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An awful lot of people believe that low intelligence logically implies moral inferiority. That if you are unintelligent, you are a bad person. It is a moral failing to not be smarter.
Progressives seem to believe this more strongly than conservatives, and use it as one of their primary attacks against the right. If you take "stupid = bad" as an axiom, then HBD forces you to conclude that less intelligent races are bad, and progressives who don't even question the "stupid = bad" axiom automatically equate HBD with "some races are inferior". But because the "stupid = bad" axiom is unstated, and probably not consciously endorsed, they can't quite articulate this chain of reasoning. The embarrassment that would come if it were incontrovertibly proven that some races were inferior on a genetic level is that it would be revealed that they are bigots. They have always been bigots against unintelligent people, but by restricting their bigotry to unintelligent white people, manage to convince themselves that that doesn't count. But if colored people are even less intelligent, and it wasn't society's fault it was inherent to the individuals themselves and their genes, then the progressives would either have to admit to being racist, or change their worldview to account for good but unintelligent people. Who, in my opinion, exist in multitudes. I've met quite a few. But a lot of people aren't ready to admit that.
There's an underappreciated element here IMO: the instinctive refusal to utter fighting words while not being a fighter. The brain is capable of marvelous feats of self-deception & motivated reasoning not only in order to protect its self-image, but also to physically protect itself from harm, ie. by preventing the adoption of beliefs that will get its owner's ass kicked.
How often do we straightforwardly tell another person "I'm smarter than you"? I've never done it; I imagine most people haven't. With good reason: it's a challenge, 'fighting words', as it fairly directly implies 'so we should do things my way if we come to a disagreement' AKA 'I'm in charge now.' This isn't something any social structure can let stand, but modern white America even less than most, with its reliance upon poorly-defined social hierarchy for avoiding conflict. (See: VKR's Gametalk) If you're middle class, went to university or worked for a corporation, chances are very good that you've been extensively trained to subconciously avoid conflicts of precisely this type, and it may well be that this taboo is load-bearing. Scaled up, saying 'my group is smarter than your group' has even more serious social ramifications, again independent of the statement's truth value. Pretending it isn't so may be the best alternative.
The standard response to inconvenient truths, at least as far as I can tell, is to change the subject and not talk about them, not to actively deny them. The only time I've ever told someone to their face that I'm smarter than them was when having petty arguments as a child, usually at some point where it escalates to them calling me an idiot and me going "well actually..." and bragging about my grades and advanced math.
But I have never never never pretended to be the same or lesser intelligence than someone I'm not. Nowadays when I get complimented for being smart, I get embarassed and shrug it off as unimportant rather than bragging, but I never never never lie and pretend that it isn't true when we both know it is. There's a difference between choosing not to actively announce certain truths to avoid conflict, and lying about them to protect yourself when confronted by a hostile crowd. And there's a vast gulf between that and actively opposing and arguing against people saying the truth that you yourself secretly agree with. I'm not saying it never happens, but it's way more rare than strategic silence.
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I have tried debating liberals on this, and it's not just leftists who are hostile to HBD. It usually ends up going in circles. they start by denying that IQ is real or that it measure anything. i ask why are some people better at {math,engineering,physics, etc.} than others, and it's a sort of cognitive dissonance of conceding that there is some innate ability or 'thing' that is unequally distributed but at the same time not the same as intelligence.
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"progressives believe stupid = bad more than conservatives but conveniently don't think about it" always looked like a sneer to me rather than an accurate assessment. Progressives do think uneducated = bad.
Can it not be both?
Let us be blunt IQ does not measure "intelligence" it measures "academic aptitude". To the degree that there is any correlation at all between IQ and positive social outcomes it is because our society has chosen to use academics as a means to sort winners from losers. This coupled with general laziness (actually calibrating your test cases is hard yo) is why that progressive professors are always grading on a curve rather than knowledge and understanding of the material.
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It's not enough to just be educated, though. Trump has a B.S. from Wharton, and yet many of the progressive attacks on him focus on his perceived lack of intelligence.
George W. Bush went to Yale and he was famously seen as an idiot by the left in the 2000's merely because he had a few malapropisms and committed the largest foreign policy blunder in my lifetime. If your family is loaded and you're not an eloquent speaker people will assume that your degree wasn't really earned. The right is similarly dismissive of Jill Biden's PhD because she got it after Joe became a senator.
Jill Biden has a Ed.D which is a doctorate in education, and enables you to make more money if you are a teacher. It is not a Ph.D. A Ed.D is a practical degree, for people who plan to teach. Most schools pay you more the more education you have, so it makes sense to get the qualification. At Delaware, where she got her degree, you need a portfolio rather than a dissertation, and and Ed.D is part-time for 3-4 years as opposed to a Ph.D. which is full-time for 5 to 6 years.
