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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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There is only one solution. The truth. I know you're afraid of it but there is no other way. And honestly I've found that embracing the truth gets you a lot less hate than you might think, especially in personal contexts, I'd still be wary in certain professional contexts. But through chats with friends I've found that most people are a lot more receptive to HBD arguments than you might think, so long as you explain it right. Most normies have genuinely never heard anyone who isn't genuinely hateful suggest that blacks might have lower IQs so start off slow. Emphasize that what we observe is overlapping Bell curves with different means and make sure to note that you are not saying "every one from this race is dumb". Talk about twin studies. If you're white and not Jewish talk about Asian and Jewish over preformance to make you sound less biased.

Also, to add to this, it's not like you have to make an HBD argument. There are many reasons why an organization (or even an entire field) might not attract black people, and not all of those reasons are necessarily "they're inherently less capable" or "the organization/field is biased". Point out some of those reasons, and say you think that the burden of proof is on the one who claims that it must be bias rather than any other possible reason.

I don't think "burden of proof" makes sense in the context of actually trying to solve a problem. But in any case, yes that is the usually tack that I or others take, suggesting that something like better elementary schools would eventually fix the problem. But then you've ceded that at equilibrium we should expect equal representation, so why not help speed up our approach to that equilibrium? Again, for competitive fields, arguing that the under-represented just don't care enough to try as hard is about as unspeakable as saying they're not as capable (see Damore).

Thanks. I have had the honest convos with people one on one and it has usually gone OK. But lots of my educated acquaintances have heard the basic claims about IQ and also a bunch of rebuttals or claimed debunkings. E.g. They think Gould's Mismeasure of Man showed conclusively that race realists were wrong.

I any case, I am talking about professional contexts, again where people explicitly disavow the possibility that differences in group outcomes could be possibly due to "inherent inferiority".

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