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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Hey! First time poster here. Please be critical.

I saw this article last week and am not sure how to think about it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee

The TL;DR is that honors classes in this subset of all honors classes had a clear bias in terms of racial makeup relative to baseline. So they stopped offering honors classes.

On the one hand this seems super effective— with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.

On the other hand my intuition says that in general it’s okay to allow students to self-select (or students and whoever is telling them what to do) and decide how much schoolwork they want to do.

It seems relevant to the school-flavor culture war stuff.

Any links to previous threads on similar topics would be appreciated.

Curious to know more.

Edit: not bait, genuine curiosity. Got some good criticism about low-effort top-level-posting, would appreciate suggestions/pointers to excellent top-level posts.

Continued edit: Also curious what about this post codes it as bait? A few people saw it that way.

I can't be the only person who was a little bit confused whether the "effort" the parent Schaenman (who is a Harvard-educated UCLA medical professor) spearheaded is pro- or anti-honors classes. Her quote in the article could unironically be said by someone who wants to get rid of honors classes but sees it as not taking any opportunities away (we're just making all the classes rigorous, not holding anyone back!), or someone who doesn't want to get rid of honors classes because they see doing that as taking away opportunities.

It seems she's in favor of retaining honors classes, but I wasn't sure until I read the paragraph further down in the article about her going to a school board meeting with the Cuban father.

It is important to note that the honors classes did not have a "clear bias in terms of racial makeup relative to baseline." First, there was no suggestion of any "bias," there was only the observed result that the racial makeup of students in the honors classes did not match the racial makeup of the general student body. That "bias" was the first (and only) reason the school considered is a failure. Second, the disparity was laughably small. The school is 15% black and the honors class was 14% black. That's a rounding error.

There's a quote from one of the teachers saying that she looked at the class photograph and wondered where all the black kids were. That's the level of logic on which this school is operating.

Here's the quote from the article, it seems like you're misrepresenting it (or being flippant, maybe I am misunderstanding?):

Culver City English teachers presented data at a board meeting last year showing Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37% of the student body. Asian students were 34% of the advanced class, compared with 10% of students. Black students represented 14% of AP English, versus 15% of the student body.

If you're quibbling with the word choice of "bias" that's fine, what I meant to say was:

There was a clear disparity in the racial makeup of honors classes relative to baseline (student body) (according to the article)

Oh, hell. I can’t help but wonder if statistics was taught there.

I think it's more of a question of whether or not statistics was learned there rather than whether or not it was taught there. I'm reminded of the saying that you can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Diana Moon Glampers is, inarguably, 'super effective'! Does the International Math Olympiad's disproportionate asianness (and lack of blacks) indicate 'bias', and should that be retired until equity is ensured? But eh, we've been over this a ton. And it reads like bait, where is HIynka?

Anyway, why think / post so much about "whatever the media wrote about yesterday"? Is (recent headline #5) really that relevant to the real problem of 'educating / teaching your kid'? How much value does "Honors Compare And Contrast The Use Of Vocabulary In Chaucer And Shakespeare" really provide over the standard course? Both are inferior to "reading whatever you feel like on wikipedia", tbh. If you, or your 16yo kid, want to be a great writer, should you fight to preserve Honors English, or ... (for you or the kid) have a blog, debate topics you care about on the internet?. Even if those alternatives seem 'meh', the political simulacra wastes away whatever scraps remain of your will to actually cause better writing - so instead of reading Old Books with your kid, you end up fighting for (R) control of your school board while your kid writes furry fanfics.

Diana Moon Glampers is, inarguably, 'super effective'!

Love the short story (hadn't read that one), but it seems like the most relevant criticism it presents would be that this policy change (no honors classes) limits competition. I'm wondering if the opposite is true (this policy change increases opportunities for competition).

If you agree that social/cultural factors end up filtering (in part) who takes honors classes, wouldn't removing that filter allow for more "honest" competition within the regular classes?

Is there also, like, an anarcho-capitalist (or maybe just capitalist?) argument for this kind of policy? Where each teacher gets to make their class as awesome or distinct as possible and then market-like forces dictate which classes kids take and which teachers/classes parents hold in high regard?

Does the International Math Olympiad's disproportionate asianness (and lack of blacks) indicate 'bias', and should that be retired until equity is ensured?

Yes, it indicates bias (could argue about whether it's bad or not). No, because there's no "regular" Olympiad to integrate with.

Anyway, why think / post so much about "whatever the media wrote about yesterday"?

So, this is a reasonable question to ask, but this is the culture war roundup, and this is clearly a culture-war issue, right? I certainly found it to be a thought-provoking idea (maybe it's not). I was (and still am) excited about all of the responses I've gotten thus far. Maybe what you're alluding to is that the culture war doesn't matter and that we should phase out the roundup? It doesn't seem futile to argue about the right way to educate kids, although maybe what you are expressing is fatigue at rehashing this topic (I get the sense it may have been discussed before). I'll admit that maybe too many resources (time/money) are spent on political endeavors rather than "real" endeavors. One thing that honors classes can give (that can't be provided by you or I reading with our kids) would be opportunities to critique literary works amongst peers (or the filtered "smart kids" in honors classes).

Should we only post about what our favorite blogger wrote about yesterday?

We have to distinguish between positive-sum and zero-sum activities. If I'm hiring someone for the first kind of job, e.g. a contractor to build my house, then it's in my interest to do so meritocratically and without political favoritism, because I actually care about the result i.e. the house getting built. And by extension, if I delegate to you the task of finding me a contractor, but you recommend your cousin's firm as a personal favor to him, then I have a right to take issue with that because you (my agent) did not act according to the interest of me (the principal). The same is true if I'm a taxpayer and you're a government bureaucrat in charge of hiring a contractor to fix up the roads in my city, etc.

On the other hand, for the second kind of job (e.g. politicians, pundits, public intellectuals), there is no question of "merit" because the whole point of the job is to take stuff from one group and give it to another. The sole qualification for the job is "are you on my side or not". I may equally object to so-called "meritocracy" in this case, because it's a betrayal of the social contract by which I can focus my efforts on positive-sum value creation on the understanding that my interests will still be represented in the zero-sum arena. Without this understanding, we're left with a stagnant, materially impoverished society like the classic third-world oil dictatorship.

Where do honors classes fit into this dichotomy? It's hard to say, which is why this is such a difficult issue. Students taking honors classes may be doing so with the goal of going into a career of value-creation or a career of value-reallocation, or (more likely) they haven't even decided yet. Furthermore, there is an almost inevitable tendency (which classically-liberal society tries to stamp out, but lately without much success) for people to parlay status and wealth gained through the value-creation track into influence on value-reallocation. When society's direction is being shaped by a handful of tech billionaires, people may rightly see STEM education as a zero-sum game, even though it isn't inherently.

Obvious troll solution: keep the honors and AP classes, but remove the bonus grade point. That eliminates the incentives to take those classes to get a better position on the value-reallocation ladder while still leaving the classes available for the 4 students who want to take them to learn better.

Critical: this sounds like a certain sort of bait. Paging @HlynkaCG?

As for the actual content, yeah, this is obviously terrible. Do they have any reason to believe the bias was perpetuated by the classes, rather than by outside factors? If the latter, a gap to flush the racism out of the classes wouldn’t be likely to help at all.

The cost benefit for actions like this probably won’t add up without considering ass-covering. I would expect the motivators, on the school side, to have feared a lawsuit. Whether this was real or imagined I couldn’t say.

Hence why I answered it anyway.

And the question depends on who else is getting something out of it. If I were baiting the DankRationality forum into complaining about women, they might have a good time with it. If I then use screen caps to get them deplatformed or at least losing status, well, maybe it was still a loss for them.

There’s also a more pedestrian explanation where sometimes people just want their preconceptions flattered. I think the CW thread prompt makes it clear why I wouldn’t want to reward that.

(Which raises a question: If the "bait" is good enough that you can never quite tell whether it's bait or just a difficult question, does it actually stop being "bait?" Or does it make it the worst, most insidious kind of "bait?")

If a bait is so poorly placed on the hook that it's trivial for fish to eat it without any risk of getting caught on the hook, is it still bait?

Which means I can clearly not choose the bait that was placed in front of you!

Not trying to troll, just haven’t been a part of the community for very long. Don’t know the norms and can’t reproduce the normative top-level comment yet.

If there's an inequality, and you want equality, you can solve it by several ways. The hardest one is to lift everyone to the top - this was the official goal of communism, but by now we can be pretty sure it's not achievable. The easiest one is to bring everybody to the bottom - this is what implementing communism usually leads to (though in reality even at the bottom there's inequality - you could have slightly less moldy bread than your neighbor). You can just stop measuring and declare it to be heretical. The wokes now are trying to implement the combined 2+3 strategy - brining people as much as possible to the bottom, and declaring merit tests racist.

with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.

Early AI koan:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Unfortunately, is is much harder to enlighten people that imagine if they rebuild something with their biases instead of somebody else's, they'd get an unbiased result.

Right, I am imagining that rather than having an explicit inequality (honors classes vs non-honors classes) you end up with a gray area where some teachers are better than others and then skillful/determined parents are the only ones that can get their kids in the right classes.

Love the koan, thanks for the thoughts.

The effect of it would be that parents with a lot of resources and good ability to hustle would get their kids into good schools to good teachers, using various proxy methods (paying for more expensive house, driving the kid longer, hiring tutors, using private schools) while parents of a bright kid that have little resources would have no options, since there's no formal "honors" framework they could lean on for support. Which is diametrically opposite to the stated goal of the "equality" system. But that's how it usually works.

This is meta, but I wonder if our prohibition on "low-effort" top level posts has had a negative side effect. It seems that, more and more, it is low information or low conscientiousness users who post at the top level. Other users recognize that the standards for a top level post are supposed to be high, and don't want to spend an hour writing up something nice, doing research, etc... There are things I've considered posting which would serve as a jumping off point for discussion. I haven't posted them because I didn't have the time to write a long, researched, personal take.

