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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Let me also cut through what feels like a lot of unnecessary argumentation and simply ask you this: how can you explain the correlation between cognitive skills and genetic closeness depicted in this figure without acknowledging substantial genetic heritability?

Yes, when you control for factors X, Y and Z, whatever remains is going to be what shows up on the graph. That is what "controlling for" means. Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

  • -25

"judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

This is a gross mischaracterization of the HBD position and you know it. I, and every other HBD supporter I know of in the rationalist community supports judging individual people by their actual qualities. The only difference is that we don't expect such judgements to find exactly equal distributions of talent in each race.

I have literally never seen a rationalist HBD supporter who argues that a demonstrably talented individual should be denied opportunity because of their race

This is a gross mischaracterization

No, it is not a gross mischaracterization. It is the bailey in contrast to the motte. I have had arguments whicthn users in this very thread about how equality before the law is not the same thing as fungibility.

Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

Can you name any specific HBD-tards?

I am not aware of any HBD believer/tolerant people who say "a 7 foot tall white man who never misses free throws should be banned from the NBA" or "a black teenager with perfect SATs who won the math olympiad should be rejected from Caltech". Can you cite some of them?

Can you name any specific HBD-tards?

A handful in this forum but I'm already in the dog house with the mods.

  • -10

Lol I totally believe you that they exist, but you just can't link to them cause "the mods".

Speaking as a mod, there certainly are people with those beliefs on this forum, but no, it is not encouraged to call people out by name as examples of "People who believe shitty things."

If "HBD" now also has to include the extreme weakman positions of people who just want a scientific fig-leaf for racist blanket dismissal (of badly-performing groups), is there any group identification you are okay with the people like me who don't hold those positions? I genuinely believe that intelligence is heritable, there are significant differences in averages between groups and want to judge people by their individual qualities and find any policy that treats people differential based on race or ethnicity to be morally highly unpalatable. Do you not believe me that these are my positions, or do you just think that I am not allowed to hold these without taking responsibility for any cover this might give to people who believe in the first two but not the second two?

HBD-tards

Don't do this. Straight-up calling your opponents retards is not how arguments work here and you know it.

Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

That wasn't remotely the topic of conversation.

The answer is the same though.

  • -15

But "HBD-tards" do not advocate for this generally. As is constantly stated, HBD is most commonly used as an alternative to a racism of the gaps.

Not "generally", only when they are forced to retreat from the bailey to the motte. Hence the derision aimed towards "blank-slatists" and the like.

  • -10

If this is so I only care about the motte, if you find me outside of it feel free to let me know. But it really does not seem like people are willing to grant the motte.

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