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Exactly what it says on the tin.
More effort than this, please.
I'm not much more clearly I can state it.
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That's not helpful.
Let me clarify. What normative beliefs do you see HBD as being?
HBD posters on theMotte generally fall into two broad categories, strict bio-determisnists, and reflexively contrarian intersectionalists/identitarians. Both consider evaluating individual people on the basis of race/ethnic membership to be the "correct" / "rational" means of understanding human behavior and both deeply resent the Anglo/American traditions of individual responsibility, agency, and merit. They derisively refer to the norms of equality before the law and evaluating people on the basis of individual ability/merit enshrined in the US Constitution as "blank slatism" and it is the destruction of these norms that is their primary motivation.
I thought people were reacting to the woke reverse discrimination policies and systemic racism discourse that are driven by the argument that because "blank slatism" is obviously true, we need to be obsessively following societal outcomes by race and interpret any disparity as necessary proof of racism. Charles Murray says this is the reason he wrote Facing Reality, the guy Hanania is chiding claims that the woke "equality thesis" leading to unending recriminations about white racism as long as outcome disparity remains is why he's writing his stuff.
Most people seem like they would be happy to go back to a 1990s style color blindness detente, assuming it was applied evenly. You don't talk about race and intelligence publicly and you don't do racial grievance identity politics. What we got instead is that people took "there are no racial differences in intelligence" as the implicit uncontroversial truth, and drew up the whole intellectual edifice of systemic racism from that. What this has already cashed out in practice has been a complete travesty of "evaluating people on the basis of individual ability/merit", and this shows no sign of stopping. People just go "what can you do, we must keep fighting against systemic racism until it goes away".
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Okay, I think I would generally say that I accept some form of HBD, but reject everything you just said.
I think different groups have different traits on average, and that some part of the variance is probably due to genetic variation. That's all.
I'm not a strict biodeterminist; environment, culture, etc. matter too.
I'm not an identitarian, I don't think it's important for most groups to cultivate racial identity (cf. Gal 3:28); there are far more important things.
I do think it's rational to make judgments based on race, in the same way (but to a much, much lesser degree) than you might make judgments based on sex, but in both cases, those judgments are mostly only relevant before you get more data—you learn more by directly observing than by priors.
I am heartily in favor of Anglo-American norms of responsibility, agency, and merit. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that I think differences in racial averages are worth talking about (at least, when discussing policy): because they're often used as evidence that the system of responsibility, agency, and merit is actually racist, acknowledging that there are differences helps to defend the best parts of the system we are in. As it currently exists, it's often legally problematic to test for qualifications, because different races do worse on it on average, leading to the dropping of tests and less merit across the board. It would be better to just be a meritocracy and accept that the racial distribution will be more uneven than currently.
I see blank slatism as something distinct from equality before the law, and evaluation based on merit. The latter two I am in favor of, the former I think is incorrect.
What I mean by that is, yes, there are genuine differences between people. (Shocker, men and women are not the same.) But that doesn't at all mean we should drop merit or equality before the law.
Perhaps I'm unique in this, but my sense was that many people who would say that they affirm differences between racial populations are pro-merit, though that's certainly not true of everyone.
Do you also find me repugnant, and mostly making normative claims?
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Wait, what.
Evaluating individuals as individuals, independent of any group affiliation, is definitely my preferred policy and personal approach. Equality before the law and focusing on individual ability/merit would mean no affirmative action and gut DEI. Bring back meritocracy!
“Blank slatism” leads to creating government interventions around race or gender that do not reflect reality. “Systemic racism” and “heteronormative patriarchy” have to be invented to explain disparities that are not resulting from actual evidence of discrimination, because classic racism and sexism have already been defeated.
I’m not sure how representative I am of the typical Motteposter who accepts biological effects on group averages, but I doubt you’re portraying things accurately.
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