@prof_xi_o I apologize since you asked us to be nice, but in my opinion, this is not a high quality top level post. What's more, since you haven't engaged with the responses, you pattern match to me a personal who is not sincere in actually "learning more" but just trying to troll. I hope this isn't the case.

I'm continually surprised by the people who are willing to write novels in response to this type of top-level content. I think we can do much better. Perhaps the rules for top-level posts can be loosened so that a good faith user can submit a top-level comment without needing to spend a large amount of time doing so. DSL seems to have a much broader number of topics to discuss. This site is much better designed so it would be nice to have similar discussions here.

I wouldn't say this site is better designed, and especially not better implemented. You can start a thread anywhere on DSL and see it from the main page. Here we have... The culture war thread (and I guess the silly Sundays or whatever thread). That's hugely limiting for visibility of top level posts.

I've been enjoying DSL much more because people actually write effortposts about topics they're familiar with, or even just games they're playing. That kind of thing doesn't get much traction here; there were more replies to my throwaway remarks on heat pumps in the CW thread than to the front page post on them.

It does not have to be a novel.

  1. link to the post

  2. quote excerpt or passage

  3. short summary explaining the importance of the article and your opinion

I've been saying the rules for top level posts are terrible for years. The mods like them, they ain't going to change. I imagine at some point all the top-level posts will be either from sacrificial accounts or people who don't mind an occasional ban, and every top-level poster will be banned for their post.

I apologize since you asked us to >be nice

No need to apologize, appreciate the criticism.

Not trying to troll, just looking to flesh out my own knowledge. Seems reasonable to expect more effort out of top-level posts, but what does that look like?

A timebox for research beforehand (you must spend 10 min researching and 10 min writing about the topic before posting)?

What are the characteristics of a good top-level post? Do you have some examples of your favorite top-level posts?

DSL seems to have a much >broader number of topics to >discuss.

What is DSL?

DSL = Data Secrets Lox, another discussion forum in the same cultural sphere.

I'm continually surprised by the people who are willing to write novels in response to this type of top-level content.

Funny, just the other day someone was arguing with me that if a bad post generates good content, we should consider it a good post and not mod it.

I agree there are some tells that hint at possible "JAQ" trolling - it's not like this isn't a well-trodden subject - but we do occasionally get new posters who really haven't been through every past iteration on a topic.

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube (and by extension twitch), and this idea (that bad content can generate good content) certainly fits the meta there.

I miss the pinned 'low effort thread' mod comments that we had on reddit for a while, it was a good way to collect current happenings and smaller topics that don't necessarily need a 5 paragraph write up.

I was hoping that the culture war roundup would be that place (where current happenings get a little bit more wiggle room), but based on the feedback I’m getting it sounds like the community expects more effort out of top-level posts.

If you have any specific suggestions or some top-level posts you really like I’d love to hear/see them

There isn't a rule that you need to make a huge effort post for a top level post. Plenty of top level posts are something like this:

(link)

This article talks about (thing). I find it interesting for (reasons). I thought that some good points were (xyz) but felt that (xyz) were weak points of the article. I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts on (topic).

Basically, have a modicum of something to say to get an interesting discussion going and it's good enough as far as the rules go. I've only seen people get told off for not putting enough effort into a top level post when they literally throw out a "check out this link, discuss" one-liner or they are dropping some really spicy topic (which generally requires proportionally more effort). But most of the time, it seems to me like people get in their own heads and think that they aren't good enough to make a top level post. It isn't actually in the rules though.

I think I mostly do the latter when I’m trying to see other peoples opinions in an area I’m only beginning to develop a view on. Longer well researched post seem to be of the type where someone has formed an opinion and is trying to sell it.

If I see a weakness in this post it’s that it’s a subject that be talked about elsewhere and have reasonable conversations. Neoliberal or moderatepolitics could perfectly well handle the topic and have a fine discussion. And it’s been well covered.

Okay, good to know.

But most of the time, it seems to me like people get in their own heads and think that they aren't good enough to make a top level post.

I suppose we just need to encourage people more then. We're sort of in the "if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" type scenario right now. I might make a couple lower effort (but still hopefully much better than this) posts later. It's been a bit of a desert in here this week.

Civilization will adapt and those who have a need to identify high-potential children will find ways to do so. It's a shame to throw away what used to be a pretty useful nationwide institutionalized way to do this, be we'll find other ways.

And what if we don't? What if those whose ostensible goal is to erase the difference keep holding onto enough power to deny this ability long enough for our civilization to become yet more dysfunctional?

Then everything that can eventually breaks down and after some period of chaos a new civilization emerges presumably made by at least some people who know how to identify talent and use it for civilizational goals. The open question is how much ruin is in the system (probably still quite a lot).

On the one hand this seems super effective— with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.

Well, it will be super effective at achieving aesthetic goals of certain people who desire their classrooms to have the right racial admixture of students. Of achieving anything else, it won't be, including changing preferences for some future honors class opt in.

Whether we judge something as "effective" requires establishing a goal or ideal state to measure against. If the entire goal is to remove racial disparity in honors classes, then this will work. By all means throw out the baby and keep the bathwater. The actual effects of these actions are: parents that can afford it remove their kids from the district and send them to private school or move the entire family to a new district. These kids were always going to be fine. The poorer kids, and especially the (inequitable) number of racial minorities who did manage to get into these programs are back with the dumb and disruptive kids, the opportunity to imagine a better like, or at least a life around a smarter class of people, is likely gone for these kids forever. In short this program provided better outcomes for some, but not enough, of members of the desired groups, so now it helps none of them at all. To be fair to the kids.

I’m inclined to agree, but do you also agree that having a different racial makeup of these honors classes relative to baseline is a problem? If so, how do other ideologies (non-woke) solve it in a productive way?

The actual effects of these actions are: parents that can afford it remove their kids from the district and send them to private school or move the entire family to a new district.

Yes, it also occurred to me that motivated/resourced parents will get their kids in with better teachers at the same school (even though they are all non-honors now).

The article is behind a paywall for me, but I can say that, in general, this is a difficult question. I taught high school for many years, and in my experience non-honors students learn less in homogeneous classrooms in which honors students have been taken out, in part because in such classrooms teachers are stretched thinner -- there are more students who need individual attention, for example, so each student who needs individual attention is going to get less. And, if the average non-honors student learns, say, 10 pct less each year, that is going to add up to a whole lot less learning over 12 years.

OTOH, honors-level students will learn less in heterogenous classes (i.e., in a school without honors classes) than in homogenous classes.

Hence, there is no "right" answer. There is a choice that has to be made about which group you want to prioritize. Note also that, if African-American students are overrepresented among non-honors students, then choosing to have honors classes de facto means that African American students will learn less than they otherwise would in a school without honors classes. That is true regardless of the cause of African American student's lower propensity to learn -- it is true if the cause is cultural, or genetic, or because of "systemic racism" or whatever.

So, if the district decides that is it more important to maximize outcomes for African American students (or for non-honors students), then it indeed makes sense to eliminate honors classes. If the district decides it is more important to maximize outcomes for high-skill students, then it does not make sense to eliminate honors classes. But, again, that is a genuine policy dilemma.

Removing honors classes and putting the smart kids in an easy class where they don't need the teacher is comparable to just sending them home and having smaller class sizes. If they're not learning anything from the teacher because they don't need the teacher's help, then why are they even in school? It's just a way of having 20 actively learning students in a class but pretending you have class sizes of 30. I can see the appeal from a certain perspective, this combines the steps of:

  1. Have smaller class sizes, which increases learning and costs.

  2. Stop teaching smart kids, which reduces the costs created by step 1.

  3. Mask the whole process so it looks less obviously unjust than doing steps 1 and 2 in isolation.

But if you're actually paying attention, you realize that step 3 doesn't actually change how just it is, merely the surface appearance. I don't see the dilemma, this is a strictly worse policy than just letting smart kids test out of school so you don't have to spend money teaching them, and then having smaller class sizes for whoever's left. Which is itself a pretty dubious proposition, but still less dubious than wasting the smart kids' time.

If they're not learning anything from the teacher because they don't need the teacher's help

Except that I did not say that. I said that some students need** individual attention**. Some students learn from the teacher -- eg, from lecture -- yet do not need individual attention in the classroom.

Some students learn from the teacher -- eg, from lecture -- yet do not need individual attention in the classroom.

This "teacher == lecture" equivalence was fractured by the invention of video, and is being dismantled by software.

Frankly, even "comparable to just sending them home" was overstating the equivalence. Khan Academy lectures can be played back with adjustable speed, parts can be replayed if necessary, and although the interleaved quizzes aren't as good as individual attention they're way better than lecture alone. The only added value a teacher brings is discipline and individual attention.

What if we split the difference? You could sit the honors kids in the back classroom in front of self-paced software, where they'll need even less individual attention! That would thereby give teachers even more time to spend on the kids who need it more, meeting Rawlsian goals, and it would still be shortchanging the smarter kids of resources so you'd think it would even meet envious goals. You'd think the left would be happy. But, when at the end of a few years the bulk of the class are struggling slightly less with fractions and the smarter kids are solving quadratics, somehow I don't think that will be good enough. The "we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents" crowd dropped the mask when they first proposed to take the quick-witted middle schoolers out of Algebra I rather than to put the slower ones in; at that point it became too clear that "reject" meant "combat", not "disbelieve".

Note that I said "eg, lecture" rather than "ie, lecture." Also, a lecture in a k-12 classroom is usually more of a q and a than a straight lecture. Not that some students can't learn from av ideo lecture -- some can ---but the set of "students who can learn from video lectures" is definitely not the same as the set of "students who do not need individual attention." A better alternative is to 1) introduce concept; 2) ask stronger students to think about extensions ofthe concept; while 3) teacher gives individual attention to weaker students to make sure they understand the basic concept.

