site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The difference in outcomes of governance in otherwise-adjacent states is, um, certainly notable.

Ditto the inverse. The standard HBDer take is that culture doesn't matter, and that by extension Lee Kuan Yew's efforts at economic and cultural integration were a waste of time/resources, and yet (as you yourself observe) the differences in outcome are notable.

I imagine that someone will be along in a bit to argue that if Singapore had massacred all the ethnic Malays on the Island rather than integrating them they would have been even more successful but I don't buy it. That's the kind of policy that causes "unrest"

The Malays would have won that riot because they dominated the military.

Which in turn suggests the existence of considerations with far greater effect sizes than simple genetics, supporting my point.

Well yeah, the state of modern Russia points to something beyond national average IQ scores being highly relevant for what happens in a country.

Agreed

Yet Russia's PISA scores are consistently middle-of-the-pack, in mathematics above the US.

Obviously things other than IQ matter. But what, precisely, are you arguing against?

Do you believe genetics is responsible for, say, 10% of variation in educational outcomes? 20%? 50%? 80%? And I specifically mean current variation, not hypothetical variation with different forms of education (which would push up black and white equally, and leave them ranked the same).

Russia has an average IQ similar to France and my understanding is that the ethnic minorities who drag it down are concentrated in the same areas of the country. It’s Pisa scores are OK and it’s consistently capable of producing very talented people. By HBD metrics the Russian majority areas of the country should be as nice a place to live as Western Europe, but they’re definitely not.

And it’s not even compensating for history because EG Poland and the Baltics have done a much better job of closing the gap. It’s pure culture and mismanagement.

what, precisely, are you arguing against?

In this case? nothing. I'm agreeing with @hydroacetylene

Sorry, reinterpret that in the context of the overall discussion. How much impact do you think genes have on academic achievement? Both among individuals of the same race (where imo studies demonstrate it's >50%), and between races (i.e. how much of the jewish/white achievement gap is due to differences in genes between jews/whites)

Ahh.

To answer your question, when it comes to things like academics, athletics, or military effectiveness, I think that the effect of genetics (excluding the presence of serous congenital defects) is marginal to non-existant unless you're focusing on the extreme tail-ends of the bell curve. Otherwise the "noise" of individual environmental factors is inevitably going to overwhelm whatever "signal" there is that can be drawn from genetics.

HBDers ask "why is it that some kids run the mile faster than others?" And my response is that it could be any number of reasons, footwear, running form, general levels of lower body strength, differences in cardio fitness, a willingness to push one's body to the point of discomfort/distress, and/or all of the above.

In order to prove that genetics is the only meaningful factor you need to be able to prove that all of these other factors are not.

More comments

The standard HBDer take is that culture doesn't matter

This is a laughable assertion. The standard HBD take acknowledges that culture and environment can cripple any person or set of persons, just that asserting those things apply to some situations is also laughable.

The problem is most HBDers that are willing to talk about it online are the type of folks who understand that HBD is somewhat real, and then they see absolutely everything through that lens. The people here on the Motte are actually quite reasonable about HBD in my view.

But in the wastes of the internet outside our walled garden... well, when you have a hammer as powerful and covered up as HBD, what isn't a nail?

I've rarely seen HBD ever deployed, even on the internet, in any context except for as a defense against unhinged allegations of racism.

Even here, my experience has been much closer to that of @TheDag's.

One of the things that makes you feel that way is that we are often talking about racial differences in outcomes within America, to which HBD is very much "the hammer" because most left wing talking points regarding America are, in fact, nails. And because the left dominates the American media environment, their is a consistent supply of new "nails" being floated out to discuss.

because most left wing talking points regarding America are, in fact, nails.

Color me skeptical, I feel like the simpler and likely more accurate explanation is that deconstructionists gonna deconstruct.

I don't think I can name a single race based issue that has come up in the last 5 years where "systemic racism" outperformed "genetics" in explanatory power...

That would be because "systemic racism" is a lie that's been sold to you by woke Marxist intellectuals. It doesn't exist.

I'm not talking about "systemic racism" I'm talking about obvious cultural and individual confounders like whether or not a kid had an adult in thier life that was actually willing to put the time in to teach them.

More comments

This is a laughable assertion.

No it is not.

Near as I can tell, the sort of view expressed by @Folamh3, @self_made_human, and others here that...

it's all genetics, the children whose parents can afford to send them to private school tend to be smarter than the children whose parents can't; "school quality" and "teacher quality" have pretty much zero bearing on educational outcomes and are almost pure signalling; if you sent all of the private school kids to a public school and vice versa, you would see essentially zero change in educational outcomes in either cohort; and so on and so on.

...is not an extreme or hyperbolic take, it's the median.

Charitably you are engaging in a very blatant Motte and Baily where you try to play the "group differences in outcome" card right up until someone asks how exactly you determine group membership for the purposes of determining group differences. IE Is a dark-skinned man who votes Republican "black" or is he, as Joe Biden and the Hosts of the View assert, "white". (Edit: See Slate and the LA Times' treatment of Clarence Thomas and Larry Elder)

Less charitably you are simply lying.

