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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31960 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Mandela Goes From Hero to Scapegoat as South Africa Struggles

10 years after his death, attitudes have changed. The party Mr. Mandela led after his release from prison, the African National Congress, is in serious danger of losing its outright majority for the first time since he became president in 1994 in the first free election after the fall of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the A.N.C... Faith in the future is collapsing. Seventy percent of South Africans said in 2021 that the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 49 percent in 2010, according to the latest survey published by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council. Only 26 percent said they trusted the government, a huge decline from 2005, when it was 64 percent... The unemployment rate is 46 percent among South Africans aged 15 to 34. Millions more are underemployed, like Mr. Thebe. He studied computer science at the university level, never receiving a degree. The best job he said he could find was selling funeral policies to the staff of the court.

While Mr. Mandela is still lionized around the world, many South Africans, especially young people, believe that he did not do enough to create structural changes that would lift the fortunes of the country’s Black majority. White South Africans still hold a disproportionate share of the nation’s land, and earn three and a half times more than Black people. Mr. Vawda, 17, belongs to a generation that knows Mr. Mandela only as a historical figure in textbooks and films. To him, Mr. Mandela’s fight to end apartheid was admirable. But the huge economic gap between Black and white South Africans will be on his mind when he votes for the first time next year, he said. "He didn’t revolt against white people,” Mr. Vawda said. “I would have taken revenge.”

the truth and reconciliation commission led by mandela chose to pardon many perpetrators of crimes related to apartheid, such as the murderers of amy biehl, an anti-apartheid activist, in order to encourage, well, truth and reconciliation. young south africaners have identified that mandela and his friends didn't go far enough with their silly restorative justice ways - perhaps a nuremberg would have been more appropriate. if you were willing to necklace traitors of your own race, why not the enemy?

I think this is the stage of "true socialism has never been tried", only ANC/SA flavored, and the reason this "socialism" isn't true because not enough random whites were tortured in enough graphic ways to satisfactory atone for all the past wrongs.

believe that he did not do enough to create structural changes that would lift the fortunes of the country’s Black majority.

In a way it's true. But "taking revenge" surely won't get them anywhere near where they want to be. On the other hand, maybe somebody could suggest them to look into the history of Japan? I think there are a lot of similarities there, with regard to being colonized, being an economic underdog, and restructuring the society to become an economic superpower. I'd recommend not repeating the part where they go into war with the US and get nuked, of course.

somebody could suggest them to look into the history of Japan? I think there are a lot of similarities there, with regard to being colonized

Japan was colonized? That’s news to me. Perry’s gunboats didn’t lead to concessions or annexations. Unless you count being forced to open ports and restrict tariffs as colonization…? That’s markedly different from South Africa.

I had to look up Perry’s gunboats to remember more details. Something seems amazing to me that a nation of 23 million people with vast amounts of unsettled land in its own region was able to project force that far away. Or we even had a strategic interest in it.

The only rational I can come up for it is we built the ships to compete with Europe and well if you have battleships you are going to find something to do with them.

The only rational I can come up for it is we built the ships to compete with Europe and well if you have battleships you are going to find something to do with them.

Reading contemporary accounts, I can only conclude that this is pretty damn close to the truth.

Well, not as much as Africa, of course, but it was in a subservient position and it was a huge hit to the national pride. Of course it's different, but I think there are also a lot of similarities.

This was probably in reference to their unconditional surrender in WWII and the coerced political changes that followed rather than to Perry's gunboats.

The period following WW2 makes more sense, oops. Thanks.

Still feel like it’s qualitatively different, do we call Germany a victim of colonisation?

Eastern Germany probably yes.

Doesn't that just make Colonialism another meaningless Bad Word for geopolitics, like Fascism is for national politics or Capitalism for economics? A fighting word applied to malign whatever one dislikes? Or do we actually quantify the success or failure of a country under foreign control, and call it colonialism when it's economically worse off afterwards?

I agree that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Germany was bad, and the Allied occupation of Western Germany less bad, but what exactly makes the one colonialism but the other not?

Well, colonialism and fascism certainly have meanings, but as sure as that, you will find people using it as a general pejorative having nothing to do with the specific meaning. I don't think this can be helped - but I also don't think that automatically makes the word useless.

Also, I think it makes sense to separate colonisation - and colonial status - as an objective classification of relationship between two countries, and "colonialism" as an ideology, which may be useful in some contexts, but many colonial relationships have not been driven by the same ideology and in fact could follow from a wide variety of circumstances. I'd be much more careful in using "colonialism" versus "colony" or "colonisation".

Allied occupation of Western Germany less bad, but what exactly makes the one colonialism but the other not

Allied control over Germany was much more short-lived. I think the first election had been held in 1949. And yes, one could split hairs and claim this election was influenced etc. - and it probably was, to some measure - but if you are to seriously consider it, Germans were managing their own affairs, even though with some influence from the US, pretty soon. In fact, even in 1949 elections almost 1/3 of the votes went to the socialists, and another 5% to communists. Soviet Union created GDR in the same year, and East Germans never did independently manage their affairs, while GDR existed, and the examples of Hungary and Czechoslovakia showed what would happen if they tried. You can argue that until 1950s, West Germany was a US colony, but this period is so short it doesn't really matter.

Is the tenor of the US towards West German reconstruction significantly different from Japanese reconstruction esp post 1950?

@HlynkaCG says, true to style, that this demonstrates all-importance of Culture, rather than HBD. He's right in a sense. But first, I want to discuss how he is also wrong.

In short, HBD is misunderstood. It is an issue of culture, and has been increasingly an issue of culture for most of Anthropocene.

Forget this speculative pablum about Cold Winters rewarding long term preference and complex social order. I do believe it, of course; it explains the bulk of initial conditions of our path-dependent historical trajectory; it doesn't matter. I've lived most of my life in a place with rather fucking cold winters, in a house designed to withstand those; sometimes, the homeless took refuge from the cold in its entrance lobby equipped with centralized heating – they'd have frozen to death otherwise. A denizen of Honshu can survive in what is basically a shed made of paper and wood planks. In terms of human capital, Japan is leagues above Russia – like 10 points in IQ, and time preference gulf that translates to 6x difference in implicit interest rates. How so?

Whites came to South Africa and made it a fertile land, and in centuries they have not become any less industrious, nor have their fields turned to wastelands (until they were excised as racially alien, and the infrastructure left behind got broken). Why?

Protestant European countries have minimally dysgenic fertility, whereas Latin America and the Middle East are hit the hardest. Does all that heat kill high-brainpower sperm first, or what?