This is counter-acted by the fact that you provide everyone the same content. Typically, after a teacher explained something, some of the students understood it and some didn't. Now the teacher has to make a decision: continue with the lesson and lose the kids that didn't understand, or go over the same topic again (maybe in a different or more detailed way) and lose the kids that already got it and are now getting bored and not learning anything new.

The advantage of the video at least is that the experience can be tailored to the individual's needs. Students can pause, replay or skip over parts depending on how well they understood the material. And it's not necessarily repeating content verbatim: interactive courses can include optional exercises, in-depth explanations, etc. similar to what a teacher might provide.

The fundamental limitation of group-based teaching is that it goes only at a single speed, so at best it's optimized for the average student, and doesn't cater to either the under- or over-performing student. In practice, it's optimized for the below-average student, because if kids are failing classes that's considered bad (“no child left behind”) but if smart students aren't learning as much as they could have, nobody gives a crap.

Is this something that LLMs could help with? You could get one to rephrase the same definition over and over again, with more and more examples and it wouldn't get irritated. Neural networks can reportedly already analyze which students are disengaged by reading their faces, so a robot-TA that pops up and tirelessly tries to help the student with their problem would be the next logical step.

I don't see the dilemma, this is a strictly worse policy than just letting smart kids test out of school so you don't have to spend money teaching them, and then having smaller class sizes for whoever's left.

The parents would lose "free" daycare and the schools would lose the per-student payments from the government if they took that approach though.

It’s probably more important in the modern world to push up your top students. World is getting more scalable. And a countries tech development depends far more on the top. For civil society matters some to have a well educated populace that understands what’s going on.

But there’s another solution since you say lower performers need more individual attention. You could probably teach the AP at scale like intro college courses. And shift to smaller classes on the lower performers. The only issue is a lot of teachers don’t like teaching lower performing and like to have a student who they feel will go somewhere.

You could also cut teaching pay and boost number of teachers in some of the blue areas doing this. Chicagos around 100k a year for a teacher. If you pay Florida wages you could shrink class sizes.

I actually don’t think the AP would scale well at all. Think about how many people fail out of college because they don’t go to lectures or keep up with assignments. Then take away their financial skin in the game, deduct a couple years of life experience such as intro jobs, and force them to stay on “campus” all day. It’d be a bloodbath.

The staffing issue isn’t great either. I’ve never met a professor who’d rather teach freshman lectures than more selective classes. Is that because of the interest of the subject, or because monologuing to 200 people is boring and/or stressful? Either way, there’d be less desire to maximize AP class sizes.

High school also precludes the usual university staffing solution of underpaid TAs. Schedule flexibility is much lower, and there’s no carrot of scholarships or research spots. Without TAs, good luck grading the assignments of giant lecture sections.

In my opinion, one of the more valuable skills from AP is an asking-questions kind of relationship with the teacher. That’s the kind of thing which gets people going to office hours or research assistants in college. Large lectures are a hard limit to that given a high-school schedule.

Most of these problems are much, much worse if you’re simultaneously slashing wages. The market price for a teacher in Chicago accounts for cost of living, Union efforts, enjoyability of the job and the leisure time…force that to match Florida, and you’ll find people would rather be in Florida.

Cost of living isn’t much higher in Chicago/Illinois. And Florida has better academic performance when adjusting for race. It’s mostly just unions.

I’m seeing Chicago as slightly cheaper than Miami, but more expensive than all the other listed Florida cities, which are more comparable to Houston or Richmond.

But my point stands. You are paying teachers to live in Illinois rather than somewhere with a comparable cost but no snow, better beaches, and different politics. I’m sure we can model some of the difference as due to unions, and some fraction of that as self-perpetuating overhead rather than an actual service that people would pay for. How much? I think if you cut wages to Florida levels, the marginal teach would feel much better about moving to Florida. Or Albequerque, or anywhere with similar pay.

And shift to smaller classes on the lower performers. The only issue is a lot of teachers don’t like teaching lower performing and like to have a student who they feel will go somewhere.

I think most teachers would be happy teaching lower performers in a setting in which they can do so successfully (ie, in a setting in which students show actual progress). And of course in high schools, a teacher could have some classes with higher performers and some with lower performers.

If you pay Florida wages you could shrink class sizes.

Yes, there is definitely a tradeoff between salary and class sizes. Of course, there is also the problem that lower ciass sizes = more teachers = need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find all those extra teachers. OTOH, there are plenty of teachers who are not effective in large non-honors classes but who would be effective in smaller classes (eg: a teacher who is not great at classroom management). Again, it is a complex problem.

You could probably teach the AP at scale like intro college courses.

Even that has tradeoffs -- larger classes = more time grading homework (a big deal for any class which requires writing: 100 essays at 15 min per essay = 25 hours of grading), so teachers of larger classes might end up assigning less demanding work.

It is really a more complex problem than is normally assumed.

Hence, there is no "right" answer.

Nonsense. Of course there is a right answer, which is to not do these things. It's not like this is the first time it's ever been tried. Schemes like this have been tried over and over and over for 50 years or more. It always results in ruin and devastation for the school system. Even the stated goal of "Well, kids that need more individual attention learn more when you have classes of smart kids that need less individual attention because there is more individual attention freed up for them" fails to materialize. Because these policies are rarely pursued in isolation. And "equity first" batch of policies, in addition to scrapping achievement, usually also scraps discipline. If parents of achieving kids were frustrated that their kids no longer had access to higher maths or proper AP classes, they become terrified at how increasingly violent the schools become. Seemingly just daycares for felons in training.

Sure, not all the parents will pull their kids out. But I can promise you families that care about their kids will stop moving there. Then things really start going south as the tax base for schools begins to decrease. Now you have schools full of dumb, violent, out of control kids, and no money to deal with the problem.

On a side note, needs individual attention is the best euphemism for fetal alcohol syndrome I've ever heard. I look back on my public school days, with a mix of well off suburbs and trailer parks funneling into the same school district, and the need to keep those groups separate was paramount. Woe betide you if you were a kid who wanted to learn, and were stuck in a class with even 2 or 3 kids who would spring from their desk every 3 minutes and begin smacking people or singing loudly and off key or jumping on their desk. You could go an entire year and not learn one single thing over the teacher's ineffectual shouting. Getting away from them was the singular reason I worked hard in school. Because otherwise I could give a shit about memorizing dates in history, or doing sentence diagrams until my hands cramped.

At least back then, everybody was white, so nobody cared.

You are not really addressing my argument, as is evidenced by this:

On a side note, needs individual attention is the best euphemism for fetal alcohol syndrome I've ever heard.

Leaving aside that that is absolutely wrong -- you have clearly never taught high school economics -- if a school indeed has students with fetal alcohol syndrome, it has to figure out how to serve their needs, and how to balance serving their needs with serving the needs of other students, because there are always tradeoffs. As I said, it really doesn't matter what the cause of low ability is.

I did address you argument in literally the entire rest of my post. But you do you.

Leaving aside that that is absolutely wrong -- you have clearly never taught high school economics -- if a school indeed has students with fetal alcohol syndrome, it has to figure out how to serve their needs, and how to balance serving their needs with serving the needs of other students, because there are always tradeoffs. As I said, it really doesn't matter what the cause of low ability is.

Let me tell you how this went in a rather high profile case near me. A kid with obvious special needs was constantly violent. Problem was, the parents refused to agree to any program the school suggested. They insisted he stay in regular class. It got so bad, the school told the parents they needed to accompany the child in school 100% of the time. I'm under the impression the school did not actually have the authority to request this, and the parents didn't bother.

Anyways, eventually this 6 year old kid gets ahold of his mother's gun and shoots his teacher. After the school was warned 4 times that day that people had seen the kid with the gun, the kid had said he'd shoot his teacher, etc. The administrators just wanted to wait it out and hope nothing happened. Their hands were practically tied because of policies getting rid of the "school to prison pipeline".

That is the terminal destination of these policies.

The administrators just wanted to wait it out and hope nothing happened. Their hands were practically tied because of policies getting rid of the "school to prison pipeline".

Is this actually true? What specific policies were there stopping them? What policies preventing them notifying Children's Protective Services? or the police? Is this a policy issue or an issue where people didn't believe a six year old would have a gun and threaten someone with it (for example) or laziness or complacency? and therefore didn't follow the policies they should have? The indication seems to have been that by policy they should have notified the police when they received the tip rather than simply just searching the kids backpack and then dropping the matter.

For anyone interested, @WhiningCoil is presumably referring to the shooting of Abby Zwerner in Virginia.

I did address you argument in literally the entire rest of my post.

No, you actually didn't. You addressed a different issue. You did not address at all the argument that there are tradeoffs between what is best for high skills students and what is best for low skills students.

Let me tell you how this went in a rather high profile case near me.

Again, what does that have to do with the issue? Leaving aside that 6-yr-olds shooting teachers is not exactly a central example of the issue, the fact that this particular school made the wrong decision in this particular case does not mean that the tradeoffs that I identified do not exist.

I think you need to reevaluate the position that the primary cause of differences in capacity for learning between students is primarily due to students self-selecting how much schoolwork they'd like to do. While that preference surely does have some impact, an important determinant of the level of work that a given student can handle will be the student's general intelligence. Removing honors classes is (in my opinion) a deliberate attempt to hold back intelligent children for the sake of "equity".

Sure, I’ll admit that general intelligence is a factor for some students when they choose to take honors classes.

I’d argue that for most students (middle of the Bell curve) the choice is related to other factors like signaling to colleges, their work ethic, their family dynamics (pressure from family, support from family), and their desire to challenge themselves and not be bored.

Edit: I forgot to add that which class a students’ cohort takes is probably a huge driver as well

I’d argue that for most students (middle of the Bell curve) the choice is related to other factors

If a student in the middle of the bell curve in intelligence, I'm not sure they have much of a choice in this. A student in the middle of the bell curve in baseball ability doesn't have much of a choice in whether or not they play on the varsity baseball team. And if by some weird confluence of events they end up playing on the team anyway, then if the coach is at all competent, that student will find themselves riding the bench more often than not.

