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As a black person...I really really really don't want HBD to be true
This doesn't mean I think it's wrong. It's just that I think that the conclusions you'd have to draw from it being correct are just so awful for me.
I view it as nothing short of tragic that a people who suffered so much due to being viewed as inferior, who struggled for so long to be viewed as equals and treated with dignity, who endured all kinds of injustices in the hope that we would overcome...only for science to prove that it was fruitless all along. It's so dispiriting the possibility that all the problems in our community: crime, poverty, ignorance, are intransient. How are you supposed to deal with that without becoming utterly nihilistic?
I'll probably have a longer more essay-type post for next week's thread but I just want to get my raw emotions about it out here before then.
It's just so unfair. It fills me with anger and sadness and rage and I can't stop thinking about it. I don't want it to be true...I don't want it to be true. It's so unfair
This post really gets my troll senses tingling. An account that's less than a week old posting about HBD, which is probably the most offensive topic a leftist would come across. Then starting said topic with "as a black person". Then not really saying much but vague agreement. I could easily see this post being the result of a leftist forum user from some other site saying "Hey guys, I'll go to that place where Nazis justify racism, and pretend to be a black man agreeing with them. Then they'll show us what they REALLY think!!!"
If this isn't the case then I'd suggest posting that essay type post sooner rather than later, as you'll get more interesting answers that way.
Agreed. We seem to somehow be undergoing reverse Conquest's second law...
I suggest we call it "Scott's Law of Witches" after this post. The outgroup refer to it as the "Nazi Bar Problem" but we don't want to promote "Nazi" as an epithet for right-wing views in the large gap between Mitt Romney and the actual NSDAP.
As far as I can tell, the motte is mostly pro-HBD and anti-equal protection laws. That makes us at least fellow travelers to what Nazi means in practice.
I think that a majority of mottians might agree with Scott Alexander that it is likely that the Ashkenazi Jews have some genetic intelligence advantage compared to most other ethnic groups.
"Pro-HBD" seems a weird term to describe that, it makes it sound like people pick their beliefs to signal group membership instead of what they perceive to be true. Like they are fanboys of some sports team.
I believe that the surface gravity on Earth is roughly 9.8m/s^2. I don't like this fact, and think it would be amazing if earth was less dense and had only 2 m/s^2 surface gravity. I would thus be annoyed to be called "pro-gravity".
My relationship to HBD is similar, except that I believe it to be more of a minor quirk than a driving force of history. What we should do about it is that we should try very hard to identify the relevant genes and then CRISPR the hell out of the next generation.
"anti-equal protection laws" can mean many different things. I am broadly for colorblindness and meritocracy, which means I am broadly against affirmative action.
To the degree that the state makes it hard to fire employees for stuff, I think it is probably more consistent to add ethnicity to other criteria like sex/gender, sexual orientation or even political leanings.
Being treated equally for these things by the state is non-negotiable. There might be a few mottians dreaming of turning the US into a "white ethnostate", and I don't particularly object to calling them fellow travelers of the Nazis, but I would be surprised to learn that it is a majority of them. "We should not hand out driving licences / passports / concealed carry licences / permissions to have kids to Males / Republicans / Lesbians / Blacks" sounds fucking un-American to my European ears.
I think one effect is that people with moderate opinions are much less likely to comment on a thread than people with strong opinions. People who argue about gender until the comment depth reaches 20 are likely either feminists or men's rights people. People who argue about class relations ad nauseam are likely to be Marxists. People who thrive on HBD discussions are more likely to be (prescriptive) racists than people who thrive on discussions about economics are.
Earth would have had no air, then.
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