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Here's one person's experience that might make at least part of it not so depressing: I've spent a lot of times in universities in extremely left-leaning areas (Like Jill Stein beating Trump extreme). There are routinely literal communists in my circles. I've never not been able to pull an IRL political argument back from extremes through tying everything back to core ideals like egalitarianism (and playing word games to avoid certain triggering phrases)---no standardized testing isn't a white supremacist plot, which alternatives do you think are going to be less biased? Rent control isn't as obviously good as you think it is, you have to be careful not to screw over people trying to move in, have you looked at what the actual minority groups you're speaking for think about police funding? Do you really trust elite college admissions committees to implement a non-transparent, "holistic" affirmative action policy without sneaking in a bunch of details that turn it into something mostly benefiting the privileged under the cover of tokenism? etc.
I therefore thought that both extremes were basically covered by the Lizardman Constant. Reading this forum has been one of the biggest shocks I've experienced to my beliefs about the world in the last 5-10 years (second to the Ukraine invasion I guess)---here are a large number intelligent people I share a country with who actually just have irreconcilable value differences; people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet, but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.
This might be less clear than you think. I think quite possibly the largest contingent of people here are in favor of colorblind meritocracy, roughly. But in the absence of data, then your priors would be affected by race. That is, you should think a random Asian you meet is probably a bit smarter than average, until you actually get to know them or they go through some other filtration mechanism so that you know more accurately. This is technically treating people differently by race, but it's due to variation and knowledge constraints, not value differences.
That said, you only said that here are a large number, and the more substantially racist minority may still be a large number to you.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I think the most prominent writer fitting the view you describe is Richard Hanania. I'm searching through comments to see what this place thinks about his writings on racial issues---here's something sitting at +28 against it, though here's another at +14 possibly in favor though it's hard to tell what they would think in the perfect world where colorblindness was possible. (I'm not super good at searching for things, maybe you can do better?). Somehow this still leaves me with the impression that the voting population here is further towards racialism that Hanania.
I also think the link I gave above about what one of the mods thinks about the general attitude towards colorblindness is also very strong evidence.
Oh, but Hanania's known for more generally being a troll and bothering people, so I wouldn't trust opinions of him as reflective of the popularity of this one stance (though I think he not infrequently has interesting things to say). I don't currently have time right now, but maybe I'll look later.
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May I remind you that the VP and the most recent Supreme Court justice were explicitly chosen on the basis of race?
Political appointees are picked for ridiculous reasons all the time. This isn't the most objectionable thing that's happened in VP or Supreme Court choices. I also don't think these choices really made a policy difference over the alternatives. The only material impact was to the other people who could've been chosen otherwise---like 5 people in the whole country who are doing pretty well in life either way and purposefully chose a career where they knew they would be judged in bizarre and unfair ways.
Do you have other examples that are a little more materially impactful/out of the ordinary? Maybe you can try for same level of material impact as Trump's policies on legal and skilled immigration that were very plausibly motivated by Stephen Miller/Motte-style explicit racialism?
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I am certainly one of the people here with whom you would say you have “irreconcilable value differences.” However, I’m quite confident that our value differences are not actually “irreconcilable” because I used to have basically the same beliefs as you do now. I was a very committed progressive for nearly the entirety of my twenties, basically from the time I first developed a serious political consciousness. I believed very strongly in egalitarianism and would have been disgusted by “bigotry”, “prejudice”, “hate”, etc. Yet, here I am now, one of those far-right racialists. I “reconciled” myself to these beliefs over time as a result of life experiences and sustained observation of the world - and the people - around me. If I could undergo that process, I have no reason to think it’s impossible/implausible for the same to happen to you.
We have the policy preferences we do because we disagree about important facts regarding humans and what they’re like. You flatter yourself by supposing that your beliefs are purely a matter of understanding facts, whereas our ideas are due to “values” which are, somehow, immutable, immune to persuasion, and presumably assigned to us at random at the moments of our respective births. This isn’t how “values” actually work at all, though. For an intelligent, thoughtful, and perceptive person, “values” should be subject to change in the exact same way that propositional/epistemic beliefs about reality are - in fact, values are simply a type of propositional belief. If you have the same “values” at age sixty that you did at age twenty, that’s probably because you just weren’t paying very much attention to the world or thinking very hard about anything.
I think I wasn't very clear---I totally agree that values differences are in principle reconcilable. I've even on record in this sub saying that values can be derived from other concerns and can definitely be argued.
My point was that I've found that specifically my values difference with most of the racialists on the Motte is irreconcilable. I've been bashing my head against this since my first post in this sub and basically consistently gotten replies that are unmoderated personal attacks instead of any substantive argument, particularly from a certain poster who believes only Russians have souls and his following. Again, one of my very early interactions with this community was someone ban-evading and calling me a slithering rat just for having the temerity to try and argue value points. I guess a lot of racialism is just motivated by idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences that are too strong to be overwhelmed by any other consideration---how is this anything but not irreconcilable?
