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Notes -
Michael Lind, Eugenicons and the Motte.
Recently, Michael Lind, a notable political commentator and anti-immigration activist, took a stab at what he termed the "eugenicons". The most prominent of which being men like Charles Murray, Steve Sailer, Bo Winegard and guys like Richard Hanania, whose face is prominently plastered over the article.
Linds piece paints these "eugenicons" as being not just factually wrong and out of their element with regards to the science, but also politically ineffective. As Lind sees 'race realism' and the libertarian ethos it allegedly expresses itself through these men to be "utterly incompatible" with broadening the appeal of the modern Republican party to working class Americans of all races. Lind, being a bit of a ‘soft’ materialist in the old Marxist sense, has a preferred view of the public as being in a bit of an economic class struggle. Though his view is far more principled and sophisticated than what you generally find among big L Americans Leftists.
Lind’s article is worth a read, and so are the various responses. The two better ones being from Steve Sailer and Brian Chau
Charles Murray did not respond in length, but remarked after reading Linds article that
Sailer, like Murray, voiced his disappointment that the article by Lind was not composed of anti HBD arguments of higher quality. And took issue with the view Lind expresses with regards to the state of the scientific literature at this time. Maintaining that Lind is far behind the curve on just how heavily the evidence has been falling on the side of HBD in recent years and that he also mischaracterizes some of the HBD positions as strict determinism. Pointing out that social causes have a very clear effect, as he cites his new favorite chart of various fatalities rising in line with the 'happening' of George Floyd.
These are all familiar notes for HBD folks, but they focus on facts and details over the broad stroke narrative. Something Brian Chau points out and extrapolates on. And it’s a worthwhile endeavor, given that someone whose been in the game for as long as Lind is probably not going to have his broader political viewpoint or his fondness for the American working class dissuaded by, as he put it:
It’s a fair position to hold, I suppose, so where does Lind get his ideas from?
As Chau sees it, Lind is working from a presupposition of political representation. That is, Lind sees himself representing the American working class. To that end it is no surprise he dislikes the HBD creed, given it is inherently divisive to the multiracial America. Something modern day classical Marxists have been pointing at for a long while, to little effect as they continue to support mass immigration, unlike Lind.
On that note Lind ties Libertarianism and HBD together, showing just how these two ideas are compatible. As Lind puts it:
This is certainly an observation. I think it would be easy, like Chau does, to point out that of the 4 big “eugenicons” only Hanania is ostensibly libertarian and otherwise poke holes in it. But I think that draws us away from the truth value of the statement as it relates to Lind and his position as a representative of the working class American. In a broad class interest narrative, there is an obvious pathway where the notion of free market success correlates with ‘superiority’. At the very least, if we value success in modern society, and we place some stock in the notion of heritability of traits, we end up with an undeniable truth. The lower classes are inferior to the superior upper classes. But as it relates to the "eugenicons", again, it’s not necessarily a truth anyone of the 4 mentioned, Sailer, Murray, Winegard and Hanania, are guided by politically.
Lind goes too far then, or does he? You don’t have to to go full send Capitalist Darwinism or whatever. Most people have the self reflection to look at themselves as a less than perfect part of a greater whole. Or that would be my view. Except that is the minority view of a National Socialist. So I think, to the extent American politics exist as is represented in media, Lind might be more correct than not here. And if “eugenicons” are not viscerally racist in their soul, I’d argue they do have to contend with the old ghost of “Social Darwinism”. Merely pointing at The Bell Curve and HBD as a truth can’t qualify as just another feather of truth in the cap of HBD folks. In the words of Eric Turkheimer, this truth could rival the atom bomb.
Chau's criticism of Lind is that Lind is not seeking truth but instead seeking to represent a class of people. To that end, if there is a truth that can harm them it’s not his duty to have that truth guide him but to shield the people from it. They are stronger together, class solidarity and all that. And through that lens Chau contextualizes some of Lind’s more extravagant misrepresentations of HBD ‘truths’. It’s simply not Lind's job to represent this truth. Lind is representing a class of people. Protecting both its class interest as well as its dignity, at the very least.
Beyond this you will have to read Chau’s article as he takes broader issue with the worldview Lind expresses.
On the whole I find Lind’s position to be stronger than I had suspected after seeing the "eugenicons" pile on him for the various errors and factual misrepresentations made. So long as Lind is accurately representing the people he feels with, his position will remain strong. Particularly since it is dealing with immediate problems that are likely to result from the HBD 'atom bomb' being released on the public. I had always assumed that biological truths would lead people towards something like ethno-nationalist 'democratic' socialism. But I’m now more willing to believe that America could surprise me if the bomb was dropped on them.
On that note it is not clear to me if Lind’s representing of the multiracial American working class is for its protection or ours.
So, Lind’s argument is essentially that most people can’t be trusted not to misinterpret “overlapping curves with long tails” as “bimodal distribution.”
I’m not sure he’s wrong. Even at what should be some of the smartest employers, like Google, you can’t say the first without being misinterpreted as saying the second, and then subsequently lose your job.
It seems we are caught between two choices on this issue. Either keep political power in the hands of the people broadly and keep lying to them, or scale back who has political power to those that can interpret very simple ideas like overlapping curves.
It’s somewhat of a false dichotomy: “overlapping curves with long tails” and “bimodal distribution” are often pam_theyre_the_same_picture.jpg, especially with natural data.
“Overlapping curves with long tails” can result in bimodal distributions, and bimodal distributions are frequently the result of mixing two overlapping curves, long tails or not. A common case is a bimodal distribution being a mixture of two normal distributions.
That being said, it’d be fallacious to conclude that, if a unimodal (or, at least, non-obviously bimodal) distribution results from the mixture of two populations, that means the difference between the two populations is not significant or substantial. Especially since even modest differences in mean can produce amplified effects on the tails.
As described by the paper linked in the Wikipedia article above, a population mixture between men and women is unlikely to be bimodal in height, despite human height between the sexes often serving as a canonical example for a bimodal distribution in statistics textbooks. And, might I add, its status as a canonical example is probably because the average height difference between men and women is well-accepted, observable, and uncontroversial in spite of there being readily noticeable variance in the heights of both men and women.
The authors suggest a rule of thumb of the difference in mean being greater than the sum of the two population standard deviations for producing a bimodal distribution. Such a difference would be akin to a difference of greater than 30 IQ points for two populations with a standard deviation of 15.
The paper also hilariously (not sure if the authors find it as amusing as I do) Notices that the male heights in a previous study have far more 5’10” and 6’0 men than would be expected relative to 5’11”-ers. This immediately made me think of classic OKCupid dating statistics, where there is a dearth of reported 5’11”-ers due to potential 5’11”-ers rounding up to satisfy the female demand for male height and round numbers. I would remark, "5'11 versus 6'0: the meme to academia pipeline." However, it might actually be "5'11 versus 6'0: the academia to meme pipeline."
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