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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32994 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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For context, OP (Matt Lakeman) is an old ex-regular who has an amazing blog dedicated mostly to international travel, reading on historical stuff and self-experiments. He's been to the Dominican Republic, among other places. He was not impressed. As one can expect, there's a section on the Haiti, with passages like:

Haiti was my first destination choice for this trip. But when I Googled “Haiti,” the top news story was about 17 American and Canadian missionaries being kidnapped by a Haitian gang and held for $17 million ransom. So I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to go to Haiti at the moment.

I don’t know why the two countries have diverged so dramatically. Noah Smith says no one knows the cause of the split, but it’s probably some combination of Haiti starting its independence with enormous national debt (as part of a settlement with former colonial master France), terrible land management policies, the ongoing toll of the U.S. occupation for twenty years (the Dominican Republic was invaded too, but only for eight years), constant regime change, and generally abysmal macroeconomic policy. One Dominican I talked to attributed the country’s success to mid-century dictator Rafel Truillo, who was authoritarian and oppressive (and renamed the capital after himself), but allegedly brought enough order to the country to attract foreign investment and jump start the modern tourist economy. Also, for geographic/climate reasons, Haiti gets hit far more and far harder by natural disasters than the Dominican Republic.

By chance, I spent some time with two European aid workers stationed in Haiti. Their strong consensus was that Haiti was even worse than I had imagined. Worse than anyone imagines. And it has no viable recovery plan. A few interesting things they told me:

[...]

Law and order is non-existent in the cities. There is no point in reporting crimes. The cities are essentially in a state of anarchy.

The lawlessness has gotten worse over the last few years. The two used to be able to go to restaurants and jazz clubs, but now they don’t leave their homes at night.

Taxes are not paid in Haiti (duh). But if for some reason someone wants to pay taxes in Haiti, they first have to bribe the security guards at the doors of the tax offices.

When the Haitian people get pissed off at the government, their only viable means of protest is to block roads. So they’ll cut down trees or light tires on fire and cut off major highways. There is literally no process in place for the Haitian government to clear these blockages.

The Haitian people are consumed by “fake news.” Rival political factions run radio stations and Whatsapp groups, and spread fake news to vilify the opposition and/or foreigners. The fake news is so rampant that the average Haitian seems to have a completely deluded view of politics and the world at large.

It's a mystery indeed!

By the way, Scott's trip to Haiti was what opened his eyes to biodeterminism. (this reminds me of that old text of a guy who became racist after going on a humanitarian mission to Africa, there was an incredibly parable-like bit where he helped some local set up a food stall with baked bread, but his relative came and said «you have bread! My family needs bread!», took everything – you can't deny your family – so the guy went bankrupt and never did business again; lost it again and search engines are... uncooperative). Maybe Matt should've gone after all and written something in his usual manner.

...But also.

IQ is not a mechanistic explanation. All the politically correct stuff he asks about – governments, [inability to make use of] climate, culture – are in the end products of IQ but can be studied separately. IQ only tells us why it's so inescapably and consistently bad. But then an informed person would ask: why is Russia or Ukraine or Belarus like that? Why is China like that? Why is Iran like that? Sure it's not Sub-Saharan Africa, but aren't these people clearly smart enough to at least do better than what they show? And why are they worse than, like, Portugal? So IQ can't be the full story; and so long as this is the case, one has enough wiggle room to not notice the elephant.

As I've just argued, tabooing HBD destroys a great deal more than understanding of stuff that pertains directly to HBD. It lowers the effective IQ of the group, and much faster than dysgenics. Regarding the normiefication of the sub, you're obviously correct, but barely-challenged mentions of Jared Diamond, who is an utter fraud and a just-so storyteller, are even more telling. AskHistorians link is okay. Here's a good discussion of his GGS by that Russian biologist who wrote a Tolkien fanfic from Mordor's perspective, if anyone is interested, I can... proofread Deepl/ChatGPT translation.

that Russian biologist who wrote a Tolkien fanfic from Mordor's perspective,

Except that Tolkien wasn't thinking about Russia at all, in the slightest. If they really do think that the Orcs are a depiction of what the West thinks of Russia, they're barking up the wrong tree. If they then say "Okay, let's be Orcs! To hell with the West!", they're idiots (not to put a tooth in it): they'd rather cut their nose off to spite their face, and they still don't understand how irrelevant they are to most Western thought historically.

Do you believe we care that much about Tolkien's intentions in particular? Enough to engage in some post-mortem polemic, even? Our ressentiment is more interesting than your escapism, our literature is deeper than your fairy tales. Be flattered when they are used as a starting point, in the way Yudkowsky used Rowling's.

(this reminds me of that old text of a guy who became racist after going on a humanitarian mission to Africa, there was an incredibly parable-like bit where he helped some local set up a food stall with baked bread, but his relative came and said «you have bread! My family needs bread!», took everything – you can't deny your family – so the guy went bankrupt and never did business again; lost it again and search engines are... uncooperative).

Here it is. CW for, uh, emotional honesty if you follow the link.

Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and Venezuela are like that while Indonesia and Botswana and Costa Rica are not like that because the former set of countries are run by elites with Marxist assumptions that lead to retarded economic policies and general dysfunction, while the latter are run by elites who are normal and where dysfunctional are dysfunctional in predictable self interested ways. Botswana and Indonesia in particular benefit from keeping much of their colonial institutions from very functional countries instead of asking corrupt and ideologically driven marxists to design new ones.

A somewhat fanciful tangent, but that reminds me of the debate over Elon Musk commandeering Twitter on free speech fairness grounds only to end up promoting his own tweets.

I think a social media CEO tilting things in their individual favor is less terrible than abstract ideological shenanigans stacking the decks against rival or suspiciously off-the-grid political notions.

According to Wikipedia, which cites the IMF, Haiti's per capita GDP, in purchasing power parity, is $3,188. Jamaica's is $11,802, and Barbados's is $17,407. Something other than HBD is going on.

And, btw, describing Guns, Germs and Steel as a just-so story seems very odd. The book repeatedly discusses alternative theories, potential weaknesses in its evidence, and avenues for additional research which might confirm or refute his argument, none of which is the norm, especially in books designed for a popular audience. That doesn't mean he is correct, but it certainly isn't a just-so story.

The book is a very good just-so story with an honest author who more or less admits that's what he's telling.

It's particularly visible towards the end when it attempts to explain European dominance as opposed to Chinese, Arab or Indian dominance, but then admits that had one guy made a different choice (the emperor of China and the treasure fleets) then European dominance likely would not have happened.

You've got that backwards: He starts by saying that internal politics led to decisions which meant that China did not end up conquering the world,and then argues that that decision would have had less effect had China been divided into several regional states, and then presents a hypothesis of what role geography might have played in China's high level of political unity. But, regardless, that is basically irrelevant: It is 3 pages tacked on at the end on the subject of potential future avenues of research

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