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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Jews are intelligent. As such, HBD provides no reason to be against them.

The Joo-posters are constantly arguing that Jews are essentially a malignant invasive species working for the benefit of their in-group (Jews) to the detriment of non-Jews, and that undermining Western civilization and trying to destroy white society is something they are naturally driven to do. In olden times, they would have just said this is because Jews are inherently wicked because God hates them. Nowadays, that doesn't sound very persuasive, especially to rationalists, so instead they make up HBD theories for why Jews are a uniquely pernicious tribe following biological imperatives.

I know this because it's not exactly a new argument, and you know this because you've been around long enough to have seen it yourself. Why are you pretending that HBD has only ever been about IQ? Even the people whose HBD arguments are primarily focused on blacks are quite open about their belief that HBD says blacks aren't just low IQ, but also impulsive, violent, criminally inclined, etc.

instead they make up HBD theories for why Jews are a uniquely pernicious tribe following biological imperatives.

Isn't that overcomplicating it a bit? When did generic in-group bias become anything to do with HBD? There's simply no need to reach as far as HBD when a perfectly fully formed explanation of nepotism already exists a lot closer to the centre of the Overton Window?

Generic in-group bias would be a fully-formed explanation if the complaints about Jews were limited to their overrepresentation in banking and Hollywood, but the Jew-baiting posts very regularly make much broader assertions, that Jews are responsible for desegregation, affirmative action, increased immigration, laxer criminal justice, pornography, sexual liberation, feminism, and essentially, the entire liberal project, up to and including wokeism. Which is assumed to be a deliberate multigenerational campaign to undermine their neighbors and destroy their host society.

This only makes sense if you believe (a) Jews are just naturally evil for some reason; (b) it's some sort of biological imperative to conduct tribal warfare at a level that goes well beyond any "in-group bias" one sees in other ethnic groups. And some of the Joo-posters have made explicit HBD arguments to the effect that Jews just "evolved that way."

Jews are responsible for desegregation, affirmative action, increased immigration, laxer criminal justice, pornography, sexual liberation, feminism, and essentially, the entire liberal project, up to and including wokeism.

To be fair, you can hear that right from the horse's mouth. She herself relates this behavior directly to Tikkun Olam:

to speedily see Your mighty splendor, to cause detestable (idolatry) to be removed from the land, and the (false) gods will be utterly 'cut off', to takein olam – fix/repair/establish a world – under the Almighty's kingdom

In other words, when all the people of the world abandon false gods and recognize the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, the world will have been perfected.

To be fair, you can hear that right from the horse's mouth. She herself relates this behavior directly to Tikkun Olam:

Whether or not you agree with individual Jews who believe that things that like gay rights and affirmative action are good, there is still a disconnect between "They're doing these things because they believe they're good" and "They're doing these things because they are driven by a Jewish impulse to corrupt and destroy." But I take it that you are, in fact, endorsing the HBD theory of Jewish nefariousness?

In other words, when all the people of the world abandon false gods and recognize the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, the world will have been perfected.

This is essentially what most religious adherents believe.

The Roman Pantheon was highly representative of subjugation and hierarchy, no doubt, but it integrated the idols and symbols of others into its order. The mandate to remove idolatry from the land and "cut off" the false gods points to Yahweh as a singularly jealous god. So a Jewish mandate to drive out the false gods of the Gentiles, or Ōr laGōyyīm, relates the systematic behavior of Jewish influence in Gentile culture. Yes, I do think, as in all religion, there is an HBD-understood influence between the mythos that has formulated the people, the genes of those people, and the behavior of said people. Same is true for Christians, Arabs, Hindus.

If we properly understand Yahweh as a metaphor and synonym for the Jewish people, then the mandate in Tikkun Olam to "utterly cut off" the false gods points towards an inscrutable cultural hostility. A hostility towards the national idols and traditions and even the very ethnic identity of Gentiles is openly professed under the banner of Tikkun Olam today.

Edit: Here's an interesting article from a Jewish group corroborating the importance of Tikkun Olam to the behavior of the Jewish people:

One can say a lot about our infatuation with Tikkun Olam, and I will. But let’s start with what the critics get wrong, which is most of it.

First, the phrase “Tikkun Olam” is at least as old as Rabbinic Judaism itself. It appears already in the Mishnah, where it refers to social policy legislation providing extra protection to those potentially at a disadvantage. The “Aleinu”, one of the oldest Jewish prayers, contains the phrase “repair the world” (letaken olam). Critics love to grouse that liberal Jews “forget” the context—Aleinu envisions that God (not us) will “repair the world in the Kingship of God”—but the more important point is that “Tikkun Olam” wasn’t some phrase invented in the 1970s by Rabbi Michael Lerner and other hippie Jews.

