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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   27820 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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it's all genetics, the children whose parents can afford to send them to private school tend to be smarter than the children whose parents can't; "school quality" and "teacher quality" have pretty much zero bearing on educational outcomes and are almost pure signalling; if you sent all of the private school kids to a public school and vice versa, you would see essentially zero change in educational outcomes in either cohort; and so on and so on.

No Hlynka, as I've told you before, HBDers don't think genetics is the be all and end all.*

The reason that differences in outcome are minimal for a smart kid in a private versus public school is that they both surpass a minimum threshold of quality such that any further difference is down to genetics. Take the same kid and chuck them in the kind of rundown, underfunded schools you might find in the worst parts of India and you're going to see them suffer. If you wish to attribute all the disparities of the world to either genetics or "culture", then that's the latter because it has fuck all to do with genes.

You're so comfortable in your Western skin that you don't notice how almost everything around you is far better than it historically was, say a century ago, and is still better than the majority of this planet.

*Another example of your exasperating tendency to forget anything inconvenient to your narrative. Even my usual desire to adhere to the presumption of good faith and charity here on The Motte has long worn thin for you.

as I've told you before, HBDers don't think genetics is the be all and end all.

And yet HBDers keep arguing the contrary.

To be blunt, you either endorse the linked comment or you don't. Which is it?

To be blunt, you either endorse the linked comment or you don't. Which is it?

Did you stop beating your wife? Yes or no answers only 🙏

I see what you're trying to do, and I am not going to change tack

I am not going to change tack

Have you ever? Not where I've seen it.

You know better than to drop into this level of petty back-and-forth.

In my defense, I did stop before you have reason to do more than mildly admonish me. I'm not kidding about Hlynka being deaf to anything inconvenient for him, he's been misrepresenting my position for like the fifth time over, each one with me in the comments explaining that, no, HBD isn't the claim that all human differences are inherently genetic.

If there's a politer way to point out someone acting in clear bad faith, or in the utter absence of good, it's no longer obvious to me or I've used it up on him ages ago.

Right back at you, link me an example of yourself or some other prominent HBDer arguing that cultural attitudes matter more than melanin content and I'll shut up concede the point.

Nice snide little comment — especially since most HBDer would cite Igbo as being intelligent population that has black skin.

But I do think genes matter more than environment, at least in the modern setting. That doesn’t mean environment doesn’t matter. I’d probably put it 60-70 genes and the balance environment noting the two intersect (genes help build environment and environment reinforced the success of certain genes).

As my comment above expresses, I think that cultural attitudes mattered a lot more than genes 250 years ago. They don't now, though.

If cultural attitudes used to matter more than genes, does this not falsify the claim that "it's all genetics"?

Likewise, what grounds do you have for believing that that cultural attitudes have stopped mattering, and will not matter in the future?

If cultural attitudes used to matter more than genes, does this not falsify the claim that "it's all genetics"?

The phrase "it's all genetics", if you interpret it as "racial differences in outcomes in intelligence and educational attainment in the modern day are more genetic than they are cultural", is true imo. I think a lot of posters here are frustrated with their longtime back and forth with you and are being less than precise as a result, which is pretty understandable.

Likewise, what grounds do you have for believing that that cultural attitudes have stopped mattering, and will not matter in the future?

I mean, 'cultural attitudes' means 'any attitudes that are shared between individuals'. Those obviously matter in many senses, and will continue to. That they don't matter for, specifically, racial differences in educational attainment doesn't mean they don't matter for many other things, e.g. what one does with that intelligence and education.

You know better than to drop into this level of petty back-and-forth.

melanin content

In the comment of mine you linked to, I was discussing the differences in educational outcomes between middle-class students attending private schools and working-class students in state schools - in Ireland. Ireland, as you may be aware, is about 90% white. Almost every student in either the private or state schools under discussion is white. In my experience, if anything the private schools tend to be more ethnically diverse than the state schools, which doesn't impact on their having consistently higher educational outcomes than the state schools. If you think that the comment you linked to proves that I think poor black people are less intelligent than rich white people - well, it doesn't. You are simply, unambiguously wrong.

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