  • -11

note: I think it'd be more productive for everyone if you directly responded to the (different) arguments we're all making, instead of picking on one individual example of hypocrisy.

Take the rare very smart black kid in 1800. He's a slave. His masters notice he's clever, and give him more complex work. He remains a slave.

Take the kid post-reconstruction. He's the son of a farm laborer. He grows up, goes to the city, and gets a job at a factory. He's paid less than similar white workers for explicitly segregationist reasons. He's still given more responsibility than his black coworkers though, maybe even more pay.

The kid grows up in 1980. He's sent to a bad public school. Fights break out every day, teachers don't understand half of the material in most classes. But the teachers still read from the book, the textbooks are still available, so the smart kid picks up a lot. And he does well on the standardized tests. He goes to a good college, helped in part by affirmative action, and gets a job as an engineer. Or maybe he finds school stifling, does well on some classes but neglects others, and gets sucked into a culture of drugs and violence, becomes a sad statistic. Both happened.

The kid grows up in 2020. Bad public school, but with 2x the funding. The kid spends half his time on his phone, but still does well on tests. Test scores -> decent college -> decent job. Or, he finds school stifling. But now, he's naturally attracted to online communities with people of similar intelligence, and imitates their interests. With this, he makes connections, learns the tacit parts of upper-middle-class culture, and builds a desire for the kinds of occupations successful people pursue. Via one of those, he gets a good job.

This is why culture and environment 'don't matter'. They do matter, in the absolute. But, first in cities, then via technology, modern life exposes people to every other type of person, allowing people to effectively sort themselves by ability. And this heavily smooths out any differences in outcomes attributable to differences in culture or circumstances. Some still remains, of course, but much less than in the past. Innate ability, by contrast, is as strong a differentiator as ever.

A question: Jewish kids, Black kids, Hispanic kids, White kids, and Asian kids all have access to computers and the internet. They all post on all the major platforms. Why are so many of the best writers or smartest anonymous posters, even via the constrained medium of twitter, jews? Why are so few black?

You might explain this via lack of access, or systemic racism. But the second question is: Why, at least to my eyes, are the racial gaps in ability as large, and often larger, (both in terms of jew/white, asian/white, and white/black) in the realm of self-driven achievement on anonymous internet platforms than they are in educational institutions or real-world occupations?

Just to be clear, you're asking me to imagine a lineage of people who were smart and capable but held back by cultural and policy issues like slavery and segregation...

...and the conclusion that you expect me to draw from this example is that cultural and policy issues don't matter?

I think you're going to need to unpack your reasoning for me.

...and the conclusion that you expect me to draw from this example is that cultural and policy issues don't matter?

The idea is that the extent to which culture and policy has held them back, in the specific areas of education and the economy, has been significantly reduced over time, by a combination of intentional targeted policy and the general free association and exchange of ideas in the modern world. It makes sense that genes would eventually start taking precedent over culture if massive pressures exist on the part of the gap caused by culture.

This is intended as a reply to both this comment and your comment below.

I interpret the phrase/claim that "it's all genetics" as exactly that. Genetics is the only variable worth considering when it comes to evaluating individual or group outcomes.

Even if I concede the claim that specific issues of policy and culture matter less now than they did say a century ago, how do you get from there to the claim that they are not meaningful now, and will not be meaningful in the future?

Likewise, it seems to me that being a couple generations behind in the "building generational wealth game" due to past policy would be a significant handicap that is non-genetic in nature even after preexisting barriers had been removed.

I do not care about whether self_made_human was lying or being dishonest when he said "its all genetics". Most people, most of the time, are dishonest when they argue. What I care about is if the specific claim "variation in genetics matter more than variation in modifiable environment in contributing to educational outcomes".

how do you get from there to the claim that they are not meaningful now, and will not be meaningful in the future

The fact that we closed the achievement gap a lot in the past two centuries, but despite more and more effort put into reform the achievement gap isn't closing. And the fact that things like tutoring, while they help, seem to help smarter students as much as they do dumber students, so the gap isn't going to close more.

Crucially, this does not mean better education couldn't help. This means the current ways we approach education aren't helping. Maybe a tutor GPT-7 would add .5 stddevs of test scores to each student.

But the problem is, we've reached severe diminishing returns in 'cultural solutions to student test scores and mathematical/scientific knowledge'. I do think there's still juice left to be squeezed in entirely new cultural paradigms, like the AI 1:1 tutor or perhaps entirely reworking school as a series of practical competitions where students have to use math/science knowledge to do something intermediate to 'playing minecraft/factorio', 'working a real job', and 'self-directed survival-oriented problem solving as a hunter-gatherer'. But I think there's just not that much juice left, and most of the benefit of the new paradigms will be in areas other than 'test scores', like 'being economically productive' or 'capable independent people with character'.