I don’t think that high schools sports is a good analogy for honors classes. And I meant middle of the bell curve within students who take honors classes. The smartest kids will need educational experiences tailored to their needs (arguably honors classes might not be the best for the smartest kids). But for most kids in honors classes I would guess that their motivation is not “I’m so smart I need honors classes.”

Aren’t honors classes purely opt-in (no analogy for tryouts and selection)?

I would guess that more students pick honors classes because their friends are taking them than any other (explicit) reason, which you can’t always say for someone who makes the varsity baseball team.

Aren’t honors classes purely opt-in (no analogy for tryouts and selection)?

I would guess that more students pick honors classes because their friends are taking them than any other (explicit) reason, which you can’t always say for someone who makes the varsity baseball team.

I can't speak for the general case, but in my experience, honors classes did have some analog for tryouts, in the sense that the teachers had to be convinced that the student was qualified for the honors class. And in my experience, I couldn't think of a single case where students picked honors classes due to any sort of peer influence. The causality was always reversed, if there was any friendship at all; they were friends because they took the same honors classes together. And the reason for taking those honors classes was generally explicitly because of the additional advantage in education (or more cynically education qualifications as they appear to colleges - which can only work if the student also has the intelligence to actually get good grades there - it was generally considered common knowledge that a B in an honors class was worse than an A in a regular one) those honors classes (theoretically) provided them.

And I meant middle of the bell curve within students who take honors classes. The smartest kids will need educational experiences tailored to their needs (arguably honors classes might not be the best for the smartest kids). But for most kids in honors classes I would guess that their motivation is not “I’m so smart I need honors classes.”

Oh, I see, the clarification about the bell curve makes sense. Either way, the effect of filtering - again, students couldn't just arbitrarily choose to take honors classes, in my experience, and had to actually be deemed qualified - would make intelligence a pretty important factor. Though obviously teachers' judgments are imperfect. And basically no student is going to think "I'm so smart I need honors classes;" rather, it's more "I'm smart/good at academics enough to take honors classes and excel which is better for my college prospects than taking regular classes and excelling (and I'm smart enough that the risk of taking honors classes and being mediocre is very low)."

I couldn't think of a single case where students picked honors classes due to any sort of peer influence

This is fair, but I have anecdata to the contrary-- let's call it a draw on that one.

And basically no student is going to think "I'm so smart I need honors classes;" rather, it's more "I'm smart/good at academics enough to take honors classes and excel which is better for my college prospects than taking regular classes and excelling (and I'm smart enough that the risk of taking honors classes and being mediocre is very low)."

I like your characterization of a hypothetical student's motivation better here, it seems more plausible.

If I'm understanding your position correctly, you're saying that the primary driver for students taking honors classes is their general intelligence? I still think I disagree, and would argue that social factors are a bigger driver (when you take into account the whole distribution of intelligence in a given honors class). I'd be curious to know if there's relevant research.

Edit: singular possessive

If I'm understanding your position correctly, you're saying that the primary driver for students taking honors classes is their general intelligence?

No, you understand incorrectly. I'm not making any statement about the primary driver. I'm not sure if it's even possible to do the research to figure out what the primary driver is, so I'm not sure how you're concluding that social factors rather than general intelligence or something else altogether is a bigger driver. I'm just saying that, due to the filtering effect of honors classes, they're generally going to consist of students who are higher in general intelligence than the broader student population at the given school and grade. Teachers aren't perfect at gauging a student's potential ability to make use of honors classes, but I believe they're better than chance.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I appreciate your points. All I have is my intuitive sense of why people choose honors classes. It sounds like my intuitive model of those people is different than yours. That's fine.

Edit: actually this wasn't your initial post, it was someone else. Apologies.

I went and re-read your initial post. My claim was that:

it’s okay to allow students to self-select (or students and whoever is telling them what to do) and decide how much schoolwork they want to do.

I went to American (US) public high school, and my recollection is that the main differentiator for the honors classes was that there was more schoolwork (more note-taking in english, more books to read) and the kids who took the classes were "better." Maybe that's not true across all high schools. I think that maybe International Baccalaureate (IB) or Advanced Placement (AP) would be better examples of places where true high-performers go.

I'm just saying that, due to the filtering effect of honors classes, they're generally going to consist of students who are higher in general intelligence than the broader student population at the given school and grade.

I'm inclined to agree, as long as you're saying that the average intelligence is higher. Maybe that's too much of a nitpick, but certainly there would be overlap in the distributions of general intelligence in honors and regular classes.

Teachers aren't perfect at gauging a student's potential ability to make use of honors classes, but I believe they're better than chance.

I'd rather use standardized tests for this, wouldn't you? Or a combination of standardized tests and nomination by teachers of students with merit? Teachers have all kinds of biases, and some teachers are terrible (many teachers awesome).

Edit: clarification in last paragraph

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  1. Disparate outcome doesn’t suggest biased methods; could simply suggest disparate populations (eg NBA has a disparate outcome by race but few suggest it’s primarily driven by biased methods).

  2. Maybe there is bias but that doesn’t per se justify scraping the program. If honors program creates +10 units of utility and the bias creates less than -10 units, then the honors program is kaldor hicks efficient. Now, there should be an attempt to make that Pareto efficient by actually compensating anyone actually harmed.

There’s always going to be racial disparities because there are racial disparities in academic skill as evidenced by testing. Getting rid of honor’s classes because black and latino students do poorly is like getting rid of swimming competitions because short guys do poorly or getting rid of beauty models because fat women feel offended. It is the exact wrong way of looking at the world. The black and latino students, instead of narcissistically believing they are morally harmed, should feel gratitude that they live in a nation where smarter people live and should feel blessed that they have more capable competitors to inspire them. If there is any moral harm occurring, it is that smart students will grow up to have to subsidize the problems of dumb students. In no way do the dumb students possess moral victimhood status, IMHO.

I disagree with this view.

In my opinion, a great deal of harm was caused to Africans when the wheel was introduced to their continent then combustion engines, electricity and telecommunications.

Being forced to compete in an artificial capitalist economy is unfair when you are biologically less suited than others to that competition, but well-suited to your natural environment that is displaced by the capitalists.

There is a lot of talk about the harm caused to the enslaved people that were transported in state-of-the-art (at the time) boats across the seas and the centuries, and their descendants.

Clearly their suffering matters a lot more (in terms of how many people care about it) than the suffering of their cousins who were just as enslaved, murdered and brutalized but on their original continent.

The difference is that one side had a glimpse of 'what could be'.

Non-African capitalists have been dangling the carrot of civilization in front of Africans for centuries now, never to quite reach it.

Imagine if aliens came to Earth and showed everybody what fully automated luxury communism is but only slightly different people than you got to partake in it, everybody else only getting 30% of the utopia. Wouldn't that be a form of harm? Wouldn't you have been happier if you hadn't had a glimpse of paradise on Earth, without getting told that you specifically does not get to have it?

This is essentially the black experience in the West.

The movie Elysium touches on this, I believe, it is no surprise that the director is a white South-African.

Being forced to compete in an artificial capitalist economy is unfair when you are biologically less suited than others to that competition, but well-suited to your natural environment that is displaced by the capitalists.

Africans are biologically less suitable to capitalism than non-Africans? Unpack that one for me.

At least for the ones forcibly brought overseas.

We see them do a lot worse in metrics that are relevant to success in capitalism such as time preference, literacy, numeracy, civility or manners, almost any metric one can imagine relevant to commercial success, and these metrics have strong biological underpinnings.

Usually whatever gene variant is associated with the worse outcome in phenotype for a capitalist society (ie increased violence or reduced intellectual function) will be more prevalent in Subsaharian African in studies, but these are controversial and not that common.

Some studies related to that can be found here, mostly from the 2010s, I haven't really kept up to date with the most relevant science.

This article from 22 seems to claim that using geographical categorization makes for bad science and leads to violence, continuously referring to a single shooting that happened that year.

While I don't know whether or not it makes for bad science, I think using the fragments of science that are still being published using geographical denominations would probably decrease violence, if one were to believe the FBI crime statistics.

Indeed, they quote one of the scientists:

Benjamin’s hope is that polygenic scores developed for educational attainment and other measures of behavioral and social traits will one day improve the analysis of social science experiments. As he envisions it, the scores could be used in randomized studies, in much the same way that scientists try to control for family income or parents’ educational level. The thinking is that by controlling for genetics, researchers could better estimate the effectiveness of interventions.

Regarding the issue with maladaptation to capitalist societies, which some people call 'structural racism':

The few that manage to attain success and status in our capitalist society happen almost by accident.

If there was no audience for their brawling, their singing and dancing or their running and throwing, most of them would not be successful, and these are people that are outliers of their group already.

While these top sportsmen and entertainers do command a certain amount of luxury and status, they are still employees, or even commodities, traded by powerful capitalist owners.

Who's to say what life they would have on the continent? Would they not make impressive warlords? Powerful tribes chiefs?

Out of the few African-American distinguished for some level of legitimate intellectual achievement, I can't help but notice that they usually show significant non-African admixture. Some people question if Obama is African at all, or Indonesian, MLK is another example.

NASA recently named a moon mountain for Melba Mouton. I'd be surprised if she were more than 50% African.

You're essentially arguing that black and Latino students should just accept the reality that they aren't as smart as white people, and be grateful that there are white people around to serve as role models.

Even if this were true, our society is not constructed such that we can assert a modern-day Great Chain of Being and expect the people born into the bottom rungs to accept it.

Are you suggesting that we join them in their denial of reality, or that we lie to them?

As I said to @The_Nybbler, I don't have suggestions. I am just pointing out that accepting the worst racial stereotypes about your people are, in fact, true, would be such an incredibly bitter pill to swallow that I don't think most people could do it.

