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The point of HBD is to get rid of the currently dominant framework in society. Normative equality with factual inequality is ridiculous. Most would agree that the idiot/drug-dealer/robber deserves worse outcomes than the Nobel prize winning family man.
The current system pretends that 'investing' in lower quality people will increase their quality. If we shuffle around welfare policies and make more investments, we'll eventually have everyone be really high quality and it will all be harmonious and great. Of course there are various ethnic resentments and greed that really motivate things but officially, that's what the explanation is. That's the source of legitimacy.
HBD explains why the investment doesn't work. It shows that you might make marginal changes on the edges but that fundamentally low-quality populations will remain low-quality. It shows that there's no end to this 'investment', that it's actually a tax on efficiency, meritocracy and society generally. Prosocial people might pay for an investment to improve all of society but few are going to throw money down the drain when it's guaranteed not to work and actually creates problems. The beginning of blankslatism was founded on scientific fraud for this very reason - they fiddled with the figures of skull measurements so it looked like their opponents were lying, evil racists. First you establish the facts, then you explain how your policy solves the problem, then you purge the old guard of nonbelievers, then you implement it.
HBD will show the danger in taxing the most capable while subsidizing the least capable. I know a bunch of really clever, productive people - zero children, one child, zero children, two children... Very few have more than three. Meanwhile you see single mothers on welfare with a brood of children, statistically of much lower quality. Consider how sex and reproduction are considered among society's elite. Sabatini was this genius researcher with one son who's been impoverished and excluded from his work because he dared have consensual sex with a woman. HBD would say we need lots of this, that the best should be reproducing the most. https://www.thefp.com/p/he-was-a-world-renowned-cancer-researcher?s=w
Blankslatism is a huge drain on group efficiency, understanding HBD increases efficiency. Even if blankslatist ideology can't be voted out, it does go against the structure of the universe. Those groups that are less blankslatist will get a competitive advantage. If we don't vote it out, then the Chinese army will. If not them, then some other force.
@aqouta - apologies for the ping, but we were discussing HBD recently. What's your assessment of the argument he's making here?
No worries about a ping, it's good to have another context to continue from.
I think @RandomRanger drawing some conclusions from HBD that make sense if you add some other values like that society's purpose is to do something like maximize capabilities that I don't really hold, or at least don't strongly hold. You'll see they don't even mention race, this is just the Idiocracy argument.
It does seem like our heavy investments in educational interventions could at least be better spent even going to improve the lives to those they're trying to uplift if we were a little more realistic and separated out the most gifted students with impoverished backgrounds for tracks and gave the less talents of all races something like a comfortable life. It doesn't strike me as particularly compassionate to spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to teach less gifted students subjects that they aren't capable of. In fact that seems quite humiliating, it makes the failing more personal if we assume that they're capable but some personal failing is causing them to fall short. Those resources could go towards making sure they have adequate housing and that their neighborhoods are safe. There is no reason our less gifted can't lead dignified lives. I suspect that because of HBD those living dignified but not demanding lives will differ in racial proportions to those living impactful lives. I think it will probably have different proportions of red heads and heights as well for much the same reason.
As for @Capital_Room's longer post, I find it pretty unconvincing. Yes, I know that those people are obsessed with disparate outcomes. No, I don't think that this is reasonable justification for racial discrimination. It's just the argument for Harrison Bergeron given without candor.
Have you read Chris Arnade's Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America? It's a pretty good book, and this is one of its key points. (There's also some bits about getting help or services — particularly the passage about waiting rooms — that really resonated with my personal experiences.)
Except, of course, they don't need to convince you it's reasonable, they just have to have convinced EEOC bureaucrats, judges, DEI departments, and so on, and they'll force it on everybody whether you agree or not.
Speaking of which, I remember when we studied that in school, and the teacher argued that the titular character is actually the villain of the story, and that Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers is meant to be the hero.
This is all technicality. We still live in a democracy, these people serve at our collective pleasure. All sorts of things have been the law carried out as written, been unjust and overthrown. Step one is to defeat the idea in the public arena, the rest follows.
And I disagree with both of these. Our "democracy" is a sham, and "these people" are fully insulated from the electoral process.
Then this conversation is pointless.
By "this conversation," do you mean you and I talking, or do you mean the entire discussion as to what motivates the "equity set"?
Us talking. To be clear I don't think it's true that our democracy is a sham, but that's a very large subject and if it's the difference of our beliefs I don't currently have the time or interest to crack it open. For the most part it seems to me like the electorate gets what a large majority wants and is willing to loudly hinge their votes on. If the demand and anger was there to destroy the equal outcome status quo then it would fall.
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