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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28284 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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In a large thread about HBD, this comment https://www.themotte.org/post/877/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/187753?context=8#context was not replied. @OliveTapenade @guesswho @HlynkaCG @Questionmark

Since IQ scores are usually unavailable in large genetic databases, largest studies use "educational attainment" (EA, a variable dimensioned in number of years studied for individual's highest degree). Davide Piffer took polygenic index function derived from European populations and computed its values for some other populations, and plotted them vs their phenotypic IQs.

Of course, using polygenic index on another population than which polygenic index was derived isn't good. But this is bad in a sense that it is not accurate for estimating an individual from that another population (mostly because of linkage disequilibrium) but here we are interested in relative ranking of population averages, and they align fairly well. If using PGI to get another population averages was bad, we could predict it would be produce zero correlations and correlation -1 just as likely as +1. We could have seen bias associated with genetic distance from reference population or bias associated with relative position on PCA chart, but we don't. Maybe Piffer cherrypicked results? If so, why wouldn't be the best response to it is to re-do his analysis and show proper ~0 correlation?

Anti-HBD, what's your response to this? Why do you repeat "legacy of slavery" ad nauseam but ignore what genetics starts to explore? (link about mostly the same: https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/sasha-gusev-wont-answer-basic-questions )

Like @The_Nybbler I am deeply skeptical of educational attainment as a proxy for raw intelligence. If anything it strikes me as a case of affirming the consequent. Simple truth is that I've met too many 60th percentile ASVABs who were demonstrably capable of organizing/supervising complex evolutions involving hundreds of people and dozens of moving parts, just as I've met too many post-grads from prestigious institutions who I wouldn't trust to boil water, to take such claims at face value.

More generally I will reiterate my take from the previous thread. While Thomas Sowell does not address HBD directly I find it hard not to read his "vision of the anointed" in to pretty much everything HBDers post here. The scales falling from my eyes moment was when the Wonderlic "Race Norming" scandal came to light in 2019, and a significant portion of users here defended it. To be clear, The NFL had been collecting Wonderlic score on players since the late 70s, and what they got caught doing was artificially adjusting the scores of high-performing black players downward to change the racial distribution of disability payouts. On a dime I saw users who had claimed to support standardized testing flip from "the data obviously supports our conclusion" to "we must correct manipulate the data to better reflect the truth". This is what might be called in another context; "saying the quiet part out loud" and it exposes the fact that HBD as it is advocated for here on theMotte and more generally amongst rationalists is much more of a normative belief than a descriptive one. An argument over "ought"s rather "are"s.

Yes, I catch lot of flak on this forum for maintaining that Utilitarianism is a stupid and evil ideology that is fundamentally incompatible with human flourishing, but I feel that the discourse surrounding HBD is an apt illustration of the problem. Once you've gone on the record in defense of lying or manipulating data to defend your preferred narrative or achieve your preferred policy outcomes, what reason does anyone else have to trust you? Contra The Sequences and Scott Alexander, 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 when evaluating a statement is not whether a statement is true or false, but "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 does not benefit in anyway. Those who possess genuine individual merit.

If I may –

I suspect (and he can tell me if I am wrong, or unhelpful) is that part of what Hlynka is consistently gesturing towards is that HBD, as a belief, is the sort of belief that a self-anointed ruling class finds helpful because of its Explanatory Power. It is constantly being used to explain why certain government or social programs don't "work."

For the average person this framework is probably not a helpful one compared to something along the lines of the color-blind individualism that I think he is partial to. (Setting aside the fact that good common sense is probably a better predictor than HBD when it comes to keeping one out of trouble, you don't have to believe in HBD to "believe in" FBI crime stats &ct.)

So I think Hlynka's consistent suspicion of people who beat the HBD drum is rooted in the intuition that people who reach for such explanation may be the sorts of people who see themselves as would-be Lords and Masters of humanity, who cannot fail but only be failed. If someone is reaching for HBD, is it because it actually helps them interact with those around them in a charitable and mutually beneficial way or because they're sculpting society inside of their head?

If someone is reaching for HBD, is it because it actually helps them interact with those around them in a charitable and mutually beneficial way or because they're sculpting society inside of their head?

Yes, there is certainly a strong element of this in my approach.

I don't think it's a coincidence that those who seem to be most invested in the explanatory power of "Bio-determisnism" and various other structural "isms" also seem to be decidedly against what one might call "traditional western values". Describing Christianity as a "slave" or "cuck" religion/morality, and leaning heavily on the gay in "fully automated luxury gay space communism".

It does seem like (unsurprisingly, I guess) a lot of people right and left converge on "the Problem with Society is [my pet "structural" peeve], not 'merely' [poor moral choices], and to solve it we will need [new sociological insights and methods] because [traditional cultural and legal incentives] are boring insufficient to the crisis we face."

Which I think is not dissimilar to how things were around 100 years ago, where the communists/fascists/socialists-of-the-chair all had remarkably similar ideas about what was to be done despite vehemently and violently disagreeing with one another.

Which I think is not dissimilar to how things were around 100 years ago, where the communists/fascists/socialists-of-the-chair all had remarkably similar ideas about what was to be done despite vehemently and violently disagreeing with one another.

And they all made the wrong choices, against individualism and merit, (and, unfortunately, there are many things in the free world with similar effect, though to a lesser extent).

I don't think it's wrong to talk about structural problems, you just have to do it with your eyes open, be aware of tradeoffs and complications behind the scenes, etc. Communism is an obvious structural problem. DEI being essentially mandated by the government is an obvious structural problem, that we can (hopefully) one day fix.

Of course, poor moral choices matter too. But the only real way to affect those at an appreciable scale are through things with far-reaching effects, which include structural things.

Any substantial reforms should of course involve cultural or legal incentives.

Does that "wrong choice" include eugenics and the Nazi "merciful death" program, in your view?

Oh, I just meant the overall collectivization, group identity things.

I'm not familiar with the programs in question, but from the name, I assume they're not good, if that's what you're asking?

I think eugenics and euthanasia are concepts worthy of consideration, and the German military defeat in 1945 does not turn them into "wrong choices".

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