But there's a ton of juice left to squeeze in genes. The easiest way to squeeze, technically, although socially unworkable, would just be to normalize average families adopting the excess children of smart/successful families, and then paying/culturally encouraging the latter to have ten kids and adopt them all out. This would cause test scores to skyrocket. (Crucially, this doesn't have to be done on test scores. If you care about metis or tacit knowledge, just have people adopt the children of parents successful on your metric! You could even have people make individual decisions based on their own preferences.). Then, we have embryo selection and gene editing, with the exact same properties.

Likewise, it seems to me that being a couple generations behind in the "building generational wealth game" due to past policy would be a significant handicap that is non-genetic in nature even after preexisting barriers had been removed.

There are many rich black people. 20% of black households make $100k+ in household income. 50% of jewish households have $100k+. Those numbers are probably off, but within an order of magnitude. 14% of the population is black, and 2% of the population is jewish. Yet. Is scott alexander black? Yudkowsky? Yarvin? Where are all of the intelligent black bloggers? What about nobel prize winners? I agree historical household income has to have some impact. But let's assume it's responsible for the entire wealth, achievement, and income gaps between jewish and black people. The gap in black vs jewish achievement at the highest levels (e.g. nobel prizes, accomplished mathematicians) that remains is still several factors of ten. Why? Why isn't it intelligence?

Most people, most of the time, are dishonest when they argue. What I care about is if the specific claim "variation in genetics matter more than variation in modifiable environment in contributing to educational outcomes".

Fair enough, and for what it's worth I feel like this here might represent some genuine common ground between us because that is ultimately what I care about as well. At the same time I also expect that we will be butting heads shortly on the definition of "modifiable".

Crucially, this does not mean better education couldn't help. This means the current ways we approach education aren't helping.

Ironically I agree with the statement as well, whole-heartedly even. The difference, I believe, is in where we lay the blame for the apparent failure. The woke-left and alt-right both are both looking for excuses to blame the kids because their ideology depends on it, but I believe that ultimate responsibility must lie with the adults IE the parents and "the educators".

But the problem is, we've reached severe diminishing returns in 'cultural solutions to student test scores and mathematical/scientific knowledge'.

I'm not convinced this is true. I think that what we have is less a situation of "X was attempted and found impossible" and more a situation of "X was found difficult/inconvenient and then abandoned." DeBeor all but admits that the upward mobility of black families in the bay area was becoming inconvenient to progressive policy goals just around the same time that they decided (for totally unrelated reasons we swear) to sabotage overhaul the educational system. What if they had just not done that?

But there's a ton of juice left to squeeze in genes.

Again doubt, or at least I doubt that there is anywhere near as much juice as there is left to squeeze out of overturning obviously counter-productive progressive policies. In my mind this is one of those "If you're serious about ending fossil fuels you should be supporting the construction of nuclear powerplants" type situations where the fact that the median Green-new-dealer/HBDer almost never does, seriously undermines the cause's credibility.

As for the last paragraph, the obvious rejoinder is what exactly makes you think Elizer Yudkowski or Curtis Yarvin is more qualified to be a supreme court justice than Clarence Thomas or more qualified to play quarterback than Patrick Mahomes? Be specific, Be precise.

More comments

Near as I can tell, the sort of view expressed by @Folamh3, @self_made_human, and others here that...

it's all genetics, the children whose parents can afford to send them to private school tend to be smarter than the children whose parents can't; "school quality" and "teacher quality" have pretty much zero bearing on educational outcomes and are almost pure signalling; if you sent all of the private school kids to a public school and vice versa, you would see essentially zero change in educational outcomes in either cohort; and so on and so on.

It is probably true. Schools are like 2% of environment, probably less. In fact, some parents have taken to faking moving into "worse" schools to improve their kids chance of getting into top tier colleges. Its not extreme because its bland and true. If you took all the kids from Brooklyn Tech and put them in the worst school in NYC, and put all those kids into Tech, Tech would immediately become a "bottom 10" school and this rando bad school would become a "top 10" school. Environmental effects need to be much stronger than teachers to significantly affect outcomes.

Do you realize that he was paraphrasing DeBoer and you can look up what else the guy has written? Specifically, from the same link,

This perspective is both buttressed by a tremendous amount of evidence and yet considered impermissible in polite debate. And teachers and schools pay the price, as they are asked to control outcomes they have limited influence on. The abstract of this paper sums up the reality.

Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains.

[…]

Kids do learn at school. You send your kid, he can’t sing the alphabet song, a few days later he’s driving you nuts with it. Sixteen-year-olds learn to drive. We handily acquire skills that didn’t even exist ten years ago. Concerns about the Black-white academic performance gap can sometimes obscure the fact that Black children today handily outperform Black children from decades past. Everyone has been getting smarter all the time for at least a hundred years or so. So how can I deny that education works?