Nor are the concepts of Jewish social justice and universal morality, to which Tikkun Olam has come to refer. Virtually all the prophets talk tirelessly about the need to create a just and ethical society, many of their words sound pretty much like a 21st century Tikkun Olam manifesto. Needless to say, they draw from the Torah, which speaks endlessly about loving the stranger and the poor. The idea that Jews have a universal mission also appears insistently from the Torah onwards. When God blesses our patriarch Abraham, God states that “through you, all the Nations of the Earth will be blessed”. The prophets often focus on Israel, their purview also extends to all Peoples. This includes the prophet Jonah, whose story we read on Yom Kippur and whose mission was exclusively directed at the gentile city (an enemy city, in fact) of Nineveh.

It would take gallons of ink to list all the traditional sources that encourage us to embark on what we call today Tikkun Olam. Considering how many of these sources are traditionally understood to be directly and authoritatively quoting God, whoever has an issue with Tikkun Olam needs to take it up with the Boss Himself. So no, it’s not a marginal idea that evil liberals brought to the forefront of the Jewish agenda; it’s been central to Judaism for millennia. And it’s not a perversion of a Kabbalistic term; if anything, the way in which we understand Tikkun Olam today is more faithful to the original mishnaic meaning of the term (pragmatic legislation to protect the vulnerable and preserve the integrity of society) than to the mystical interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah, in which the world has lost its original harmony after the “breaking of the vessels”, and fulfilling mitzvot (whether ethical or purely ritual) can “repair the world” from its spiritual wounds.

If we understand Tikkun Olam to relate to a psychometric quality like g then of course HBD would suggest that this idea which has been central to these people for millennia is both a reflection of and influence on their psychology, even atheistic Jews. Even Jews, proudly, relate a long history of radical agitation to the concept.

You have a talent for writing lots of words, throwing down links, and copypastaing walls of text that dance around and suggestively pantomime a statement without actually directly answering the question. And as many other people have pointed out, selectively ignoring every time one of your arguments or citations is disproven, only to come back to it next time hoping no one will notice or remember.

So, I asked you if there is something specially malignant about Jews, and if you believe it's biological, and you give me a bunch of stuff about Tikkun Olam (yes, yes, we all know about Tikkun Olam, it's at this point a meme so old it's practically Boomer DR) and how it "suggests" that maybe in fact yes, Jews have evolved over thousands of years to become a uniquely insidious race with characteristics more threatening and hostile to outsiders than any other practitioners of a monotheistic religion. Such that it is now a biological imperative among anyone with Jewish DNA to try to subvert and destroy the society in which they live.

Would you say that is a fair characterization of what you believe? And if not, could you please be specific in explaining in what way I have misunderstood you?

Note that I am not even disputing, at the moment, your implicit equation of "supports liberal causes" with "wants to destroy civilization," though of course that is highly disputable as well. I'm giving you "Tikkun Olam" and asking what you think this actually says about Jews as a species.

Such that it is now a biological imperative among anyone with Jewish DNA to try to subvert and destroy the society in which they live.

Don't you see you are misrepresenting my point in the exact same way others misrepresent HBD: "Oh, so you're saying because of HBD there are no intelligent people in such-and-such group, and absolutely everyone from this group is smarter than that group." You are just using the exact same strategy here.

If you have truly internalized HBD you would recognize the question is not if a psychological quality is inherited, it's only the extent to which it's inherited. So it's basically tautological to ask if there's an HBD explanation for the behavior of Jews- of course there is, just like everyone else.

I would simply summarize: HBD would suggest Jews have a penchant for supporting radical causes and, surprise surprise, those radical causes that rally their support tend to prioritize the interests of Jews over non-Jews, and they tend to come into confrontation with Gentile culture. When Jews are telling you they are promoting anti-racism because of Tikkun Olam why don't you believe them? I do.

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In other words, when all the people of the world abandon false gods and recognize the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, the world will have been perfected.

Okay, this is not sinister.

Christians and Muslims believe that as well. If we add up the Abrahamic faiths, over fifty percent of all human beings belong to religious traditions that explicitly believe that everyone should abandon false gods and turn to the only true God - the Lord of Hosts; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Israel.

If Jews believe that the world will be perfected when everyone recognises Adonai, then as a Christian I feel entirely unthreatened. I greet that belief with a hearty "Amen!"

If Jews believe that the world will be perfected when everyone recognises Adonai, then as a Christian I feel entirely unthreatened. I greet that belief with a hearty "Amen!"