For the longest time we have been kings of the hill, we thoroughly dominate this planet, no beast and certainly no frivolity of climate decides whether we thrive or go extinct. Even the most wretched countries have carrying capacity orders of magnitude higher than what the era of Cold Winters relevance allowed. No. Society is humans' environment. Culture is humans' selection pressure. The measure of our fitness is how well we fit in. Whether you are praised by a local pastor and your children held in high esteem for your success in retail business, or your store looted and your children taken hostage for ransom determines - on average – how many grandchildren they will be able to raise; and whether, in the long run, that which grows around your grave will be a nation of thugs or genteel shopkeepers. HBD tells us how well a person of a given extraction, ceteris paribus, will be likely to perform on a batch of rigorous and meaningful tests relative to others. Deep history tells us why that is so. Culture is the mechanism by which ceteris is prevented from being paribus; both directly through environmental inputs and more importantly through what they were for your ancestors. For all practical purposes, it does not matter what came first, chicken or egg, gene alleles or the criteria by which they get effectively judged as worthy of continuation: this is a self-sustaining loop either way. It does not matter that my people could, in a society different from Russia, be more than what they actually are, more than Japanese, perhaps. They – us – demonstrably fail to build anything better than Russia. And Black South Africans, under their own power, have demonstrably failed to build anything better than what the Apartheid regime was; the best idea they could muster was to flip the table.
Of course, one can claim that the absence of indignity inherent to second-class citizenship is worth all that. But – is there really dignity to be found in brutality and corruption, chaos and fear, squalor and pathetic self-deception? Their current troubles have nothing to do with whitey, except in the sense that they cannot sustain the country that whitey has built; so the Gods of Copybook Headings come to collect their due.

HBD is downstream of culture, in a way that feeble, equitable, painless interventions and charitable self-sacrifice by the stronger party cannot negate. The less virtuous cannot rule and become more virtuous in the process. You will have to have a culture where virtue is rewarded, even if that puts some strongly self-identifying, cohesive group in a bad spot. And to have that culture, you have to have at least a seed of people who maintain it effortlessly among themselves. This can be done, for a time, in virtually any society. But let us say that is it not easy to pull oneself by the hair out of the bog. Society is not just upstream of individual biology – it is less mutable than that.

Now, as for what makes Hlynka right. It's that in this scheme there is such a thing as pure culture, the culture of governance and highest-level decisionmaking, which can rapidly change and impose that change on the whole underlying structure; and in South Africa it is terrible.

But if you squint, the culture of the US is pretty similar. Do Americans not lambast «whiteness»? Do their dignitaries not take the knee for a thug, while honest people are canceled? Do they not piss all over the legacy of the whitey, overturn his monuments, ruin education and academia he had created? Is this not what this place owes its existence to?

I exaggerate of course. The serious point is that both American and South African political culture disdains the notion of owning your mistakes, and is ignorant of the feeling of limits. The only respectable response to a failure is to double down and accuse your enemies of meddling; chutzpah is the measure of sincerity. (I've been astonished recently to see Douglas Hofstadter admit he has been wrong about AI – this is not how American Public Intellectuals are supposed to operate. «It's a very traumatic experience when some of your most core beliefs about the world start collapsing.» Well, I'm sorry for your loss, man, try to not have smug and absurd beliefs next time.)

But this abysmal cultural regime is normal. Not doubling down, stopping digging when you find yourself in a pit, actually thinking, is anomalous; the project of rationality was premised on making this anomaly pay rent. Opinions differ as to whether it worked out. Extreme cases of nations being clearly worse than normal for pure cultural reasons are very popular – North Korea, Argentina… But that's grasping at straws.

So there not being much difference in «pure culture», the reason America is not South Africa is still HBD. To wit, there are plainly too many good people, industrious people, smart people, to let it fail; they patch the gaps with tax money, duct tape and high technology faster than new gaps show up, and fast enough to attract even more of the same sort of people, increasing the delta between America and less fortunate nations. Japan, too, does not make sense politically, and their economic system is a mess – but the Japanese have high enough human capital to bear the burden of their culture. They'd have been able to bear Kim's regime as well. After all, Koreans manage somehow, and Koreans are their peers, HBD-wise.

Some states don't have that luxury. South Africa is failing as a state, for example. Its culture is terrible on every level and it is not blessed enough by HBD to cover it up.

You will have to have a culture where virtue is rewarded, even if that puts some strongly self-identifying, cohesive group in a bad spot. And to have that culture, you have to have at least a seed of people who maintain it effortlessly

I was largely onboard with what you were saying until this point.

I actually think this line illustrates (or at least gestures towards) one of the major our differences in our respective worldviews. Virtue is never "effortless". Virtue, by its very nature, requires effort. It requires pain and discomfort. The difference between sincere virtue and empty signaling lies in it's personal in the personal cost. The willingness to put in the work and endure the pain. As I keep saying, a principle that gets discarded the moment it becomes inconvenient to hold was never sincerely held in the first place. It's the same idea.

If anything, it is the belief that virtue is (or ought to be) somehow intrinsic or effortless that lies at the heart of so much of the world's dysfunction.

Much as leadership is not about asking permission so much as stepping up, culture is a choice. You can choose to demean and deride those who put in the effort or you can encourage them. That choice will effect the balance of effort around you. In short your choices matter, because your choices determine your culture and that is a thought that certain people just cannot abide.

I think that there are a lot of people particularly amongst the woke left and so-called dissident right who feel an urgent need to believe that individual choices don't matter and that culture does not matter because so long as these things don't matter, they can not be held responsible for the outcomes their culture creates.

Ironically, I've long viewed the current state of Russia as the most damning evidence against the HBD hypothesis. If I grant for the sake of argument that intelligence is primarily genetic, there's no disputing that Russians have it in spades. Russia has produced a slew of great artists and thinkers over the centuries and as a general rule when Russians get out of Russia they seem to do quite well for themselves. So why did the US end up as world hegemon and not the Soviet Union? I would argue that Russian culture was the chief determinator. As I recall we had an argument a few years back where I accused you of being "a servile and effete European". I also seem to recall getting an entirely deserved warning form @ZorbaTHut about it. My position regarding you has mellowed since, I genuinely value your posts as someone who's views are vastly different from mine, and you've always had interesting takes. At the same time I do still feel like there is some truth to the barb. My Polish friends joke that there is nothing more galling to a Russian than seeing another Russian happy or successful. I don't now how much truth there is in this but it does readily to explain how Russia always seems to be getting caught in defect-defect type equilibriums.

You talk about American culture "lambasting whitness" and the first thought that comes to my mind is "is that really American Culture though?" We're already in a place where anything that is unambiguously pro-american ('Murica) gets coded "Red" by default so what of it? It's no secret that our academic elite are not "American" in any meaningful sense of the word, their whole political platform revolves around making the US more like Europe IE poorer, more class stratified, and more segregated "multi-cultural". The choice is in going along with them.

I might have misspoken. Let me put it another way.

Consider the quote from Dostoyevsky by @Harlequin5942 (I would translate it more literally, but no matter):

For the same reason, the parents will have to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of the army, in order that he may earn more towards the family capital. Yes, such things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the subject. It is all done out of sheer rectitude—out of a rectitude which is magnified to the point of the younger son believing that he has been rightly sold, and that it is simply idyllic for the victim to rejoice when he is made over into pledge. What more have I to tell?