This experience has not meaningfully changed in the last three years, although I will say that you have been much more reasonable. So trying again, do you mind explaining/linking to some place where you've explained these specific facts?
In that post, you and Yassine are certainly not arguing that your views are in any sense reconcilable with inegalitarian/particularist views. The central argument there is that your specific set of values are the objectively and inarguably correct set of values, given everything that’s true about the world we live in. Nowhere in there is a suggestion that there’s any practical way for anyone to persuade you out of those values; quite the opposite. You’re saying that the only way someone with inegalitarian values could have any leg to stand on morally is if there were massive, fundamental structural/technological changes in the way our civilization is organized; barring that - something which will not happen in our lifetimes - your values are correct, and mine are not even worth discussing because they’re in the dustbin of (current) history. Not exactly an invitation to “reconciliation”.
I read all of the replies to that post, and I can identify not a single one that I would consider an unmoderated personal attack devoid of substantive argument. Perhaps you’re referring to replies to other posts not linked to.
First off, you’re totally misinterpreting his use of the word “rats” in that post. He is using it as a shortening of “rationalists” - a group with which he himself identified at the time, and presumably still does. It was a very common term of self-identification at the time; there was an entire constellation of Tumblr users, for example, who proudly called themselves “Rat Tumblr” (or Rattumb for short), meaning just “Rationalist Tumblr”.
In that post, Ilforte is accusing you of aping the shibboleths of that subculture while working directly and intentionally to sabotage its aims and core values. In the segments of your post that he quotes, you very clearly do appear to be advocating using social shame to rigidly enforce speech taboos around certain topics - to not only ridicule and socially bully racialists, but to actually actively ruin their lives in a professional sense, or at least to celebrate those who do so. This is, indeed, a very serious violation of one of the core values of that subculture at the time, which was strongly opposed to that type of social shaming and speech tabooing.
I’m also unsure what you mean by accusing him of “ban evading”. That post is in /r/CultureWarRoundup, a totally separate splinter subreddit from /r/TheMotte, and not a sub from which I believe Ilforte was ever banned at any point. If you mean he’s ban evading by cross-posting a post of yours from The Motte and criticizing it… that’s not what ban evading is.
I’m sure that in some cases this is probably true! However, again, many of us racialists once shared your liberal priors, instincts, and aesthetics. Yet this was not enough to stop us from eventually adopting these views. Why do you think that is? Clearly in that case it can’t just be due to some ineffable, inarticulable, subconscious psychological difference between us and you, right? If I was progressive once, I must contain the capability to inhabit the brain states compatible with progressivism. And yet obviously I also simultaneously contain the capacity to inhabit the brain states compatible with rightism. Are you so certain that you lack that capacity?
That would be difficult, simply given the lack of any effective search function in this site’s design. I have been meaning to put together a master spreadsheet of links to some of my more successful/important posts, such that I would be able to supply those links when prompted, but I have not gotten around to doing so. I don’t have time to pull those right now, but I’ll see what I can do at some point in the future. However, I would caution that I’m not confident the posts alone will be persuasive to you, since they will not be in combination with the specific and non-transferable life experiences I’ve had which caused me to be more sympathetic to these ideas than I likely would have otherwise.
It's a point that can actually be argued---if you don't agree maybe you can describe why instead of pulling out about 150 words of debate-team kritik?
On the other hand, this:
is not something that can be argued or lead to any kind of reconciliation. I either have the same life experiences as you or there's no way that I'll ever understand why your values are valid?
This is a frustratingly long post that somehow manages to dodge every possible chance to give a concrete argument on the actual value issue in favor of making meta points. I guess the most productive thing to do here then is wait until there's an actual substantive point to discuss. I mean, there hasn't been much in 3 years of trying, but maybe something better will come out of this.
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Huh? With all the constant complaints about racism, you're shocked at the possibility of racists existing?
Who are you even talking about? We have holocaust deniers, we have HBDers, but I don't remember seeing anyone say an intelligent black people shouldn't be treated as intelligent, because they're black. It sounds like you're whipping yourself into a frenzy.
I honestly thought that most of the complaints about racism in the US were mostly caused by unconscious bias---things that the perpetrators would feel very guilty for and stop if they realized what they were doing. Otherwise, I thought the stories were some combination of exaggeration, cherry-picked bad luck, or very special circumstances---being in a certain part of Idaho or in a circa-2002 airport.
People maybe don't say this---they'll question whether there are intelligent black people in the first place or say that people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US. The first is a factual point that can be pretty quickly refuted, but the second is a values difference.
I'm talking less "complaints about racism in the US", and more complaints like "Trump supporters are racist". You're telling me all the post-2016 drama was about "unconscious bias"?
Well then I have a bit of an issue with making claims like "they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". I agree there are actual values disagreements here (no shortage of folks here supporting monstrous things like surrogacy), I don't even mind slapping negative valance labels on them, like "racism", anymore. But if you're going to make an elaborate descriptive statement about what people believe, you should make sure it's accurate.
The first is a point I haven't seen anyone make here, and the latter is already a step down from your original claim, and I still want to know who you're talking about, because it doesn't quite fit into any conversations I remember.