The issue is that these are all markers of absolute learning. People don’t know something, or don’t know how to do something, and then they take lessons, and then they know it or can do it. From algebra to gymnastics to motorcycle maintenance to guitar, you can grow in your cognitive and practical abilities. The rate that you grow will differ from that of others, and most people will admit that there are different natural limits on various learned abilities between individuals; a seasoned piano teacher will tell you that anyone can learn some tunes, but also that most people have natural limits on their learning that prevent them from being as good as the masters. So too with academics: the fact that growth in absolute learning is common does not undermine the observation that some learners will always outperform others in relative terms. Everybody can learn. The trouble is that people think that they care most about this absolute learning when what they actually care about, and what the system cares about, is relative learning - performance in a spectrum or hierarchy of ability that shows skills in comparison to those of other people.

I do not see how you can object to anything in there. Genetics drives the differential ranking of humans; environment drives the absolute magnitude of what's possible for every given percentile; it seems to be the society-wide environment and not some school or teacher's ultra clever nudging or a bit of extra resources. The evidence really suggests that, as long as you don't hit the kids over the head with a lead pipe, don't starve them or force into pit fights, and provide merely reasonable learning conditions by the standards of modern pedagogic science – which are in many cases cheaper to achieve than some extravagant progressive practices – they basically reach up to their genotypic potential in the contemporary society. Which is unequal in predictable ways.

Sure, ruining education remains easier than getting it right, just like producing inedible slurry is easier than running a decent food stall. But the latter is still not rocket science. It's reasonable, arguably necessary, to enforce some standards of hygiene and ingredient quality; it is inane to assert that, say, differences in height of New Yorkers of different races are driven by distribution of ethnic food stalls in their neighborhoods. Likewise with education.

…But of course you understand all that, you [expletive deleted]. You were trolling @Folamh3 back then as well:

I must confess a certain amount amusment/schadenfreude reading this.
If ability to read really is, as you just so confidently asserted, "all genetic" why shouldn't teachers pick their methods based on what's fun for them?

etc. etc.

You just refuse to engage charitably on this matter, and in fact seem to take some pride in that.

Look man, you and I have been doing this for years. 10 years this October by my count. What do you think my "engaging charitably" would look even like in this context?

The way I see it I have been eminently charitable, and in the decade I've been participating in this specific community I've seen an HBD post that rose above tired "arguments as soldiers" or "look at me I'm so edgey" maybe a handful of times at the most.

What this look likes from my end you have staked out a position in the Motte, and because your position in the Motte may have some merit (emphasis on the may) I am expected to cede the Bailey as typified by the linked post without a fight in the name of "charity".

If that's what is expected of me then, yes. I will admit that I do take a certain amount of pride in refusing to "engage charitably".

How did you ask the question

"If DeBoer is correct that education doesn't matter, how does he explain the fact that scores were going up before the change in policy?"

after being quoted, 24 hours earlier, DeBoer saying

"Kids do learn at school. You send your kid, he can’t sing the alphabet song, a few days later he’s driving you nuts with it. Sixteen-year-olds learn to drive. We handily acquire skills that didn’t even exist ten years ago. Concerns about the Black-white academic performance gap can sometimes obscure the fact that Black children today handily outperform Black children from decades past"?

You're consistently misinterpreting the statements of people who disagree with you in ways convenient for your arguments, that make their positions seem much more extreme than they really are. Please just ... try to notice when you make a mistake and correct for it in the future?

What are your responses to Freddie DeBoer's arguments on this topic? Education Doesn't Work 2.0, a comprehensive argument that education cannot close academic gaps and Genes Believe in You are blogposts, and the book is The Cult Of Smart (pirated). These aren't about race, which he sort of ignores, but make strong arguments about individual differences in ability, and ones that readily generalize to race.

My response is that as a member of the educational establishment DeBoer is likely trying to deflect blame for poor educational outcomes away from himself and his colleagues and on to the children.

To quote @FCfromSSC in the previously linked thread...

Teachers: "We totally figured out how to teach poor black kids! we just didn't like doing it, so we decided to not teach them instead, figuring that ought to work just as well!"

Otherwise see above

Note that this issue is not in any way specific to black kids. Do you imagine they're disproportionately exposed to the «whole language» claptrap while whites are getting reasonable methods like phonics?

For a toy model: say reading ability is normally distributed in your society; and you establish a binary criterion for "can read" or "can't read" that cuts your whole population exactly in half; and there are two factors contributing positively to the reading skill, namely educational method (Good vs Bad) and innate IQ (which can only be 6X or 5X); and you have two races with different innate average IQ. The race with the lower innate IQ will have fewer people above the threshold initially, and benefit more from the switch to the better teaching method; and will still have proportionally more people below it.

This is pretty trivial.

There are also blood pressure medications that work better for black people than white people and vice-versa. Is that also culturally driven? Some black people think this is racist. In fact so many that the meme made itself into an episode of House.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RCGLyLUNMv8

Phonics is a program designed to help poor performing students no? No wonder it did more for black kids. But it is a mirage, like pre-k, the gains evaporate over time and sometimes there is even regression past the mean.

