domain:acoup.blog
wemptronics
1m ago
I expect a society that has a number of educators who endorse pedagogy which deprioritizes competence will generate less competent individuals. I'm not sure that Americans ever did value and reward people that exude competence very much.
As for the government, the USG didn't seem that smart during the Cold War either. There was the government that allowed an intelligence agency to believe a 1000 strong militia could successfully execute regime change in Cuba with an amphibious landing. The CIA was a silly place filled with wacky incompetence, but then the very serious people -- the ones who didn't think the Bay of Pigs would work -- decided it was all well and good. They could just as easily deny involvement with a carrier task force offshore.
The USG has been exposed as inept in espionage since time immemorial. Does this plane look familiar, or maybe I meant this one? US intelligence agencies and Federal law enforcement were repeatedly compromised at high levels right up to the end of the Cold War. Despite the fact Soviet espionage efforts were proven beyond a doubt from get go the US allowed the public to believe Soviet-friendly memes like McCarthyism instead of the reality that the nation's adversaries posed serious threats. Then there was that time where the USG unwittingly decided America and the rest of the world should go hungry and foot the bill for Soviet breadlines. Woops!
The USG belatedly rounds up spies from time to time, but its counter-espionage appears as dismal as ever. It could be that general government incompetence can no longer be propped up by blessings, luck, or being too big to fail. Alternatively, China could be a far more capable adversary than the Soviets ever were. China is not yet as committed to hostile opposition as the Soviets were. China is also not without its own incompetent fuck ups despite our general interest and the Iron Curtain Great Firewall. COVID, ahem.
Grant_us_eyes
8m ago
I would think the answer is fairly simple - someone who could pull such a solo operation off would need almost polymath-levels of knowledge and skill - be capable of writing and directing and sound management and storyboarding AND managing CGI and and and-
That isn't to say it doesn't happen - Astartes comes to mind as the Ur example of the crazy stuff a single person can pull off nowadays - but even then it takes places in a well-established sandbox of a creative universe.
funzodonzo
12m ago
A good roundup of rumours about Xi
Is there suppose to be a link here?
aardvark2
14m ago
We interbreed without real issue,
The modal point for this is about Europeans and West Africans who aren't very far apart. I'd be curious to know about how good most genetically distant populations, Mbuti pygmies and Australoids fare in that respect.
Btw we don't know really that there was reproductive barrier with Nearderthals, after all, we have some of their genes. Maybe it were cultural values against mixing.
and we don't really inhabit different ecological niches
neither did Neaderthals.
etc. but these are pretty minor overall.
They were significant enough that Europeans didn't go in Africa interior before they invented treatment from malaria and Austronesians could not establish structure where they kept Africans as slaves. Africans, on their own hand, could not just take technology they gained from others and use it to expand (like Europeans took gunpowder and compass invented by Chinese and used against them).
Something else, or are more specifics needed? The problems go on.
You can argue whether Missouri is a tributary of Mississippi or vice-versa or what is the actual border between Europe and Asia but it does not disprove geography.
How close are they?
If you have geniune interest in this question, you can look in literature estimates of genetic differences between some populations. There are algorithms like ADMIXTURE which take genetic information as input and do cluster analysis, and produce results pretty much like that a 19th century racist would have made.
hadn't even figured out evolution yet, and wouldn't for over a century, so they hardly were working from scientific principles to begin with!
This is irrelevant. Gunpowder, sails and compass were used without any scientific basis for them in centuries. People drew maps assuming flat Earth. etc etc. These pre-evolution racists might just assume that God or gods made differences between races.
the underlying categories will increasingly be revealed as fundamentally flawed.
This experiment has been already run in Brazil. No. On reverse, Brazilians are much less happy to brag about how they do not believe in races, than Americans.
daguerrean
15m ago
I thought we were forced to split from SSC so Scott's name was not sullied by association with us due to our most popular topic of discussion at the time, HBD. When TheMotte was formed HBD was kind of our meat and potatoes.