Amen!

Can you make your point more clearly?

Yes, many Christians and many Jews have bizarre, mistaken theological views. But that's nothing to do with my point. Sure, there are lots of woke Jews, like the one in that TikTok you linked. But there are also many woke Christians. The issue at hand is wokeness, not Judaism or Christianity.

You then linked this to a prayer in the Aleinu (a noticeably non-woke prayer that is over a thousand years old), which, yes, prays that false gods will be banished, and all the human race will return to worship God.

There are two problems with this.

Firstly, there is no apparent connection between the woke Jewish girl in the TikTok and the content of the Aleinu beyond the phrase tikkun olam. That phrase is used very widely by Jews. You might as well point out that there's an entire chapter on the necessity of Social Justice in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Secondly, the Aleinu is totally innocuous. Praying that idols are destroyed and everyone worship God? That's basic Judaism, sure, but it's also basic Christianity and basic Islam. Hatred of idol-worship is deep in the DNA of all Abrahamic religions. You wrote as if there's something scary about Jews praying that all the world abandon idols and worship God, whereas in fact that is believed by the majority of the human race.

I think you are attempting to draw massive, unsupportable, and conspiratorial conclusions from the existence of woke Jews.

Indeed, the Aleinu is recited at the end of each of the three Jewish prayer services, so anybody who takes HBD seriously would likewise look closely at the prayer for insight into the psychology of this ancient people, let's look at the text you link:

It is our obligation to praise the Master of all, to ascribe greatness to the Creator of the [world in the] beginning: that He has not made us like the nations of the lands, and has not positioned us like the families of the earth; that He has not assigned our portion like theirs, nor our lot like that of all their multitudes. For they prostrate themselves to vanity and nothingness, and pray to a god that cannot deliver. But we bow, prostrate ourselves, and offer thanks before the Supreme King of Kings, the Holy One blessed is He, Who spreads the heavens, and establishes the earth, and the seat of His glory is in heaven above, and the abode of His invincible might is in the loftiest heights. He is our God, there is nothing else. Our King is true, all else is insignificant, as it is written in His Torah: And You shall know this day and take into Your heart that Adonoy is God in the heavens above and upon the earth below; there is nothing else.

We therefore put our hope in You, Adonoy our God, to soon behold the glory of Your might in banishing idolatry from the earth, and the false gods will be utterly exterminated to perfect the world as the kingdom of Shadai. And all mankind will invoke Your Name, to turn back to You, all the wicked of the earth. They will realize and know, all the inhabitants of the world, that to You, every knee must bend, every tongue must swear [allegiance to You]. Before You, Adonoy, our God, they will bow and prostrate themselves, and to the glory of Your Name give honor. And they will all accept [upon themselves] the yoke of Your kingdom, and You will reign over them, soon, forever and ever. For the kingdom is Yours, and to all eternity You will reign in glory, as it is written in Your Torah: Adonoy will reign forever and ever. And it is said: And Adonoy will be King over the whole earth; on that day Adonoy will be One and His Name One.

So this prayer absolutely corroborates my suggestion that Tikkun Olam is a reflection of a Jewish psychology that can and should be understood in HBD terms, and provides an explanatory factor for Jewish influence in Gentile culture.

So you call this prayer "totally innocuous", I call it deeply meaningful. They recite it three times a day, so it obviously carries a profound meaning. The prayer emphasizes a racial distinction between Jews and non-Jews and says that non-Jews worship a false god. What are the false gods of the Gentiles? Their idols, their historical symbols, their ethnic identity. It's no wonder that the woman in that video relates Jewish agitation in these various radical social movements against the traditional Gentile order and ethnic identity as fulfilling Tikunn Olam.

It's about psychology, not conspiracy. It's the Jews themselves who relate this behavior to Tikunn Olam, I'm just the messenger here.

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In-group bias differs by populations. As does, say, intraversion

Why are you pretending that HBD has only ever been about IQ?

HBD as used by rationalists should be about IQ, because IQ can be measured. Claiming that Jews are bad people for some HBD-related reason that you can't measure is incorrectly using HBD.

I will concede that HBD may give you a reason to hate Jews if you use it incorrectly, but I don't think that tells you much about HBD. Anything can give you a reason for anything if you use it incorrectly.

So your belief is that HBD explains IQ differences and only IQ differences (as far as cognitive function goes)?

Exactly what else do you think it can explain that wouldn't be tied to IQ?

(I would think that something like low time preference is tied to IQ.)

Exactly what else do you think it can explain that wouldn't be tied to IQ?