I'm pessimistic, and I don't think there actually is an easy way forward, unless we conveniently discover either that HBD is wrong, or that the problem is easier to correct than we think.

People have ways to cope. It's always a sad day when a young man understands he doesn't have the makings of a varsity athlete, but he moves on. People typically value the things they are good at and denigrate the rest ('acting white') .

In the less politically correct accounts of white life in africa, they note that the indigenous accept the intelligence difference as a matter of course. Similarly to how an 'old-fashioned' white person might prefer a jewish lawyer.

I don't think trying to find a spooky force that keeps them down does anything but feed their resentment.

Even if this were true, our society is not constructed such that we can assert a modern-day Great Chain of Being and expect the people born into the bottom rungs to accept it.

Isn't this, without the slant, the relationship between a walmart greeter / janitor and a well paid lawyer or software dev? The former are much poorer and less-well-regarded than the latter - much moreso than the difference between a 'median black' and 'median white' - but they 'accept' that, whether by skill or maybe social class, their place is lower. At least in the same sense a black student's is.

Of course it's justified by merit - and if a poor smart person can ace leetcode problems (most can't, even if they try and learn), they have a shot at being richer. But that doesn't make them any less unequal. What makes "I'm (white) not as smart as someone who makes $150k/year (white)" THAT much better (fundamentally, not as a matter of political feasibility) than "I'm (14% black / 60% white) not as smart as someone who makes $150k/year (7% black / 60% white)"?

They accept it because, as I said, it doesn't harm them

How does it harm a poor black person much moreso than it does a poor white person?

I don’t know anyone that thinks highly of lawyers or software developers, for one.

Second, this status-seeking fetish of the petit bourgeois is in direct opposition to the American mythology of the rugged individual. A Wal-Mart greeter isn’t acknowledging your superiority by saying hello to you. They’re doing a job that they may or may not enjoy (you forget that many Wal-Mart greeters are bored retirees, who have the luxury of not needing to work, which places them well above the lawyers and software developers who do).

Third, “merit” is not the reason your software developer or lawyer has a bloated salary. These are two jobs that currently pay very well because they have corporate backing. And judging by the recent high amount of FAANG layoffs, that backing isn’t unconditional.

They’re doing a job that they may or may not enjoy (you forget that many Wal-Mart greeters are bored retirees, who have the luxury of not needing to work, which places them well above the lawyers and software developers who do).

Then why doesn't the software guy just get a Walmart job then and cut his expenses accordingly? Hmmm . Maybe making 7 figures by 30-40 is more fun than living hand to mouth your whole life.

You could’ve read the text you quoted and gotten your answer. Also, no software engineer makes 7 figures unless they’re in management or counting “total compensation” in a bid to make themselves sound higher status than they actually are.

7 figures in accumulated savings and by investing your income in the stock market and or real estate, which is doable.

And not at all what you claimed.

It's a comparison. The way in which a black person, whether by racism or merit, scores poorly on a test, gets into a less prestigious school, or a lower-income occupation, is exactly the same way in which a less-well-off white person does. The claim is this happens disproportionately to black people, not that anything specific happens to black people that isn't ålso common among poor whites.

Second, this status-seeking fetish of the petit bourgeois is in direct opposition to the American mythology of the rugged individual.

There's never been an america, or anywhere, where people didn't seek status, wealth, power, social approval, etc

Third, “merit” is not the reason your software developer or lawyer has a bloated salary

... you type into your laptop/phone's meticulously designed user interface, which is transmitted over dozens of layers of well-optimized abstraction to a dozen others on random parts of the globe, as a billion people do the same thing. Software engineering is hard, and as its products are integrated into every area of human activity, it remains valuable. It has "corporate backing" because corporations using it make billions. FAANG layoffs are returns to the status quo of 1.5 years ago - in part, they overestimated how much of COVID internet demand would be permanent, in part general overhiring. But genuinely talented developers are still hard to find, and expensive.

Yes, petit bourgeois status chasers have always existed. All the same, they are tumors whose existence is harshly ignored in the American mythology of the self made man. You can feel however you want about said tumors.

And software engineering isn’t harder than chemical, petroleum, electrical, or nuclear engineering, all fields that pay peanuts compared to software. As professed by my many acquaintances who jumped engineering ship to the laptop class. Your money comes from corporate marketing.

Oh, and this piece of shit in my hand that you’re fetishizing as the peak of human technology can barely copy and paste properly, hence the lack of quotations in my reply.

And software engineering isn’t harder than chemical, petroleum, electrical, or nuclear engineering, all fields that pay peanuts compared to software.

Is this actually true? I'd always heard that petroleum engineering is one of the top careers one can go into right out of school in terms of income, whereas software engineering has become saturated to the point that making 6 figures without extensive experience or working for a FAANG company is unusual. The industry in which I work employs a lot of electrical engineers, and I know that they're compensated very well as well, at least within my field.

All mythologies aren't particularly accurate! But social climbing or hwatever has been integral to the american experience since the revolution, just like every other human society everywhere

And software engineering isn’t harder than chemical, petroleum, electrical, or nuclear engineering, all fields that pay peanuts compared to software

... yeah, because those fields aren't in the process of transforming all niches of economic activity. software pays a lot because it's difficult AND in demand.

Oh, and this piece of shit in my hand that you’re fetishizing as the peak of human technology can barely copy and paste properly

"that car you're fetishizing as the peak of human technology? its sound system flickers sometimes. cars are irrelevant"

I genuinely don't think we disagree on anything material, you just seem mad at the elite laptop class or something

This is all a very fluffy way to say “yes, most revenue in software development comes from marketing.”

So I’m glad we agree. Though calling the laptop class “elite” is always funny wish fulfillment from rationalists whose greatest achievement in life is becoming middle managers for a tech company. The “elite” don’t work.

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Isn't this without the slant, the relationship between a walmart greeter / janitor and a well paid lawyer or software dev? The former are much poorer and less-well-regarded than the latter - much moreso than the difference between a 'median black' and 'median white' - but they 'accept' that, whether by skill or maybe social class, their place is lower. At least in the same sense a black student's is."

Black children in families making 200K have the same SAT scores as those born in families making 20K. A child born in the top 1% who is Black (a very rare thing), has the same criminality rate as a 40 percentile who is white. The bottom 50% of Blacks have the same criminality rate as the bottom 1% of Whites by income (again using global not intra-race percentiles). With this in mind let's address your following question.

How does it (accepting the existence of inequality) harm a poor black person much moreso than it does a poor white person?

In an entirely fair society, it is concievable that a poor white janitor or his children might one day have the potential to become something more. The same cannot be said for a black Janitor, and in fact his job might actually merit taking by a black secretary or nurse.

Even unsourced graphs from racist blogs show that, at any IQ level, the number of blacks at it is either less than or decently close to the number of whites. This doesn't demonstrate 'categorical' differences. Sure, regression to the mean means a 90IQ black's probably a bit 'genetically' worse than a 90IQ white, but not that much. A white and black that've sorted into similar skill brackets don't have that much difference in potential. And compared to someone who makes 300k/year, the difference is difficult to notice. I don't see what your stats add to that picture.

To the original points, being a 'low-IQ black' isn't worse than being a low-IQ white, of which there are many.

And, if you (speaking generally) are a 130IQ white talking to a bunch of 125IQ whites, isn't there something odd about drawing a line between a 90IQ black and a 100IQ white?

White people pretty well accept it, though. They accept Asian representation without a wince and have a pathological belief that PoC make better musicians, comics and dancers. If some group, hypothetically, had a civilizationally-challenged level of narcissism that prevents fair and just grading, the issue is squarely on them.

White people pretty well accept it, though.

They accept it because, as I said, it doesn't harm them. Even if you want to be a musician, comic, or dancer (accepting your premise for the moment, and "white men can't dance" jokes aside, I don't think anyone seriously believes white people have a genetic disadvantage in the performative arts), white people are obviously able to succeed there as well.

I see no evidence for any race having a "civilizationally-challenged level of narcissim."

They accept it because, as I said, it doesn't harm them.

So what is the specific mechanism that harms a particular mediocre black American student when American blacks are underrepresented as honor students (because they are straight up worse at academics than most others), but that doesn't harm a particular mediocre Gentile American white student even though Gentile American whites are underrepresented as honor students (because they, too, are worse at academics than Jews, Asians and many other sorts of non-American and sometimes non-white immigrants)? For any student who doesn't make the cut, the harm is obvious because it decreases this student's upward social mobility, potential access to capital, networking, happy life and levers of power. But what does race have to do with it?

If you accept the treatment of races as lobbying groups and cohesive political units (relatedly, a very apt formulation I've seen recently is: «treat individuals in the present as genetically-determined avatars for demographic dynasties») – then it must apply equally in all cases where a race is less successful relative to another. If you do not, then it must be shown and clearly argued that outcomes on the level of aggregate racial statistics have some causal adverse impact on an individual, before it starts to make sense to recognize a problem here. You cannot have it both ways, affirming racial politics of non-whites but bluntly stating whites do not have a case for symmetrical complaints. This would be just incoherent.

I don't think anyone seriously believes white people have a genetic disadvantage in the performative arts

Impassionata does, I do too. More accurately, whites have advantages in competitive domains where requirements fit their traits well, and the same is true for any other group (duh). It so happens that what is called «dance» today is better suited to traits of black people, I guess. This is obviously true for NBA, why cannot it be true to more artistic forms of physical performance? Do you think blacks are not genetically advantaged in the context of NBA? This should be textbook stuff.

So what is the specific mechanism that harms a particular mediocre black American student

There is no mechanism that disproportionately harms an individual, assuming a race-blind meritocratic society (which is a big assumption).

This is obviously true for NBA, why cannot it be true to more artistic forms of physical performance? Do you think blacks are not genetically advantaged in the context of NBA?

Being a good NBA player requires height, strength, and speed, all traits where blacks pretty clearly have a genetic advantage.

There may be genetic traits that make one a better singer, dancer, or comedian, but I am skeptical that blacks are unusually gifted, or whites unusually disadvantaged, in these areas.

