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One of the less stupid notions to come out of LessWrong was the idea of making one's beliefs "pay rent"
The fundamental problem with HBD as it is typically advocated by dissident progressives and users here on theMotte is that if the hypothesis is correct (and that is a big "IF") the actual benefit/utility to adopting "HBD Awareness" over some flavor of "colorblind meritocracy" will be less than zero. Accordingly I feel that it only appropriate to question why certain individuals/users seem to be so invested in their opposition to "blank slatism". I have my theories but none that are likely to be considered "charitable" or "kind" by the mod team.
Not mod-hatted, but borderline, because you're annoying me.
I modded Incanto below because "Shut up, I'm sick of you" is not a good response to someone who's being tiresome on a subject. But you really are being tiresome, and not because I disagree with you, but because it really looks like every time something even vaguely related to HBD comes up, you have to post some little jab that is clearly meant to provoke the HBDers on the Motte into going after you. Does this give you a smug sense of validation, or are you just spoiling for a fight? I don't know, but it's tiresome.
"One of the less stupid ideas..." "certain individuals" "I have my theories" - this is all weasel-wording to hide your real message which is "I want to openly display my contempt for you people." And as several people have noted, you do it even in the most tangentially related threads just because you have a hammer and you want to swing it.
As for "I have my theories but none that are likely to be considered "charitable" or "kind" by the mod team."That is "I really want to tell you what I really think of you and display my contempt even more openly, but I know I'd get modded if I did so I am just going to handwave in that direction and expect you to understand I'm insulting you even though I'm not technically allowed to do that." Speak plainly, and if you know "speaking plainly" would get you modded, then either keep it to yourself, or figure out how to express what you want to say in an appropriate manner (it's not like people here don't call each other's ideas stupid and evil every day).
Fine, you want me to speak plainly let us speak plainly.
It's not like @Cimafra, @BurdensomeCount, @Hoffmietser, @SecureSignals, or our old friend Oakland Et Al. have been particularly shy about their motives. Thomas Sowell might not have mentioned HBD directly in Conflict of Visions but it hard not to read his "vision of the anointed" in pretty much everything that gets posted on the topic. Personally, the breaking point/scales falling from my eyes moment was when the Wonderlic "Race Norming" scandal came to light in 2019, and the bulk of the users here defended it. On a dime I saw users (including some who are active in this very thread right now) flip from "the data is obvious and supports our conclusion" to "we must manipulate the data to better reflect the truth". This is what might be called in another forum; "saying the quiet part out loud" and it cuts to the quick as It exposes HBD as a normative belief rather than a descriptive one. An argument over "ought"s rather "are"s.
I know I catch a lot of flak for maintaining that Utilitarianism is a stupid and evil ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with human flourishing, but I feel that the discourse surrounding the topic here is an apt illustration of the problem. Once you have gone on the record in defense of lying or manipulating data to achieve your preferred policy outcomes, what reason does anyone else have to trust you? Contra the Sequences, information does not exist in a vacuum, and arguments do not spring fully formed from the either. The proles are not stupid. They recognize that the Devil can quote scripture, and that a liar can tell the truth when it suits them. Thus the fundamental question one must always be prepared to ask is not whether a statement is true or false, the question is "Cui Bono?".
Who benefits from Id Pol, HBD Awareness, and Intersectionality? Who benefits from the dismantlement of Anglo/American norms about equality of opportunity and equality before the law? I can tell you who sure as hell doesn't benefit in anyway. Those who possess genuine individual merit.
You, (that is the mod team) have made it clear my dismissal of HBD as a product of Bay-Area rationalists looking to paper over their preexisting racial and class resentments with a thin veneer of "Science!", is uncharitable and unkind and will eventually see me banned and yet if the shoe fits...
Now, hang on.
At this point, my problem as a moderator with "HBD" discussions in this space is that people are far too quick to resort to shorthanded arguments either way. Part of writing to include everyone is writing to include people who aren't already marinated in decades of internet debates concerning (respectively) "the real and charitably-interpreted science of human group differences" and/or "the historic use of 'Science!' to excuse the oppression of disfavored human groups."
Of course, I can't realistically require every poster to relitigate past issues in microscopic detail in every single post. But right now I think I am seeing the opposite problem more often, where the discussion history between community members is functioning as unnecessary conversational baggage.
I'd really like to see more discussion and less axe grinding, I think is what I'm getting at. You get a lot of leeway as a valuable member of the community and, frankly, as a past moderator. The bans you're eating are not because of heresy against the sociopolitical dogmas of Bay Area Rationalists (of any particular tribe). They are because you sometimes decide that a certain argument is worth burning through some of the goodwill you've accumulated over the years. I have definitely been there and done that. But you're doing it a lot lately, and that is a trend I'd like to see reversed.
I am not mod-hatting this comment as a warning. I am mod-hatting this comment because I am speaking as a moderator, here.
