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Notes -
Richard Hanania writes we need to shut up about HBD.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/shut-up-about-race-and-iq
He defines HBD as believing:
Populations have genetic differences in things like personality and intelligence. (group differences)
Groups are often in zero-sum competition with one another, and this is a useful way to understand the world. (zero sum)
People to a very strong degree naturally prefer their own ingroup over others. (descriptive tribalism)
Individuals should favor their own ingroup, whether that is their race or their co-nationals. (normative tribalism)
And he goes on to criticize 2-4. I tend to agree with those criticisms, but I think it’s fairly common in these kinds of circles to believe a version of 2 focused on ideological competition, not between racial groups, where the social justice left and its preferred policies to rectify group differences can only be defeated by using the facts to explain group differences that won’t be rectified through policy.
While I accept Hanania’s point that the facts frequently don’t matter in which political ideas rise to the top, I still feel like Cofnas has a point (whom Hanania is responding to).
I’m quite philosemetic, for example. The best argument against antisemitism based on observing Jewish overperformance and concluding it’s due to some kind of plot is explaining that intelligence matters and the Ashkenazim underwent a particular history and we now observe them having very high average test scores.
Hanania himself wrote not so long ago about how Jewish personality traits might be needed to fully explain their political interest and influence, beyond just intelligence.
Using biology to explain overperformance but not underperformance seems like a strange compromise.
In much of today’s polite society, if one points out the achievement gap among groups, you’re a racist.
But if one doesn’t acknowledge the achievement gap between groups to justify affirmative action, you’re a racist.
And that’s without even mentioning biology! Watching lefties like Kathryn Paige Harden and Freddie deBoer try to (admirably) describe these kinds of issues while trying to remain in the good graces of polite society is enlightening.
Now, if you could guarantee me a return to a more race-blind culture and legal system if we shut up about genetics then I would take that. But we are on a path towards learning the murky details of (and being able to influence) genetics of both groups and individuals. I don’t think the elephant in the room will stay quiet.
It’s a bit remarkable to read Hanania write:
I think he means, “talk about something publicly” as opposed to at all, but actually I’ll easily bite those bullets and say we ought to understand the disadvantages short men face due to female preferences and that we ought to know just how much we expend society’s resources on the severely handicapped.
Social desirability bias is incredibly powerful and one should choose one’s battles. Polite society in the West went from being quite racist, in ways that didn’t always align with the facts, to correcting hard (thanks, Hitler) to race is only skin deep, which also doesn’t align. And then we got the influence of Kendiism.
Even ignoring immigration (where he doesn’t cover the Garret Jones stance), a lot of US politics comes down to this issue, and HBD was mostly in a quietist tradition the last few decades with little influence for being outside the Overton Window.
I know Trace doesn’t like HBD much, but wow is that like the whole story of his FAA traffic controller storyline. If you listen to the Blocked and Reported episode, he and Jesse aren’t shy about pointing out it was an insane policy to completely jettison meritocracy, but they dance around the general point that if you set a fairly high intellectual bar for a job, it’s going to look like the racists are right. If you allow self-selection, you also very well might make it look like the sexists are right.
The elephant in the room is only growing larger for anyone following the facts. Conceding the present Overton Window is unassailable is I think conceding defeat to the social justice left.
Hanania says:
But that's exactly what has happened, no?
Anyway. I believe that there are very few people writing cogently and effectively on any given topic, and they all know each other, so the bulk of discourse is advanced essentially by conspiracies. I think there's some Discord group where Hanania, Karlin, Yglesias and other such edgy dorks hang out. I suspect that some time ago – maybe around Scott's disappearance – they've concluded that the right is doomed politically (for reasons Trace describes with regard to the GOP) and just decided to cut their losses, concocting some compromise vision and rhetorical tradition. What we observe now is a product of that covenant – bloodless, by-the-letter, superficially reasonable essays that may feel very fresh to a tired culture warrior, but also make flimsy arguments that prove them having engaged in a bit of lobotomy as a gesture of goodwill to the liberal-progressive hegemony they wish to be forgiven by.
Rather than this schlock, I'd rather read Hanania's Discord messages.
btw
https://twitter.com/nooceleration/status/1760765496218026264
Tfw Karlin has no idea who Scott Alexander is.
I'm also not 100% certain about "Scott's disappearance". Do you mean immediately following the doxxing threat until he reemerged a few months later, or do you mean ongoing since the doxxing (ie, metaphorically, old Scott never came back).
Karlin (and Hanania) definitely know who Scott Alexander is, it's probably just not immediately salient to them that he went dark for a few months 4 years ago.
The former; I believe he wasn't literally non-existent back then, after all. I think this was the private start of this Great Reconciliation with the Big Brother discourse, which eventually made its way from the apex (Scottsphere) to the less plugged-in pundits.
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