Sure, you are right. Virtue not only takes effort, it to a large extent is just a consistent, directed application of effort. But – for the scope of the argument, what is the difference between having the power to sustain effort and the challenge being relatively effortless? Between having the power to lift a weight, and that weight being slight for one's shoulders?

«Unvirtuous» people know the score, they know the required investment and the theoretically optimal payoff matrix. They just fail to keep up, and so give up. Inasmuch as this is due to them facing extra temptations and so on holding them back, that can in principle be rectified through top-down cultural intervention (though as I say, it is hard to reinvent a nation; you folks tried a few times, and patted yourself on the back for succeeding… in Germany and Japan, only to walk away in embarrassment and confusion from the Middle East). But in the end, some people, and peoples on the average, just find the required effort too much.

And it works the same way for virtues and abilities. I argue that recognizing the unequal distribution of innate ability is necessary, not only to tailor interventions and temper expectations, but to be kind to people, to be able to forgive them their shortcomings.
Speaking of, you like to accuse HBDers of thinking that education is wasted on black children. I don't know if you've ever taught; millions of Americans do, and they all have to face the question of education being mostly wasted on some children. The thing is, teachers who ignore or deny innate inequality end up having to choose either to hate themselves, the society, or children who fail to achieve whatever skill level they think their teaching ought to make possible.
This latter mindset is pointless, except to make the naturally able feel better about themselves – after all, they try too, and they achieve more, so supposedly they tried harder and are morally superior for this reason.

I agree, for the most part, though I quibble a bit with your choice of virtues simply because you ignored what I think are most important— valuing knowledge and hard work as virtues alongside high time preference, honesty and loyalty.

HBD fails in my opinion because on whole most cultures are fairly young. Modern Western European culture as we know it today only really came to prominence with the enlightenment, which putting it roughly back in time to 1700, would give it slightly better than 300 years of assertive mating (as we never really purposely bred humans as we do dogs). Modern Japan as we know it started with Meiji. Had you gone to Japan during Sengoku or Europe during the medieval period, you’d find a much different culture with much difference in values. There are outliers. Jews and the Chinese are both continuous cultures from ancient times.

That's all a bit too high-level, but I do not agree. Japanese values today are similar to Japanese values many centuries to millenia ago: long time orientation, Malthusian industriousness, suppression of self, painful politeness, respect for hierarchy and obsession with neatness. Do not mistake adaptation of the form to the technological context of the era (which makes their modern-day Samurai arrogant bosses instead of murderers, among other things) for substantial change of some philosophical or biological underpinning. Hajnali Europeans are, deep history aside, products of the Catholic Church and accompanying selection pressures, which probably have only changed direction in the last century or so. Right now this is all going tits up, of course.

Jews and the Chinese, on the other hand, are not all that stable. From what I can tell, 2rafa is both genetically and behaviorally rather distinct from ancient Hebrews, and the Chinese of course have had a sequence of regime changes. I'd say directional positions of «human firmware» from 20 to 50 generations ago are mostly preserved in all large modern populations.

Of course, one can claim that the absence of indignity inherent to second-class citizenship is worth all that

Brings to mind an old quote from my own banana-state country: “I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans.” - Manuel Quezon, President of the Republic

...but tellingly, the quote is followed by "But that is not an admission that a government run by Filipinos will be a government run like hell. Much less can it be an admission that a government run by Americans or by the people of any other foreign country, for that matter, can ever be a government run like heaven."

(A fairly popular sentiment among most formerly colonized peoples, I gather)

You say there isn't dignity in self-imposed squalor, and fine, but as you notice, there isn't one in colonial servitude either. And sometimes the yearning for freedom—on the value of its own context, independent of any potential downstream QoL effects—is strong enough to override everything else.

But more generally, the South Africans had just enough leeway to intuitively place the majority of the blame on whitey, given the self-evidently oppressive nature of apartheid. It followed fairly intuitively then that racial emancipation would be synonymous with economic: if we can just kick whitey out, everything will be fine. That was wrong, but in hindsight, there wasn't any way for them to have thought otherwise! Any, however justifiable and actually-true, argument based on HBD would be (understandably) seen as colonialist apologia, coming from loftily high colonizers who deign to redirect blame to justify their dastardly wicked oppression. So freedom alone seemed a convincing enough antidote to all the social ills—now that it might not be, it's not like there's any coming back to colonialism or apartheid, even in the event most black south Africans would prefer it: you've burned all the bridges.

And in the same vein, modern day whining is mostly generalized xenophobic sentiment, but cloaked in enough anti-colonialist lingo to capitalize on Third Worldist and BLM-type "anti-racist" sympathies... and with similarly enough wiggle room to be intuitively understandable and not-wrong-on-its-face: apartheid was all-encompassing and fairly recent enough—and history does have consequences—to be the scapegoat for South Africa's failed-state-tendencies.

(A fairly popular sentiment among most formerly colonized peoples, I gather)

Also known amongst colonizers too:

Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them [T.E. Lawrence]

if we can just kick whitey out, everything will be fine. That was wrong, but in hindsight, there wasn't any way for them to have thought otherwise!

Of course there was. Numerous examples where whitey got kicked out and everything wasn't fine.

South Africa went a lot farther south, relatively, compared to lots of African countries that kicked whitey out- and the seriously bad cases had civil wars and genocides as extenuating circumstances.

In case it isn't clear, I am not advocating for reinstatement of apartheid. Admittedly I do not have strong feelings either way, blacks oppressing whites right now is not morally better in my book, but what does it matter.

There are less extreme options, though.

On 4 August 1972, Amin declared that Britain would need to take on the responsibility for caring for British subjects who were of Indian origin,[3] accusing them of "sabotaging Uganda's economy and encouraging corruption".[2] The deadline for British subjects to leave was confirmed as three months, which came to mean 8 November. On 9 August, the policy was expanded to include citizens of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.[3] The position of the 23,000 Indians who had been granted Ugandan citizenship (and in particular those who held no other citizenship) was less clear. Not originally included, on 19 August, they were seemingly added to the list, before being re-exempted three days later following international protest. Many chose to leave rather than endure further intimidation, with only 4,000 known to have stayed.[3] Exemptions for certain professions were added, then later removed.[3][2]

«The Indians only milked the cow, but they did not feed it to yield more milk. There are now Black faces in every shop and industry. All the big cars in Uganda are now driven by Africans, and not the former bloodsuckers. The rest of Africa can learn from us.»

At the time of their deportation Indians owned 90% of the country's businesses and accounted for 90% of Uganda's tax revenue. The real value of salaries and wages plummeted by 90% in less than a decade following the expulsion, and although some of these businesses were handed over to native Ugandans this was ineffective as most did not know how to run them. Uganda's industrial sector which was seen as the backbone of the economy was damaged due to the lack of skilled workers.

