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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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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.

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.

Reading the linked story, it's a little more complicated than that. And basically demonstrates that the Pence Rule is not a bad idea, and fucking co-workers/colleagues is.

What the articles tells me is that getting women into science is simply not worth the trouble; each time some broad opens her piehole, we lose a luminary.

Can you imagine if this nonsense had been around while Richard Feynman was still alive?

You haven’t had a warning since September, but it was for the exact same ranting about women as a class.

Painting with that broad of a brush is still against the rules.

As infamously expressed by Tim Hunt:

Tim Hunt, an English biochemist who admitted that he has a reputation for being a “chauvinist”, said to the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”

Hunt said he was in favour of single-sex labs, adding that he didn’t want to “stand in the way of women”. The 72-year-old, who won the 2001 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, made the remarks when addressing a convention of senior female scientists and science journalists.

It doesn't strike me as a bad idea, but I don't actually want the Science to get any better. Best case scenario seems to me for diversity to cancel the AI apocalypse.

Is his action the problem or is it the rule that's bad?

People should be allowed to have sex if they're coworkers without one party retrospectively deciding it was abuse and canning a top researcher. What was the point of all this sexual liberation/free love if it's only for anonymous strangers to have casual sex?

I think the woman who complained made a mountain out of a molehill, but she was also plainly hoping to boost her career by association with him. He didn't do that, plus he then was giving signs he was going to dump her for the German squeeze, hence the revenge accusation.

If he didn't realise all the way that an affair with a work colleague could go south, then I'm sorry for him, but he walked into this trap. He probably, by the sound of it, isn't too smart when it comes to relationships; he took up with the accuser when he was in the middle of divorcing his wife (this wasn't an affair), he never noticed the red flags over her having a string of guys on the go at the same time, and he seems to have thought she'd be just fine with him having another side piece and probably replacing her with that one.

He may not have deserved what happened to him, but women and men do not want the same thing out of sex. If he imagined that she was approaching sex like a guy, like him, as "fun casual thing with no deeper intentions", well now he knows different. I genuinely think "don't shit where you eat" is a good rule, particularly when it comes to 'office romances' because an ordinary love affair is bad enough when it goes sour, but something like this is ten times worse, as we can now see.

Now, if the pair of them had ended up getting married or in a "durable relationship" out of this, then okay. But he was looking for something no-strings-attached, assumed she was the same, and ignored or was not aware of the signals she was giving out.

is it the rule that's bad?

Given that the rules Sabatini violated include not only the Whitehead Consensual Sexual and Romantic Relationships Policy but also Exodus 20:14, and "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and "Don't shit where you eat" form part of the Copybook Headings of Gnon, I don't think "Sabatini did nothing wrong" is a defensible position. You can defend "Geniuses should not be held to the same rules as plebs", but that fell out of fashion for good reasons after it became clear how much damage sociopathic elites could do by abusing it.

What was the point of all this sexual liberation/free love if it's only for anonymous strangers to have casual sex?

There wasn't any. Free love isn't. The only dispute is about whether Blue Tribers should doublethink this in order to avoid giving aid and comfort to the hated Red Tribe by straight up admitting it.

@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.

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.

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.)

Yes, I know that those people are obsessed with disparate outcomes. No, I don't think that this is reasonable justification for racial discrimination.

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.

It's just the argument for Harrison Bergeron given without candor.

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.

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.

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.

We still live in a democracy, these people serve at our collective pleasure.

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.

Don't apologize for ping - we are amongst friends - if anything let's ping more

Which makes OP's vaguing @mitigatedchaos even more infuriating.

Personally, I think it's interesting to see how other people respond. He responds to my Tumblr posts in this manner quite regularly.

Trust me, I know, I'm the one who needled you into replying to his posts one time. I'm 99% on his side, I simply find those indirect references to you rude.

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.

Except that you're ignoring the likes of Jayman. He's quite cleat that it's not an "investment," it's compensation for the "low quality."

It shows that there's no end to this 'investment', that it's actually a tax on efficiency, meritocracy and society generally.

Again, he's quite open about this, that his proposals mean redistribution from genetic "haves" to "have-nots," and that it it will indeed never end. That is a perpetual moral obligation of JAWs to pay that "tax on efficiency, meritocracy and society generally" forever.

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 argument is that, again, you will be forced, by legal and cultural pressure, to "throw money down the drain", because if you don't, you will be deemed a racist bigot and cast into the Outer Darkness. Punish dissent severely enough long enough, and you'll get people to cave.

Edit: Let me add the classic "equality vs. equity" cartoon, this version courtesy of the United Way. This is why your "blankslatism" vs. "understanding HBD" is irrelevant, because in the "equity" framework, the sources of the inequity don't matter. Even if the supposed "blankslatists" came to believe HBD instead, those biological differences become just one more thing to build and distribute metaphorical "boxes and ramps" to compensate for it. If genetics has left groups unequal, then society must make them equal. The problem isn't "blankslatism," it's equity.

Well, it's a good thing for the blankslatists that Jayman isn't in charge of their PR! Jayman is the exception, the general rule is that HBD people want to end the current system. I bet if you took the HBD community and asked them to choose between his 'infinite redistribution and one sided race war' or my 'end the tax', I'd enjoy an overwhelming majority of support. The only hbd people I know of who say this are Jayman (black) and Razib Khan (brown of some description).

Punishing dissent can paper over the cracks but Boeing needs to produce planes that don't fall apart. TSMC's ever-delayed plants in America need capable staff. Doing things correctly isn't a luxury, it's the grinding stone of competition. An equilibrium of eternal net-negative redistribution cannot hold. Either it gets voted out or it gets bombed into oblivion.

