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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Oh look, another week on the motte, another topic about DAE DAE da joos???. Actually strike that, that's the ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶r̶d̶ seventh in seven days (thanks, fuckduck9000!).

I'd like to formally apologize to the mods for raising a stink about the HBD moratorium back in the old place. This is getting really annoying.

Jews are intelligent. As such, HBD provides no reason to be against them.

The Joo-posters are constantly arguing that Jews are essentially a malignant invasive species working for the benefit of their in-group (Jews) to the detriment of non-Jews, and that undermining Western civilization and trying to destroy white society is something they are naturally driven to do. In olden times, they would have just said this is because Jews are inherently wicked because God hates them. Nowadays, that doesn't sound very persuasive, especially to rationalists, so instead they make up HBD theories for why Jews are a uniquely pernicious tribe following biological imperatives.

I know this because it's not exactly a new argument, and you know this because you've been around long enough to have seen it yourself. Why are you pretending that HBD has only ever been about IQ? Even the people whose HBD arguments are primarily focused on blacks are quite open about their belief that HBD says blacks aren't just low IQ, but also impulsive, violent, criminally inclined, etc.

Why are you pretending that HBD has only ever been about IQ?

HBD as used by rationalists should be about IQ, because IQ can be measured. Claiming that Jews are bad people for some HBD-related reason that you can't measure is incorrectly using HBD.

I will concede that HBD may give you a reason to hate Jews if you use it incorrectly, but I don't think that tells you much about HBD. Anything can give you a reason for anything if you use it incorrectly.

So your belief is that HBD explains IQ differences and only IQ differences (as far as cognitive function goes)?

Exactly what else do you think it can explain that wouldn't be tied to IQ?

(I would think that something like low time preference is tied to IQ.)

Why wouldn't it explain anything else? Why is our ability to measure it according to science which has been hostile to these conclusions for decades conclusive evidence of existence or non existence of phenomena? Why would behavior be uniquely free of genetic influence, when in fact we can point to numerous examples of behavior being influenced by genetics on an individual level?

HBDers argue over and over the it's absurd to assume that genetics influences an abundance of physical characteristics but not the brain; why is it intellectually fine that the first ranked NBA player who isn't Black or Balkan is in the 30s, but racism that there aren't enough Blacks at Harvard law? Further HBDer arguments require that American folk racialization categories are accurate, that the world can be divided into White/Black/Asian and produce useful insights, why wouldn't other even more prevalent folk racial theories be correct?

It seems like if you open up to HBD, the burden is heavy to claim that it implicates only part of the brain.