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I don't see what the race norming scandal had to do with lying. As far as I understand it, it isn't facially unreasonable to estimate the past IQ of black people based on the black population mean instead of the general population mean for paying out injury settlements. I don't at all see how this is manipulating the data to reflect the truth. Especially since it's, like, for an injury settlement.
People who possess merit benefit from HBD awareness because if it succeeds 1) they don't have to keep pretending that they can't see the obvious correlations between race and achievement anywhere and 2) don't have to take 'affirmative action'-style hiring practices to hire supposedly high potential but socially disadvantaged minorities who will in fact perform poorly.
Charitably it might be more "trying to have your cake and eat it too" than "lying", but Hlynka tends to be cynical about his opponents. My example in that vein is a certain type of person suddenly defending the Ivy-League's "holistic" recruitment criteria, when someone points out they primarily discriminate against Asians.
It might have been reasonable when settling the first case, for lack of alternatives. Once it becomes routine, I don't see an excuse for not simply testing each athlete at the start of their career.
It might give off a certain "working backwards from a conclusion vibe". Isn't the proper way to draw conclusions about group differences, to measure and aggregate individual results, rather than to say "this here bloke couldn't have been hurt by all these concussions, he was always a dum-dum, because he comes from a group of dum-dums"?
Except that this is exactly what the NFL had been doing since the 70s. The scandal, that is the behavior that users here were defending, was that the NFL got caught artificially lowering the Wonderlic scores of high-performing blacks "to more correctly reflect the baseline" (whatever that means) and (presumably) minimize disability payments to black players.
In other words, about as clear-cut a case of racial discrimination winning out over colorblind meritocracy as one could ask for. That a significant portion of active HBDers on the Motte came out against standardized testing and defended the NFL's behavior is a dead give-away for which side of the "meritocracy" debate they're really on.
I don't remember that debate on themotte, but I feel like this probably isn't an accurate description how that discussion went? I highly doubt the 'HBDers' were defending 'using a group mean instead of individual scores when the individual scores were easily available'
Wasn't that what you just did a moment ago?
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I wasn't paying attention to the story when it was in the news, or was being discussed here. Thanks for pointing it out.
That's fair, and to be clear I'm not holding this against you, but this is why I describe it as a "scales falling from my eyes moment". I've already eaten a couple warnings and a ban for making comments to the effect of "[User] is a lying liar and here's the thread that proves it." which is why I dance around it now.
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You'd get less pushback if you said this out loud. Especially since nothing about this argument you think is so difficult for people to understand is not regularly discussed on this forum and the limits of utilitarianism are commonly understood even by the people who espouse it depending on their utility functions.
Stop going after specific people and go after arguments. This passive-aggressive bullshit is something I expect from Americans, but as someone who tells us all frequently about how he is a member of the warrior caste, your snide jabs and thinly veiled sneers are irritating in the extreme. If you want a fight on the internet, you can get one quite easily without having to resort to these sneers where you pretend to hold yourself privy to some secret of the universe all the stupid rationalists don't get. Nothing is new under the sun, not least of which the things you think other people don't get or haven't considered.
I spoke plainly, before the server reset, about fighting ecological x-risk and climate change by nuking India, and by attachment, any other nation with significant growth potential, with the express goal of making sure that no country ever industrialized again. I was pilloried and given mod warnings, but I was still allowed to express my opinion.
By comparison, "cui bono" is barely even an argument. If you want to speak plainly, then you tell us. You tell us who benefits, and then we can see if that's true in the long or short term. Personally, I have little faith in the ability of anyone at all to plan for long term outcomes, especially if the outcomes are distributed over other people.
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I largely agree with you that your commitment to "Racial Blindness" does require blindness to the reality of HBD. I disagree with others challenging you that they want race-blindness as a matter of policy but they just have an intellectual curiosity in the HBD topic. They aren't racists or bad people, because they want everyone to be blind to race as a matter of policy, they just want themselves to know the truth beneath the collective charade.
I agree with you this position is untenable. You can't really, truly believe "all men are created equal" and internalize HBD. I reject race-blindness on principle, I am going to believe my lying eyes. But I don't reject race-blindness because I'm a bad person, but because I've asked "who benefits from Race Blindness?"
The question "who benefits from Id Pol" is just so extremely easy to answer. Obviously all the groups which agitate for their interests on behalf of their identity and have radically changed culture and policy, to the benefit of their political and cultural power, as a direct result of their agitation benefit from Id Pol.
As far as "who benefits from Race Blindness?", that's a question which equally easy to answer: the people who radically agitate for their own racial interests while simultaneously demanding race blindness for White people benefit from Race Blindness. This encompasses every race except for White people, most notably the Jews who doggedly agitate for their ethnic interests while demanding race blindness from and perpetuating racial animosity towards White people. On the one hand, cats are out of bags and people are becoming aware of this pattern which has dominated culture and academia for the past century (just read the replies!). On the other hand, if you remain willfully blind to something like differences in the distribution of cognitive traits between races of people you are also going to remain blind to that pattern of behavior as well.
