don't need to believe in the supernatural in order to make sense of the world, most intelligent people do not actually believe in religion, and the occasional person who appears to is widely assumed to be lying or crazy.

I mean, it says something about their commitment that their models come much closer to explaining modern geology through a global flood than they do to explaining modern biology through a literal garden of Eden, which is the opposite of what you would expect from grifters.

The early 21st century stuff is what I lived through, and I took it seriously when I was happening because I was in the fifth grade and thought the Flying Spaghetti Monster was the greatest comic invention ever. I wasn't even thinking about the Scopes trial as I wrote my post. I should've expanded my frame of reference while writing.

Still, my point stands. There were efforts to get intelligent design taught in schools in the 00's, which were defeated by the left, because they.. cared about the truth? Or because they cared about stomping on the right?

because they.. cared about the truth? Or because they cared about stomping on the right?

I believed the former at the time. Experience beat knowledge that it is the latter into me.

I've come to learn no political endeavor is ever driven by truth because the nature of power makes it impossible to pursue it and truth at the same time.

Truth is just so very scared of Power that she will vanish and have herself replaced by her sister Dogma at the slightest whiff of Power showing up. Which is why she famously never attends wars, let alone politics in general.

I don't know where exactly the genuine belief in truth ends and the "get the outgroup" begins

We've stopped believing in truth and started knowing it was true?

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