Thousands of Indians returned to Uganda starting in 1986 when Yoweri Museveni assumed power. Museveni criticized Amin's policies and invited the Indians to return.[26][8] According to Museveni, "Gujaratis have played a lead role in Uganda's social and industrial development. I knew that this community can do wonders for my country and they have been doing it for last many decades." The Indians resurfacing in Uganda have helped rebuild the economy of Uganda, and are financially well settled.[8][27]

Despite making up less than 1% of the population, they are estimated to contribute up to 65% of the country's tax revenues.[2] Sudhir Ruparelia, who is of Indian origin, is the richest man in Uganda and has an estimated fortune of $1 billion.[2]

Yes, it is trivial to see where Idi Amin (by all accounts a horrible human being) was coming from in this case. He's probably even correct to an extent – Uganda is still dirt poor, Indians or no, whereas Indians themselves are «financially well settled»; this can't feel okay to natives.
But recognizing that someone has to pay taxes to keep the system running, denouncing racism, and guaranteeing whitey an equal measure of legal protection and opportunity for political and administrative representation, would certainly help South African fortunes, I believe. (It's amazing to me how many people still don't want to leave South Africa, despite being able to).

This would come at a price of the collective whitey becoming disproportionately powerful, of course – if through less unfair means. Which is unacceptable. So they will keep digging and doubling down, until their power grid and other vital infrastructure properly collapses and their governance degrades to Haitian levels, probably. Maybe it's still worth it.

Russians are an interesting case because we as a group are great at mathematics, physics, literature and so on but bad at government and social organization in general. This is the grain of truth behind the racist meme that Russians are not really white people. What it really means is that we in general are not part of the industrious Northern European culture that came into being a few hundred years ago, we are not part of what Napoleon called "the nation of shopkeepers". We are happy to spend all night talking about philosophy, then we are not happy to go to work in the morning to do the kind of boring shit that created and maintains the modern West. The idea of being genuinely excited about being, say, a small business entrepreneur, seems somewhat extraneous to our culture. We want to be poets and mystics and scientists. There is something childish about it I guess, but also there is a sort of dynamism about it. Unfortunately given that the dynamism does not seem to help us to create sane liberal government, it probably does not mean much in the great scheme of things.

Yet I think that there is some reason to be optimistic, HBD or not. 2000 years ago the Northern Europeans were backwoods barbarians, but they eventually became the world's leading intellectual culture.

Edit: That said, I left Russia young, I'm sure you know it much better than I do so let me know if I'm wrong.

The idea of being genuinely excited about being, say, a small business entrepreneur, seems somewhat extraneous to our culture. We want to be poets and mystics and scientists. There is something childish about it I guess, but also there is a sort of dynamism about it.

From Dostoevsky's "The Gambler":

“I would rather live a wandering life in tents,” I cried, “than bow the knee to a German idol!”

“To what idol?” exclaimed the General, now seriously angry.

“To the German method of heaping up riches. I have not been here very long, but I can tell you that what I have seen and verified makes my Tartar blood boil. Good Lord! I wish for no virtues of that kind... every German family is bound to slavery and to submission to its ‘Vater.’ They work like oxen, and amass wealth like Jews. Suppose the ‘Vater’ has put by a certain number of gülden which he hands over to his eldest son, in order that the said son may acquire a trade or a small plot of land. Well, one result is to deprive the daughter of a dowry, and so leave her among the unwedded. For the same reason, the parents will have to sell the younger son into bondage or the ranks of the army, in order that he may earn more towards the family capital. Yes, such things ARE done, for I have been making inquiries on the subject. It is all done out of sheer rectitude—out of a rectitude which is magnified to the point of the younger son believing that he has been rightly sold, and that it is simply idyllic for the victim to rejoice when he is made over into pledge. What more have I to tell? Well, this—that matters bear just as hardly upon the eldest son. Perhaps he has his Gretchen to whom his heart is bound; but he cannot marry her, for the reason that he has not yet amassed sufficient gülden. So, the pair wait on in a mood of sincere and virtuous expectation, and smilingly deposit themselves in pawn the while. Gretchen’s cheeks grow sunken, and she begins to wither; until at last, after some twenty years, their substance has multiplied, and sufficient gülden have been honourably and virtuously accumulated. Then the ‘Vater’ blesses his forty-year-old heir and the thirty-five-year-old Gretchen with the sunken bosom and the scarlet nose; after which he bursts, into tears, reads the pair a lesson on morality, and dies. In turn the eldest son becomes a virtuous ‘Vater,’ and the old story begins again... What is more; they think there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves. Yes, there you have it in a nutshell. For my own part, I would rather grow fat after the Russian manner, or squander my whole substance at roulette. I have no wish to be ‘Hoppe and Company’ at the end of five generations. I want the money for myself, for in no way do I look upon my personality as necessary to, or meet to be given over to, capital. I may be wrong, but there you have it. Those are my views.”

They'd have been able to bear Kim's regime as well. After all, Koreans manage somehow, and Koreans are their peers, HBD-wise.

North Koreans seem worse off than South Africans (than all Southern Africans) on any metric except violent crime rate, for which little data exists but which we can probably assume is lower in the DPRK. The DRC and Liberia have higher GDP/capita by some estimates.

North Koreans seem worse off than South Africans (than all Southern Africans) on any metric except violent crime rate, for which little data exists but which we can probably assume is lower in the DPRK. The DRC and Liberia have higher GDP/capita by some estimates.

I don't dispute your metrics, but there is a consistent effect where North Koreans who successfully defect to South Korea end up missing their home. Naturally this is blamed on "discrimination" but the defectors I have seen interviewed in the documentaries I've watched reminisce about villages where everyone knew one another and had a defined role in a tight knit community that lasted their whole lives. Not that this excuses the starvation or state-sponsored grotesqueries, but personally I would not find it an easy decision if forced to choose whether to be born into an average life in North Korea or in South Africa.

I just think this means those metrics are shit. They have an orderly society, life expectancy 8 years higher and virtually zero HIV vs. 14% of the population being positive. This ought to count for something.

I don't trust either of those countries' statistics very much, though.

Reports out of North Korea (from just last month) paint a picture of a population that seems to have in many cases a much worse quality of life than the median sub-Saharan African (who is in fact not starving or in a refugee camp or being pillaged by rebels). And many of them seem to be the more successful North Koreans close to the Chinese border who engage in smuggling activity that allows for their stories to reach Western journalists, the condition of many is likely much, much worse.

A place like North Korea or Maoist China may be for a time worse than anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, but I think in the long run they will still come out on top due to the underlying strengths of their people and/or culture. Poor parts of East Asia feel completely different from poor parts of Africa in terms of education, industriousness of the population, and the general orderliness of society despite the lack of resources.

Thanks, I hate it. I knew they locked up under Covid but didn't track the extent. It is still overwhelmingly likely that they're better off on things like HIV and drug abuse but fine, let's accept this is cold comfort in face of being starved to death by a psychotic tyranny.