So whites should accept the reality that they are statistically shorter, weaker, and slower than black people? (except that US whites aren't shorter, at least.... maybe the NBA needs some diversity investigations?), but blacks cannot be expected to accept the reality that they have statistically lower IQ? This is blatant special pleading.

So whites should accept the reality that they are statistically shorter, weaker, and slower than black people? (except that US whites aren't shorter, at least.... maybe the NBA needs some diversity investigations?), but blacks cannot be expected to accept the reality that they have statistically lower IQ? This is blatant special pleading.

The reality that blacks have statistically lower IQs is an obvious fact - I don't think anyone actually disputes it. We can see the numbers.

The disputes are over whether IQ actually represents intelligence, and whether the difference is genetic.

Let's skip all the wrangling over both those questions and suppose you and I agree that the answer is yes, IQ is meaningful and genetic, and, to put it crudely, whites are smarter than blacks.

I'm not arguing that blacks "shouldn't be expected to accept reality." I am pointing out that when you have a trait that strongly determines/predicts one's outcomes and success in life (which IQ, given the premises above, does, while height and athletic ability, in today's society, does not), it is not realistic for you to blithely say "Sorry, black people, you're just not as smart, that's why you aren't ever going to achieve economic or political parity. Suck it up."

Are you factually correct in saying that? Maybe. And I don't see much utility (or nobility) in the "noble lie." So maybe saying that until everyone believes it is the only real option.

However, I don't think that will work. I don't think you will ever get everyone to believe it. And I understand why black people would not want to believe it. ("But they should just accept--" Yes, yes, if all this is true, I suppose they should. They won't. Are you absolutely sure, if you were black, you'd be able to bite that bullet?)

I do not have a solution. I am making observations, not prescriptions.

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Being a good NBA player requires height, strength, and speed, all traits where blacks pretty clearly have a genetic advantage.

Methinks it's mainly speed, or rather fast-twitch muscle fibers. Politically correct science tells me that black American men are perceived as being taller, heavier, stronger and more muscular even when they are not – and in fact they are like one inch shorter, but it's basically equal. Blacks have more skeletal muscle on average, so I guess that's why they're decent bodybuilders, but they are noticeably less impressive as pure strongmen than Germanics, Scandinavians, obviously including Icelanders, and Eastern Slavs (Poles, Ukrainians).

Btw you have already posited that there is no feeling of inferiority in masculine quality on part of white men, so that's a bit perplexing – do you think men who are perceived as «pretty clearly have a genetic advantage in height, strength and speed» are not seen as more masculine and sexually desirable on a primal level? Asians suffer a lot, and struggle to lose virginity, for their lack of those advantages – not because they're good at math.

Some ethnicities among Southern Slavs are taller and probably stronger than American whites, albeit slower than blacks. Accordingly, there are 83 international players from Yugoslavia, including 30 from Serbia (pop. 6.8 million) and 10 from Montenegro (619 thousand people). This chart tells me French Guiana contributes even more per capita, not sure what's going on there.

Anyway, this stuff is best left to Steve Sailer. My only point is that the same vector of fast-paced athleticism that makes one a good runner, jumper, dunker and boxer* can easily make one a great agile dancer, assuming you're not dancing 19th century waltz. Singers and comedians are more a matter of taste; but self-esteem, impulsivity and outgoing personality are also partly genetic, and one can see how blacks have an advantage there and how it can contribute to success at performing.

* though there, too, Slavs make a good showing by virtue of bulk, power and technique; now that Fedor's star has fallen, I'm looking forward to Sergey Pavlovich vs Curtis Blaydes. Sergei did lose to Overeem but has... changed a lot since then. I don't care for box per se, but the picture there is similar to MMA.

Btw you have already posited that there is no feeling of inferiority in masculine quality on part of white men

I didn't say no feelings of inferiority. I'm sure some white men do feel that way. I do not think it's an anxiety deeply embedded in white society, as you seem to, or one that affects most mentally healthy white men. Like, how many white men do you know who actually spend time worrying about how their dick compares to a black man's?

Some people may have genetic advantages in whatever traits make one a better dancer, and even a singer, and maybe even a comedian (seems to me IQ would be the most important one there, but maybe extroversion is also a factor, as @ApplesauceIrishCream suggested). Maybe black people have the edge there too. But if so, it's certainly less obvious, given that white people worldwide have no shortage of dancing, singing, and comedy/storytelling traditions. Any "gap" doesn't seem as impactful as an IQ gap, or even a speed/height gap.

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There may be genetic traits that make one a better singer, dancer, or comedian, but I am skeptical that blacks are unusually gifted, or whites unusually disadvantaged, in these areas.

Those seem like cases where thriving on attention, or extroversion, would provide an advantage. A dancer that was extremely physically gifted but also shy would be less successful, on average. Black people are stereotypically seen as having more than average swagger; this plausibly has a genetic component; and they may benefit on the margin as a result.

Being a good musician or comedian requires intelligence. There's the bit about scott's brother being a good pianist, jewish overrepresentation among musicians, and generally understanding the relations that make up 'good music', 'good dance', has to depend on intelligence in the same way all other complex tasks do. So, any hypothesized racial difference in intelligence should show up there too.

Affirmative action certainly harms whites, as does having a low regard for whites in total.

What do you mean “white people are obviously able to succeed”? Everyone talented is obviously able to succeed.

i think what @Amadan is arguing is that affirmative action and related things is not the end all be all and has had not really that much of a disadvantaging effect on white people

I mean there's no evidence that white people are either genetically or socially disadvantaged in those endeavors.

We accepted that blacks are best at basketball, Koreans at starcraft and seem to be doing just fine. And averages mean nothing to individual. Nobody is saying that this kid is not suited for honors. But meritocracy is important.

You're essentially arguing that black and Latino students should just accept the reality that they aren't as smart as white people, and be grateful that there are white people around to serve as role models.

That's basically how white people relate to Asian students and it seems basically fine to me. I don't actually find it all that degrading to know that my ethnic group doesn't have the highest average IQ and I don't actually think it says much of anything about me individually.

I could agree with this in the abstract. Intelligence does not equate to moral worth, right?

Except our society very much does equate intelligence to moral worth, and more importantly, equates intelligence to success in life. As a practical matter, very few white people aspire to be professional basketball players or think that their lives are made worse because they are genetically disadvantaged in their basketball potential. But intelligence affects basically everything. And the hard HBD proponents don't just say "Well, black people have lower IQs, but that's okay."

I often see the "Well, Asians score better than whites on IQ tests and that doesn't bother me" argument, but very clearly, whites are doing fine despite perhaps not being the highest IQ race on the planet. If there is a real, genetically-determined IQ gap between whites and Asians, it's small enough as to make little or no difference, whereas the gaps between whites and blacks are stark and significant.

Note that none of this is me claiming that these gaps can't be real. I'm just saying that if you were a black person seeing how poorly your fellow black people are doing in the world and told "Sorry, it's just your bad luck to be born the race whose dump stat is Intelligence," you would probably have a problem accepting this with equanimity.

Except our society very much does equate intelligence to moral worth, and more importantly, equates intelligence to success in life.

Which society? TheMotte?

Adolescent Self-Esteem: Differences by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age

Large-scale representative surveys of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students in the United States show high self-esteem scores for all groups. African-American students score highest, Whites score slightly higher than Hispanics, and Asian Americans score lowest. Males score slightly higher than females. Multivariate controls for grades and college plans actually heighten these race/ethnic/gender differences. A truncated scoring method, designed to counter race/ethnic differences in extreme response style, reduced but did not eliminate the subgroup differences. Age differences in self-esteem are modest, with 12th graders reporting the highest scores. The findings are highly consistent across 18 annual surveys from 1991 through 2008, and self-esteem scores show little overall change during that period.

How likely do you suppose it is that in a society where intelligence is equated to moral worth, the stereotypically most intelligent and most socially conformist, and objectively the highest-scoring major group has the lowest self-esteem, and vice versa?

very clearly, whites are doing fine despite perhaps not being the highest IQ race on the planet

Insofar as we define whites on the planet in a convenient enough manner. Ukrainians aren't white, I guess – and Appalachians should be proud that Episcopalans and Judeo-Hapas in private schools of New York and New England who hate them and politically oppose them have a skin tone close to theirs and get honors on their behalf.

As a practical matter, very few white people aspire to be professional basketball players or think that their lives are made worse because they are genetically disadvantaged in their basketball potential

Not to be crass, but it's not just basketball.

Social media, porn sites, ads and all sorts of American, and now not only American entertainment are bursting with black-male-white-female content, with «muh BBC» mockery of «white boys», «once you go black» memes, with even Effective Altruists wringing their hands that they treat black men as irresistible «sex toys» in their polyamorous rings (what racism!) in the wake of Bostromgate. You really don't need to look hard for it. American society is very conscious about interracial stuff and in denial about fetishizing it (e.g. here's a 8chan board). It's an elephant in the room, don't even try to snarkily spin this into a me issue, as is the custom. I guess I've first realized this when reading Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! book one, the uncomfortable chapter dedicated to, I assume, nursing insecurities of intelligent elderly Jews:

A rectangle of light appeared on the wall; somewhere in the darkness there was a projector. A card, light an old silent-movie caption, appeared in the rectangle. It said:

ALL JEW GIRLS LIKE TO BALL WITH BUCK NIGGERS.

"Sons of bitches," Saul shouted back at them. They were still working on his feelings about Rebecca. Well, that would get them nowhere: he had ample reason to trust her devotion to him, especially her sexual devotion.

The card moved out of the rectangle, and a picture appeared in its place. It was Rebecca's, in her nightgown, kneeling. Before her stood a naked and enormous black man, six feet six at least, with an equally impressive penis which she held sensuously in her mouth. Her eyes were closed in bliss, like a baby nursing.