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It's more than reasonable to be dismissive of something that doesn't exist, such as Jill Biden's PhD, since Jill holds a Doctor of Education (EdD) and not a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
Equating EdD degrees with PhD degrees is a common misconception—one that EdD holders are in no hurry to correct—as they get to gas themselves up with the prestige of a PhD using a degree obtained at a much lower difficult setting. Academic stolen valor: plus it's not like one would expect even Education PhDs to be all that tough either, in the first place.
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It's not enough to be credentialed. Does it show that Trump went to college? There certainly isn't much emphasis on it from his own side: as someone removed from American politics I had not heard of his education before.
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I think most people, correctly, view the unintelligence as a disaster waiting to happen, that they don't want to be around when it happens. I think many people, especially here, fail to truly appreciate the qualitative difference being stupid brings. It's not like an RPG where you rolls are harder, but you can still occasionally have a streak of good RNG.
For example, lets look at what you can expect of African Americans in their measured average IQ range.
This website seems scarcely believable. Only at 130 does one apparently 'just capable of writing a legible piece of text', yet he a moment before described the 120-9 range as masters students, lawyers etc. who are surely capable of writing 'an article'? Where are his sources? Just looks like complete dross he plucked out of the air.
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While I agree that smart people often overestimate the intellectual capabilities of people with average or below-average IQ's, the claim that violence is associated with a particular IQ range seems extremely tenuous. Intelligence is important but it isn't the sole determinant of personality, and while there is a correlation between lower IQ and violence in the US owing to the particular populations present here, the opposite trend can be observed in Mexico, where murder rates are lower in plurality indigenous regions than in plurality white ones (Conquistadors were a mean bunch).
I think American blacks are culturally (strongly) and genetically (not as strongly) predisposed to violence, and that those genetic predispositions are to some extent shared with southern whites i.e. not from slave ancestry, but from slaveowner ancestry. Black people elsewhere would have to be analyzed independently, as they don't share all of these characteristics. In some multiethnic countries like Mali, the black agricultural population is less violent than the lighter-skinned desert pastoralist population.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I have a mixture of Asian-style social conservatism and more classically American liberal beliefs i.e. on a personal level I follow the typical "immigrant parent" line, on an intermediate scale I think of Tocquevillian-style local democracy as an ideal, and on a larger scale I align more or less with Hobbes or Xunzi. When I'm feeling witty I call this Confucianism with American Characteristics.
This is not really sufficient effort for engagement on the matter. "That seems messed up" signals your disapproval ("that view seems low status") without explaining why you disapprove, or how the observed evidence might be explained in other ways.
(It may help to sub a different ingroup/outgroup to grasp the dynamic here. For example, if the other user had suggested that men are naturally more violent than women, would you say "that seems messed up?" Or imagine they had suggested that young people are naturally more violent than old people, or that people with cognitive impairments are naturally more violent than cognitive normies. Whether any of these claims is actually true or false, you can hopefully see why someone might make such claims, and think of the kinds of evidence that would strengthen or weaken your tendency to endorse or reject such claims.)
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I mean, I don't want to believe this. I take no pleasure in it, but it is simply what I have concluded given the available data and a lifetime of observation. It is as unlikely that every group of humans would be equal in their propensity towards violence as that they would have the same skin tone, the same average height or IQ, or be equally capable of running marathons. Moreover, the difference between any two ethnic groups in terms of aggression will be nothing compared to the difference between men and women, and we have (mostly) managed to accept and internalize the latter.
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If you thought the Conquistadors were mean, you should read about the Mexica.
The Mexica were exterminated, though. There’s a million or so nahua(who are their closest relatives) left, but the biggest mexican indigenous population is probably the much tamer maya.
Honestly I’d wager that if you count by genetics rather than language there’s more pure blooded purepecha left than mexica.
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My impression is that Mesoamericans are like the Japanese or Germans: capable of committing horrendous acts when sanctioned by the state or their religion, but less likely than most to commit spontaneous acts of interpersonal violence. People who have lived in Guatemala, for instance, have told me that the stereotypes there are that Mayans are shy and docile whereas Ladinos (the local name for Mestizos) are loud and aggressive.
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Why would this be the case?
And what is this website, anyway? Is it trustworthy? A quick look around gives me the impression that the guy is a nutcase.
I think the mechanism would be that it makes you smart enough to realize that you can solve your immediate problem with violence, but not smart enough to realize that it will make you worse-off in the long term (assuming your environment is such that violence really is bad for you in the long run).