Still, I'd say this supports my basic thesis that HBD can paper over even patently insane «culture». This kind of state is not supposed to work. It couldn't work in Africa especially – it'd have imploded long before getting nukes. And

Recently there have been signs the authorities could be preparing to open the border. Myong Suk and Chan Ho, who live along the border, say most of those in their towns have now been vaccinated against Covid - with the Chinese vaccine they presume - while in Pyongyang, Ji Yeon says a good number of people have received two shots. Furthermore, customs data shows the country is once again allowing some grain and flour over the border from China, possibly in an attempt to ease shortages and stave off a much-feared famine.

Seems like Kim will fail to exterminate his subjects or get toppled, again.

Eritrea has fairly poor HBD and it’s a lot like North Korea, although it hasn’t lasted several generations.

Around 80% of South African youths are functionally illiterate.

https://www.africanews.com/2023/05/17/over-80-of-south-african-children-around-10-years-old-have-difficulty-reading-study//

It's fair to say that if the black radicals get what they want, South Africa will quickly become Congo (at best).

Thus far, black elites are smart enough to understand that, which is why they don't give in to those radical demands. But if I were a white South African, I wouldn't make any long-term bets on the country. Then again, some of these white families have lived there for centuries, so I can understand their reluctance to just walk away. Easier said than done.

A lot of these white families don’t have anywhere to go.

“I wouldn’t make any long-term bets on S Africa”

Which of course is horrible for development. Your investment return hurdle for buying widget making machine turns to will it pay for itself in 12-18 months. You divert cash-flow to buying London or Vancouver real estate instead of long term domestic investment.

It's fair to say that if the black radicals get what they want, South Africa will quickly become Congo (at best).

It's interesting that the Congo has maintained its 'heart of darkness, cannibals, pygmy tribes, blood diamonds, deepest Africa' reputation. There are big parts of the Congo that are a shithole but other parts are in fact doing well, GDP growth in 2022 was like 9%, and there's a rapidly growing middle class in Kinshasa, which I would say will probably become one of the better sub-Saharan African cities shortly, if it isn't already. Good hotels, interesting contemporary art galleries, better food (perhaps the Franco-Belgian legacy, as Belgian food has an undeservedly poor reputation), streets that are often very clean and well kept for the region. In some ways, the DRC might well have a brighter future than South Africa. Maybe it's because the main language of commerce, government and culture there is French, so there's comparatively much less written in English about the country.

I think that 2009era Moldbug post (I think it was him, or maybe someone else in the NrX sphere at the time) where he compares old photographs of the well-maintained European quarter of Leopoldville circa 1940 or whatever (which was probably all of about ten blocks) to some generic modern African city with corrugated iron roofs and garbage in the street and things falling apart etc. has poisoned a lot of people to the fact that in much of the continent things have actually gotten a lot better over the last 25 years.

One thing that's true about South Africans which, in my experience, isn't true about many other Sub-Saharan African countries is that there's a perennial air of pessimism and decline common to people of all races. In the DRC, people are much more optimistic.

There are big parts of the Congo that are a shithole but other parts are in fact doing well, GDP growth in 2022 was like 9% In some ways, the DRC might well have a brighter future than South Africa.

TIL: there are two Congos. And the richest one has become radically poorer over the past decade whereas the bottom-ranked one is still so far behind that Pakistan, of all countries, is thrice as rich.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CG-CD

So you'll excuse my cynicism over your valiant attempts to puff the Congo(s), of all places.

P.S. I wouldn't look at growth rates without looking at the currency movements (3 year average). Turkey is a good example of this. Posting very high growth rates did exactly nothing because the lira has continuously tanked. D.S.

I’m talking about the DRC, not the Republic.

Any good news about Black progress is poisoned or avoided by afropessimist activists, who have a vested interest in presenting a narrative of oppression to soak up donor dollars.

It's the same in Africa that it is in America, where I have friends that tell me racism has increased in the past twenty years despite anti Black racism being in quite obvious decline.

Could you elaborate? I'm not convinced. On the Africa side of things, that is.

Sub-Saharan Africa development aid per year. It crossed $1bn in the 60s, and has increased steadily to over $60bn/yr today. All those dollars go through various middlemen and NGOs, all of which have a vested interest in preserving those flows.

Development aid and charity fundraising is typically not themed around "Hey, they're doing pretty ok, but just this one more push and they'll be even better off!" It's themed around starvation, famine, death, oppression, murder, dreaded diseases, uncontrolled civil war, genocide. Nobody ever came to my church to gather money for a cause and talked about how basically-ok things are. They talk about how horrible things are.

Those activists and charity groups are the dominant players in controlling US coverage of Africa. African states themselves have either been incapable or uninterested in writing and publicizing books about how great things are in Africa after the independence hangover set in.

I read the NYT Sunday Book Review most weeks, and there's often an African author somewhere in the list, rarely are those books upbeat comedies; a technically well written book by any African "exploring the intersections of race, religion, gender and oppression in the author's native..." While we don't get the African Tucker Max or something like that. The books from African topics/authors I read in undergrad were things like The Pickup (SA illegal immigrants), Things Fall Apart (Itself a wonderful book but about the downsides of colonialism), Machete Season (Rwandan Genocide).

George Clooney et al can always cash in on publicizing something bad happening somewhere in Africa for Human Rights Activist street cred; the last time celebrities put effort into publicizing well developed Africa was, what, The Rumble in the Jungle?

Compare to Asian countries that have specifically put effort into enhancing their image abroad.

This along with thier army of progregressive allies who need to make sure that the blame for any set-back lands somewhere other than leftist economic and social justice policies.

It's a true babtist-and-bootlegger coalition.

Unironically yes.

People here keep accusing me of being overly contrary, or snarky but a this is legitimately what i believe.

I believe that the reason black-pilled progs seem to gravitate towards hbd and fascism is that its safer for thier egos than the alternatives.

Are those friends fans of Steve Sailer?

Somehow, I doubt they’re concerned about curbing the excesses of affirmative action.

It's the same in Africa that it is in America, where I have friends that tell me racism has increased in the past twenty years despite anti Black racism being in quite obvious decline.

I (African immigrant to Canada) just had a totally surreal conversation with my sister (also immigrated to US but was born there and moved back as a child) about how the US sucks to live and racism is everywhere. Miami is apparently horrible cause DeSantis, the cops constantly bother you for being black and you might die. Keep in mind: this is the child of an African migrant who came to the US as part of a diplomatic mission making upper-middle class money.

I didn't even know where to begin. She has an alternate cultural heritage (African parents are...skeptical of black American narratives*), if she got this big a dose of it I can only imagine what others are getting.

* It's very amusing to watch them talk around it - "she started following...those people. And you know how they can be".

African parents are...skeptical of black American narratives

I’ve noticed this and it amuses me endlessly that the most prejudiced people against African Americans are… other blacks. Jamaicans are often even more prejudiced.

Never ask a Nigerian his opinion of his daughter potentially dating an ADOS man.

I don't think that racial tension between white and black people is the main issue in South African politics. Even when it comes to racial conflict, tension between Indians and native South Africans around Durban and labor tensions between black South Africans and migrants from elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa in Joburg and elsewhere have been more salient in recent years.