"Motherfuckers," Saul screamed. "It's a fake. That's not Rebecca— it's an actress with makeup. You forgot the mole on her hip." They could drug his senses but not his mind.

Granted, the trilogy including this chapter is replete with all other sorts of sex – sign of the times. And I know that accurate tinder/dating/marriage statistics do not support the implied pattern. The question is of social impressions and beliefs.

Sex is right at the foundation of human sociality. Do you suppose there are very few white people who think their lives are made worse because they are not seen as impressively masculine?

I think you’re not quite getting at how white versus black masculinity is seen. Yes, blacks are viewed as bigger, stronger, tougher, and sexually bolder, but Americans do still have a concept of men needing to do the right thing, which black men are very definitely not stereotyped as doing.

Sex is right at the foundation of human sociality. Do you suppose there are very few white people who think their lives are made worse because they are not seen as impressively masculine?

Yes, I do suppose that.

+1 for citing one of my favorite books, though.

Note that none of this is me claiming that these gaps can't be real. I'm just saying that if you were a black person seeing how poorly your fellow black people are doing in the world and told "Sorry, it's just your bad luck to be born the race whose dump stat is Intelligence," you would probably have a problem accepting this with equanimity.

This isn't the message, though. Being born to a particular race certainly can be bad luck depending on the race and society based on the discrimination that goes on in that society. But the average IQ - and more broadly the average of any trait - of your race has no real bearing on your lot in life. It's your own personal intelligence that has the bearing on your life. And that personal intelligence isn't influenced by the average intelligence of your race - it's the other way around, where the average intelligence of your race is influenced by the personal intelligence of you and everyone else in your race, because that's literally how one would calculate that.

In theory, yes. But people aren't just individuals, they are also members of communities - familial, ethnic, racial, national, etc.

"Even if your people are naturally less intelligent, you might not be" doesn't seem like it would be much consolation. Especially if it turns out you aren't one of the lucky ones at the favorable end of the bell curve.

So, given a choice between "The lives of you and yours are unfortunate because you are intellectually inferior and there isn't much that can be done about that," and "The lives of you and yours are unfortunate because of historical discrimination and institutional racism, and we can fix that," which one do you think most people are going to choose? How easy would it be for you to accept option a?

See, I agree with everything you’re saying here, and have argued the same things multiple times in this space. That’s what’s so odd to me about how hostile you get towards me and other users here who have advocated a formalized geographic and/or cultural separation of blacks from other higher-performing racial groups in this country. I believe it would be a genuine act of care and would drastically improve the lived experience of most black people, for precisely the reasons you’ve outlined. Yet you continue to (usually by implication but occasionally explicitly) accuse me of having other, more malicious motives.

I understand why you might have other concerns which would stop you from carrying through the argument you’re making to (what I believe is) its most appropriate conclusion, but I ask that you take this opportunity to at least reflect on why someone would conclude from the argument you’re making that maybe the best solution is to engineer a future in which black people will not have to live every single day of their lives being forced to unfavorably compare themselves to whites and Asians.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever been particularly hostile to you. Obviously I disagree with your ideology, but I don't recall ever being uncivil to you.

Yet you continue to (usually by implication but occasionally explicitly) accuse me of having other, more malicious motives.

I accept that you are sincere in wanting a peaceful separation where we all just get along on our respective sides of the fence.

I just don't believe most white nationalists are so benevolent. Sure, they might not all want a race war if there is a less violent alternative, but they don't actually care about the well-being of black people; they just hate and resent black people because they perceive blacks to be making their own lives worse.

Let's say that's true. I think even you must know that your project of the US setting aside a chunk of the country for African-America and subsidizing them for a few generations is about as likely as AIs turning into benevolent overlords who give us Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism. So I don't see white nationalism leading to anything but a race war, whatever your personal intentions might be.

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"The lives of you and yours are unfortunate because you are intellectually inferior and there isn't much that can be done about that,"

Again, I don't think this is the message. There are plenty of things that can be done about lower intellect to give people better lives - just as many as can be done to effectively improve people's lives by countering historical discrimination or institutional racism, by my lights - and plenty of people specifically push for policies designed to do just that. I do think the message gets negativity attached to them because of the lionization of "intelligence" as the indicator of worth or value in a person, but then the solution is clearly to get rid of that lionization. I'm pretty sure concepts like physical strength or martial prowess used to be a far greater indicator of someone's worth as a human being (at least among males) in the past, but that association is mostly gone now in modern society. I think we can do the same for intelligence. And, frankly, I think we must if we are to create at all a functional society going forward.

I often see the "Well, Asians score better than whites on IQ tests and that doesn't bother me" argument, but very clearly, whites are doing fine despite perhaps not being the highest IQ race on the planet. If there is a real, genetically-determined IQ gap between whites and Asians, it's small enough as to make little or no difference, whereas the gaps between whites and blacks are stark and significant.

IQ gap is a very abstract concept. I doubt regular people are going around correlating how they interact with people, with what that person's race's average IQ is compared to theirs.

What isn't abstract is how often you are harrassed, abused, or otherwise victimized, and what tribe that person comes from. When you are openly discriminated against during job interviews, and what the open racial preferences of the company were. When you are in groups, and which people are openly racially hostile towards you.

Never, have I ever, had a naturalized Asian-American do any of those things to me, or anyone I know. To whatever degree there are abstract, market dominant minority effects at play between European-Americans and Asian-Americans, they have manifested zero immediate negative consequences in my life. Only the most terminally online person would resort to nonchalantly claiming that some IQ different between whites and asians doesn't bother them. Whatever the differences between whites and asians, asian people have likely never bothered him. And not in the "Ugh, that bothers me" sense but the "I think that might be a felony, or at least a misdemeanor" sense.

The same cannot be said about how many equity policies have forced me into contact with groups that hate me and seem eager to victimize my family. Or worse, have the state do it for them.

What isn't abstract is how often you are harrassed, abused, or otherwise victimized, and what tribe that person comes from. When you are openly discriminated against during job interviews, and what the open racial preferences of the company were. When you are in groups, and which people are openly racially hostile towards you.

Never, have I ever, had a naturalized Asian-American do any of those things to me, or anyone I know. To whatever degree there are abstract, market dominant minority effects at play between European-Americans and Asian-Americans, they have manifested zero immediate negative consequences in my life.

It's not commonly noted, but these things do happen in small ways. The self-segregation of asian students from white ones does happen in some schools - particularly at ones with large asian populations like Cal. Also, I've seen cases of anti-white discrimination crop up in professional contexts; cases of Indian caste-bias, or of the marginalization of whites in some east-asian companies operating branches in CA.

It's not commonly noted, but these things do happen in small ways. The self-segregation of asian students from white ones does happen in some schools - particularly at ones with large asian populations like Cal. Also, I've seen cases of anti-white discrimination crop up in professional contexts; cases of Indian caste-bias, or of the marginalization of whites in some east-asian companies operating branches in CA.

People keeping to themselves doesn't bother me. But RE: Indians hiring discriminately, I really wasn't talking about Indians. I know they are technically Asian, but the Indian Subcontinent is it's own thing for a reason. My wife was actually told point blank during an interview she wasn't going to get the job because she wasn't Indian once. She has an ethnic sounding last name (nobody knows why), so maybe they didn't realize she was white when they offered to interview her.

The same cannot be said about how many equity policies have forced me into contact with groups that hate me and seem eager to victimize my family. Or worse, have the state do it for them.

Okay. But you're grinding an entirely different axe. We're talking (based on my original response) about whether it's reasonable to expect that blacks (and Latinos) should just accept that white people are smarter and be happy.

Well, Jews and some Asian ethnicities are smarter on average than white people. I, a white person, hold no ill will towards them.

Okay. But you're grinding an entirely different axe. We're talking (based on my original response) about whether it's reasonable to expect that blacks (and Latinos) should just accept that white people are smarter and be happy.

I donno man. I just don't know.

I mean, going back to my previously mentioned, white suburban, not a minority in sight, upbringing, dumb white kids were just dumb. And they often grumbled that life wasn't fair. The speeding tickets they got for going 100 in a 45 weren't fair. The F's they got on tests weren't fair. Getting fired from the jobs they struggled to show up for wasn't fair. And no amount of pointing out them that these things were the consequences of their actions made a dent in their conviction. Even that they were the easily foreseeable consequence! Well, maybe for normal people. Not for them.

I'm not sure how many of them ever articulated that they even perceived it to be an IQ problem. I mean, naturally everyone around them knew they were dumb as a box of rocks. But they always thought they were as smart as everyone else, and that life wasn't fair.

Luckily nobody gave a fuck, because they were all white. There was no "Dumb ass white person" political action group. There was no equity program for those utterly incapable of not making a bad decision.

If IQ test data between Blacks and Whites is accurate, you've got a truly staggering proportion of the African American population that are just dumb. And if they are like the dumb white people I've known, they don't think they are. They will never believe they are. And, like the dumb white people around me growing up, society serves itself best when it doesn't take their complaints about "fairness" seriously.

As for how they cope with it, ideally, that would be on them. Alas...

Agreed - dumb people are dumb, and one characteristic of dumb people is an inability to accept cause and effect, that actions have consequences, to take responsibility, etc. As well as suffering from Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. (I've known a few dumb people who knew they were less than bright and more or less accepted it, but most... don't.) Obviously this is equally true of dumb white people and dumb black people.

As for how they cope with it, ideally, that would be on them. Alas...

Yeah, that is the crux of it. My argument is not that IQ tests imply unfortunate things so we should not believe them, or that we should pretend things that aren't true because it makes dumb people feel bad. My argument is a purely practical one: given that dumb people demonstrably can't accept this, then if it's true that blacks and Latinos are dumb at much higher rates, why would you think they should just "cope" and be happy? That's not a reasonable expectation of human behavior.

What is the solution? I don't know.

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Wait why is this an effective plan? It doesn’t seem like it will do anything except be bad for some high performing kids.

If the target metric is racial makeup of classes relative to baseline, integrating honors and regular classes seems like an effective strategy, no?