Personally I agree with the premise that educators have little power to influence outcomes. I went to school. Unlike, I feel, most other adults, I remember what it was like. Unlike most people on this site (in most likelyhood) my school was ranked in the bottom 50% of schools in my state. In fact, there were more than 1 stabbings during my matriculation. Yet, me and both my siblings got full academic ride scholarships to flagship state schools. Weird. In fact, weirdly we weren't the only ones. It seems at "middling-to-poor" schools scholarships and admissions to high end universities tend to cluster in families. So odd.

Now, families share more than just genes, of course (although that is just passing the buck for one extra cycle wherein we must ask why families have different cultures) but it does disprove, largely, the impact that schools have, at least on the upside. And on the downside, its pretty obvious that bad schools are caused by having ungovernable students, rather than bad teachers. Most of the "worst schools" have much higher than average teacher compensation for their state.

Phonics is a program designed to help poor performing students no? No wonder it did more for black kids. But it is a mirage, like pre-k, the gains evaporate over time and sometimes there is even regression past the mean.

Is it?

The linked discussion was about a reading program instituted in the usual crappy inner-city schools, which showed massive improvements on reading ability by all the school's metrics, with exactly the students who never, ever show massive improvement. And faced with this improvement, the teachers refused to continue the program, because they didn't like teaching it.

Not that it stopped working. Not that the gains weren't sustainable. Not that it only worked with a specially-selected sub-population of students. The kids who couldn't learn to read were learning to read, and the teachers refused to continue the program because doing their fucking jobs was too much of a downer. And we know that this is how it was, not because their private emails leaked, or someone dragged it out of them through FOIA, but because they said so publicly in interviews with the press, apparently oblivious to how fucking monstrous this sounds to anyone with a brain.

Of course, this is only an isolated incident, so it would be irresponsible to imagine that if a whole school system can fuck up this badly and have no one call them on it, maybe others could be suffering similar fuckups, or maybe even that they might be fucking other things up as well. Like when they did a push nation-wide to cap the amount of discipline black students receive, resulting in a total breakdown of school discipline, or when they make it official policy to retain disruptive students despite solid evidence that such students impede the learning of the rest of the class... just minor details like that, you know?

The standard HBD argument is that we've tried all the environmental interventions, they didn't work, so HBD is the only explanation remaining. Only, we haven't tried all the environmental interventions. We tried the environmental interventions popular with the exact set of people who gave us the replication crisis, and no others.

Maybe you're right, it's down to genetics, and there's nothing to be done. I'm willing to accept that after we've burned down the institutions that have been operating with a degree of incompetence indistinguishable from pure malice, forced the people who built and staffed those institutions to accept full personal responsibility for their failure, and then at least tried the things that we have solid reasons to believe would actually work.

And sure, that's not easy to do. And sure, there's no reason to humor the bullshit accusations of racism for even a single second more. But before I'm willing to accept that it's all down to genetics and there's nothing to be done, I want to see a rigorous test of the thesis that actually, this mess is the fucking Progressives' fault.

More comments

Phonics is a program designed to help poor performing students no?

No. I suspect you are thinking of Hooked on Phonics Phonics/Phonetics is simply the traditional "dead white guy" means of teaching someone read/write an alphabetic language that was the default standard in most places until the late 90s early oughts, these days it's gone the way of memorizing multiplication tables and is now primarily a Catholic/Classical education thing.

the gains evaporate over time and sometimes there is even regression past the mean.

Personally I agree with the premise that educators have little power to influence outcomes...

I understand that this is the conventional wisdom here, I just don't think it has any basis in reality. I've seen way too many instances of a team showing a marked improvement after a change in coach, platoons turning around/going to shit under a new CO or Top, and students doing better once they got a tutor, with my own two eyes to buy the claim that teaching is some sort of "special case".

I don't think it's "education" or even "educators" that are useless, I think it's our educational establishment.

More comments

  1. DeBoer is not "a member of the educational establishment". He is a first a journalist, then blogger, then guy who writes on education policy. Most of his writing is about random topics of interest to him and readers. He is currently looking for work as a ghostwriter. The educational establishment mostly dislikes him for saying all of the things they do are stupid.

  2. Even if he were, that doesn't refute his arguments. Since almost all reasoning is somewhat motivated, plenty of motivated reasoning is correct. Isn't it curious how chemists think chemistry has important economic applications, ML researchers believe ML has important applications, historians of literature believe that literature enriches the spirit ... yet they're arguably correct! He makes many well-composed and strong arguments that stand on their own.

  3. Black and low-iq kids who go to great schools still get low test scores. Regressed-to-the-mean 115 iq kids in high school who do a lot of test prep still score lower than 130 iq kids from middle-class families.

  4. I agree that public schools are suboptimal. But they're suboptimal in similar ways for white and black kids. Even at preppy good mostly-white schools, there are still a ton of bad teachers, and a ton of students who do poorly in good classes. Bad schools and good schools are, really, pretty similar, and the surrounding economy (giving opportunities to people who are smart but didn't fit well in school) compensates for a lot of what schools miss out on.