I'm not making any claims. I'm an HBD skeptic who thinks it has some explanatory power but not the power its more enthusiastic advocates claim. Such as all the other qualities I mentioned.

What I am noticing in your case is that it appears you believe that HBD is "correctly" used when it makes negative generalizations about your outgroup, and "incorrectly" used when it makes negative generalizations about your ingroup.

What I am noticing in your case is that it appears you believe that HBD is "correctly" used when it makes negative generalizations about your outgroup, and "incorrectly" used when it makes negative generalizations about your ingroup.

By this reasoning, most people here are well-educated, so generalizing that education is good is self-serving, and should be looked upon very suspiciously. I suspect that most people here are not murderers, either, so it would be self-serving to claim that being a murderer indicates something negative about oneself.

By this reasoning, most people here are well-educated, so generalizing that education is good is self-serving, and should be looked upon very suspiciously.

That's specious reasoning. I'm saying the dividing line you have created has no logical basis.

Do you believe HBD explains IQ differences, but nothing else about any behavioral or cognitive differences that are not a direct result of IQ?

If you are asking whether there could be, in theory, behavioral differences that are widespread among some group, are negative, are related to the brain, and are not the result of IQ, yes.

If you are asking whether such things have actually been measured for Jews the same way that IQ has been, so that they could be used to say negative things about Jews without just making shit up, then no.

In theory, someone could measure a "GQ index", discover that Jews score high on this factor, discover that this factor is inherited like IQ, and discover that this factor is correlated with greed. That would be HBD being used to explain something negative about Jews. But this hasn't actually happened.

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Why wouldn't it explain anything else? Why is our ability to measure it according to science which has been hostile to these conclusions for decades conclusive evidence of existence or non existence of phenomena? Why would behavior be uniquely free of genetic influence, when in fact we can point to numerous examples of behavior being influenced by genetics on an individual level?

HBDers argue over and over the it's absurd to assume that genetics influences an abundance of physical characteristics but not the brain; why is it intellectually fine that the first ranked NBA player who isn't Black or Balkan is in the 30s, but racism that there aren't enough Blacks at Harvard law? Further HBDer arguments require that American folk racialization categories are accurate, that the world can be divided into White/Black/Asian and produce useful insights, why wouldn't other even more prevalent folk racial theories be correct?

It seems like if you open up to HBD, the burden is heavy to claim that it implicates only part of the brain.

This does not follow. And, in fact, this kind of non sequitur coming from an apparently intelligent person is in itself a major reason. I think Lior Pachter's inane and poisonous hit piece on James Watson, a piece completely misrepresenting Pachter's own field for the sake of essentially propagating anti-white hatred while character-assassinating one of the field's heroes, was a big one. Really showed me how this happens.

It absolutely follows.

It doesn't mean you might not hate Jews for other reasons than HBD, but not because of HBD itself.

HBD – in and of itself – does not provide reason to hate any group or individual, it's not a normative position but a prism for making predictions.

Smarter people, so far as they are unaligned with one's values, are a bigger cause for concern than dumber ones in all important cases.

Their main argument is ‘look at all these jews in politics and media’ –and intelligence is sufficient to explain overrepresentation. Their intellectual output covers the entire spectrum of political opinions. Treating a race as a single unified force is the same mistake the woke make when they explain black underachievement with institutional white supremacy. So I don’t see what one guy criticizing watson is supposed to prove.

It’s the combo of high intelligence and apparent anti-my-group alignment that anti-semites tend to be against. (Tongue in cheek, of course. The Yudkowsky irony amuses me greatly.)

The off-the-cuff words of someone in the DR recently, giving some in-group criticism:

Some things are cliches because they are true. For example: politics lie downstream from culture. Almost no one in the dissident right denies this.

The problem is they don’t understand culture and have no real interest in understanding it (or aptitude for understanding it). When they do bother to approach it, they approach it with the attitude of “these Jews are not smarter than me! I see everything they are doing, it’s soooo obvious!” Wrong moron. They are actually quite sophisticated and there is a lot we can learn from them. They wouldn't have reached the position they have if they weren't.

And any assessment that gives Js their fair due (while nevertheless accepting they are a hostile elite), sends these grugs into a tizzy. They’d rather sit on streams and complain that Js succeed simply by virtue of their “evil” (and not their talent or their particular inscrutable approach). It becomes an ego thing for them.

Of course the most controversial premise here is that they are a hostile elite, which is not a hypothesis that is refuted by their IQ.

If evolution doesn't stop at the neck, why does it stop at intelligence and not touch morality?

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