TSMC's ever-delayed plants in America need capable staff.

A relevant piece I read recently in The Hill: "DEI killed the CHIPS Act"

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.

This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.

…

There’s even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.

That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.

…

In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. Intel must know the coming grants are election-year stunts — mere statements of intent that will not be followed up. Even after due diligence and final agreements, the funds will only be released in dribs and drabs as recipients prove they’re jumping through the appropriate hoops.

For instance, chipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”

No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was launching a CHIPS-funded training program for historically black colleges.

So, no, the people in charge are indeed willing to prioritize "equity" over having microchips.

the grinding stone of competition

There's a lot of ruin in a nation. The "fall of Rome" was a centuries-long decline only visible in hindsight; from within, it just seemed like a series of individual, unrelated crises. The Global American Empire is still the sole hegemon of our "unipolar" world order, and can remain on top for quite some time despite ongoing encrudification. If it can take down any major potential competitors while that still holds — ensure China "grows old before it grows rich" and collapses from its terrible demographics, grind down Russia until it breaks apart, et cetera — and uses its remaining power to spread the ideology to as much of humanity as possible, then there won't really be anyone really left outside the GAE to "bomb it into oblivion" even as it decays.

The article skirts around it, but almost all the actual DEI stuff is just filing “plans” and some more paperwork for bullshit job HR employees at corporate. Even the union training stuff was only implicitly critical. The main reason, which the article ignores, is surely just that a strong dollar and extremely high US salaries mean that moving the factories to Germany and Japan makes them much more economically viable.

I can scarcely put into words my profound disappointment and heartbreak learning that the CHIPs act was killed by DEI bullshit.

I've been banging on for years now about the risk of Taiwan being invaded, or blockaded and smothered, by China. That the risk of TSMC being nationalized by China is so existential that it should be our number one priority. That we cannot possibly prevent China from eventually "unifying" with Taiwan, and the only possible solution is to do whatever it takes to have, preferably domestic, alternatives. I've thrown oodles of money into Intel due to this thesis, and plan on throwing oodles more. I might be talking out my ass, but I've put my money where my mouth is.

I honestly believed our government was taking this shit seriously with the CHIPs act. It was practically the singular glimmer of hope I had that the current administration wasn't content to just let people suffer and die en masse if it at least meant they weren't acting racist. I should have fucking known better. I really fucking should have.

God damnit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-12/pentagon-scraps-plan-to-spend-2-5-billion-on-intel-chip-grant

Intel's been truly cucked by NVIDIA on the gains front. It's down over the last 5 years. Then again, my Lockheed Martin shares aren't doing so great either. I assumed the US would start making big munitions orders as the world heated up, they were my war hedge. But no...

God damn it, indeed.

Even if I take your phrasing with a shaker of salt, I’m still disappointed in the politics being played.

From Wikipedia:

TSMC planned to send experienced Taiwanese technicians to train local workers, which local unions characterized as "a lack of respect for American workers". The Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council subsequently asked Congress to block visas for 500 Taiwanese workers.

The whole wiki section on criticisms, of course, spends more time quoting the one commentator who didn’t think CHIPS favored unions enough.

It borders on parody. What can a man even do about this?

I can scarcely put into words my profound disappointment and heartbreak learning that the CHIPs act was killed by DEI bullshit.

@DaseindustriesLtd disproven again, there are no traces of any secret cabal keeping things under control. "Von Neumanns" are not in politics (and if they are, they are busy maneuvering to climb as high as possible and divert as much money and resources for themselves as possible).

As said Dominic Mckenzie Cummings, someone with extensive experience in government:

You might think somewhere there must be a quiet calm centre like in a James Bond movie where you open the door and that is where the ninjas are who actually know what they are doing.

There are no ninjas. There is no door.

No God, no Caesar, no hero is going to save us, we are on our own.

Oh come on, this is more American whining. Muh deaths of overdoses, muh Russian election meddling, little old us assaulted on all fronts, won't somebody please spare a thought for the poor hegemon.

The CHIPS act has been about pork and the usual fighting over the spoils from the beginning, its success or failure is of no consequence. China was summarily cut off from modern semiconductor manufacturing and falls behind, new fabs in safe allied countries are being completed, Taiwan is getting reinforced, and AGI seems to be on schedule within 5 years. Yes, could have been done better. But it has gone well enough that advancing petty political agendas took precedence. If there ever is any plausible risk of the US losing control over the global high-end manufacturing chain, I am sure you'll see it going differently.

The problem with Cummings was that he was the archetypal example of the stupid and ill-informed public school to Oxbridge humanities pipeline graduate who runs the British civil service, he just thought he could do a better job than his contemporaries after he failed to make money in 1990s Russia (itself a damning indictment given he was a moderately well-connected Englishman while the state was being comprehensively pillaged by many of his peers). Most of his ideas were the kind of ill-informed contrarianism that belongs at the Oxford Union, except that Cummings was so linked by his class hatred of men from better families who went to better or more reputable schools that he decided he would tear everything down to be replaced by his version of the same system that ruined everything.

His veneration is ridiculous. All of his good ideas were because he occasionally read a couple of good pieces in the SSC/rat/LWverse and possibly read some Moldbug (although clearly, clearly not enough). Cummings failed to understand that the problem was not that the people in charge were uniquely incompetent but that their incentives were mismatched with the improvement of the nation, and that he would have acted exactly the same if he had been in power (and indeed largely did when he was, as evidenced by his chaotic flipping on COVID and his ultra-pro-lockdown position contra Boris’ libertarianism, which was worse for the country than the decisions of the vast majority of Whitehall civil servants he so decried.

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