Your quote is about phonics versus 'rich literary experience'. And phonics was better for black kids. But the thing is, the high IQ kids, and to a 50x lesser extent the white kids, did fine with non-phonics. The entire premise of the phonics debate is that many kids do fine with both methods of instruction, but that some group of kids does better with phonics (although still not as well as the group who it doesn't matter for). And - the needs-phonics group is disproportionately black. Why is that?

Even if he were, that doesn't refute his arguments.

I kind of feel like it does. At the very least it significantly undermines them. It's not enough to just propose a new theory, the new theory has to both account for everything the old theory did, and produce better predictions. If DeBoer is correct that education doesn't matter, how does he explain the fact that scores were going up before the change in policy?

Edit to Add: You and DeBoer are trying to argue statistical distributions, and "regression to the mean", but I'm still stuck on the part where we stopped trying to teach kids how to read.

More comments

Look man, you and I have been doing this for years. 10 years this October by my count. What do you think my "engaging charitably" would look even like in this context?

So is your excuse simply that this shit is your nature and no amount of educational efforts can fix you? A bit inconsistent given the argument you advance, innit?

So is your excuse simply that this shit is your nature and no amount of educational efforts can fix you?

No, I'm saying some level of reciprocity is required, or proverbial carrot provided, if you want me to choose "cooperate" after the other guys have already chosen "defect".

I actually recall the precise moment the switch flipped, and I stopped considering the HBDers here worthy of engagement. It was summer of 2021 during CW discussion of the NFL's "race norming" scandal and a number prominent HBDers (including a few who are still active today) defended the practice of artificially lowering the scores of high performing black individuals as necessary to "improve accuracy". After all if HBD is true, and a black man scored well it must be because the test was flawed and not because that individual black man in question might have actually been smart.

I pointed out that that if you have data that falsifies a theory, you're supposed to update the theory not the data, only to receive a bunch of downvotes, snide comments about my lack of intellectual bone-fides, and lectures about distributions, set theory, etc... Yet the whole time the simple fact that these guys were (by their own admission) editing observational data to support a pre-arrived-at conclusion was sitting there staring me in the face. Given that, why would I trust anything further they had to say?

That out of the way I will give you a chance to start a new hopefully more cooperative cycle by offering you (and anyone else who cares to chime in) the same basic case against HBD that I've been making since we started having these discussions in the open comments section of SSC.com.

HBDers like to claim individual and environmental factors largely don't matter and that everything can be boiled down to genetics. When I observe the world around me, I find that exceedingly hard to believe. My go-to example is that someone can have all the genetic potential in the world and still end up a flabby bastard if they don't eat well or work-out. Or in the case of the linked thread, all the genetic potential in the world isn't going to make a kid read well if nobody teaches them to read. From these simple observations I have arrived at the conclusion that the effect sizes of individual/environmental factors like having an engaged adult who teaches the kid to read, or getting off one's ass and going to the gym are far more predictive of outcome, and thus must have substantially greater effect sizes than that of genetics assuming such effects exist at all.

The replies I get (assuming anyone engages at all) are typically something along the lines of "Maybe, but if we control for all those other factors, genetics will be the only one left". And that's often where the conversation, breaks down because they haven't actually adressed my claim about effect sizes, they're just explaining what the term "Controlling for" means.

The statement that "If we eliminate all considerations that are not X, X will be the only consideration remaining." Is a tautology, not a proof that "X" is true, or that "X" is more meaningful than "Y".

It was summer of 2021 during CW discussion of the NFL's "race norming" scandal and a number prominent HBDers (including a few who are still active today) defended the practice of artificially lowering the scores of high performing black individuals as necessary to "improve accuracy

This is incorrect. There was a billion dollar lawsuit, and in a settlement the NFL had to pay based on estimates of the loss in cognitive function caused by concussions. The 'race-norming' was assuming that black people (with concussions) started from lower IQs than white people, to reduce the NFL's payouts. Which is reasonable, because large-scale IQ testing of black people does find they have lower IQs. They are not claiming that the black person is 'too smart', and his IQ should be adjusted down. They're claiming that he has the average IQ of a black person, not a white person, and thus his score of (past IQ - current IQ), i.e. his IQ loss, should be adjusted down. Again, you persistently mischaracterize the statements of your opponents, instead of engaging with their arguments.

My go-to example is that someone can have all the genetic potential in the world and still end up a flabby bastard if they don't eat well or work-out

Can you make a direct analogy for the cases of education and income here, so we can address it directly?

Or in the case of the linked thread, all the genetic potential in the world isn't going to make a kid read well if nobody teaches them to read

It's very relevant that we have phones, school-provided tablets, libraries, and closed-caption tv shows. These massively equalize the 'environment' people experience relative to the past!

The replies I get (assuming anyone engages at all) are typically something along the lines of "Maybe, but if we control for all those other factors, genetics will be the only one left". And that's often where the conversation, breaks down because they haven't actually adressed my claim about effect sizes, they're just explaining what the term "Controlling for" means.

What's an intervention that you think would have a comparable effect size to genetics?

This is incorrect. There was a billion dollar lawsuit,

To be clear, I'm not talking about the lawsuit, I'm talking about the culture war thread discussion about the lawsuit.

