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Notes -
Right-Libertarian anti-racism policy.
I’m sure you’ve all seen a lot of awful anti-racism/diversity/etc policies put in place by leftists; every thread here features at least some examples.
That said, I really don’t like racism. It is one of the most disgusting instances of collectivist thinking: judging an individual for the actions of a group of people that ostensibly contains him; in this case people get lumped together by skin color.
Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?
Suppose you are a CEO of a corporation, what policies do you put in place to ensure there is no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc?
What are your thoughts on contingent-racism: judging people exclusively on their individual capability (obviously this isn't really what nazis or even republicans are doing), and then ending up with a class / friend group / group of employees that's smething vaguely like 33% jewish, 33% asian, 20% white and 20% indian/middle eastern (0% black/hispanic)? Is this racism? Would it be racism to say this has something to do with genes? Because "no discrimination based on skin color in hiring, promotion, etc" would do that (and already has to significant extents) in those places.
You see, I view all the HBD stuff as a motte and bailey thing. Obviously there might be some population level differences, but then still, one has a moral duty not to draw Bayesian inferences out of these statistics and instead evaluate every person on their own merits, disregarding traits like race, nationality or gender. As long as you do that any proportion you get is fine. That said, obsessing over genes or IQ differences or whatever is always sus. It’s a thoroughly uninteresting topic, unless when used to provide flimsy justifications for racist practices. I don’t care whether or not Blacks have better or worse IQ than Whites on average — I’m dealing with people, not with averages.
Close. It's a thoroughly uninteresting topic, unless when used to refute flimsy justifications for racist practices.
Which is commendable, but only as long as you're actually dealing with people, not averages. When one is collecting statistics about racial outcomes, averages matter. If one is concluding racist discrimination from unequal outcomes while denying alternate explanations of average differences, they're likely wrong, and HBD might explain the mistake, so bringing it up corrects a mistake. HBD is only one of several possible confounders, mind, but if you actually want to make sure you're right, you need to consider all the ways you could be wrong.
And if one falsely concludes one racial group is discriminated against, and installs practices like, for example, Affirmative Action quotas while getting the target number wrong due to failing to consider average differences, that is racial discrimination, and that's why HBD can be important to prevent racial discrimination.
(And to be clear, racial discrimination is still a possibility, but you can't know that from just the statistics. You need to either ignore racial outcome statistics, or, among other confounders, consider HBD. Only when you're eliminated all possible confounders (or use an entirely differend method) you can actually conclude discrimination.)
You have a point, I’ll concede you that, but..
There are many ways to argue against affirmative action and I think it’s best to focus on the ones that don’t sound like a scientific references section to mein kampf. I guess by now it should be pretty evident that shilling for HBD ain’t going to win you the hearts and minds of normal people.
Therefore I think the practice of using HBD to refute affirmative action presumptions should also be considered thoroughly uninteresting.
It's true that with an unsympathetic audience you would want to lead with other arguments. But here on The Motte, we should be more concerned with finding the truth more than convincing the audience.
And a true argument being dismissed without consideration of the facts, worse, dismissing the person who brought it up, is an unacceptable state of being. At least here, we can do better than that.
Especially as this is a meta discussion - we're not arguing whether "HBD is true", but what it and discussing it implies. And for what it's worth, I seem to have convinced my audience - you. Your previous comment suggested that bringing up HBD implies bad motivations - you going back on that is a success.
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