The ANC finds itself sandwiched between the DA to the right, which is the party of white and cape coloured (longstanding biracial) South Africans, and the EFF to the left, which is indeed openly racist against whites and Indians but whose primary message is about the ANC's corruption and far-left economic policies/redistribution.

Archive link for the paywalled article: https://archive.is/6WOew

There are very few paths more predictable than communists causing economic failure and deciding that the kulaks are to blame.

Kulak failing economics, and deciding to blame the communists?

You use that word but i do not think it means what you think it means.

Which...which one?

Kulak

Oh. Yeah, I was making a half-assed joke referencing KulakRevolt.

Oh ok, now im feeling kind of dumb for missing that.

I thought he was referring to our local poster. It was a joke.

To be fair that is a reasonable assumption. Shame on me for assuming we were discussing the historical example.

What sort of political options on the ground do radicalized youth like Mr Vawda have?

The almost openly genocidal EFF?

Let the record show that DA has a higher vote share than EFF, and their policies are likely to be considered reasonable by people here than the ANC or EFF. DA has 84 seats in the National Assembly, EFF has 44. (ANC has 230).

And I believe the ruling party, the ANC is also closer to that now than is good?

Closer, yes, but they seem to understand that actually oppressing the whites will be detrimental to their Swiss bank accounts and Vancouver apartments.

I don't know honestly how they're on genocidal rhetoric. Probably far less than Malema, otherwise he'd not be the radical.

All I gathered from the news is ANC is okay with massive corruption, has an almost seamless connection with organised crime and has a policy of moving squatters into voting precincts where they'd like more votes.

It's been losing support gradually though.

They've been losing support but they are seen as too conciliatory towards whites. The guy who leads ANC is one of the richest black elites in the country. EFF will turbocharge South Africa's descent into Zimbabwe. However, I ultimately think it won't be allowed to happen since even Western countries put pressure on ANC to tamp down the flirtation with overt black racism.

Pompeo even publicly warned SA over "appropriation without compensation" of white wealth that was making the rounds within ANC circles. The Biden admin doesn't seem to mollycoddle them either. SA has an important position for the world's mineral markets, which is why I suspect there will be far greater pressure to maintain the status quo compared to what we saw in Zimbabwe.

“I cannot guarantee the future. I am not a prophet. I said that if things don’t change, there will be a revolution affecting all of us – and that will include me and black people in suburbs. Those rising up from townships will accuse us of abandoning them in squalor and in poverty. We will all be in serious trouble.”

“It may not be me [calling for the slaughter of white people]. But it could be me. What will necessitate such a thing? I can’t guarantee I can’t or won’t call for the slaughter of white people. But why would I make a pledge to say I definitely won’t call for that? I won’t do it.”

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, even more intense ethnic conflict.' I suppose this goes to show the power of nationalist feeling - it can override all other considerations.

I think this also highlights the importance of HBD. Some people on this forum have disputed its value, saying 'so what do we gain in the real world from this knowledge'? We'd gain useful information about the destiny of states that go from white rule (indigenous fighter jet programs, first heart transplant, nuclear program) to black rule (mass unemployment, constant power outages, ludicrously high crime/murder rate). We'd know it was unlikely that South Africa, along with Brazil, would be a meaningful part of BRICS, the source of future world economic growth. Useful investing information! And we'd know that since the situation in South Africa was very unlikely to markedly improve, future racial conflict is likely as the economic gap between black and white remains.

I mean, South Africa was once capable of big projects, but it has never been a nice place to live for the black majority, and it had serious crime and unemployment issues even under apartheid.

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, even more intense ethnic conflict.' I suppose this goes to show the power of nationalist feeling - it can override all other considerations.

It's more of a "setting your house on fire to warm yourself", which is an obviously bad idea unless you are very, very cold right now.

It would be better if hbd didn’t need to be taught. It was just vaguely understood enough. But with the left saying every outcome difference it makes talking about hbd more important to prevent policy mistakes. S Africa would be better if for the most part they just let whites rule. Now you have the globalist saying everything is racism which makes their lower class believe the reason they are not getting ahead is oppression which then leads to ethnic conflict.

The thing is once you start thinking about hbd you start seeing it everywhere.

If I went to some Harvard economists policy symposium on Africa they would have all these fancy theories on what should be done. But non of them would incorporate hbd into it.

I think this also highlights the importance of HBD.

If anything, I'd say it demonstrates the exact opposite.

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, and even more intense ethnic conflict.'

It just goes to show that culture matters.

How convenient, it's just the culture. Will you also argue that culture can make a chihuahua into a hunting dog? Will an improved culture of running put Europeans at the top of the 100m sprints? Will changes to black culture mean they start getting many Fields Medallists or STEM Nobel Prizes?

Genetics is real. Evolution is real. These things will remain real regardless of what you think about them, that's the beauty of material reality.

Will you also argue that culture can make a chihuahua into a hunting dog?

It takes culture to even determine that there should be "hunting dogs" at all, and to start the project of breeding them. We are the product of the cultures of yesterday - who they decided to reward, what traits they regarded as high-status, etc.

Who would have thought in 100 AD that at some point the world's top scientists would be from Britain and Germany?

The Germans often inflicted crushing defeats on the Roman Empire (most famously at Teutoburg but in many other battles), persuading Rome that they shouldn't try to conquer that territory. If the armies of sub-Saharan Africa obliterated two entire American or British divisions that would be very strong evidence that they were peers of British or American civilization.

Furthermore, there has been considerable demographic change in Britain since 100 AD. Anglo-Saxons weren't even there yet.

The German victories over the Romans happened back when despite huge differences between the two sides, they were not very different in military technology. So the German victories over the Romans cannot be directly compared to modern clashes between European and African armies. An African army of the ancient Roman time period would probably have defeated a Roman army in some cases too, especially with the advantage of terrain such as the Germans had at Teutoburg.

The Romans respected German bravery and military prowess, but I think that very few Romans of that time period would have thought it anything but extremely unlikely that the backwoods savages east of the Rhine would eventually lead the world in science and technology.

To me it seems that the Koreans genes have sharply diverged around the mid 1950-s. So is with the German genes in the mid 1940s

North Korea has excuses. Being cut off from world markets and having your trading ships stolen by the US does causes problems with energy production, as does 70 years of Stalinism. Maintaining an extremely large military with a nuclear missile program does distort their economy.

What excuse does South Africa have?

What excuse does South Africa have?

The same that Moldova, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia have despite being lily white? Corruption and incompetence sometime in tandem with the case of south africa a bad case of revanche desire that couldn't be either ignored or satisfied.

People that win power and people that best use power is two different sets. Especially if the formerly oppressed majority don't have the administrative capacity to run the country. So everyone in power started stealing - the same happened in every slavic country in the eastern block. We couldn't fall as far as south africa not because we were smarter but because EU invested quite a lot in us and they just didn't want too much chaos on the borders.