This is to say, I think you are correct to code people who accept HBD as intrinsically being enemies of race blindness- they call it a Noble Lie for a reason! If you believe the cause but don't support the Lie that justifies it, then you should seriously consider if this is an ideology you believe in.
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Your personal moral convictions regarding HBD posters don't seem to be especially interesting or important to anyone, and I'm not sure why you would have ever expected otherwise.
Why don't you spend a little bit less time repeating them to an apparently disinterested audience, and a little more time doing things like backing up your ludicrous claims? You stated here that "those were pushing DEI back during the Bush administration have transitioned to pushing HBD now" while in this post last week you said "those Anti-policing pushes have been spearheaded by the same class of people who are spearheading HBD awareness, namely secular progressive Democrats."
I want you to either defend these claims, by which I mean name actual names and cite actual evidence of progressive Democrats "spearheading" and "pushing" HBD, or flatly shut the fuck up and stop lying. I'm tired of watching you have these arguments with your feet firmly planted in Bizzarro World.
Step outside your extremely-online rationalist bubble and look around.
Look at who is pushing "Racial Consciousness", Look at who is arguing that things like colorblindness and standardized testing are "problematic" or "unscientific" and where they are arguing these things. Look at what flags they are flying. Only one of the two mainstream parties in the US has been actively campaigning against meritocracy and in favor of racial discrimination and it isn't the Republicans and they aren't doing it in any of the "red" states.
Oh, so you just call everything you disagree with on the subject of race "HBD" whether the stated reasoning has anything to do with genetics or not. Brilliant. Let me guess, you read their minds and decided you could disregard everything they were saying in favor of your own imagined "real" version of their arguments.
No, progressive Democrats are not HBD advocates. They generally get really agitated whenever anyone brings up HBD as an explanation for anything. Stop posting like anyone else knows or gives a shit about your personal imaginary versions of what everyone thinks.
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No, dude.
It boggles me how a former mod, and someone who still interacts with us all the time (both positively and negatively) can continue to get it so badly wrong. I expect other axe-grinding ideologues to pull out these arguments about how dumb and converged and oblivious the mod team is, but you should know better.
You know we don't ban arguments. We don't ban people arguing HBD. We don't ban people arguing against HBD. You are allowed to say HBD is proof that blacks should be all be sent back to Africa, you are allowed to say that HBD is made-up bullshit, you are allowed to say that HBD is obviously true but we should still blah blah blah. And you are allowed to say that HBD is a product of liberal progressive values emanating from the Bay Area, or rationalists papering over their racial and class resentments. (I personally think that's one of your sillier takes, but whatever.)
Why do you get modded? Because it's not enough for you to disagree with people or tell them you think their beliefs are wrong, or even that you don't think they're being honest about their beliefs. You right here were very clearly trying to goad and bait the people you have a problem with (Cimrafa, BurdensomeCount, Hoffmeister, SecureSignals, etc.). You write in an antagonistic way - "You people are actually a bunch of leftists and you're lying about what you think FIGHT ME" - because you want a fight. And it's that last part - wanting a fight - which keeps getting you dinged. Not your weird version of horseshoe theory or your campaign against HBD. I mean, on the scale of people with obnoxious takes they can't shut up about that the mod team doesn't much like, you are nowhere near the "I wish this guy would just fucking go away" zone. And yet you get modded more often than a lot of the people with more extreme shitty hot takes. Why? Because you keep deliberately going after your enemies because you really, really want to get their goat. (Or maybe because you think Zorba will finally see the light and ban all the people you think we should ban? I dunno.)
The post I made above was expressing my annoyance about "I have my theories but none that are likely to be considered "charitable" or "kind" by the mod team." Yes, it's quite possible your "theories" would not be considered charitable or kind by the mod team, because we don't look kindly on screeds trying to critique someone's beliefs by mapping out their perceived personal shortcomings. If you've got something else, talk about the beliefs.
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Of course some people who espouse HBD are basically white nationalists. And some aren't. You are treating them as one homogenous group.
It's not even very hard to tell the difference; the white nationalists don't like treating Jews and Asians as intelligent.
The most prominent white nationalist publication, American Renaissance, routinely discusses the average Asian IQ advantage over whites’. Other than the occasional contrarian crank like Neema Parvini (who is not a white nationalist, and who, as his name suggests, would not be invited into most white nationalists’ ideal state) few if any of even the most hardcore racialists dispute the data about Asian or Jewish IQ.
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I don't see white nationalists claiming Jews aren't intelligent.
A common Nazi trope was condemning the Jews' "trickery" and "evil cunning" in cheating/inveigling money from "honest but simple" German workers and farmers.
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They also don't like Jews and Asians, period. And it's not that hard to notice.
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That happens a lot actually. Not among HBD people, but actual white nationalists, the kind who like hitler or explicitly say "I want a Christian White Nation".
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And especially, more intelligent than whites.
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