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I think the best world for how it is would be an ignorance is bliss world. HBD isn’t taught but the elites have read Charles Murray. MSNBC doesn’t say the word white supremacists constantly. They accept differences in outcomes isn’t proof of racism. It’s probably not good if every kid is taught in high school that blacks are you on average much less intelligent. It would be very discouraging. I still had an inkling as a 5 year old that most of the sports players didn’t look like me especially at run fast positions.
But that’s also a conservative view. Some systems just work better probably because they get to a workable rational equilibrium that agrees with human nature and not a pure robotic rationalist.
I was always fond of the 90s vision of diversity, AKA the RPG party: everyone is different and has different strengths and weaknesses, and by specializing, and working together, and dividing tasks appropriately, we can achieve greater things than we could alone or if everyone were the same.
And to some extent this is a fictional exaggeration, some people are just better at nearly everything than some other people. But even then, comparative advantage is a thing that can provide mutual benefits (I bet Elon Musk would be an excellent fry cook, but the fact that someone else does it means he has more time to do his thing, even if they're not as good at frying as him). But to some extent it's straight up true. If you tried to make me be a lumberjack I would be absolutely awful at it. There are literally millions of Americans better suited to the job than me, many of whom are less intelligent than me. The fact that they can do their thing and I can do mine is great, and I'm glad they exist, even if a hypothetical version of them with all of their existing talents plus my intelligence on top would be better.
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Oddly, the only ways you can keep the smarter kids from figuring out black kids are on average less intelligent basically amount to segregation. If black kids are in other schools, the kids get no basis for comparison. If the student bodies are carefully curated so some schools have only the smart black kids, they get a false one -- but you can't apply that one too widely for lack of appropriate population.
I don’t care if the smart kids realize it. I literally said as a 6 year old I realized all the football players were black.
My point is sometimes their knowledge you don’t need to yell out. People know it but they don’t talk about it constantly.
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I remember a study or book years ago showing that nerdy black kids in all black schools got hassled less because they couldn't be so easily compared to Asians or whites.
(Of course who were they getting hassled by?...)
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You don't have to see unintelligence as a specific moral failing or believe it impossible to be both unintelligent and righteous in order to recognize the fact that, broadly speaking being intelligent is better than being unintelligent
Better in the sense of being more competent and thus better able to enact ones will on the world and accomplish desired outcomes. Not better as in "this person tries to make the world a better place instead of being selfish". Intelligence is comparable to being physically strong, or talented at piano, or a skilled actor. It can be impressive, and can accomplish more good things if used for good, but it doesn't actually make you a good person and if you use it for evil then it just makes you a more impressive villain who accomplishes more evil.
I agree that the intelligence axis is for the most part orthogonal to the evil/good axis but i still think you're downplaying just how important intelligence is. Intelligence is the primary quality that seperates men from beasts. It was a necessary part of nearly every societal advancement ever made. Almost everyone would be better off if they, their neighbors and their countrymen were more intelligent. If one group is on average less intelligent that reflects very poorly on that group and that's true even without adding any mythos about intelligent being equivalent to moral virtue. Now that doesn't mean we should stick our heads in the sand to avoid truths that are offensive but i don't think pretending they're not offensive is helpful either. Personally I think the best way to make the truth of HBD more palatable instead of downplaying the importance of intelligence is downplaying the importance of race. A white man with an IQ of 80 is less intelligent than a black man with an IQ of 120. Population means mean nothing when evaluating individuals.
"Better off" is not "morally superior". Neither is "healthier", "safer", or "more productive". Not even "less prone to addiction". Generally, crime rates are used as a proxy for morality, but this is a foolish thing to do: there are a lot of ways to be an absolute shit to your fellow humans without breaking the law. And sure, crime is a more immediate problem, and lower-IQ people commit more of it, and that's a problem that has to be managed... but it wasn't low-IQ people who built the current race-war narrative into the memetic hazard it's become, or who make effective law enforcement impossible.
You completely missed my point. My point was that intelligence is important enough for reasons outside of "moral superiority" that even if we all make it very clear that intelligence is not the same as morality that acknowledging one group is more intelligent than another will still not be easy in the same way that acknowledging one group is more athletic is.
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If anything it is, of course, the exact opposite. "They deserve to be at the bottom of the ladder because they are stupid" is the essential line of race conservatives. Therefore, welfare, affirmative action, criminal justice reform, etc, are a waste of time at best, and counter-productive at worst. The progressive line is "they are not stupid, so if they are at the bottom it can only be because society has placed them there." Therefore, welfare, affirmative action, criminal justice reform, etc, are necessary.