I don't think that the majority of SA problems are because of the IQ gap between the populations. There are enough black people there to produce equally smart as number and IQ people as the indian and white minorities

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I can see you're being facetious. I'm pretty sure that outside of some HBD strawmen, nobody claims that only genetics matters for group outcomes. Unlike the mainstream narrative, we simply claim that it's important and claim trying to analyze and predict outcomes without even considering genetics is a doomed endeavor. It certainly leads to stupidity like the endless hunt for ever more subtle systemic racism (racism of the gaps, as I prefer to call it), when genes-blind attempts to mitigate the disparity fail.

Am I? In history we have couple of unwilling experiments when a nation is split in half by culture. But we also have the formation of ethno states of Europe with massive population swaps after wwI and the fall of ottoman empire (and even before that - 1860-s/70-s). And until communism came the slavic ethnostates were chugging along somewhat nicely and in pack and catching up to the western european societies. Something that we couldn't reproduce after the fall of the iron curtain. Of course big part of the old elites were slaughtered, but they were also slaughtered during ottoman times.

I believe in HBD as in your genes influence your IQ, but when I look around the world to me it seems that the culture matters quite more on a state level.

I can see how lower average IQ can easily cripple a state if you don't produce enough talented people to run the place, but from mine first hand experience - it is corruption that matters much more.

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Yes it's the culture. The same country, comprised of the same people, and subject to the same material and economic constraints can be a dynamo under one regime's leadership and a complete basket-case under another's.

Ironically your dog example only reinforces my point, you really should have chosen a Pomeranian or a Yorkie because chihuahuas are hunting dogs. The material reality is that the difference between Paris Hilton's Purse Puppy and a Mexican Rat-Catcher is in the upbringing rather than the breed.

Chihuahuas are not meaningfully hunting dogs - they're tiny! A quick search will show this. They lack the physical qualities needed for hunting, it's not what they're for, not where their comparative advantage lies. That's why they're not routinely listed as hunting dogs. Catching rats is not what people mean by hunting.

South Africa worked relatively well when it was run by whites and works poorly now that it is run by blacks. That's not a cultural change, it's a change of who is in control. If it was a cultural change, what was the cultural change? If the cultural change that caused the deterioration is 'a popularization of the idea of letting blacks run the country' then what use is the concept?

Dachshunds are also tiny, and yet the name means "badger hound" and they were explicitly bred that way in order to get down in badger warrens and drag those ferocious pests out by the entrails.

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Chihuahuas are not meaningfully hunting dogs - they're tiny!

And yet they hunt.

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Control doesn’t imply culture. Just because the right decisions were made previously doesn’t mean culture engendered those decisions.

It sorta does. Will to power is a cultural variable.

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Can you please elaborate on your reasoning here? We have a situation that looks to be a total confirmation of HBD premises - the predictions that HBD theories would make on this topic have been proved correct, and you view this as evidence that HBD is wrong? I'm not trying to be glib here, I really cannot understand your reasoning. It also looks like you forgot to include the > for the second quote as well.

Can you please elaborate on your reasoning here?

I will try.

HBD as typically expressed here on theMotte is a strong normative belief in biological determinism. This believe is in turn used to justify opposition any cultural or social intervention that isn't explicitly configured along racial and intersectional lines.

"it's all genetics" they'll say, "teacher quality has pretty much zero bearing on educational outcomes" they'll say, and these claims will be used to explain why teaching black kids to read is a waste of time, and why rationalists need to make dysgenics a priority. [To be clear this isn't a straw man, it's the baseline] (https://www.themotte.org/post/349/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/63701)

HBDers dismiss pro-social behavior as stupid and counterproductive and when this leads to poor outcomes, they blame the melanin content of the other guys skin rather than a result of the defect-defect equilibrium that they've been actively rooting for.

What we are seeing in South Africa now is a failure of basic civic structures and trust, this has fuck all to do with skin color but it does have a great deal to do with social cohesion.

The skin color of the leadership seems pretty important to SA.

There are some caveats to full HBD. North Korea, East Germany, etc. These show that poor government can hold good populations back. SA is an example of a good minority government even benefiting a probably less talented country as a whole. But also demonstrates a soft-HBD possibility that there exists certain populations that are incapable, or at least less capable of good governance in a democracy of democracy adjacent regime.

The skin color of the leadership seems pretty important to SA.

And yet somehow less important than whether the leadership are a bunch of Marxists.

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HBDers dismiss pro-social behavior as stupid and counterproductive and when this leads to poor outcomes

HBD recalibrates what we ought to consider pro-social behavior. The mainstream "we should all mix until we are all a shade of brown so we can focus on our Constitution and Conservative values and put all this race stuff behind us" perspective is the anti-social perspective. Just because it gets you more praise from an adversarial elite does not mean it is pro-social behavior. "White people have no racial identity in a meaningful sense, and whites have had no ethnically-particular influence on America" is not pro-social, it's anti-social.

Someone who understands HBD also understand pro-social behavior to be just that: behavior that improves the quality of society. Tripling down on race denial and ignoring the elephant in the room of dysgenic spiral is anti-social behavior even if it's expected in polite society.

HBD as typically expressed here on theMotte is a strong normative belief in biological determinism.

These aren't strawmen, but they are weak men. Biological determinism obviously falls to North/South Korea. And yes, there are better and worse ways to teach kids to read and teachers prefer the worse ones. None of that means there aren't genetically dumb and genetically smart kids, and that this matters a lot. Nor that some populations are on average a lot smarter, and this matters too. Even if Communism (or totalitarianism in general, but Communism has certainly been the most successful form) is a debilitating disease that neither the high nor low IQ can always resist.

HBDers dismiss pro-social behavior as stupid and counterproductive and when this leads to poor outcomes, they blame the melanin content of the other guys skin

This, on the other hand, is a strawman.

Biological determinism obviously falls to North/South Korea.

"Biological determinism" does not mean "nothing else except biology has any effect". By your reasoning nothing whatsoever is biologically determined. "The difference between an oak tree and a cow is not biologically determined since you can burn them both and the piles of ashes look pretty much identical."

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these claims will be used to explain why teaching black kids to read is a waste of time

Teaching black kids is clearly NOT a waste of time. Trying to teach black kids as we currently do in many if not most majority black schools IS CLEARLY a waste of time

I find this very surprising, because I consider myself a fairly strong HBD believer and none of this matches to what I actually believe.

This believe is in turn used to justify opposition any cultural or social intervention that isn't explicitly configured along racial and intersectional lines.

I've found that the HBD "position" on issues like this is more that as g is unevenly distributed among population groups, that it will naturally manifest as a difference in outcomes even in the absence of explicit racial discrimination. It isn't that teaching black kids to read is a waste of time, but more that recognising that as a group they're going to need different environments, teaching styles and expectations to thrive - and that any plausible interventions that are designed to bring them up to the same standards as another population with a different g distribution curve are going to fail. This can definitely lend support to the argument that black people and white people should have separate education systems, but not that "teaching black kids to read is a waste of time". The closest I can come to seeing that argument in HBD is to use it as a justification, i.e. "It's going to be expensive to educate a separate, low-performing population with differing requirements and aptitudes, so why not just not have that separate population instead and save money?" - but that's not really the fault of HBD itself.

