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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35216 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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My guess is hereditary biological determinism...

I admidettly only scan over this material but the best examples are Askhenazi Jews are inherently smart, in it's worst guise Black people are inherently stupid.

As far as I can tell, the low-IQ version of this argument starts with a racist mindset that then uses a naive attribution of IQ to genetics, and constructs an elaborate just-so story to justify any inequality of black people as a natural consequence of the world.

My guess is that the high-iq version has better arguments and data but is just another elaborate just-so story like evolutionary psychology or blank-slate cultural constructionism or marxism or whatever other thought system that lacks sufficient epistemic humility and likes to draw long-bows.

The inquiry is fine and there may be the beginnings of a genuine science taking shape but easy answers are a lot more fun to post than the complexity of the real world.

  • -14

My guess is hereditary biological determinism...

I admidettly only scan over this material but

This is the definition of a low effort post.

I think your take is terrible and that if you don't understand a topic you shouldn't opine authoritatively upon it, but something you said piqued my interest.

I admidettly only scan over this material but the best examples are Askhenazi Jews are inherently smart, in it's worst guise Black people are inherently stupid.

I'm really, REALLY curious to hear a bit of elaboration on your thought process here. Why is "Ashkenazi jews are inherently smart" the best example, and "black people are inherently stupid" the bad example? What is the precise differentiating point between those two positions that makes one the best and one the worst?

It's a potentially narrow, fairly homogeneous grouping at least for some of history. It's more tractable for study. 'Black people', which at that level, not so much-it would include a plethora of overlapping lineages.

This is not a useful objection, as "black people" can be usefully narrowed to "black American descendants of slaves" (ADOS) -- which informally is often what is being talked about anyway. It is an interesting question about whether sub-Saharan Africans (who do form a useful if large cluster) or e.g. Nigerians (or Igbo or Yoruba) or Congolese are also different, but in the US it's ADOS which are normally most relevant.

Certainly it's an ugly idea that an identifiable group might be on the average significantly less intelligent than the whole population average, but just because it is ugly does not mean it is not true.

Out of curiosity.

What is «elaborate» or «just-so» about smarts being heritable?

Smarts can be hereditable for sure, but in daily life there's lots of types of smarts in terms of success for environment, and there's not just genetics, there's epigenetics - culture can affect genetic expression.

Epigenetics has fuck all to do with cultural effects on gene expression actually, or with almost anything else. But okay.

Apologies, environmental, I mean, though culture overlaps with environmental.

Spent a minute trying to find a charitable basis on which to respond to this, but —

Can't remember the last time I saw someone so casually dismiss an entire concept while openly admitting that he doesn't even know what is being discussed and can't be bothered to spend five seconds at least googling the acronym.

It took you so much longer to write that! And you're so comfortable assuming that HBD-proponents only hold their views because of tawdry character flaws. When you do make it to google maybe look into "projection (psychology)" as well.

I'd thought you were a troll but it looks like you've been around a while?

One of life's mysteries, I guess. Like what 'HBD' means.

It was provocative I admit and I welcome harsh criticism of such a lazy post. But I have read some of the posts here and I stand by my gut feeling of a lack of sufficient nuance for the topic.

As far as I can tell it traverses the full complexity of human complexity - genetics, epigenetics, phenotypics, brain science, interaction of culture with genetics, study design, statistics, intelligence measurement, long history, short history, local history, global history, evolutionary biology, education, development...

Ie, partitioning off causal effects based on aggregate numbers on IQ across partly socially constructed population categories feels 'fraught'. I'd engage with it more (currently reading Charles Murray) if it wasn't for the fact that most posts don't seem to show the slightest glimpse of epistemic humility or acknowledgement of the gaps, difficulties in causal analysis.

But it's an intuition - I could be way off, can you point me to something enlightening and I'll make a start on the topic. I'm picking this would need about 1000 hours of research /thinking as a starter given it's complexity.

Yeah, no, the presumption of good faith is gone here. You do not have the attitude of someone interested in learning and I won't be snookered into wasting more time on you.

Perfect example of using "nuance" and "complexity" to cloud up an issue.

When you are dead, you don't know about it, it's just hard for others.

Same issue when you're dumb.

– deep Russian wisdom a meme stolen from Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais wisdom

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