Mantergeistmann
15m ago
It's also an old pre-battle rallying speech technique. "Yes, they're strong, and it's okay to be afraid, but if you do your part and hang in there, we'll beat them because we're stronger".
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
19m ago
it’s a common narrative and, one step further, it’s a good and healthy narrative.
As for truth, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a fascinating concept, but people can and do come to definitive conclusions about the world all the time. Are the #resist libs correct in assuming themselves the underdogs?
I_Smell_Mendacious
25m ago
the government has other reasons to not reveal the files that are known to the higher-ups on both sides of the aisle
I kind of assume that if there is evidence of crimes by wealthy, powerful individuals at the presumed level of Epstein clientele, it won't see a DAs office. Instead, a 3 letter agency will have presented it to said individual with a "welcome to being our bitch" speech.
Righteous is irrelevant, though?
True is also irrelevant because your enemy is always a mystery. Lacking 100% knowledge of your enemy (because how could you ever have it?), it is impossible to know the truth of your enemy. So it’s best to plan with humility and act with confidence.
And I say good in the context of healthy, as in, likely to lead to a better and more predictively successful life
So, adaptive wins, as it always does.
Edit: Probably worth saying that I think this is also a good and righteous state of mind. When God told the Israelites he was giving them Canaan, they didn’t just waltz in and wait for God to vaporize their enemies. They sent in spies, scoped out the land, enjoyed a few odds-evening miracles, engaged in effective battle strategies, suffered and died to defeat (partially) enemies that were simultaneously too strong (to be defeated solely by the Israelites) and too weak (to resist God’s will).
Rov_Scam
31m ago
Huh? They interviewed him for three hours. Three rambling, incoherent hours.
Magusoflight
31m ago
I knew it was this sort of show after just one episode and refused my wife’s request to watch further. I have a very well honed woke entertainment detector and nope out the instant I see this sort of thing
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
36m ago
A rule that if someone expresses a disagreeable sentiment, you are allowed to say "Wow, you're a racist, fuck off"?
The current "correct" response to someone expressing a bigoted sentiment is ignoring it, then? Would replying "This is a grossly bigoted statement" be considered a personal attack or what have you?
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
36m ago
You’re right, it’s a common narrative because it is adaptive—but as a cursory look at the natural world will tell you, “adaptive” does not necessarily mean good, true, or righteous.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
37m ago
Removing likes from Scott's substack does not seem to have resulted in any meaningful change in comment quality.
Not a perfect parallel to the up/downvote, but some evidence that the votes or lack thereof have little effect.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
39m ago
I haven't seen this show, but all the praise being lavished on it makes me go "Really? Do none of you remember the likes of St. Elsewhere, for example, which also trod this path of 'slice of life reality in a hospital serving lower economic area'?"
I hate to break it to you grandma, but that show's over forty years old now. I'll have to ask my mom if she's heard of it, she was fond of the odd medical drama that somehow found its way to India back then, though the odds are against it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
43m ago
No, it’s not. It’s not the reason we bailed on Reddit, either.
But the last point is correct.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
43m ago
There's just no way that the opinions on this site aren't tainted by racism.
Also true of anyone that's ever read Robin Diangelo or Ibram Kendi.
If you want a place with opinions untainted... enjoy journaling?
HereAndGone
45m ago
The likelihood of these problems just is higher when it comes to adopting a black child.
Now I've got to go look up statistics about adoption/fostering, the racial identifies (God help me) of the kids involved, and how that relates to the demographic break-down of the population at large.
God have mercy on my soul!
aardvark2
47m ago
You're requiring undue burden of proof. Like some creationists say "show me abiogenesis ab novo". Causal genes for IQ are not established -- currently, GWAS operates with tag SNPs which are just proxies to causal variants near them, but it different populations tag SNP might proxy different variants so there is no easy way to transfer polygenic scores to other population. Actually, Davide Piffer tried that, (and his analysis shows Africans dumber -- check his Substack) -- and got responses "never do that"
At least, not without larger effect sizes and better mathematical techniques.
So are pro-HBD folks say "we don't need larger sample sizes, we already know the truth" or are anti-HBD folks say "we don't need larger sample sizes, we already know the truth"?
