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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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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.

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

why? Say you own an polygenic testing / embryo selection company that could make anyone significantly smarter by 'obsessing over genes or iq differences'. that sounds interesting.

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

Not that it does, the individual approach is much more practical as seen above. But if "drawing bayesian inferences" or "evaluating groups on merits" was a more efficient way to promote total intelligence or capability - wouldn't that be better than 'measuring every individual', but doing so poorly?

If you work on gene modification then of course it’s your job to do that, I for one can only commend this valuable line of work

I am merely saying that it’a morally bankrupt to apply anything other than the individual approach when dealing with individuals, even if it is not always practical to do so