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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I started writing a post for the culture war thread, and it got longer than I thought it would so I ended up just posting it as its own thread. I know some people don't always see those threads, so I thought I'd post a link here. I'm open to discussing it in either location:

https://www.themotte.org/post/604/the-case-for-ignoring-race

The Case for Ignoring Race

There are two arguments I want to push forward. The first is about ignoring race in your personal life. Ignoring your own race, and ignoring the race of others around you. And the second argument is to ignore race in the policy space. Ignoring race in college admissions, immigration, crime, etc. I also don't want to make the case that only white people should ignore race. I think it is generally beneficial for everyone to ignore race, but I'm guessing that most of the racial identitarians (people who place great importance on racial identity) that are here on themotte are white racial identitarians.

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Summary

Race is clearly a thing that exists. Genetic differences exist across races. The simplest proof is in people's skin pigmentation. However, genetics doesn't have to dictate anyone's destiny. Genetics can be barriers to unlimited possibilities, but your final place within a large set of possibilities is up to you.

And because race and genetics do not fully dictate who a person is, those characteristics do not provide good information about an individual that isn't obtainable in a myriad of other more reliable ways.

No.. SOMETHING IS MISSING FROM THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION.

@self_made_human

Certainly you should avoid being in that situation in the first place

Yes agreed. But you mean being in a situation where you have to pass a black man late at night on a spooky street, and I mean living in a universe where black people are scary. (I mean, you in particular probably agree with me on that too but- this popped to me when you said that.)

@hanikrummihundursvin

It was his DNA

Ok. Then how do we get better DNA?

I'm going somewhere with this I swear. This isn't just transhumanism- this is-

The reason affirmative action is bad is because it is trying to fit an unfit population.

Yes! This is so close to what I want to say! You can't just shove the unfit in random places and expect magic to happen... But as long as you still pressure them to do well in the places you shove them (->this might be a good place to attack<-), you can expect magic to happen. Giraffes didn't get long necks by magic or genetic drift. They got them by breeding with Giraffes with long necks!

My point- what this whole conversation is missing- SEXUAL SELECTION IS METALEMARKIAN On a species-wide level, giraffes DID get longer necks by trying to have longer necks!!! So there is good reason to give races opportunity to aspire towards one another's greatness.

Also, memetic selection is Lemarkian even faster. But that's somewhat evened out by the fact that you and competitors both have a whole planet of well developed memes already at your fingertips when you decide to do something- And is already present in this thread implicitly (cultural differences are memetic.) And- its already factored in. A lot of G seems to be the ability to select the correct memetics from those available.

But this seems to suggest to get to a better answer we need to mate the less smart with the more smart instead of the more smart with the more smart. Why isn’t the latter preferred?

This only presents a problem if you're trying to use inductive reason to model an anti-inductive phenomenon.

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