Nutrition, parasite load, education infrastructure, epigenetics. Virtually nobody denies these have large effect, but... These are largely downstream of low genetic IQ itself. The other thing that could produce it is bad government. Given that there are many African countries and they were parts of different alliances, it's extremely unlikely that each has uniquely backward government like North Korea has.
Every human born in the last two hundred years lives a live completely unlike the lives we lived in the last five thousand.
I'd disagree about details, but let's assume it's true. You raise actually a valid point that some genes beneficial in ancient environment might be bad now (i.e. improved food digestion then and causing obesity now, ditto protection against infection vs allergy ). But it looks like most of in-population variation is just slightly broken gene variants of ideal brain devised by evolution for current moment.
But geniuses are still geniuses and dumbs still dumbs.
Because: we know that wolves are smarter than dogs.
think that if you were posting this from pro-HBD pespective, someone could write: A Racist Poster Compares Africans To Wolves By Implication.
This theory is unfalsifiable, of course, so I won't ask you to falsify it...
I think it's possible somehow to separate ability for sitting still the longest from intelligence. Btw, many backward cultures had weird rituals, which might have something like sitting still on anthill for certain amount of hime and our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't move for 16 hours per day.
You could devise a separate "sitting long" test which would require something less intellectual. Well... Make them sit and use drum. See, no problemo here.
if we rounded up people at random, gave them IQ tests, dropped them off somewhere remote,
It would make sense to compare teams made of people with similar IQ than than loners.
HereAndGone
49m ago
And if the kid did turn out well, he'd still be an invasive species by that interpretation. Still not a good way to describe people. People of whatever colour or background can be trash, and I have no problem with calling trashy people trashy. But "invasive species" is "some alien foreign breed introduced here which outcompetes our native species" and the White liberals are just as much "invasive species" in the American context as the black ghetto-dwellers, they both came to America from other countries on boats and took over the land from the natives already there.
If you're going to talk about "invasive species" then you will have to do it in your land acknowledgement, friends.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
52m ago
"Really? Do none of you remember the likes of St. Elsewhere, for example, which also trod this path of 'slice of life reality in a hospital serving lower economic area'?"
No, few of those praising the show remember St. Elsewhere. Because they were born after St. Elsewhere ended.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
52m ago
It was definitely a Special Episode kind of moment and speech
After years and years of not watching tv/streaming shows/movies/what-have-you, they all feel like A Very Special Episode when I'm forced to watch something. It all feels like a lecture where the lecturer views me as an especially dim child.
HereAndGone
53m ago
There are sad cases of people adopting a kid as though selecting a pet from a dog shelter, then not being able (or willing) to cope with the work involved in "this kid is going to need a lot of help" and dumping the kid the same way they'd dump that dog out on the side of the road.
One lurid tale, from way back when during the Anglican Wars that probably didn't get traction outside of the religion news/religion discussion blogs, about a pair of nice liberal gay men (can't remember if they were married if gay marriage was legal then) in a particular Episcopalian church, members in good standing of said church, one at least of them very active in the work of the local church, who adopted a young black boy. Much praise from all around and a hell of a lot of back-patting in the community about how superior they all were with their liberal values as opposed to the nasty conservative church members fighting over LGBT rights and gay clergy and letting gay couples adopt and the rest of it. Then it turns out one of the nice gay dads, the active in the church one, was sexually abusing the kid (and probably had wanted to adopt a kid for that specific purpose).
There's horror stories whenever you turn over stones everywhere.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
54m ago
@AlexanderTurok writing that MAGA people are classless retards non-elite human capital who are too dumb to go to {snip} get a job
I've never made such a claim, rather I've consistently cited the fact that the unemployment rate is close to zero. Reading comprehension.
It's not just the presence of these events, it's the absence of others.
I remember being shocked as a kid when a bad guy in CSI: Miami turned out to be black. In almost every other case it was some sort of white person. And oh boy was it righteous and great when a white man tried to frame an innocent black man and got caught because of it. Gave an immense justice infused confirmation bias high to my progressive young self.
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