The original quote:
That description is straightforwardly true, supportable by innumerable examples from across our popular media, entertainment, academia, etc. Progressives and Blues generally do in fact treat stupidity as a moral failing when talking about white people and particularly about Reds. It is not unreasonable to assess their insistence that Blacks cannot possibly be less intelligent on average with the way they treat Reds, whom they loudly and frequently have insisted are significantly less intelligent on average, and have spent decades mocking for this failing. There is no way to reconcile their treatment of the perceived lack of intelligence of their collective outgroup, with their treatment of the factual lack of intelligence of a collective ingroup.
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I don't think that's opposite. The progressives aren't questioning that stupid people belong at the bottom, they're tacitly agreeing that stupid people belong at the bottom and arguing that minorities are secretly intelligent if all the cultural biases didn't keep underestimating them. The argument is "they aren't stupid so they don't belong at the bottom with the stupid people", not "it doesn't matter how smart they are, they still deserve good outcomes anyway"
It does seem relevant that progressives are in favor of downward redistribution though. "The market needs to set wages based on scarce traits like intelligence, but the unintelligent should still get healthcare, free college, public housing, and childcare subsidized by redistribution from the intelligent" might imply a different moral judgement of the unintelligent than 'the unintelligent should be at the bottom and get nothing but their market wages".
I don't think I would categorize that as a "progressive" position though, that just seems like classic liberalism. Maybe with a wider reach, and an ignorance of economic incentives. But I'm not opposed to the general idea of redistribution. But the progressive position is usually that the market does not need to set wages based on scarce traits, a "wage gap" between groups is evidence of discrimination and needs to be fixed at the source. Rich people should give their money to poor people not because they are more capable and competent and thus should subsidize the less able, but because their wealth was stolen in the first place by discriminatory institutions and exploitation of the disadvantaged. The advocated policies are similar, but the justifications, and the extent of them, are very different.
Maybe I'm setting up too weak of a straw man to knock down. Obviously there are more and less extreme people along the way. But if you find someone claiming "minorities need social support because they're less capable than whites" they are going to be tarred and feathered in progressive circles as an evil Nazi, not held up as an orthodox progressive who says what they're all thinking.
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yeah, somehow lead poisoning is still holding back blacks even though whites and Asians in same environment or worse environments do better, and lead levels have been low for half a century now.
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There is no one strain of denial.
You have the people arguing IQ isn't even real. As in it can't be measured and different "types" of intelligence are totally uncorrelated with each other.
You have people arguing that IQ is real, but their is no racial IQ gap because the tests are racist.
You have people arguing that IQ is real, and seemingly admitting there is an "achievement gap" between blacks and well... everyone. But they will never utter the word intelligence, have no plan to deal with the substantial population permanently lacking in "achievement" and beyond all help. They just believe that somehow, this time, and with enough white guilt, lots and lots of tax payer money, and totally neglecting the needs of every other demographic, you can nurture all those young black geniuses into their full potential.
IMHO, given the way our institutions are continually abolishing all means of measuring competence, I think some combination of the first and second strains of denial are winning the day. Probably a majority of the first strain that disbelieves in IQ at a fundamental level. Or is so far down the "everything is a social construct" rabbit hole that they disbelieve being good at things has any relevance to whether you should be rewarded handsomely for them. Even Doctors. Because "racism".
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But if you actually prove that they are stupid, then what?
This is MathWizard's point: progressives don't actually disbelieve that the stupid deserve to be at the bottom of the pile, they simply disagree about who are the stupid ones.
Yes,if they really are stupid, that undermines the argument of progressives. But I was responding only to MathWizard's claim that progressives think stupid = morally inferior, which is quite silly.
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This matches my pet theory exactly. Something I've noticed is that people who strongly hold the "stupid = bad" axiom (though I might characterize it more as the equivalent "intelligent = virtuous" axiom) often tend to be quite intelligent themselves and also enjoying the fruits of their intelligence. E.g. they make a lot of money in white collar work that they got through excelling at school, and they also have little trouble with the law or finances due to being pretty good about planning their behavior. It's led me to believe that much of this belief in this axiom is tied up with one's ego, that believing in the virtuousness of intelligence rather than the dumb luck of it allows one to more easily justify the cosmic rightness of one's good lot in life. And that deep belief that the reason one lives a better life than others is because one earned it by being more virtuous is a hard thing to let go of, especially if your worldview also posits that the luck of birth having any impact on one's lot in life relative to others is wrong and ought to be destroyed wherever possible.
I've said similar things myself on this topic previously. Everyone is biased to think that their own attributes are better and more valuable than other peoples'. I've struggled this myself, and do still retain some subconscious sense of superiority for my own intelligence. But philosophically I reject the premise on a conscious level, and I think that has helped keep my ego in check somewhat, though definitely not entirely.
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