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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.

Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out. My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT. When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.

So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

Red's aversion to HBD is trivially easy to figure out. They are the true believers in both the civic religion and the old-time religion. The words on the paper do not say "after careful consideration of the available data we have concluded..." they say "we hold these truths to be self evident". Likewise, Jesus didnt say love your neighbor unless he is a nigger and therefore less intelligent than you. He said love thy neighbor.

I guess I would mostly code as one of those Reds that's modestly adverse to HBD. I don't quite agree with any of my siblings here. If I had to characterize my actual beliefs briefly, I'd say:

I think that color-blindness is the right way to run a society of fixed population size (immigration being a separate discussion). Even if HBD is strongly true, what of it? Capitalism and individualism has already proven to be mostly adequate at slotting people of varying skill levels into appropriate jobs, and giving appropriate punishments to individuals who commit crimes. I don't think we should discriminate by race at the society level at all - either to give an artificial boost to people who some may feel have been unfairly discriminated against in the past, or to artificially suppress people who, based on their race and HBD research, may be more likely to be less intelligent than average or more inclined to short-term thinking, i.e. more likely to steal, assault, murder, etc. If one race appears to be less likely to be CEOs and more likely to be murderers, and HBD suggests that this is likely to be a perfectly legitimate outcome given genetic tendencies, then I'd say society is working correctly and no intervention is needed.

I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high. Some have already called for a race war, which doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Perhaps I am a fool and it's already too late. But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.

I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high.

One of the things driving wokeness is differences in racial outcomes and the lack of any acceptable explanation for them aside from "The Man is keeping black people down". And wokeness increases racial tensions.

But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.

We did. The racial detente failed, and it didn't fail due to Nazis and HBD types. It failed because it didn't produce the racially uniform outcomes expected by those who don't believe in HBD. But I'm told that even if HBD is true it is not reasonable to expect blacks to accept statistically worse outcomes. In which case there is no peaceful solution, there is only conflict.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

It is very easy to figure out.

Red tribe defines itself as pro capitalist, and primary popular argument for capitalism is: "In capitalist society all are equal. The rich are succesful because they WORKED HARD, the poor are losers because they are worthless lazy scum. Stop whining and pull yourself by your bootstraps!"

(no one except nerds cares about economic calculation and efficient allocation of capital)

Acceptance of HBD torpedoes and sinks this talking point.

Now there are only two ways out:

a/ The winners are superior because they were BORN superior. Bow to your evolution given masters, peasant, and be grateful they let you live in their world.

(this means outright repudiation of last 250+ years of Western history in general and whole American national myth in particular, few people want to open this can of worms)

b/ The winners are superior due to their undeserved lucky strike, it would not be unjust to ask them to share some of their wealth with the less lucky.

(and this is even less acceptable to Red Tribe)

So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD

Conservative from 1963 could be comfortable with raw white supremacy, but would find all modern HBD science with its bell curves and IQ tables even more disturbing.

See this classic racist writing of the time.

The central question that emerges-and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

Impeccably polite, but pure and hardcore racism so far.

But, why? What makes, according to Buckley, "White community" the "advanced race"?

Nothing about "blood", nothing about "birth", nothing about genes, nothing about IQ.

It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro

It is mere "cultural superiority". While lazy negroes were eating watermelons, Southern whites were studying and learning hard.

So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

Yes, even to conservative racist in chief of the time, white supremacy is not something permanent and desirable for its own sake, but mere temporary expedient, a method of teaching and educating the black folks until they become as cultured and civilized as whites, especially southern whites.

When racism had such defenders, it is no surprise it ended on the trash dump of history.

Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out.

The obvious answer that comes to mind is that they're terrified of being called racist, and they have a few mental fig leaves that allow them to deny being racist - being colourblind, treating people as individuals, etc. To further torture the metaphor, HBD doesn't just remove the fig leaf covering the penis of racism, it gives it viagra and supercharges it. "Oh, yeah, black and brown populations are just genetically stupider and more criminal" - this is not the kind of belief you can hold and still pretend you are judging people by "their character, not the color of their skin."

I think that you have got that backwards. If the police are scrupulous about treating crime and punishment as strictly individual, there will be no racism apparent as the cases are investigated and prosecuted one by one. But compile national statistics and racial differences jump out at you. If you believe in individual justice and judging people by their character, not the color of the their skin, you just have to shrug and say "races really are different."

