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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25769 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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This is a great article, well worth the full read. Especially in context with the comments written about it here. It seems the author hits the nail on the head when he talks about the elusive nature of the point of contention and the issue he has with getting 'liberals' to engage with it. He is also conveniently vindicated as being correct as this issue is exemplified in the comments here post after post. Where every manner of framing the issue away from reality is tried. It would be a miss for me to not highlight those comments if not for the convenience of the columns author already doing it for me:

At this stage, short of some grand conspiracy of white people “to keep the black man down” (the Woke explanation) the cause of group disparities must come down to some combination of the following sources:

Genetic group differences stemming from human bio-diversity, as attested to by a growing mountain of evidence,

Deep historically situated cultural differences that are almost impossible to change,

Recently developed behavioral differences that cannot be modified with tools we consider "liberal" and acceptable in the modern world.

On paper, and when I talk to them personally, many of the liberal-centrist types tell me they understand this problem. They have read Steven Pinker, they have read the Bell Curve, and they know the issues with Affirmative Action and disparate impact in the context of persistent group differences. Their eyes are open. They've got this one.

So what is their solution? More individualism and objective standards for achievement. We need to go back to color blindness, the legal fiction of equality, and judging everyone like a blank slate even though they are not. We can just call that a "meritocracy" as we did in the 1990s. Let the chips fall where they may, and be done with the matter once and for all.

Perhaps this is a great “debate club idea”, but who is going to own the consequences if indeed we were to tear down all disparate impact regulations, equal opportunity programs, and affirmative action? I don’t think an appeal to "meritocracy" would cut it.

Many commenters here seem to have missed this part of the article and what follows. It would be much better for everyone if they didn't. Though I would suspect the problem they have with it is hard for them to verbalize. Since any movement in this direction on their part is an explicit admission that they are willing to break baseline social taboos. To stand up in person and say you don't care about starving children in Africa because you don't recognize borders, would be an obvious low status signal. You would have to be stupid or of low moral character to say such a thing. The same would also be true for saying you don't see a problem with extremely poor black educational attainment or medical conditions like obesity and heart disease, because you don't see race. You would have to be a fool or the most brilliant of racist comedians to earnestly say such a thing in public under your own name.

Many people here do want HBD to be talked about more mainstream because it will lead to better policy and outcomes.

They won’t say it under their own name because of the current political situation where if you start saying things are genetic society will ban you from earning an income.

It’s not because they don’t want to deal with it. It’s because people don’t want to starve themselves from Unemployment.

Few industries let you speak truth. Trump mostly gets to. Hedge Fund managers get to or equivalent trader that can print money. Deshaun Watson gets to. Unless you are a really special talent you don’t get to.

The difference is that HBD folks have to own it. Many academics throughout the years have done so for decades at great professional and personal risk. Yes, the truth is ugly and the fallout of widespread recognition and actualization of it might be even more ugly. But that's the fight being had.

Versus the likes of James Lindsey who simply ignore the inevitable fallout of their advocacy for colorblind meritocracy, acting as if the negative consequences simply won't happen. Not that he or the likes of him would ever allow the conversation to even get to that point, as that would be too great of an admission. No, the 'liberals' act not just like they have the most functional solution, but the most morally correct one. Like the author points out, it's as if they can't see that the system they are advocating for might end up shipping a bunch of melted ice cream. They refuse to even engage with the proposition. Instead they just assert that they are shipping ice cream to everyone the same way so it's fair.

Contrast this complete lack of self criticism with the way they engage with topics like HBD, where suddenly every little detail becomes functionally impossible to deal with. They don't actually have to engage with the truth proposition of HBD, they can just ignore it through the cover that any real world implementation derived from HBD is impossible, even if the results would not necessarily differ in any way compared to the 'liberal' one, the only difference being moral palatability, which is really only a cover for social acceptability. 'At least we are not nazis!' when in function they are shipping the same melted ice cream.

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