From that frame of reference it being bad for the high-performing kids would be a side-effect, right?

Couldn't you argue that the high-performing kids would be incentivized to move towards private education, which would lead to more market forces being present in education? Could policy changes like this bring public school closer to its socialist roots and accelerate the adoption of private, market-driven education?

From that frame of reference it being bad for the high-performing kids would be a side-effect, right?

Yes, if you completely ignore the point of having honors classes in the first point.

The reason why honors classes exist is to teach the more advanced students at a level commensurate with their ability. If you just abandon this, then it's not an honors class anymore, and it doesn't serve the purpose for which they were intended.

That this seems trivially obvious should bring consideration to whether that's the goal. Based on personal experience with school administrators, I would suggest that many of them are perfectly happy to make a policy change that's bad for high performing kids, applying the attitude that they'll be fine anyway.

Because the stated goal is not to "improve outcomes", it's to "increase equity", and pulling down high performers is just as equitable and easier than boosting up low performers.

You can only increase equity by transferring ownership. That's what equity means.

Although 'increasing equity' is as Orwellian a phrase as I've ever heard.

Interesting perspective, I love the idea that when there are strong "tribal" affiliations it can be a valid choice to explicitly have representation.

I'm going to have to think about that duality you mentioned-- maybe it's not just the american progressives, like the war in Afghanistan/Iraq come to mind, there's the justification for those invasions (both of which were arguably or factually bullshit) and the reality, which is taboo to mention

Someone down below mentioned "Orthopraxy" as opposed to "Orthodoxy" your point about the rabbi brings that to mind.

I think the problem with American progressives is their sincerity. If the actual goal is to establish a 10% representation of black people in the upper middle class (‘PMC’), then just do it and move on, like almost every other country that implements extensive affirmative action.

No, the goal is not to establish representation qua representation. The goal is to prove that black people are "just as good as" everyone else; that dark skin, or "black" speech, and "black" culture really isn't worse, or even all that separate from the mainstream; that people raised in picket-fence honkey-topia aren't laughing up their sleeve at Shaniqua with the neck-swivels and the sassy-black-girl mannerisms and weave, or D'quavious who starts every sentence "naw, man, f'real..." Or that's at least what I'd bet the black people involved sometimes think (based in part on accounts like John McWhorter's). The ever-shifting demands for affirmative action, representation, equity, and all the rest of it are just a never-ending stream of metrics for this ineffable "acceptance" which inevitably fail because what's being sought isn't material - it's psychological. Your cynical approach is actually the antithesis of what these people want. Your way is just Goodhart's Law ruining their efforts permanently.

As to what the white people who actually make up the bulk and vast numerical majority of the radical-left race-activists are thinking, that's something else entirely. There, the concern isn't even necessarily with black people as people - it's often an entirely narcissistic obsession with self-criticism and self-abnegation (or at least the criticism and abnegation of things which they can safely "rebel" against). "The resistance" against "fascists" and "just being a decent person" against Jim Crow. Cynically doing redistribution wouldn't help these people at all because their focus isn't on the black people at all, except insofar as black people are a moral cudgel they can wield to make themselves look and feel better. They'll find some new way to wield the cudgel, or if it comes to it, find a new cudgel (e.g. the switch from gay rights to trans rights). The point is to rebel against what they see as an illegitimate order, not actually to solve on-the-ground issues.

This orthodoxy, opposed to your orthopraxy (incidentally, all of Judaism is more like it) might just be the downside of individualism. Americans are descendants of people who have chosen their own destiny (except, I suppose, ADOS), the can-do nation. If your religion is bullshit with nice Chestertonian fences, then that's a bummer – why not go for the one that also has tradition but isn't bullshit? Or maybe has cooler bullshit and more rad tradition to boot – with golden icons and UFOs and other bling? Really, why not have it all? Why cope? The ultra-Orthodox (or perhaps it'd be correct to say ultra-Orthopraxic) are cognizant of the fact that they will never receive more support than in their extreme corner of the tribe, nor will they have hope of such guarantees that the society around cares about the healthy perpetuation of their bloodline. Europeans you speak of are simply selected for conformity and brokenness. Americans are builders of globe-spanning business empires that solve problems you didn't even know you could have. They take spirituality to be a matter of finding good consultancy. Surely, if my enterprise works, at least one of those must work too!

But on the other hand, I reject the framing. Americans are simply victims of professional brainwashing; they correctly believe the required consultancies exist, and are oblivious to having been engineered this way by them.

For the masters of the cult, your cynical attitude of going through the motions to reap a modest benefit is quite a problem; it's at best a necessary cope when the mappings and keys are lost, and you can no longer afford or guide zealotry, but also cannot divorce it from sincerity. Such in the late age of a dying faith. How do you know what the benefit worth seeking, while discarding the mumbo-jumbo, even is? Common sense? But common sense is the product of what one feels to be the true religion, because it is not even questioned – its truth apparent viscerally, in senses of dread, cringe, exhilaration, craving, even apathy. American betters want Americans not to accept some mere redistribution, but to desire racial equity on the fundamental level of terminal values following from basic ontology. Their racial religion is fertile and young.

And of course plausible deniability helps in the long run.

But in the US there’s an obsession - is it Puritan? Is it Anglo? - with the method. It’s not enough to do something, you have to do it and believe you didn’t do it, that the outcome was fair and inevitable and your intervention was merely repairing the order of things rather than - even for reasons of justice or peace or whatever - altering it.

This is an important point. It also speaks to one of the most destructive effects of the progressive purity spiral: they know some people might recite the catechisms of progressivism ("Black Lives Matter," "Transwomen are women," etc.) without really, truly believing in every article of the faith. And they don't want to let anyone get away with that - you have to actually believe! Hence the constant policing and "unpacking privilege" and the instant dogpiling on any good progressive who accidentally reveals doctrinal impurity.

If the actual goal is to establish a 10% representation of black people in the upper middle class (‘PMC’), then just do it and move on, like almost every other country that implements extensive affirmative action.

You can't do that, because of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were not written to allow it. Equal protection under the law and nondiscrimination on the basis of race do not allow for explicit quotas, and the possibility of explicit quotas was rejected in both centuries.

they film a scene where one visits his rabbi and the rabbi essentially says “it doesn’t really matter whether you believe, just follow the rules”. American progressivism cannot really conceive of such reasoning.

I remember reading some time ago about how for most pre-Christian religions the focus of the religion was on practice, not belief or love or anything internal. It didn't matter if you doubted Zeus's existence (although for the most part the existence of deities was taken for granted) or thought he was a right prick, what mattered was that you performed the right rituals on the right days with the right sacrifices and said the right words.

Edit: Thanks to Ilforte, proper term for this is Orthopraxy.

And while there was a break with that tradition already with Christians in general, Protestants in particular then took it even further with the whole "sola fide" thing.

I'm not wholly sold on secular progressivism being a new religion, but I am wholly sold on it being directly downstream of Christianity (particularly Protestant Christianity) and wearing its influences on its sleeve.

This image of a cynical religious atheist seems to me an abomination.

Americans are devout followers of Christmas movie logic, it doesn’t work if people don’t believe in Santa anymore.

Perhaps they're right, not Santa of course, one must attempt to orient themselves to the truth but if you don't believe in anything what spark is left in your society?

This reminds me of my recent and only visit to Europe, I'm definitely overfitting here. What I was struck by was that the whole place, at least the countries I visited, had the feel of a retirement home. A really nice retirement home with old folks who had rich histories worth visiting. But totally uninterested in doing anything new. The wise old man who knows much but none of it novel, I this is a side character with no development and is envied by no American.

If the social justice types are running unstable feature branches of the source code the "cynical religious aethiests are copy and pasting binaries to code they lost a long time ago waiting for old age or compatibility issues to consume them. I'll take fighting the woke for a better modern source, thank you.

Method is theory, theory is method. If you try to raise the one without the other it will slack and bring the other with it. Tying them together prevents the existence of any avenue for criticism.

I would say it's different from similar practices in Malaysia/Nigeria or wherever solely because it's America, and thus the top; everything under the principal is hidden in its shadow and not taken publicly to be the exemplal intention of that process. Like in law, the appearance of the thing is usually taken from how it appears at its highest strata, even when the actual events underlying the appearance differ drastically across the spectrum.

Hey, welcome to TheMotte.

Can you elaborate on why you think that removing honors classes will be super-effective? Can you point to a similar strategy in history that worked well?

Because I think of the original affirmative action policies put in place to limit the number of Jews from higher education at elite universities around the turn of the 20th century, and I note that Jewish advantage in higher education remained durable through those policies.

I think you might want to start by proving that the difference in racial make-up in higher-education in cognitively difficult classes, like math and physics and so on, is actually based in bias, and not in accurately reflecting racial differences in intelligence. You can do this by finding a measure of capacity in these topics that isn't biased, like double-blinded standardized tests or even just lifetime achievement of a racial group in a field across history, and seeing if that measure is reflected uniformly across racial groups.

Let's get some consensus on where north actually is before we call the compass pointing not where we expected it to biased.

On the one hand this seems super effective— with a strategy like this maybe in a generation or so when they start offering honors classes again there might be less bias.

Why do you think it seems effective? Let alone super. The racial composition of those classes is mix of economic and cultural factors. Do you expect those to change in a generation? Why?

It makes sense to me that by integrating the honors classes with the regular classes the regular classes will then more closely approximate baseline racial makeup. Like if your goal is to reduce (explicit) racial biases, this seems like an effective strategy. Isn’t it? Like, if we ignore the side-effects, this does accomplish that goal, right? How would you steel-man the policy change?

Do you expect those to change in a generation?

I hope that our biases have evolved by that point to be around things like how much money you have, or how you score on tests. It’s certainly not guaranteed to happen, but I think it’s more likely than not that we will change our biases away from skin color/narrowly-defined race in like 20-40 years (maybe this is wishful thinking)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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