The trouble starts if you insist that the national statistics need to be race balanced. To make the national statistics come out race balanced requires fiddling the individual cases, convicting innocent white men, acquitting guilty black men, and doing the racist thing of telling an individual "we aren't going to judge your case on the actual facts, but on skin color, because we've a quota to fill."

"Oh, yeah, black and brown populations are just genetically stupider and more criminal" - this is not the kind of belief you can hold and still pretend you are judging people by "their character, not the color of their skin."

Of course it is. The same way you can judge a marathon runner by their time and not the color of their skin, but damned if the top ones aren't black every time.

I think "hold explicitly" is a better way of phrasing it. People act in ways that suggest they actually believe in HBD all the time (even and especially on the left), but few of them will actively state that when asked.

You can hold it explicitly and still judge people -- individually -- by "their character, not the color of their skin."

If you watch 500 marathons and every time the winner is black, then when marathon #501 comes around and you’re getting ready to place your bets, you would be a complete moron to approach those bets with the attitude, “I have no opinion about which race the winner will be from. It could be the white guy this time, we have no way to know beforehand!” When surveying the slate of runners, you are completely justified in looking at the white guys and saying, “Bad bet, safe to ignore.”

Similarly, in societal terms, if I’m a recruiter trying to hire for a white-collar job, and I have to make a decision based on limited information, I would have to be a complete moron - or a liberal ideologue - not to utilize my understanding of probabilities gained from observation of previous outcomes. If the only information given to me about two competing candidates is that one guy’s name is Connor Przyewski, and the other guy’s name is Anquon Washington, I have to use outside information - like my observations of patterns - to supplement the explicit info I was provided. This means that I have to judge the candidates based on the information I have, which, if skin color has a demonstrated correlation with observable disparate outcomes, would include skin color as a useful proxy for important information.

In reality, you would have more information than just the applicants' names. This being a white-collar job, there would presumably be detailed resumes. You can judge the candidates based on that. Either the Black candidates' resumes would be weaker, or their resumes would be of a similar quality to Whites, but they would be underrepresented relative to the population.

Likewise with racial profiling in policing. A police officer usually has much more information than just race. In a true Bayesian inference calculation, race would end up mattering very little. Instructing police officers to racially profile would probably just cause them to give too much weight to race and ignore other relevant information. Note that even race-neutral policing results in Blacks being disproportionately arrested etc., because they commit crime at a higher rate than Whites.

My understanding of HBD, in general, is that the takeaway should be that a non-racially-discriminatory system will produce unequal outcomes, not that racial discrimination is justified. That is, the current system is non-discriminatory and disparate outcomes are because of HBD, not that the current system is discriminatory and that's fine because of HBD.

Similarly, in societal terms, if I’m a recruiter trying to hire for a white-collar job, and I have to make a decision based on limited information, I would have to be a complete moron - or a liberal ideologue - not to utilize my understanding of probabilities gained from observation of previous outcomes.

I don't think there's a magic bullet solution, but this is why I think legally mandated moronicism - so that everyone is equally a complete moron in this respect - accompanied with increased legibility into individual competence is the right approach. There should never be a case where someone's name or race is the only information given to you as a recruiter/hirer, and it should be punishable if you make some meaningful consequential decision in the case that somehow that were the only information given to you.

When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality

I blame Christianity for that one on the "mainstream" right. Until "we" shake free from the Abrahamic memeplex we aren't getting rid of "driving slowly in the leftism lane".

What do you expect to save you?

Neohellenistic religions? Atheism?

Some religious cult with even less of a pedigree?

How have those worked out already?

I blame Christianity

Why? When Christians gained power, they never ever tried to create world of free anarchist communes.

They built world of feudal kingdoms based on "divine right" "noble blood" and strict hereditary hierarchy and kept it this way for 1500 years.

christians upvoting this as if it does not prove that they are part of a corrupt religious tradition when the bible contains passages like this:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.”’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

“Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

Tabula rasa didn't spring out of the ether fully formed all on its own. Further major Christian and Muslim denominations are the prime sources of jackasses who value a person being of the faith over all other features of that person including class, nationality, ethnicity, race or even being a criminal or not.

Absolutely, Christians are fundamentally leftists.

I don't believe that you know what either of those words mean.

If you accept any egalitarian premises you are a leftist. Is it not the case that salvation through jesus and his sacrifice is posisble and was for everyone? That would seem to be a fundamentally egalitarian and open religious doctrine.

Oh no, has someone been hoisted by their own petard?

Very possibly.

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