...and there is no need to "assume" anything because the NFL has a Wonderlic Score for every player who's entered the league since 1968.

As I argued at the time, adjusting Tomlinson's Wonderlic score down because he's Black is about as central an example of old-school "racism" as it's possible to come by these days.

More comments

HBDers like to claim individual and environmental factors largely don't matter and that everything can be boiled down to genetics. When I observe the world around me, I find that exceedingly hard to believe. My go-to example is that someone can have all the genetic potential in the world and still end up a flabby bastard if they don't eat well or work-out. Or in the case of the linked thread, all the genetic potential in the world isn't going to make a kid read well if nobody teaches them to read. From these simple observations I have arrived at the conclusion that the effect sizes of individual/environmental factors like having an engaged adult who teaches the kid to read, or getting off one's ass and going to the gym are far more predictive of outcome, and thus must have a greater effect size than genetics assuming such effects are measurable at all.

You do seem to just ignore those of us who are proponents of HBD and don't fall into this obvious trap. Yes, the environment also matters, no this does not actually disprove HBD and it is ridiculous to assume it does for the same reason a dump trunk being able to plow through a barricade does not prove barricades to have no efficacy. The world is more complicated than only one thing being able to contribute to an outcome. The HBD position is not that HBD has a greater effect size than environment, this is trivially proved by the ability to deprive babies of oxygen enough to leave them mentally handicapped. The HBD position is that genetics matter at all and vary between groups.

You do seem to just ignore those of us who are proponents of HBD and don't fall into this obvious trap.

You know what, it's fair cop, and if I have that's on me. Mea Culpa. At the same time the immediat question that springs to my mind is where have you been? Why haven't you been weighing in? Is this one of those "no enemies to the left" type situations, or have you been weighing in this whole time and I just haven't seen it?

More comments

I stopped considering the HBDers here worthy of engagement.

If you don't consider HBDers worthy of engagement, then stop engaging with me. Stop tagging me in comments as part of conversations I'm not part of.

I don't want to interact with you ever again in any capacity, but you're the one who keeps forcing the issue. Just stop interacting with me and we can go our separate ways.

In my follow-up comments to the comment you linked, I made it abundantly clear that when I said "it's all genetics" I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect, and I do not, in fact, believe that culture plays zero role in educational outcomes. My hyperbolic assertion that "it's all genetics" was intended to contrast with the attitudes of certain education researchers who do, apparently, believe that genetics plays no role in educational outcomes, and that educational outcomes are entirely determined by culture, upbringing and school quality.

I've made my actual position on this matter abundantly clear to you, and I think it's rather tiresome and dishonest of you to quote this off-the-cuff comment out of context. You seem convinced that this off-the-cuff comment I made in passing was some sort of "mask-off" moment for me, and all the follow-up comments I made expressing my actual position in more nuanced detail were simply lies. I don't know how you arrived at this position and I don't appreciate being misrepresented.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would knock it off and stop involving me every time you want to make a point about how evil and wretched HBDers are. And don't tell a story that you're only pinging me because I'm "one of the Motte's most prominent HBD proponents" or whatever: I barely discuss the issue at all, and the comment you linked is from seven months ago. In the interim, out of the dozens if not hundreds of comments I've posted here, I've discussed HBD in any capacity a grand total of three times, in one case because you were pinging me about it, in another case to explicitly refute the claim that HBD is the cause of disproportionate homicide rates between ethnic groups in the US. It's not a topic I know much about, claim any expertise in or discuss with any great frequency.

If you're so convinced that rabid, unqualified endorsement of HBD is the median position on this site, it shouldn't be remotely hard for you to find a better example to illustrate your point than me, a guy who has never claimed any expertise in the topic, doesn't find it particularly interesting and barely talks about it. Given that you know all of the foregoing, it's really obnoxious of you to repeatedly bring me up any time you're trying to score points in a HBD debate, especially now that you've been explicitly requested not to do so in future.

My read of that interaction is that you were trying to use arguments as soldiers and then got pissy when they got slaughtered to a man because you'd marched them into a killbox.

This is far from the first time that you and I have done this particular song and dance. You'll make some blanket claim about X-outcome is entirely explained by genetics and then someone usually myself or @FCfromSSC will point out that all the genetics in the world won't teach kids to read, or turn a flabby sack of dough into NFL athlete if they don't eat well and go to the gym, at which point you accuse your interlocutor of misunderstanding what you plainly said and/or quoting you out context. Rinse, wash, repeat, every 3 - 4 months.

Simply put, if you don't want to be used as an example of HBDer's poor behavior, stop providing such good examples.

Edit: See also my replies to @DaseindustriesLtd, and @hydroacetylene.

  • -12

This is far from the first time that you and I have done this particular song and dance. You'll make some blanket claim about X-outcome is entirely explained by genetics and then someone usually myself or @FCfromSSC will point out that all the genetics in the world won't teach kids to read, or turn a flabby sack of dough into NFL athlete if they don't eat well and go to the gym, at which point you accuse your interlocutor of misunderstanding what you plainly said and/or quoting you out context. Rinse, wash, repeat, every 3 - 4 months.

