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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25632 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Far Right HBD Civil War

Bronze Age Pervert recently xeeted on what he believes in the current infeasibility of HBD politically:

While for the sake of truth I think facts about racial disparities should be discussed, it’s not good at all politically. In fact it’s impossible in the present circumstances. Only a myth of race blindness is workable. You won’t convince some populations that they are inferior by birth and deserve their station in life. You won’t even convince “decent people” from high achieving populations of this. On the other hand discrimination to offset perceived past discrimination or natural inequalities is also felt to be wrong (although I think it would be relatively easy to convince modern populations to accept affirmative action to offset natural inequalities, which is another reason pushing this with a political intention is a big mistake). The only solution in short run is race blindness, stopping and reversing all racialization of politics and society. This isn’t my own preference by the way but a statement on fact. The “HBD position” is an impossibility politically and culturally today. Public hypocrisy is the only way out that will be accepted unless you are ready to go the Nietzsche and Gobineau route (and you are not).

This was controversial with numerous pundits amongst the different spheres of the Right: with Woods, Winegard, and Fuentes having opposing views.

I think the question of politically feasibility of HBD is a point of discussion, in addition to—perhaps more interestingly—the timing of the xeet by Bronze Age Pervert—wat means? Is HBD the path forward? In the chaos of the Isreal-Hamas war and the current anti-woke backlash, is the vitalist Right looking to make themselves more palatable?

Is HBD the path forward?

I'm going to take this opportunity to ask a question that has been bubbling whenever (racial) HBD comes up as a topic on this forum: do HBD advocates equally call for recognition of intra-racial HBD between classes, or does it stop at skin color? To put it bluntly: every single statistic that HBD advocates point to as reasons why Blacks are inferior seem to be as or more severely accurate of poor people. Under an HBD lens, why should I regard poor whites as allies or brothers or anything other than vermin?

Studies of the correlation between education levels that are clear indicators of IQ (ie, a Bachelor's or above) are scarce, possibly because it is almost impossible to actually study because the number of college graduates who actually commit crimes is so tiny as to be nonexistent. Lochner and Morretti found a 30% decrease in murder and assault rates for each additional year of schooling, and that increases in schooling after high school graduation had no discernable impact because the rate of incarceration had already bottomed out. I couldn't find actual data on the topic, but working backward prisoners appear to have less than 4% of the odds of having a Bachelor's compared to the general population.

HBD advocates like Charles Murray and Lee Kuan Yew have both talked about the effects of the Great Sort, that once meritocratic policies are implemented and a majority of working class students have the opportunity to advance through education, the remaining working class becomes increasingly composed of the less intelligent or less conscientious. LKY talks about how labor union leaders in Singapore were initially drawn directly from workers, but this became less practical in recent years because there was no one smart enough to take on a leadership role, so they brought in college educated labor professionals to lead. Murray discusses this as a central thesis of Coming Apart, where he discusses the decline in IQ among working class whites. My own father talks frequently about how when he was young, a lot of white contractors were smart guys who never thought about going to college or just took over the family business, where today young white contractors are dumber and lazier because any white kid who wanted to work and had half a brain got into college.

So if I want to avoid crime, why would I advocate for racial discrimination, and not for economic discrimination? Why not a colorblind meritocracy, where those who fail are harshly cast out regardless of race? Which is rather...what we have in our current Capitalist Hellscape, n'est pas? If you want to escape crime, have money. If you want to have money, have good genetics for intelligence and conscientiousness, work hard, and you'll get a job that will pay you enough to move into a restrictively zoned neighborhood where the criminally inclined will be kept out by high housing prices and lack of public transport.

Why do wignats who trumpet HBD findings convenient for them rail against "elites," elites who clearly have the better gene pool?

The political problem with true HBD, in the long run, is that very few people are located at its apex. If I accept its moral bases, I see no reason to help out people below me on its ladder, whether by skin color or by education. And most people are below someone.

do HBD advocates equally call for recognition of intra-racial HBD between classes

Count me as one of these; but then, I'm the "go back to explicitly acknowledging the hereditary nature of ruling elites" guy. Bring back terms like "good breeding."

Why not a colorblind meritocracy, where those who fail are harshly cast out regardless of race?

Actually a popular position in some of my IRL circles.

Which is rather...what we have in our current Capitalist Hellscape, n'est pas?

No, we don't. Not since Griggs and "disparate impact," anyway.

Ehh, Griggs vs. Duke Power is overrated by HBD/IQ folks. It's not like IQ tests were ubiquitous before Griggs, were they?

I think the more important problem for large companies is that the PR costs might be large and that PR costs are very salient/legible in a way that employee quality is not, at least no in the short-term (and people are hardly paragons of rationality in the long-term). Like, if you were a CEO and added IQ tests, you can be certain of a media backlash and you're also risking subsequent punishment by the board. Even if you're certain it would improve employee quality, that would (a) be hard to prove and (b) even if you could, it would take years...

Smaller firms,

  1. often just copy larger firms (they are often, in a sense, even more risk-averse than big firms, since all the financial risk is borned by the owner)
  2. often aren't super g-loaded anyway (e.g. mom-and-pop shop, contractor laying flooring, etc)
  3. have less principle-agent problems (arguably, IQ-esque tests are most valuable, because they partially displace hiring favoritism) - like, if I'm mostly hiring people I know and have worked with before, the additional value of an IQ test is ~0

Is there any evidence that using IQ tests generated media blackslashes when using IQ tests was legal?

You know - I've done some searching (Google, Google Scholar) and llm-ing (GPT, Claude, Bard), and I can't really find any evidence I would consider strong

  1. in favor or against significant media backlash against IQ testing potential hires
  2. in favor or against the claim that IQ tests were common before Griggs
  3. in favor or against the claim that IQ-testing of potential hires significantly decreased post Griggs

So, I guess I'm gonna revert to agnosticism.

I would consider court case itself as an evidence that media backslashes would not have been enough (or team Left consider media backslashes too weak to effectively discourage employers from using thing with disparate impact).

I would consider court case itself as an evidence that media backslashes would not have been enough

not have been enough to what?

Doesn't the court case merely prove at least one company wanted an IQ test and at least one organization was willing to sue them for it?

not have been enough to what?

deter other employers from using IQ tests for hiring. If there was only individual harmed, probably helping the individual w/money or other would be easier to do.

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