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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36040 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Charles Murray, and the based NPC question

The romantic view of a dissident involves a person who is simply temperamentally repulsed by the kind of bullshit others peddle, and courageously commits himself to it's refutation. But there is another less romantic, if still mildly endearing version. It's of the person who is fully programmed by what is said explicitly, but somehow deficient enough socially to completely miss the modifiers; the soviet diplomat who hears "Stalin values all legitimate criticism" and is oblivious to the meaning of "legitimate" so he writes him a letter on how communism must end. Hardly a Yudina.

This brings me to Charles Murray. Two days ago, Hanania published his magnus opus on Asian overperformance where he suggested that given the absence of a shared culture; asian overperformance must come from elsewhere. He then intuited that the cause must be a global Kendiist stereotype threat; powerful enough to penetrate North Korea, and maybe even the space time continuum to transform the Chinese before they were stereotyped.

Charles Murray reads the post and responds:

"I was so dumbfounded by this that I read it again to make sure that he really doesn’t mention genes. I’m still not absolutely sure that it isn’t an elaborate put-on. But if he’s serious…wow." Luckily, Ross Douthat was there to clarify things, replying "It's an elaborate put-on". Now think of how bizzare it is that literally the top player in the HBD sphere, is only mildly suspicious that a person positing psychological timetravel with chinese characteristics (admittedly as a potential detraction), might be speaking in jest.

Now you can imagine this guy hearing about freedom of speech from the moment of his birth, genuinely believing that everyone is on his side, and then publishing the bell curve without the slighest idea that it would be controversial. Now, kind of going in another direction - What if similar social deficiencies are present throughout the social science world, and much of what we think of as obvious woke censorship is actually complete social illiteracy?

This of course would complicate my understanding of the issues raised in my prior post. Maybe Henrich upon hearing that 6 year old Kenyan kids don't seem to recognize themselves in the mirror; consciously decides to not dig any further to avoid the gaze of the cathedral. Or maybe, he just doesn't understand that six year olds can answer questions. https://www.themotte.org/post/421/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/78627?context=8#context

I think the insight, and I wish I knew who came up with it, is “for the vast majority of people, facts and arguments are not so much about true and false, but social signaling.” In other words, even for social scientists, being right isn’t nearly as important as being on the right side of social questions. And so when confronted with things that contradict a known dogma of the cathedral, they know better than to dig the truth out, as it means being branded a heretic and shunned, denied money, and so on. They don’t even necessarily know they’re doing it, it’s instinct.

I suspect the case of Asians is much like Jews in the West. If you create a culture with a background that prizes study and deep learning and hard work, you can subtly push the genetic needle in the direction of higher intelligence and hard work and dedication to your country and people. Confucian thought was popular in Eastern Asia for millennia (if memory serves, it was first taught in 500 BC), which gives it 2500 years to work on the intelligence and psychology of practicing Confucians. Judaism as we know it started around the same time, and thus would have pushed Jews toward the same killer apps — education (gotta read Moses, and argue about the legal implications of every rule), work, and cultural cohesion. To say East Asian people don’t share any sort of culture is just wrong, they share a history of Confucius, Buddha, and the Tao. They might not overtly share it, and don’t share it in the same way, but they do have that history.

I think the insight, and I wish I knew who came up with it, is “for the vast majority of people, facts and arguments are not so much about true and false, but social signaling.”

Yeah, I get that. The whole point of my post was to wonder whether there are exceptions to this rule, or whether apparent exceptions were just people who got their signals wrong.

It was a shame too. It was a good article dispelling the moderate and conservative mainstream belief that culture is responsible. Transitioning into support for the genetic explanation instead of trolling would have made for a strong piece.

It doesn't even do that.

I'm reminded of another HBD post from a couple months ago (it might have even been one of @Lepidus') where the HBDer's "proof" that blacks were genetically predisposed toward illiteracy was that when the Oakland schools canceled its hooked-on phonics program that the literacy rate in poor (that is Black) neighborhoods plummeted.

In other words when the schools stopped teaching kids to read, the kids stopped learning to read.

The reverse implication being that if you were to drop a Jewish orphan in the woods to be raised by Wolves, he could be reasonably expected to fashion a Yamaka out of moss and would still be reading the Torah by 15.

It was not me. I’d bet on your Jew recognising himself in the mirror though.

I agree that this was a stupid troll. I thought Hanania was better than that, but I guess it was just a lapse of judgement.

what could have given you that impression?

Which impression?

I thought trollishness was his brand? I've never been able to take him seriously. Although, perhaps part of that is he's chosen a picture of himself that clearly makes him look like a monster from a Jim Henson movie.

His wokeness=civil rights law and some of his articles about the “real” difference between liberals and conservatives, whether you agree or not, are definitely novel arguments presented seriously.

