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Who, uh, doesn't spend a lot of time on twitter? Matt Yglesias spends a lot of time on twitter, and often quote-tweets these fringe far-right figures. Tucker's writers breathed the twitter-far-right environment both when he was at Fox and now. Random smart people I know IRL follow all sorts of people on twitter. Even many years ago the social network for the "liberal media" was ... twitter. And a lot of relatively mainstream right-wing media figures follow various far-right people on twitter. Sure, the far-right doesn't currently have *power, but it certainly has influence. And most of the far-right does mix in the 'statistical differences in IQ' part of HBD with white identitarianism.
His point is sort of that 'not-HBD' is a key part of the logic justifying affirmative action, but not actually a key part of the political resonance of affirmative action for almost everyone. The political resonance is just that people really really don't want to be racist and really really want to help the poor black people helpless in the face of structural factors. Someone who's an earnest progressive activist isn't going to be receptive to HBD, it just doesn't do anything for any of their motives.
And in terms of those motives: Scott Alexander clearly believes races have different average IQs. But he's a liberal so he doesn't make a huge deal about it - it just doesn't feel good. Whereas someone like ZHPL or Fuentes do believe races have different IQs, and they buy more into the whole far-right idea cluster so they make a huge deal about it. Hanania's significantly more liberal, so he doesn't really want people to become ZHPL or Fuentes, so he doesn't want to make a huge deal about race and IQ. Also, maybe emphasizing race and IQ puts you in a coalition with the 'nazis', and then the nazis are toxic to the public, so your cause loses.
As he says at the end:
(I'm not agreeing with his position here, just trying to explain it)
He'd say 'yeah, we already tried to convince the intelligentsia, see the Bell Curve, it didn't work'. But - does that mean we should stop trying? Just because it's not enough doesn't mean it isn't useful to promote HBD on the margin. Some of the intelligentsia (eg Scott and the many mainstream people who respect him) clearly are convinced, and that can't hurt the Right or Freedom or w/e.
I think the right-wing Overton window is already shifting in the HBD direction, partly because Musk bought twitter and allowed it to be discussed. In real life though, it's still absolutely unthinkable and career suicide to talk about it frankly. I take your point though, the idea does actually have (increasing) power just because of it's popularity on twitter. Maybe we'll see that translate into real life in the next decade.
It's a fact that obviously helps the right more than the left because it torpedoes a core left-wing belief about the world, but in the end it's just a fact, like evolution, that can be used to justify whatever policies the arguer wants. LKY seems to have instituted affirmative action in Singapore partly because of his race realist beliefs. I think it's really asinine to assign facts a political significance in and of themselves, even if it happens that currently one political faction likes talking about it more than another. It's not hard to argue for largely the same things leftists are arguing for now while being race realist, but I think discourse and policy would be less dysfunctional were leftists forced to do so instead of making magic dirt arguments.
I agree this is his point but I disagree with him. I think a drastic shift in the Overton is possible simply by popularizing knowledge of HBD-related facts. I think many people are genuinely unaware even of the achievement gap, let alone the evidence for it being largely genetic. The NYT runs an article about selective highschools having an issue with diversity every couple of years, not sure how that would even be news unless people weren't aware of the achievement gap. In my interactions with people I don't reveal my actual views so maybe they don't either, but I get the impression most people are simply unaware of the kind of stuff you see on race realist twitter. If that's really the case, I think there's a strong case that talking about it can change peoples' minds.
I also really dislike the argument that because wignats like talking about it no one else should lest they be associated with wignats. Politics is primarily about preferences but facts are actually important as well. Yglesias has a relevant piece on this https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-strange-death-of-education-reform-3f5 wherein he pretty much says that denying the achievement gap exists is stupid and harmful. I think a similar argument can easily be made from a liberal perspective for not denying that the gap is significantly genetic. Preventing wasteful policies that are based on fundamental misunderstandings of reality is reason enough to talk about it. There's a great quote from HBD-archon Greg Clark about this:
"This is not an “ugly” fact. It is not a “beautiful” fact. It is just a fact. This fact helps explain why it is so hard for societies using the levers of social policy to eliminate group disparities in outcomes. It is a fact that we should be aware of in thinking about inequalities of income and wealth."
The evidence will only continue to grow, I think eventually it will just be too much to deny. Even with the taboo on talking about it and researching it, even with institutions like the NIH forbidding research on it, it's just inevitable that if HBD is true it will become undeniable eventually. If it's true then the sooner it's acknowledged the better for crafting effective policy, so if you believe it's true I think you should want to convince people. Of course, taking the position Scott Alexander tacitly confessed to in his Kolmogorov And The Lightning essay of not talking about it to save your social status is completely fine too, you just shouldn't discourage others from talking about it.
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