See the discussion here.
Sorry, let me clarify---I also think there are a lot of people here who "honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". I think the strongest evidence for this is what I linked above: one of the mods of this place saying that their posts supporting colorblindness tend to be very controversial because those posts are against the prevailing attitudes here.
There's another sort of of-topic interesting point: I'm not really sure that "people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US" is significantly different from "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". The cardinal, anti-meritocratic sin of judging people by their descent instead of their own accomplishments appears just as strongly in in both cases.
I find it amazing that someone who's been here for a long time and is clearly pretty smart can end up with these interpretations of themotte's viewpoints, reading the same words I have but interpreting them so differently, lol.
From the post you linked about someone being downvoted for advocating colorblindness, I upvoted this reply:
This is ... not speaking against meritocracy. If you have a way to measure someone's merit, use it, If not, because it's being suppressed, then use race as bayesian evidence. The replies to the post are evidence against, not for, your claim that a lot of mottizens believe 'people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as'.
We can trade examples all day long, but I don't know how else to interpret even a moderator (who I think should be more aware of the general pulse of the forum than either of us) saying this:
(adding emphasis)
That's not trading examples, I found that by looking for the exact comment you're referring to. Cjet's original post about race blindness, The Case For Ignoring Race, got 18 upvotes and 5 downvotes, which is a perfectly normal ratio. The most downvoted comment related to race blindness on his page has a net karma of ... -3, and it's in response to a 38 upvotes comment with the following:
This is just ... not ... "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". This is "we should judge people on their merit, or our best estimate of their merit, and that merit is correlated with race is an objective fact about the world".
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I disagree with your interpretation somewhat. He's talking about inventors and scientists, so the extreme end of intelligence. This is "tails of the bell curve coming apart" argument rather than intelligent black people not existing.
It's fine and well if this is how you see it, but there are people who don't agree. If you treat these things as interchangeable you'll be slandering your targets in front of them.
I don't think everything should be meritocratic, though. I wouldn't let some random dude take the place of my cousin in my family, just because he's more competent, and/or more pleasant to be around, for example.
Right, so this is a good point that needs to be addressed. However, I don't think that the cousin being related to you is the key detail here---for example I would say the same about a childhood best friend but not about a hypothetical cousin whom I just met and never knew existed until then.
The principle here is really about close personal relationships, whatever might cause them. These come with an obligation of strong loyalty that overwhelms many abstract notions of fairness. The loyalty should be there when the close personal relationship is there even if there's no hereditary connection and doesn't need to be there if there's a hereditary connection with no close personal relationship.
Yes, this isn't purely meritocratic, but there's no one value that determines what you should do in all situations. We have a pretty good system of rules and expectations around professionalism---like how you should act differently in public-facing roles---that help us balance society's needs for fairness and meritocracy with personal needs for loyalty. It's ok to invite your cousin to a party over the other person, but not to hire them for a job.
Sure, I wouldn't want ancestry rules applied in a professional context, but I think there should also be some amount of loyalty to your fellow countrymen. I don't have a strong opinion over how much precisely that would be. The way I see it, countries should follow a general "[insert country here] first" framework, and people with deep roots should have relative priority over newcomers. Though even the latter I wouldn't want to go too far, so it won't turn into a dick-measuring contest over who's ancestors were here the longest.
Do you mind clarifying or giving a justification for why things should be like this? Specifically, what does "deep roots" mean? Is that things like like involvement with local community wherever they live and civic engagement or is it more like having ancestry in the country going far back? I would totally agree with you if its the first and vehemently disagree with the second---for the same reason that personal connection is what's important, not ancestry (see again the comparison between a close childhood friend vs. cousin you've never met before).
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Eh, nobody denies that intelligent black people exist, but we certainly have a few people who believe they are so rare as to be irrelevant, and/or that if any "good" blacks exist, they should be treated the same as all the others (e.g., expatriated to Africa, herded into reservations, or whatever).
I am having trouble remembering anyone saying anything like that, and believe if any example is found it will already be a step or two removed from this description.
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My impression is that very few mottizens are racialists, in that they think that eg black people should be treated differently from white people 'solely' because of race? Some people here don't really believe in HBD and are 'liberals' or 'progressives' on immigration. There are people here who want to treat people differently based on IQ and genes, but with genetic predisposition to IQ or other traits set equal would happily let in the few Nigerian or Iraqi neuroscientists if their merit was assessed accurately. There are people here who are more like normal American conservatives on the topic, and would judge people not on their race or IQ but their culture, their willingness to assimilate to American ideals and national identity, etc. I think all of those outnumber people like SecureSignals
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I had generally similar experiences in college. Could talk with far extremes on either side but you can still come out thinking some version of mistake theory where everyone is just trying to do their best, and we just disagree on how to get there.
Outside of college was always the real kicker. People in college always seemed at times a bit fluid with their values, or that their values were at least subject to some social desirability bias. Well once you can start picking your social circles and you've done it for over a decade, those values seem to calcify.
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