HBDers dismiss pro-social behavior as stupid and counterproductive and when this leads to poor outcomes,

This one really mystifies me - unless you think that pro-social behavior consists of affirmative action, diversity officer sinecures and well-meaning but fatally flawed rectification efforts. HBD doesn't really have anything to say on pro-social behaviour, and the closest I can come to understanding your position here is "HBD says that certain interventions are useless, but I don't think they're useless, ergo HBD is bad".

What we are seeing in South Africa now is a failure of basic civic structures and trust, this has fuck all to do with skin color but it does have a great deal to do with social cohesion.

I don't think that's actually the case. To the best of my knowledge, the HBD position on South Africa would be something along the lines of "Many of the economic and governmental mechanisms, frameworks and bodies set up to manage and organise SA society require a certain baseline level of g in the population, alongside certain heritable qualities in temperament (differing levels of MAOA-L alleles etc). When the administration of society was handed over to a population which did not meet what are effectively the human capital prerequisites, the result was a slow disintegration of the prosperity and social capital accumulated by the prior administration." That matches incredibly well to the outcomes we're seeing, and it isn't a particularly novel view either.

You're right when you say that there's a failure of basic civic structures and trust, and this does technically have fuck-all to do with skin-colour, but that's because skin-colour isn't actually what HBD cares about. In fact your position there fits very neatly into the HBD framework - I feel very confident saying that if you gave the entire black population of South Africa the Michael Jackson skin-colour treatment, the outcome would be identical in all the ways that matter.

Imagine looking at the state of South Africa and thinking 'what this country really needs is more brain drain, capital flight, international isolation, and even more intense ethnic conflict.'

How does believing in HBD equate to wanting any of that? HBD is a descriptive theory; understanding that the differential in human capital between the white minority and the black majority does not suggest any particular course of action or policy recommendation for the country. In fact, the knowledge that the current precipitous decline in material and cultural standards is a direct result of the dispossession and disenfranchisement of whites can easily lead to a belief that the country needs more international investment and intervention by foreigners, given that it’s blindingly obvious that the native blacks are not ever going to be able to maintain anything close to the first-world standards that prevailed in the country during apartheid.

It's not descriptive at all. HBD as it is espoused by yourself, @RandomRanger, @Folamh3, @self_made_human @SecureSignals Et Al is not about describing a position it's about justifying a position. It is normative through and through.

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I don't recall ever endorsing HBD, except if you're referring to my belief that IQ is mostly genetic rather than environmental (i.e. a descriptive stance).

I'm pretty sure that I've never claimed that HBD itself is normative. I consider it both true and useful for the purposes of further policy choices, in the same manner that 1+1=2 being true has downstream consequences in the field of economics.

Obviously, HBD is relevant because it can justify or refute a position. I think what you mean is that our "post-modern racism" came first, and we just cling to HBD to justify something we already wanted to believe, and that was partially true at the beginning although probably not in the way that you think...

My politics pre-HBD were probably closest to yours among anyone else in this community, of a broadly libertarian-conservative persuasion. Believe me when I say I understand where you're coming from because I used to think exactly like you in many ways (I know that's insulting, sorry, but I mean it).

My interest in HBD was initially, admittedly, because I saw it as bolstering some pervasive criticisms of Free Market idealism:

  • HBD sinks the theories that persistent wealth inequality and inequality in various social outcomes is driven by market failure, or aftershock effects of racism.
  • HBD provides a strong anti-welfare argument in the presence of open borders (yes, my initial interpretation of HBD pegged it as an argument against Welfare rather than an argument against immigration/open borders).

Given that the chorus of Systematic Racism was in a massive crescendo post-2016, HBD sparked my interest because it seemed plausible and to provide the best libertarian-compatible (or so I thought) explanation for those patterns of social behavior.

Of course, though, that didn't last long as @DaseindustriesLtd recently described, accepting HBD as true and taking a few steps beyond questions of economic efficiency quickly led to a broad, systematic collapse of my previously held beliefs (again, which were basically aligned with yours).

On Dissident Right Telegram I recently saw an informal poll with a decent sample size indicating that about 50% of the respondents previously identified as libertarian, so my experience is likely common among those in that sphere.

On one level, you're right that interest in HBD was motivated by an attempt to bolster a political viewpoint, but at the time it was as a defense of moderate system values against the Systematic Racism rhetoric which exploded post-2016, rather than motivated by an a priori desire to be a political dissident, which was unimaginable at the time. I know you don't want to believe that our political beliefs followed our acceptance of HBD rather than the other way around, but that was certainly my personal experience.

Thank you. I despise the subtle consensus-building here about the Imperatives of the Implications of Noticing, but I didn’t have the words to say it.

Absolutely, HBD is simply a fact, what policy you wish to enact about it depends on your ideology.

A white supremacist might crow at the evidence showing their superiority and demand extradition of underperforming minorities.

A woke person (who miraculously comes to accept it), might still want AA or desire that the topic be suppressed so as to prevent the former from winning in the court of public opinion (this might already be the case, at least for some of the smarter HBD deniers).

Me? I see it as a glaring reason we need to work on somatic or germline cognitive enhancement, so that skin color and other phenotypical features become utterly uncorrelated with performance, in the same manner that the paintjob of a F1 car doesn't really change its performance. (Barring brand liveries of course, I'm sure some teams have better cars and drivers)

Me? I see it as a glaring reason we need to work on somatic or germline cognitive enhancement, so that skin color and other phenotypical features become utterly uncorrelated with performance, in the same manner that the paintjob of a F1 car doesn't really change its performance. (Barring brand liveries of course, I'm sure some teams have better cars and drivers)

I have some unfortunate news for you: the face predicts the brain. The appearance of one's face is derived to a significant degree from the neural crest, and differences between brains actually do lead to differences in faces in such a way as to make it possible to accurately determine a wide variety of mental and personal qualities about people from their face. Just looking at someone's face gives you enough information to make fairly reliable predictions about their political affiliation, levels of dominance, kindness, sexuality, trustworthiness etc. While skin-colour might be something you can arbitrarily adjust (and albinos do make the case that this is possible), facial features do actually reflect the brain behind them in significant ways. So while you might be able to change skin-colour with no particularly long-lasting consequences, those other phenotypic features are going to be an issue.

I hardly see this as an insurmountable problem, especially when more advanced plastic surgery makes aesthetics entirely a matter of choice. It all seems tractable to me, but then again I'm not overly beholden to the human form, if the cost of raising everyone to as close to the maximum intelligence possible requires sacrificing some facial diversity, I couldn't care less!

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The EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters), a party founded by Julius Malema, who was expelled from the ANC for being far to radical.

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