His wokeness=civil rights law

In isolation I can see it as a novel argument, but there was something off about the same kinds of people who say "cathedral" every other word entertaining this argument for more than a minute.

Trollishness is his brand on Twitter. This is a deliberate marketing strategy, and apparently it works way better at driving engagement than I'd wish. On Substack, Mr. Hyde transforms back into Dr. Jekyll and puts out some genuinely good articles.

You have to read the full post to get the effect. It goes step by step to point out asian distinctiveness, demolish the idea of a shared culture (admittedly I think he exaggerates this part) and then goes:

"

Granted, stereotype threat as a way to understand the East Asian package has certain difficulties. It would need to explain how stereotypes operate globally, across cultural, linguistic, and political barriers. Somehow, a Korean in Los Angeles and a descendent of Japanese immigrants in Brazil must both know that Westerners expect them to have a certain collection of traits. This influence of stereotype even penetrates foreign countries, including China, despite the best efforts of the government to keep its population culturally isolated from the outside world. Of course, Xi Jinping is no match for the power of global stereotype threat, given that it even made North Koreans good at math. Kendism may also need stereotypes to travel back in time to work since East Asians somehow were already wealthy in the US decades ago, despite China being associated with crushing poverty throughout most of American history. But these are small details for Kendism, an ideology so convincing and scientifically well-established that universities produce glossaries to teach its core tenets. "

Kendism might also need stereotypes to travel back in time to work... but these are small details for Kendism

is really not impenetrably straussian.

I agree it's not very subtle, but it's confusing for a while.

It got a lot of 'likes' and it went viral probably more than a typical post of his, so it was a success in terms of virality. It gets discussion going. You read it once and are like "huh?", and then you get the joke and realize it's kinda clever and then you tell others.

I’m not sure what examples of woke censorship are plausibly just social illiteracy.

I would say most regulation of male-female interactions in the workplace involves a certain kind of capitalist autism common to accountants and business consultants. The reduction of man to only appropriate and not inappropriate tasks, the idea that all communication should be essentially "on topic" or "harmless." The idea that parts of your humanity can be checked at the door when you start work and resumed seamlessly upon leaving work. The way corporate capitalism has slowly eaten so much of the dating and broader social world that it is very much in question whether it is possible for the populations involved in an advanced capitalist economy to reproduce themselves.

The commonly expressed media/corporate HR view that it is perfectly reasonable to continuously narrow the circle in which people can meet, with no consequences, is based on social illiteracy.

Is the answer not most if not all of them?

Anything more specific? It seems like woke censorship is often from neuroticism and paranoia, but not so much social illiteracy.

I'd characterize woke censorship as social hyper-literacy rather than illiteracy, since it usually improves the social status of those who call for the censorship. I could see it being illiteracy of a different kind, but not socially.

here https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-east-asian-package

Say what you will about Kendi, but he’s given us a framework that can possibly explain the East Asian package. Can it be a coincidence that we see the highest levels of economic growth and mathematical success, and lowest levels of illegitimacy and other forms of anti-social behavior, in countries that are geographically adjacent, despite the limited cultural links between them? And that people from these countries show similar traits when they move abroad? Journalists and academics write papers about low South Korean fertility or remarkable Chinese growth over the years, or about Asian success in American schools, and look for local factors at work, without seeming to understand that they’re observing any kind of broader phenomenon. It’s like if scientists were trying to figure out the association between elevation and weather, and were coming up with an independent hypothesis about the relationship on each continent without ever attempting to synthesize various kinds of data into a more general theory.

Given that conservatives and anti-wokes more generally have done such a poor job of presenting a theory that fits what we see in the world, it is no wonder that Kendism has unrivaled influence. With our advanced modern state of understanding of social phenomena, it remains the only school of thought that has broad explanatory power.

Yes, the last paragraph gives it away as being a joke . It is implied that it is IQ. That is the joke

also his real views on Kendi:

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1636391983622270977

I think there is so much BS online that it becomes hard to even know what is real or not anymore.

Now think of how bizzare it is that literally the top player in the HBD sphere, is only mildly suspicious that a person positing psychological timetravel with chinese characteristics (admittedly as a potential detraction), might be speaking in jest.

The comparatively simple explanation is that the mildness of the suspicion is also an elaborate put-on. If you have identified an elaborate put-on that you seek to puncture for one reason or another, the ineffectual, socially inept thing is to run into the town square crying about duplicity: the shameless con artists, idealistic doublethinkers and their naive marks will jointly thumb their nose at you (in reverse order, respectively, for the outrageous suggestion that everything they thought is good is actually bad, for breaking their comfortable illusion, and because the second group will be grateful for the reassurance) and consign you to the loony bin. This sort of "Huh, that's curious. Surely there couldn't be something so wrong in my esteemed interlocutor's theory" affectation of good faith is generally accepted to be the more effective approach.

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