For what it's worth, pretty much everything in this paragraph is unambiguously false. I recall exactly one instance in which I expressed a HBD opinion, you disagreed with me, and I replied to you attempting to clarify my opinion (the comment to which you linked, above). I cannot find any examples in the intervening seven months in which I expressed a HBD opinion and you or @FCfromSSC replied to contradict me. This is the second instance in the last seven months in which you tagged me in a comment to use me as an example of how monstrous and wretched HBDers are, without me actually saying anything new to prompt you doing so. I went through my comment replies from the last year and found five examples of @FCfromSSC replying to a comment I'd posted, none of which bore even the most tangential relationship to HBD:

I went through my notifications on Reddit as far back as April 2021 and couldn't find a single occasion on which @FCfromSSC replied to a comment of mine in the old subreddit. These are the only times you replied to comments of mine in the old place, and neither of them have anything to do with HBD:

I'm open to correction, you're welcome to link me to a comment of mine in which I expressed a HBD opinion and you or @FCfromSSC replied to contradict me, but after digging through two-and-a-half years of comments on two websites, I can't find anything remotely resembling the sequence of events you've described, which supposedly recurs every 3-4 months. At this point I think it's only reasonable to assume that either you've mistaken me for someone else (easy mistake to make, nobody's perfect), or are simply lying.

Either substantiate your ridiculous assertions or piss off and leave me alone.

Get lost and stop trying to involve me every time you have a debate about HBD. I'm not particularly interested in discussing this topic with anyone, and certainly not with someone as obnoxious and inconsiderate as you.

stop providing such good examples.

The last time I provided you with a good example of the poor behaviour of HBDers was seven months ago. If I had provided a more recent example, you would have used it. I haven't, which is why you have to keep bringing up a comment I posted seven months ago. You have this bizarre fantasy that I'm constantly posting about HBD, but you have to trawl through seven months of comments I've posted to find one that illustrates how awful you think I am. And you know what? I think it's sad, I really do.

How long, exactly, do I have to not post a HBD-related comment before you will stop pinging me every time you have a debate on this topic? A year? Two years? Three? You're demanding that I "stop" providing you with good examples of HBDers being obnoxious, but please tell me: what the fuck does "stop" mean to you if not "hasn't done it for seven months"?

If you want to think I'm a horrible wretched human being, fine, go nuts. Just extend a tiny modicum of common courtesy and stop pinging me every time you have a debate about HBD with someone. It's really not hard and I don't see why you have to be so gratuitously obnoxious just because I don't share your opinion.

will point out that all the genetics in the world won't teach kids to read, or turn a flabby sack of dough into NFL athlete if they don't eat well and go to the gym

So where are the white cornerbacks?

So where are the white cornerbacks?

Hanging out with the middle-class black Manhattanites

I take it this distraction means you don't have a cultural reason why, given that there are still a lot more white people than black people in the US, and white people don't all, by any means, have a culture which abhors gyms and proper eating, there are no white cornerbacks in the NFL.

(There are indeed middle class black Manhattanites)

And there are indeed white Cornerbacks. Granted, not many (much like middle-class Manhattanites) but I was replying to your comment in the spirit it was offered.

More comments

it's all genetics, the children whose parents can afford to send them to private school tend to be smarter than the children whose parents can't; "school quality" and "teacher quality" have pretty much zero bearing on educational outcomes and are almost pure signalling; if you sent all of the private school kids to a public school and vice versa, you would see essentially zero change in educational outcomes in either cohort; and so on and so on.

No Hlynka, as I've told you before, HBDers don't think genetics is the be all and end all.*

The reason that differences in outcome are minimal for a smart kid in a private versus public school is that they both surpass a minimum threshold of quality such that any further difference is down to genetics. Take the same kid and chuck them in the kind of rundown, underfunded schools you might find in the worst parts of India and you're going to see them suffer. If you wish to attribute all the disparities of the world to either genetics or "culture", then that's the latter because it has fuck all to do with genes.

You're so comfortable in your Western skin that you don't notice how almost everything around you is far better than it historically was, say a century ago, and is still better than the majority of this planet.

*Another example of your exasperating tendency to forget anything inconvenient to your narrative. Even my usual desire to adhere to the presumption of good faith and charity here on The Motte has long worn thin for you.

as I've told you before, HBDers don't think genetics is the be all and end all.

And yet HBDers keep arguing the contrary.

To be blunt, you either endorse the linked comment or you don't. Which is it?

To be blunt, you either endorse the linked comment or you don't. Which is it?

Did you stop beating your wife? Yes or no answers only 🙏

I see what you're trying to do, and I am not going to change tack

I am not going to change tack

Have you ever? Not where I've seen it.

You know better than to drop into this level of petty back-and-forth.

More comments

Right back at you, link me an example of yourself or some other prominent HBDer arguing that cultural attitudes matter more than melanin content and I'll shut up concede the point.

More comments

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!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats