The board is set, the rules have been read, and the terrain has been scouted. So, how do we win?
The first thing to do is to define our victory conditions. Since Vox's power comes from crumbling institutions and escalating (rhetorical) violence, our victory conditions are stable institutions and de-escalating violence.
The first thing to do is to define our victory conditions. Since Vox's power comes from crumbling institutions and escalating (rhetorical) violence, our victory conditions are stable institutions and de-escalating violence.
There are debates on the meaning of "irony," but it just may apply to a great and mighty Defender of Civilization whose interests are best served by the collapse of social institutions and the spread of chaos.
These victory conditions can only be met if we do three things:
1). Earn the moral high-ground.
2). Engage the enemy face-to-face.
3). End the Puppy Kerfuffle.
Earn the Moral High Ground
The most important thing here is to de-escalate whenever possible. That doesn't mean you should go run and hide, it means to maintain respect and kindness at all times. And while this may be important for online interactions, it goes double for IRL events. You don't win hearts and minds by shooting people in their...well, in their hearts and minds. You do it by feeding and clothing people, by washing their feet.
Again, this is not about giving ground intellectually, it's about treating human beings like human beings instead of Captain Planet villains. Hug a Puppy. By them lunch. Invite them over to discuss their favorite books. They may never be your best friend, but they may begin to see you as human.
Vox can win the snarky rhetoric game every time. Can he win the charity game? There's only one way to find out.
Engage the Enemy Face-to-Face
Let's face it: shunning Vox has worked about as well as ignoring that strange lump growing beneath your skin. As he rightly says, he was pushed off of a platform so he went and built his own. And build it has and build it shall.
Containment is no longer an option, but neither is going nuclear. Again, in 4GW how the conflict is carried out matters more than who's right and who's wrong. If Vox's opponents keep a neutral, emotionally detached tone, his assholery will be all the more apparent. Stick to the facts and, if all possible, be friendly.
Vox is entirely capable of maintaining this sort of self-control, and he usually does.
The classic Vox Day Twitter-Exchange Pattern usually goes:
1. Vox says something triggering, but says it in a neutral tone.
2. Opponent tries to call Vox out on being a racist/misogynist/jackass.
3. Vox appeals to science/reason/logic, implies opponent is ignorant/illogical.
4. Opponent lashes out emotionally instead of countering with science/reason/logic.
5. Vox can now be as gigantically gaping an asshole as he pleases because "they started it!"
And he's right! The first person to flip out and resort to unsubstantiated personal attacks always loses the debate. They forfeit the moral high ground, and thus the argument. So don't respond with insults and dismissals, respond with links to evidence and politeness. It doesn't matter how painfully obviously wrong you think he is, you're going to have to claw for every inch and every concession.
I think that Vox can be counter-goaded into giving up the high-ground. How long can he keep purely rational in an extended debates? I don't know because none of his opponents have engaged him in one. How would he react to someone taking his ideas seriously and providing well-thought out responses?
So learn to think like the enemy. I don't care how much you hate Vox Day; if you want to go after him, you first have to understand where he's coming from. Read Vox Populi daily. Buy a few of his books. Read the articles and papers he cites as evidence and do some research of your own. If you don't know what your enemy is planning, you will never be able to see the difference between a feint and the killing blow.
End the Puppy Kerfuffle
So now we have the moral and mental high ground. This will go a long way towards depleting Vox's power, but we're not done yet.
The next step is to divide and conquer - or rather, to divide and love. "Conquer" sets the wrong frame of mind. The goal is not to bend enemies to our hideous will but to, you know, have fun reading Sci-Fi novels and playing video games with people. This means taking some responsibility on our side as well. Are we standing up for wider representation or demonizing Europeans? Are we voting for the best Sci-Fi (subjective as that may be) or for stunt novels? Or worse, for the best Tor novel?
De-escalations are not easy. It will mean listening to former enemies with open ears. It will take soul-searching and a mutual setting down of grinding axes. But the alternative is to let people like Vox dominate the conversation. You don't de-escalate a 4GW conflict by demanding your enemies submit or die, you de-escalate by learning to live together.
Vox has been very good about blocking attempts to split the Sad Puppies from the Rabids. From his perspective, that would be the worst case scenario. Fragmentation helps 4GW movements on the whole, but a movement that does not navigate the shifting alliances carefully will quickly find itself dismantled.
Fortunately, Vox's extreme views means that he is sitting on a higher concentration of fault lines than Japan. It is likely not a question of if his base will split, but when. We're going to look at one of those potential fault lines and how it could be exploited.
Specifically, we're going to talk about race. Vox self-identifies as non-White while championing ideas that generally only White Supremacists find acceptable. To be specific, the idea that "races" are legitimate concepts created by genetic differences among human subgroups, and that some races are inherently, genetically more intelligent than others. However, perusing the comments sections of Vox Populi posts shows that some (some!) of his followers criticize him for not being racist enough. Believe it or not, Vox fails at being a White Supremacist.
The difficulty, of course, is that exploiting this weakness would be both immoral and a strategic blunder. I can see the headlines now: "SJWs Attack Vox Day for Not Being a True White Supremacist! MLK Clocks 1500 RPM in Grave!" Attacking Puppies as a group of White Supremacists is already a big enough blunder. A 5 minute search shows they are a diverse lot, even if that diversity includes White Supremacists.
Fortunately, Vox has racial fault lines on both the right and the left.
White Supremacists are reasonable people, willing to line up behind Vox while he's winning. So are socially conservative Sci-Fi fans. It is all well and good when Vox is giving their mutual enemies black eyes. So long as Vox can keep the spotlight on how evil the SJWs are, he can divert attention away from his own views. The trick is to put the Dark Lord's views back into the spotlight. What was once joined can yet be separated.
One of the most interesting moments of GamerGate was when the "ethics in game journalism" people closed ranks with the psychotic misogynists. What caused this to happen? Here's one interpretation:
- Psychotic misogynists use "corruption in game industry" as a cover to attack people they hate.
- Ethics people are delighted that their bandwagon suddenly has so many people, fail to ask where they came from.
- Game journalists lump the Ethics people and the psychotic misogynists together in an attempt to discredit both.
- Ethics people and psychotics double-team the game journalists.
- Petty arguments over what percentage of GamerGaters are psychotic misogynists.
When you are in a foxhole, fighting a war, you do not care if the person next to you is psychotic. You care about killing the people on the other side of the field that are shooting you. By attacking both the Ethics people and the psychotic misogynists, the game journalists drove them into the same foxhole.
We see a similar situation with the Rabid Puppies and the Sad Puppies. Attacking the Sad Puppies as crypto-fascists looking to destroy Sci-Fi drove them into the arms of a group which is perfectly fine with destroying Sci-Fi fandom.
But being in a foxhole with a psychotic isn't a very fun position. You're shooting at the enemy and they're out collecting human ears for a necklace. Human beings are very good at rationalizing atrocities performed by their friends, but there's still a point where you realize your best friend's collection of thumbs reflects poorly on you.
Old-school Sci-Fi fans may not be the most walk-on-eggshells sensitive people, but they also have no dedication to racist ideologies or political conspiracy theories. An extended, public debate with Vox on race could draw him out enough expose his flanks. There is a limit to what most people can stomach.
Multiply this concept by the number of controversial views Vox has, and you start to see the possibilities. None of this will matter to his hardcore supporters, but then, the only thing that could potentially dissuade them is long-term de-escalation. The fringe hangers-on can be shaken loose.
The 2015 Hugos were likely a win for Vox. The Puppies did not win any Hugos, but goading the opposition into No Awarding (worse, gloating about No Awarding) seems to have moved a significant number of fence-sitters into the Rabid Camp. Enough to seize the 2016 Hugos? Maybe. Enough to repeat the "No Award" votes and flip more people to the Rabid Camp? Probably.
As it stands, the Goliath Vox has issued challenges to many figures in the Sci-Fi community. Are there no Davids among them? This is the perfect opportunity for a SJW Xanatos gambit. If Vox does poorly, then his huffing and puffing is revealed as bluster and he is publicly humiliated. If Vox does well, he can still be goaded into making statements that make some supporters uncomfortable enough to distance themselves.
Yes, there is a chance that giving Vox a platform like a public debate could legitimize him. But it could also give him enough rope to hang himself.
Part Four: Conclusions
Not bad, but not as good as the last two. He is not a white supremacist, just as he's not a Chinese supremacist. The odd blank slatism just fails here, being anti-science and observably wrong. It's like saying there's no difference between men and women: In the eyes of God and the Law, or some other abstract perspective, sure, but they are different. Keep denying it, and you just look like an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, he's Christian. That's the standard by which he and his minions judge themselves and others. I know, to you that's just foam pellets in the packaging, but you're missing the charging rhinoceros in the room by failing to mention it. It supersedes race, gender or any other criteria to them.
And last, consistently appealing to rationality, to reason, to making logical sense, is simply a winning strategy. It is the basis of civilization, of progress, of civility. Gut level opposition to this, and reliance on its opposite, feelz, as the primary organizational motivation, is what makes SJWs fail in such comical ways.
This is just too much fun.
Right, he fails at being a White Supremacist. However, he has views that generally (generally!) only White Supremacists support.
DeletePersonally, I would not argue for blank slatism (humans observably have instincts), but rather that human population groups are not significantly distinguishable by base intellectual capacity. The same studies that show a full standard intellectual deviation between Whites and Blacks show a half-deviation (if I remember correctly) between Northern Whites and Southern Whites. "White" is not a significantly rigorous genetic category for predicting base intellectual capacity.
I.. actually did consider going after him for being a Pelagian and a non-Trinitarian. But frankly, the thought of even suggesting such a thing makes me physically ill. There's low, and then there's too low.
There's a place for feelz, but not as a standard of truth (other than the truth of how we feel). This is part of why I reject popular racial categories - they are not sufficiently based in observable genetic reality for my standard of truth.
Last I checked, Vox is an Asian supremacist (or Singaporean, anyway) on the issue of IQ. He's also of the opinion that any racial group can produces geniuses, the difference is one of frequency. Asians have us all beat, in that regard, apparently.
DeleteAgain, Vox fails at White Supremacy. If Asians are more intelligent than Whites, then Whites are not as good at long-term planning/more prone to violence than Asians.
DeleteAs Groot mentioned, this is why the religious element is so important. If we pursue the thread of logic with complete objectivity, the conclusion is clear: Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are genetically intellectually inferior. We must stop accepting them as equals and deny them positions of power in society. Society will only be just and peaceful once we accept our Yellow Masters.
There's some tongue in that cheek, but not as much as you may think. Take any biological argument Vox advances and swap out "White" for "Asian" and "Black" for "White." The only way to side-step the issue is to allow in non-genetic factors, such as the Christian religion.
[However, he has views that generally (generally!) only White Supremacists support.]
DeleteDo you mean views like, "Race is genetic"? Because I've read his views on race for years, and that pretty much sums them up. Maybe you meant to say, "only White Supremacists and all of the genetic science on the topic".
[The same studies that show a full standard intellectual deviation between Whites and Blacks show a half-deviation (if I remember correctly) between Northern Whites and Southern Whites. "White" is not a significantly rigorous genetic category for predicting base intellectual capacity.]
This doesn't refute the conclusion (and can just as easily support it). The fact that there isn't just one "white" group doesn't mean that the differences between white and non-white (or white group #1 and white group #2) are any less the result of genetic predisposition.
[This is part of why I reject popular racial categories - they are not sufficiently based in observable genetic reality for my standard of truth.]
What standard would that be? More importantly, what genetic evidence would you require in order to accept that race is genetic?
[If we pursue the thread of logic with complete objectivity, the conclusion is clear: Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are genetically intellectually inferior. We must stop accepting them as equals and deny them positions of power in society. Society will only be just and peaceful once we accept our Yellow Masters.]
How is this conclusion clear? Certainly not from anything Vox as said. As he himself has pointed out 1) intelligence just means intelligence. It's not inherently the "most important factor" 2) it does not follow that superiority in any given trait grants you the "right" to rule others. He is a libertarian, after all.
Also, I think your assessment that Vox's followers will "fracture" if he talks about race is entirely incorrect, based primarily on the fact that Vox already has spoken at length about race on his blog, and his "White Supremacists" supporters are still around, despite the fact that he's made it clear that "Whites" aren't the supreme at everything (and the fact that he's "admitted" to being mostly Mexican and American Indian, which, let's face it, if they really were "White Supremacists', they still wouldn't be hanging out there) and his utterly race-indifferent fans are still around, despite the fact that he's made it clear that he thinks race is not only genetic, but has a large influence over the outcomes of various societies.
WATYF
the conclusion is clear: Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are genetically intellectually inferior. We must stop accepting them as equals and deny them positions of power in society.
DeleteHow is this conclusion clear? Certainly not from anything Vox as said.
I concur. I am more baffled each time I see a critic leap to this conclusion.
The left makes what to them is the obvious conclusion. For me. That conclusion is not obvious. People are people, and even if one group is stupid on average, their members are to be treated as individuals and allowed to lead or anything else their individual talents merit. Only the left treats people only as members of a group.
Delete1). No, that intelligence is determined primarily by race. That Blacks are genetically inferior to Whites in terms of intelligence.
Delete2). Vox frequently links the "lower intelligence of Blacks" to violent behavior. The argument is that because they are less intelligent, they are less capable of long-term thinking and more easily slip into violent responses. So, Blacks are genetically pre-disposed to violent behavior - this is a theory expressed on Vox Popoli multiple times.
3). If violence is linked to lower intelligence and long-term planning is linked to higher intelligence, then East Asians would be better at organizing societies than Whites. Even if we take Christianity into account, this just means that the ideal society would be run by Christian East Asians.
Sure, maybe we don't need to go full Holocaust on Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, but I am tired of this Equal-Opportunity bullshit.
4). Race has not fractured them yet. But a big enough, loud enough public statement could potentially do it. It remains to be seen.
This is an important topic: what are the consequences of a non-equalist reality? Vox is often coy, but it would be interesting to see a debate or discussion on the topic that accepts, even if just for the sake of argument, a premise of mean differences not amenable to equalization, and discusses the practical policy consequences. I think the conservative response is mostly just "Stop throwing money and social capital an intractable problems, and allow for voluntary free association" rather than the strawman of "reshape society with my kind on top."
DeleteRe: The Rev
DeleteHow, precisely, would going after Vox for Pelagianism and non-Trinitarianism be "too low?"
Granted it might not be the most useful point of attack, since I'm not sure how many people there are among his followers or prospective followers who care that much about theology, but why is an error on the nature of the highest things (that is, the source and summit of all things, regardless of whether or not you believe it to be God), considered, of all things, "too low," too base, too vile to discuss? Surely if any errors are worth correcting then these are. Much more so than any errors on genetics or economics or politics, at any rate.
Mind you, I'm far from sure he actually is either of those things. His views on the Trinity are certainly troubling: in his post "Mailvox: a creedal correction," for instance he seems to be attempting to maintain the divinity of all three persons of the Trinity without accepting their equality and perfect unity, revealing a flawed understanding of who and what God is, and is certainly not in line with the teaching of the Church as set forth in the Athanasian Creed (also accepted by most of the older Protestant denominations). But Pelagianism is something that just about everybody who preaches that men can choose good at all has been accused of at some point, up to and including the Apostle James in his NT epistle, so unless you can show me a quote where he specifically claims that man can earn salvation unaided, I think I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
Wherein Vox outright states he is more Pelagian than Armenian:
Deletehttp://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/03/team-calvin-question-3.html
Since the point of the series was how one might undermine Vox's support, I considered suggesting that Vox's statements on theology could be considered heresy. There are already some Christians in the comments who foam at him for supporting Roosh V and for talking about game theory in general.
I don't want to go any further into that thought than this, out of concern it will cause people to attack Vox for his religious beliefs.
[No, that intelligence is determined primarily by race. That Blacks are genetically inferior to Whites in terms of intelligence.]
DeleteOK, and is there a reason you don't think this is true? Do you also not think that Whites are genetically inferior to East Asians in terms of intelligence?
[Vox frequently links the "lower intelligence of Blacks" to violent behavior.]
Do you have a cite for this? My understanding is that he bases it on his "time to civilization" hypothesis (short vs. long time preferences in the gene pool) and the higher occurrence of the MAO-A gene in blacks. I don't recall hearing him say that it's due to "intelligence".
[If violence is linked to lower intelligence and long-term planning is linked to higher intelligence, then East Asians would be better at organizing societies than Whites. Even if we take Christianity into account, this just means that the ideal society would be run by Christian East Asians.]
Again, I'm not sure that he says this. He himself has pointed out the prominent role that Christianity has played in the development of Western society, indicating that he thinks Christianity is a more important factor than intelligence. And again, I think he places the whole "longer time preference" factor above intelligence, but you'd have to ask him to clarify that.
[Sure, maybe we don't need to go full Holocaust on Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, but I am tired of this Equal-Opportunity bullshit.]
Hyperbole much? Since he's a libertarian, he doesn't supporting anything even remotely approaching a holocaust. This is a strawman argument.
[Race has not fractured them yet. But a big enough, loud enough public statement could potentially do it. It remains to be seen.]
I just don't see any evidence to support this. He has talked about race at length. His "white power" Ilk have heard it. His "Jesus loves everybody" Ilk have heard it. We've all heard it, and yet it hasn't fractured anything.
WATYF
[I think the conservative response is mostly just "Stop throwing money and social capital an intractable problems, and allow for voluntary free association" rather than the strawman of "reshape society with my kind on top."]
DeleteThis is exactly the case, which is why Rev's appeals to holocausts are a strawman. The vast majority of the people I see comment over there are of the "stop forcing people to do things they don't want to and stop manipulating the markets and demographics" mindset, not the "Make my race the one in charge and oppress everyone else" mindset.
WATYF
Re Rev 3Sep15 4:39pm:
DeleteI guess I should keep my comments shorter; I got a response to my rambling tangent but not to my main question.
Why don't you want folks to attack Vox on his religious beliefs? Why is that particular topic deemed out of bounds?
Religious bigotry sucks?
DeleteAlternatively, if you happen to believe that there is any truth to Christ's teaching, you aren't going to risk miring people in self-destruction and alienation from God just to go after one wanker on the internet for the sake of a plastic rocket.
BTW: if either of these reasons are the Rev's and we ever meet IRL I'll buy you a beer. You rock.
This means taking some responsibility on our side as well. Are we standing up for wider representation or demonizing Europeans? Are we voting for the best Sci-Fi (subjective as that may be) or for stunt novels? Or worse, for the best Tor novel?
ReplyDeleteYou're going to become one us of in due time. Because you are for wider representation and supporting merit - but your allies aren't. They want to not only maintain the awards for the in-group, but they want to ensure that no video game, no book, no TV show, no idea exists that has not been vetted and received the narrative approval. Your side isn't for the demonization of Europe, it's for the destruction of it.
I expect you've triggered people just by suggesting they read Vox, if only to know how to better counter him.
So from VFM#10, welcome. Look forward to seeing you in the future. We'll have that chat about our favorite videogames when you arrive, provided that by the time you switch Europa Universalis hasn't been destroyed for daring to suggest technological advancement in Europe was moving faster than in Central America in the 1500s.
And if so... well we'll think of something to share a beer over.
How about something from the Civilization series? Surely no one can take that away - you can play as Buddhist Louis the XIV of Ethiopia!
DeleteAnd a beer sounds nice, VFM #10
Speaking of Sid Meier's Civilization games, have you played the Fall from Heaven 2 mod for Civ 4? Completely remakes the game into a dark fantasy world with a war between (among others) armies of literal angels and demons. If you haven't played it, look it up now.
DeleteI'll give it a try! I mostly play Revolution DMC on Civ 4. Archers and siege units with ranged attacks, Inquisitors, and native insurgencies in conquered cities. Yes, please.
DeleteI was going to comment that if the sjw's adopt the tactics Rev suggests (being non-exclusionary, less mean, etc.) it would look more like the desired end-state for all but the most rabid puppies. Kind of like the "Make Castalia successful" strategy, I think that method of killing Vox will stick in the craw of his adversaries.
DeleteRe: FfH2: Glad you liked it Zaklog. I was one of the writers/designers and always enjoy seeing it mentioned. (The prequel was included on the Civ BtS expansion disc, but don't confuse the two, as the downloadable version is much more extensive)
To be fair, it's a lose condition for the most rabid of puppies and a fair bit of the most...what's the word?... SJW-ish of SJWs.
DeleteAlso, Nikis-Knight, it's kind of an honor to have you comment on here. I played through the prequel a few times, and it's an excellent bit of dynamic storytelling. Okay, downloading FfH2 now.
Vile faceless minion number 32 here. What you describe is the goal I am working for. Awards based on merit without political agenda.
DeleteTo be specific, the idea that "races" are legitimate concepts created by genetic differences among human subgroups, and that some races are inherently, genetically more intelligent than others.
ReplyDeleteI am curious what you think would be the response if you asked the man on the street in China, Japan, Korea, anywhere in Latin America, a Persian, Arab or Turk living anywhere near an Arab, Turk or Persian, or anyone within 1000 miles of the Hutu and Tutsi that 'race' isn't a legitimate concept and all people are one.
The idea that 'race' is an idea that uniquely resonates with white-supremists is absurd. La Raza - the bloody name of the organization! - is hardly a satellite institution of the KKK.
And as our understanding of genetics becomes clearer, it's increasingly obvious that everything from height to empathy to intelligence to aggression to footsize has a significant genetic component. So the idea that if one takes human subgroups that have for the most part bred within themselves, that the groups would not exhibit equal amounts of each trait... is statistics 101. It's not a white paper from the halls of the Third Reich.
Yes, and as our understanding of genetics increases, we also see that there is, on average, as much genetic diversity between two members of the same race as two members of different races. We also see that nutrition and culture play perhaps as large of a role as race in determining not only base intelligence, but the development of intellectual skills.
DeleteYes, there are genetic markers that track very closely to country of racial origin, but these generally have more to do with external phenotype and susceptibility to certain diseases/genetic disorders than inherent intelligence.
The idea that race is a legitimate concept is not limited to White Supremacists. However, concepts of race vary from culture to culture. What I object to is not the generic framework of "races" but the idea that any given cultural concept of race is rooted in an observable genetic reality.
In other words, race is a concept rooted in a genetic reality, not the genetic reality itself. I assume that you and others will have responses to this assertion, but for the moment, I'm going to only go this far.
"Yes, and as our understanding of genetics increases, we also see that there is, on average, as much genetic diversity between two members of the same race as two members of different races. "
DeleteThis is mentioned often, but it doesn't imply at all that race is not real or a useful concept. The sylogism proving it does is always left as an exercise for the reader, but stated as is, it is irrelevant. Furthermore, the reason the concept, number of races, etc varies depending on who is asked or over time is that there are many different heirarchal groupings that can be made, the relevance of which is chosen depends on the context. Since you have said you have some interest in teh topic, you may have seen this before, but either way I would be curious as to how you would fault it.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-race-faq.html
I will read the article you posted, but for the moment, here's a short response to the overall question:
DeleteMy position is that "race" as a general concept and individual concepts of race (hereafter referred to generally as race) are suprajective concepts.
So first, we must define a "suprajective concept," since it is a complete neologism. A suprajective concept is one which is not objectively true, and yet has an objectively observable effect on reality.
For example, the existence of the god Zeus is not an objective truth. However, the existence of statues and paintings which are intended to be representations of Zeus is objectively true. I cannot prove the objective existence of Zeus, but I can prove the objective existence of a concept of Zeus which has had a great impact on history. Thus, Zeus is a suprajective concept.
We can look at race in similar terms. Race has had an undeniable impact on human history and continues to exert an objective impact on all contemporary societies.
However, many different definitions of race exist, none of which can be proven to be more in line with objective genetic reality than the others. I mean, maybe we can say that the whole "Aryans are living space gods" is more out of line with objective genetic reality than "we can tell whether a person's ancestors were from Africa or Europe."
The point is, while concepts of race objectively exist and objectively influence the world, this is not the same thing as saying that these concepts of race are objectively true. How could they be objectively true when they disagree so widely?
It seems like you are describing platonic concepts. Just because I picture something a litle different than you when we both hear "chair" doesn't mean the concept has no referant.
DeleteNature uses fuzzy borders, certainly. Going so far as to say that there is not objective truth to categories seems to be misunderstanding the concept, though. A statistical tendency is an objective, concrete reality; just because categories do not contain every individual does not imply that there is no physical basis for the categories; the relative allele and phenotype frequencies in different population groups exists and can (theoretically, and, I think, in actuality) matter even though each of those alleles may in fact exist in some members of every group.
Less Platonic, more Hegelian. Platonic concepts are eternal, unchanging, and distinct from physical reality; Hegelian concepts are modified and replaced as more evidence/exact knowledge of physical reality is obtained.
DeleteThe classic example is the concept "copper" vs. the physical object, copper. The concept "copper" referred to the physical object long before we had exact knowledge of copper's physical properties (atomic number etc.). The concept "copper" changes, the physical reality remains the same. Every culture has concepts of race, but these concepts change as more evidence on the physical reality of race becomes available.
Allele and phenotype frequencies are the best tool we now have for defining the concept of "race." Amusingly, these line up fairly well with Westerners' general racial self-definitions, particularly as the number of alleles tested for increases.
Statistical tendencies do matter, but they are a lower order of truth than experimental evidence. That's why we distinguish between the sciences and the social sciences.
Statistical evidence points to culture/nutrition being at least as important as race - why else would Whites in the American North be more intelligent than Whites in the American South? The North puts more emphasis on education and literacy than the South.
My position is that even if there is some sort of genetically-determined baseline maximum intelligence (likely, since humans are genetically more intelligent than earthworms), and even if this baseline is closely linked to race and not to close familial relations (not yet proven), then culture/nutrition still play large enough roles in shaping intelligence that any genetic difference between races is negligible.
Civilization developed in the global South, not the global North. Africa and China had advanced civilizations while most of Europe still practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. 2,000 years ago, objective scientific evidence would likely have indicated that Mediterraneans and Africans were several orders of intelligence superior to Europeans, but this still would have been due to culture and nutrition, not an inherent genetic baseline.
Africa and China had advanced civilizations while most of Europe still practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. 2,000 years ago, objective scientific evidence would likely have indicated that Mediterraneans and Africans were several orders of intelligence superior to Europeans, but this still would have been due to culture and nutrition, not an inherent genetic baseline.
DeleteRev, you realize that's more likely a self-refuting statement than not, right?
How so? It shows that culture and nutrition are more important to intelligence than a genetic baseline. Culture means stability. Stability means more resources.
DeleteWe have two test cases. First, an Africa with a higher standard of living than Europe. Second, an Africa with a lower standard of living than Europe. In both cases, the area with the higher standard of living produces more intelligent individuals.
Did you blame culture? Really? You white people make tests that basically just measure whiteness and then use them to justify denigrating cultures of color?
DeleteWhat I'm saying is, blaming culture isn't a very liberal or progressive answer; it's basically the moderate/conservative one.
Also, this: "even if this baseline is closely linked to race and not to close familial relations" doesn't make sense; race is just family at some generations removed. Obviously traits are going to be more closely linked in immediate family, than the more distantly related; that's basically the racialist thesis.
Rev, your use of the word "but" is a flag. You're trying to shoehorn in the "culture and nutrition" meme for explaining IQ differences. The example given of widely geographically dispersed populations---at a time when travel was difficult, dangerous, and relatively rare---suggests that IQ differences had to do with genetic drift and innate differences in the populations, not how they lived and what they ate. I dunno. Maybe I'm reaching here. Thing is, if you believe in human biodiversity---and it's staring us in the eyes in the multifarious shapes, sizes, colors, fabrics, abilities, etc.---it's hard to keep pushing the meme of "it's just culture and food" in a modern world where everyone can and does travel.
DeleteYes, I really did blame culture. No, I did not blame Whitey's unfair standards. If culture doesn't matter, why didn't Northern Europeans drag themselves out of the mud until the Romans forced them to implement changes to their nutrition and culture?
Delete"Traits are going to be more closely linked in immediate family"
And humanity is just race several more generations removed. Again, we can see just as much genetic diversity between two members of the same race as two members of different races. Until we better understand exactly how genetics determines intelligence, saying that it is a function of race is pure speculation.
"But"
I first read that as "your use of the word 'butt' as flag."
Dismissing it as a "meme" is a fairly SJW tactic, #188. I'm going to say it's time to shit or get off the pot. Give me some reading material - hard scientific studies, not social studies or anecdotal evidence - or admit that this is speculation.
As indicated over at Vox Populi, a good place to start would be a JayMan's blog, and reference the books copiously cited there. He's at:
Deletehttps://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/
I'm going to start digging into that, but I will freely admit it's going to take a while. I read Vox Popoli for over a year before I felt comfortable speaking about him, and this is an even bigger topic.
DeleteIn the meantime, " If culture doesn't matter, why didn't Northern Europeans drag themselves out of the mud until the Romans forced them to implement changes to their nutrition and culture?"
For the record, I'm not saying culture doesn't matter, just that it isn't a very liberal position. Explaining any difference between two populations in modern American discourse, you have two options to select from: Racism or Culture. If you are a liberal/progressive, you choose racism and decry white privelege, if you are a conservative, you choose culture, noting that poor blacks don't want to act white or chinese Tiger Moms enforce excellence, etc. If you are far right/reactionary (whatever) then you note that there is another theoretical option that can explain some measure of the difference, namely that human sub-species can have behavioral differences just as dog sub-species do.
DeleteThat doesn't mean this explains everything, but keep it as a possibility, even in spite of racism accusations, and the world makes much more sense.
For further reading (Jayman is a good choice too) see Steve Sailer or John Derbyshire. (Not sure who what other "racists" you read, but those two are, on the whole, well-spoken, moderate, and fact based.
"My position is that even if there is some sort of genetically-determined baseline maximum intelligence (likely, since humans are genetically more intelligent than earthworms), and even if this baseline is closely linked to race and not to close familial relations (not yet proven), then culture/nutrition still play large enough roles in shaping intelligence that any genetic difference between races is negligible."
DeleteEvidence continues to mount that almost everything is half-and-half, which makes sense, because genes rely on the environment for signals and material to work with. The question is not whether you are wrong, but the source of your error.
Race is a spectrum. You appear to have made the mistake of thinking that if our categories are in a sense arbitrary, and could be subdivided to the 0.1% level or less, then there must only be a 0.1% level difference between 20% and 80%. That would clearly be a fallacy.
@Nikis
DeleteAh, yes, that's true - particularly if we're talking about SJWism. Classical liberalism would be more of a nurture vs. nature, education will raise everyone to the same level sort of argument. I lean more towards the classical liberalism angle, with an understanding that culturally-determined racial stereotypes have an influence.
Institutional racism does result in differences in effort-to-payout among races. For example, let's say we have a white man and a black man of equal intelligence (you HBD types admit this is possible, regardless of the Stormfronters) both raised in a middle class environment. Both put in an equal amount of effort - time spent studying, developing skills, etc. On the whole, the black man's payout is still going to be less (statistically, on average) in terms of wages and promotions.
So, if you start out with the understanding that you will be looked down upon for factors entirely out of your control (melanin levels), and that even if you work hard you're still going to get less than if you were white, it makes saying "fuck it" a lot more tempting.
So, let's say that HBD is correct and there are inherent baseline differences. How do you prevent ethnics on the high end of their particular bell curve from being shut out by prejudice? How do you ensure that hiring is colorblind?
Note that this is not an argument for arbitrary quotas. Fuck arbitrary quotas.
Hug a Puppy. By them lunch. Invite them over to discuss their favorite books. They may never be your best friend, but they may begin to see you as human.
ReplyDeleteCouple of things:
- "Begin to see you as human" does not compute. I (for example) am very annoyed by their behavior and their attitude toward unterfans, but I know perfectly well that they're human. (All too human in some cases.) They're not slavering evil monsters, they're merely exclusionary careerist assholes. We all have our faults.
- Let's extend the recommended attitude a bit to include this: "If they offer a favorite book, read it with an open mind. If you find you like it enough to nominate it or vote for it, do that! If someone in Uberfandom assumes it's crap because your new Puppy friend likes it, speak up with your honest opinion."
Note that that's a victory condition for Sad Puppies. Does that change your calculations?
-Fair enough. But then, before writing this series and seeing the response, I probably would've assumed the Puppies would not see me as human. If I thought that, others may think it as well. So, let's leave this as a testament to others in doubt.
Delete-Absolutely, I would add that extension. Some victory conditions are mutual.
I would argue any victory condition in 4GW is mutual. The victory state is either the State regains its legitimacy and loyalty or one of the 4GW grows in legitimacy that it replaces the state as the primary point of loyalty.
DeleteIn fact, one could view much of the modern Middle East as attempts by 4GW groups to recovery the legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire (although the map and thus those groups owe more to British Imperialism than anything else). The big problem is only three seemed to have put down long term roots as states: Turkey, Israel, and Egypt with Jordan in the TBD category. Iran is and has been a state for far longer than the post-Ottoman period.
If that is true, and I know as states the post-Ottoman countries aren't technically 4GW groups but work with me, then ISIS is showing what victory looks like. In their area of control they have a higher degree of legitimacy and loyalty than the states they're replacing have had in quite some time.
So, while still working through Lind's book and therefore being tentative, I think all 4GW warfare is mutual victory or, at least, absolute victory as it occurs only when a legitimate state with broad based primary loyalty emerges, be it the old state restored or an elevated 4GW group.
Actually, maybe the Russian and Chinese civil wars that resulted in their Communist governments (and for that matter most of the cycle of Chinese history) are better examples.
Yes, replying to myself but just realized, your analysis of Vox Day's strategy agrees with this. His goal is to restore a pre-Enlightenment or at least pre-19th Century Christian West. Such a state or set of states would be the primary point of loyalty due to their uniform religion and similar cultures.
DeleteBingo, Herb. Just as a footnote, Lind does give one other victory method for 4GW forces - hollow out a State and live inside of it (think of the relationship between the Mexican/Columbian States and drug cartels). Then again, this is just another type of mutual victory.
DeleteBut then, before writing this series and seeing the response, I probably would've assumed the Puppies would not see me as human. If I thought that, others may think it as well.
DeleteNow this is interesting to me. I have to ask, why did you think you wouldn't be seen as human?
It reminds me of what happened when William Reichard declared himself a "Sad Puppy" - he said afterward that it had been intended as snark, but the reaction from Puppies supporters was so welcoming that he ended up feeling like one of the group. Obviously he hadn't expected that.
Possibly this is a path toward de-escalation.
I can definitely see where William is coming from, and I would hazard to guess that there are many others out there who see the Puppies as sworn enemies without ever questioning why.
DeleteGonna guess this happens for two reasons:
1). The SJW establishment (if we must call it that) has a vested interest in portraying Puppies as beyond reason. I am only now starting to realize the extent to which this is true. I originally decided to suggest turning the other check on faith - faith that this is the best course of action in pretty much every situation. That faith seems to has been rewarded.
2). Comments made by some on Vox Populi. I particularly remember a discussion on whether or not Roosh V qualified as White enough to remain in the USA after the great purge. When Vox's best buddy is not considered exempt from racial purges, it did not give me much hope for a warm reception.
I understand that there is power in co-opting the enemy's terms. But the talk of rivers of blood and so on certainly did influence my perceptions. It was also damn amusing, so please do keep it up!
Rev,
DeleteI think you have missed a key point of the Right vs Left argument.
When someone on the Right disagrees with someone on the Left, they think the other person is wrong.
When someone on the Left disagrees with someone on the Right, they think the other person is EVIL.
I can happily have a beer with someone who I think is wrong.
They are unwilling to allow someone who is they think is EVIL to exist.
I don't think that you're evil, George. But I do think that's a false dichotomy.
DeleteI have known many, many people on the Right who have accused both my opinions and me myself as evil. Hell, the first time I was accused of being demon possessed was in the 5th grade. How's that for demonization?
Vox has repeatedly implied that the Left is literally on the side of Satan. Perhaps unwitting pawns of Satan, but on the side of evil nonetheless. Again, how's that for demonization?
The idea that people on the Right are inherently noble and people on the Left are inherently craven is absolute nonsense. I will freely admit that you may have encountered some absolutely craven Leftists who have treated you as evil. I'm also asking you to open up to the possibility that they are not all like that.
Right now, for conservatives (or whatever the hell you want to call Vox; he delights in skipping over category lines) the standards of virtue are still the old fashioned ones: godliness, patriotism, loyalty to Western civilization -- what C.S. Lewis called "the Tao" in his essay _The Abolition of Man_. This is an external, objective standard.
DeleteModern leftists (including "liberals" but let's not wade into the morass of how that term has changed meaning) reject those standards of virtue. In place of that they basically have adopted adherence to leftist doctrines as the standard of good and evil. But that's a shifting and subjective standard, based heavily on the opinions of other leftists. Hence the strong need to be seen to endorse certain views in public, and the need to be seen to anathematize anyone who fails to endorse those views.
So when a man like Vox identifies himself as an anti-feminist, and says feminism is pernicious and riddled with hypocrisy, he's not just saying "I am not virtuous," he's implicitly saying "your standard of virtue is meaningless, therefore you have no virtue." Hence the anger, outrage, and genuine hatred directed his way.
If the dominant clique in SF fandom were capable of doing what you have advocated above, this whole controversy would never have existed. As many people have said, John Scalzi and Patrick Neilsen-Hayden could have short-circuited the whole thing by simply saying "Congratulations to 2015's Hugo nominees!" when the nomination votes were tallied.
But for that to be possible, they would have to concede that they are not the font and origin of virtue, and that other standards of goodness are equally valid. I don't think that's possible.
Trimegistus,
DeleteNo, that is not an objective standard or even a historically coherent standard. Are you talking about the godliness, patriotism, and loyalty of the pre-Christian Roman Empire? The GPL of 14th century England? The GPL of the Protestant Reformation? Or indeed, the GPL of C.S. Lewis?
I will grant that a society based on, say, the Bible has a more objective, external standard of behavior than a society based on "you should be ethical even though it does not ultimately matter for we came from nothing and return to nothing." So would a society based on the Koran. Hell, so would a society based on "Dianetics."
That aside, de-escalation will likely come when we of the Left stop allowing these jackasses to speak for us. #notyourshield and all that.
1. Civilization is acceptable. Though for me the series peaked at three (though to be fair, what a peak it was!)
ReplyDelete2. I think the reaction to Vox's new book indicates that 'deescalation' is nothing your side intends to do. Which you know - as that's what 4GW would say increases the likelihood of my side winning - I'm not complaining! Join the dark side - we have cand-... well, we have the bloodstained bones of SJWs on which to gnaw, but they're just as sweet.
In fairness, it must be noted that Vox's latest book (I assume you refer to "SJWs Always Lie") is not exactly a de-escalation in itself.
DeleteIf it were a fantasy novel, this would be a better test.
... Well of course not! If we are to take The Rev's analogy, why would you expect the 4GW guerrilla to do the work of stabilizing the state?
DeleteOn one hand, it will be interesting to see the Left's response to Vox's next book which does not call us a pack of illogical, obese sub-humans. I mean, it's probably going to be studied ignoring for, oh, a week, followed by gloating over how terrible it is. Maybe we'll get some more parodies out of it?
DeleteOn the other hand, yeah, Vox has no reason to participate in de-escalation. My guess is that 2016 is going to be the year of the big push. Vox held back this year - there's no reason to do it again.
I really enjoy this analysis, but have two problems fitting it to what I think I know:
ReplyDeleteVox Day's white supremacy is less overtly stated than it is a construction of his enemies. This makes me think can be plausibly denied. Maybe this is untrue, but it makes a shaky foundation upon which to build a war-fighting strategy of splitting RP and SP cobelligerants.
Where does handing out wooden asterisks (that can be construed to signify assholes) to Puppy nominees fit into rapprochement? One might think olive branches should be tendered BEFORE the pyrrhic battle.
Again, thank you for a thoughtful analysis.
Thanks! I appreciate your reading it and commenting on it.
DeleteYes, Vox Day fails at White Supremacy. His currently available public statements lean more towards Asian supremacy.
However, he does have many opinions that generally only White Supremacists find acceptable, such as the opinion that Blacks are the genetic intellectual inferiors of Whites. Again, he is not an actual White Supremacist.
Still, drawing him out into an extended debate could cause him to make public statements SPs can no longer ignore. I think that his calls for Equal and Opposite Thought Policing may fall into that camp. His end game is not Free Speech, but institutions which actively expel members for Badthink. Including the Badthink of racial equality.
I will freely admit that the Left is fucking up hard right now. Like, incredibly hard. Wooden asterisks are not de-escalation. Secret "real winners" parties are not de-escalation. I'm writing about what we should be doing, not what we are doing.
After seeing his statements about N.K. Jemisin, I think the tactic of trying to draw him into an extended debate about race is not going to have the effect you think it will have.
DeleteOne advantage that the "race realists" have is that their beliefs tend to correlate with observable reality pretty well - much better than the left narrative that all the differences between blacks and whites are due to white racism.
One great way of de-escalation is to co-opt the puppy on the issues that concerns them. If the anti-puppy side, or elements thereof would discuss how Tor has controlled and co-opted the Hugos, then the discussion or awareness would maybe lead to reform. At the very least it would have taken the metaphorical wind out of the puppy sails.
ReplyDeleteAlso if leaders on the puppy-kicker side said, "You have a point when you say there's little ideological diversity in the Hugo nominees. Let's look for good potential names we can consider and include." Suddenly much of the impetus and heat would have been taken out.
But their spiking the football after SP2 made SP3. The obnoxious circle jerk of SP3 will make SP4- This Time It's Personal!
That was what Brad hoped would happen. That Sad Puppies would lead to an acknowledgement of bias. He wanted the issue to be co-opted because that would have been his victory: his side's grievances aired and addressed.
DeleteWell, that turned out well. As you say SP4 - This time it's personal!
It wouldn't even have been necessary to acknowledge bias and open the Tor can of worms. A lukewarmly-accepting attitude would have been fine. "Hmm, some interesting stories. I like 'Totaled', I'll vote for that. I didn't like Skin Game much, I'll put it fifth." An honest vote. And maybe even "Hey, there's a problem when one list can nominate so many stories - any ideas on how to fix that?"
DeleteInstead we got a neverending stream of abuse for months, following by No-Awarding literally everything we said we liked because we liked it, followed by herding dozens of people into the business meeting to vote for the Tor-proposed rule change.
I don't see how it's possible to make peace with people who act and think this way without defeating them first. That's what I took away from this year.
There seem to be awkward steps towards reconciliation recently, marred by the assumption of superiority. First Wu, then GRRM. Blinded by hubris, unable to show weakness in front of the rabbit pack, sure, but an opening salvo.
DeleteSpeaking as a frenemy, however, I'd hold out for some real concessions. Maybe send GRRM a list of words that the left is no longer allowed to use?
Requests that the enemy pretty please surrender are not exactly 'awkward steps towards reconciliation.' :) Then again, they may be the best that can be managed. :0
DeleteEh, it's a start. The situation is fairly unprecedented, after all.
Delete" have fun reading Sci-Fi novels and playing video games with people. "
ReplyDeleteIf those who oppose Vox were doing this in the first place most of the conflict would have been avoided. The problem is most of them are not happy with that, they want to control what is read and played, ultimately what is enjoyed, by other people.
They need to accept that political barriers to having fun are the root cause of the kerfuffle. Their desire is to create safe spaces where everyone can have fun without being insulted for their race, weight, sexuality, etc. Unfortunately, for some people "safe spaces" means "places where only a very narrow band of human expression is allowed."
DeleteI think your analysis is fantastic and a real pleasure to read, but the one thing I feel that you're forgetting is that Vox Day isn't just effective at waging culture war, but he's also highly persuasive in arguing for his positions.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, there is a critical flaw in your strategy:
The longer those of us forced into Vox's camp spend there, the more we are exposed to his views; most importantly, many of us will eventually adopt most of them.
Converts are oftentimes more zealous than anyone born into a religion. I urge you to reflect on this.
Eh, the truth can stand up to scrutiny. When the Left gets off of its ass and starts engaging with issues intellectually instead of by falling onto fainting couches, we'll see who wins more converts.
Delete> Psychotic misogynists use "corruption in game industry" as a cover to attack people they hate.
ReplyDeleteI understand you're just using an example to make a point, but this isn't accurate. Misogyny wasn't an essential trait of the original proto-gamergate agitators. Their pre-opposition to Zoe Quinn was based on a much longer history of conflict and internet drama. I'm not sure how much of that history is still preserved on 4chan, encyclopaedia dramatica, twitter, and social networking and even I don't know "who started it," suffice to say that everything I've ever read about it (even from most pro-gamergate summaries) gets the origins wrong.
If you're ever interested in diffusing gamergate, a first step might be to be more realistic about the origins instead of just assuming that those infamous IRC logs prove everything the detractors claim about the movement's origins.
I could stand to brush up on the origins a bit more, but there was a distinctly misogynistic twist to a lot of gamergate's early stages. Women were targeted in larger numbers than men.
DeleteFinally, some equality!
"but there was a distinctly misogynistic twist to a lot of gamergate's early stages. Women were targeted in larger numbers than men."
DeleteThe latter does not imply the former. There could simply have been more female opponents popping their heads up past the parapet, for whatever reason.
Tropes Against Women was an early flashpoint, specifically because it criticized how gender roles are portrayed in games. On one hand, yes, female game critics/journalists stood up in greater numbers in support of feminist issues.
DeleteOn the other hand, it is extremely suspicious that Anita was such a flashpoint. Most of her videos were even-handed. They said "hey, it's okay to love these games, we just need to be aware of what messages they're sending." Even if you disagree with her about what "messages" games are sending, that's hardly a vicious attack on creators' rights.
Enjoyed the read. Well done. Never work.
ReplyDeleteSJWs that I know simply cannot tolerate anyone not in lockstep with them. The more intense their dislike the more cred they have among other SJWs. You're suggesting they stop being SJWs to win.
Right now the Hugo SJWs are led by dominating egos. There is no way they capitulate as that reduces their control and power.
As an academic exercise, brilliant analysis. But if academic analysis can't be implemented in the real world...
I'm suggesting the Left stops kowtowing to SJWs to win. As long as we keep giving our implicit support to these assholes, we will lose the moral level.
DeleteAnd also in the shrinking world of traditional SF publication, the awards act as a signal of quality and distinction. So PNH can not afford to release his grip on them.
ReplyDeleteFunny article. After seeing my friends attacked for holding views, some SJW's found offensive, I have had my eyes opened to the threat of the SJW.
ReplyDeleteLet me be clear, I am an immigrant whose first language was not English. I am a Muslim but I understand the threat the SJW's pose for my views. I want freedom to espouse my ideas, that also means the ideas I find offensive must be allowed. Vox Day understands this simple fact. SJW's do not.
#NotYourShield, eh?
DeleteIf you don't mind, how do you feel about the recent illegal immigration debate? Are you worried that people are going to start turning on legal immigrants as well?
Good series: insightful and balanced. Are you one of the Ilk in disguise?
ReplyDeleteI question your strategic goal. Americans thought killing Bin Laden would end Islamic terrorism the way killing Hitler ended Nazism. No, it's a 4th Gen war, there is no single leader, the Hydra has many heads. Killing Vox Day leaves Larry and Brad and Sarah and the women running it next year. Mission not accomplished.
Larry claimed conservatives were denied Hugos for political reasons and was proven correct. Brad tried to pry the doors open, Vox tried to blow the doors off, the insiders burned down half the house. Buying Puppies a Starbucks doesn't get us invited into the parlor. We're going to keep knocking, kicking, pounding, hammering until either you open the door to let all fans in, or the house collapses around us.
Think of it this way: suppose your daughter wanted to date a Black man. You might buy him lunch at a diner none of your friends frequent; but are you open-minded and tolerant enough to invite him into your home? You would? Excellent. So why won't you let the Puppies in?
Hahaha, I've been accused of it a few times. Which is worrying - apparently basic human decency is a sign of being Ilk.
DeleteRight. That's why "killing" Vox Day means de-escalation. De-escalation would be effective against the Puppy cause in general. And a sincere, morally honest de-escalation would prevent the same situation from breaking out again.
I am saying that we should let the Puppies in, and we should start by buying them lunch. In diners our friends frequent, in our homes, and on convention floors.
I'm not a gatekeeper to anything but this blog, and I say go nuts and have fun. I am proud to be having these debates on this blog, in full sight of my friends.
"I think that Vox can be counter-goaded into giving up the high-ground. How long can he keep purely rational in an extended debates? I don't know because none of his opponents have engaged him in one. How would he react to someone taking his ideas seriously and providing well-thought out responses? "
ReplyDeleteRev... I have some bad news for you.
You know Vox and I have debated nerdy inflation vs deflation for 10 years now right?
I was going to mention this, as well as the several other lengthy debates he has hosted on the blog over the years. Vox isn't the least bit unfamiliar with debating, at length, with well-stated and rational opposing viewpoints.
DeleteWATYF
Sometime you should ask Vox his opinion on Ms. Malkin's view that the Japanese threat to the west coast was a legitimate concern.
DeleteIt would still be interesting to see how he would do in front of a divided audience. Inflation vs. deflation is not a topic that will get many people's blood up.
DeleteYes it would. It's a shame that more people don't take him up in debates and instead try to just caricature him and disqualify him (even some on the right). I would love to see an extended debate on his Time To Civilization hypothesis, among other things.
DeleteWATYF
"Inflation vs. deflation is not a topic that will get many people's blood up."
DeleteNothing does Rev. Vox is a trained experienced fighter. You're not going to get him to get emotional and lose his cool in a debate. he's used to keeping his shit together while he's being punched in the face.
Hey Rev... in terms of Killing Vox Day and your writing here... what would you say about Scalzi getting the parody banned from amazon as it relates to the 4GW?
ReplyDeleteBecause from here... it looks like the dumbest thing he could do.
I've actually been getting some delicious schadenfreude out of the whole thing. The first parody could have been a good natured jab, but Scalzi throwing his official support behind it was so, so dumb. And banning the counter-parody AFTER being told it didn't count as libel? Just. No.
DeleteI actually teared up a little when I saw it was back up on Amazon this morning. All else aside, free speech is free speech.
Somebody needs to tell Scalzi to step down. He's not a wartime consigliere.
DeleteOn a lighter note, going by photos I'm hard pressed to tell the difference between Scalzi and Day. Perhaps they're the same person, and the joke's on us.
ReplyDeleteThere are strange similarities. Twins separated at birth? Experiment by a mad Nazi scientist?
Deleteyou must not see very well. Scalzi is little and pudgy and looks like he's never done a physical day of work in his whole life.
ReplyDeleteVox is a former D1 athlete and a gym rat.
Hi, Nate
ReplyDeleteCleaning my glasses just as soon as I finish posting... :-)
But through my filthy lens, they look kind of similar. Maybe I'll have to delete this after I see the world afresh through my squeaky clean prince-nez.
John Scalzi: https://gabistan.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/john-scalzi.jpg
Vox Day: https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/voxheadbabps600.png
Just for the record, I consider both of them below average sci-fi/fantasy authors (that's an opinion, btw, and neither here nor there), I'm only saying that by way of saying I don't have a dog in this fight. There are thousands of sci-fi authors out there from among whom I can choose. I've been reading them for more than forty years (from all sides of the current dogfight), and still haven't run out.
Perhaps I was too glib about them looking alike (and my apologies if I offended), but from where I'm standing they seem to be flip sides to the same coin. Now they're in a pissing contest where neither feels he can back down. The thing with the satirical books is a case in point. Nobody's the victor in something like this, digging trenches and lobbing grenades at each other. Little armies lining up behind their generals. I wish Salzi and Day WERE the same guy. It would all end peaceably and everyone'd have a cold beer and a good laugh.
When it's all said and done, there's more than hint of Sayre's law at work here. I'm not saying that both sides aren't passionate about their cause, but sometimes a little perspective is helpful.
And really, what's the endpoint for both sides? I.e., when are they happy?
Well, this ended up longer than I expected.
Thank you to our gracious host for putting up with such nonsense... :-)
Couple things... writing is a hobby for Vox. Its scalzi's job. The fact that something a guy does in his spare time for fun is good enough to be considered average in the professional world is pretty good isn't it?
ReplyDeleteAnd Scalzi is walking around with a hugo award for a joke of a novel.
Vox's prose is workmanlike. It doesn't get in the way... and it gets the job done. Scalzi has his clever tricks but otherwise really has no ideas and has to leach off of other works.
This is not a debate over who is the better writer. We really couldn't care less. Neither of them are great writers.
Part 1:
ReplyDeleteHello,
First I want to say that I have recently found your blog and I have really enjoyed what I have read so far. I am fairly new to this whole puppies/Hugo thing. I am not a "member" of any side, as I am not a hardcore SF guy (I enjoy it from time to time, but not enough for me to justify taking any real action in this regard) but I am a well wisher in regard to the puppies as I hate SJWs.
In any case, I have some answers to some of your questions you posted in the comments section of this post.
“Statistical evidence points to culture/nutrition being at least as important as race - why else would Whites in the American North be more intelligent than Whites in the American South? The North puts more emphasis on education and literacy than the South.”
Yes, but WHY? One answer is that the whites who settled the north came from England proper, while the whites who settled the south came from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Those areas were much more “clannish.” As in they practiced cousin marriage long after it was stomped out in England proper. This leads to lower IQs and less out group altruism. This is why slavery was ended by northerners rather than southerners. Southern whites are also more quick to violence then northern whites. Not only that, the Scotch-Irish had the economic system of “manorialism” much later. The manorial system lead to the reproduction of the rule-abiding, industrious peasant, and the killing of violent troublemakers. England proper had it first. For more on this topic please see:
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/behind-the-hajnal-line/
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/big-summary-post-on-the-hajnal-line/
“Civilization developed in the global South, not the global North. Africa and China had advanced civilizations while most of Europe still practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. 2,000 years ago, objective scientific evidence would likely have indicated that Mediterraneans and Africans were several orders of intelligence superior to Europeans, but this still would have been due to culture and nutrition, not an inherent genetic baseline.”
First off, 2000 years ago, Rome was the main economic, military, and civilizational power of the world. The Romans were European. Not sure why you picked 2000 years ago…. It doesn’t really make your point. 6000 years ago, maybe.
In any case, dealing with your claim that “Africans” were several orders of intelligence superior to Europeans. If you mean “North Africans” maybe we could have something to discuss, but North Africans are not black. The Congo was not more advanced than Europe. Next, the reason that places like the Middle East and North Africa had civilization before northern Europeans is really quite simple. Civilization is really “CITY-ization”, as in your population has enough of a food surplus to allow enough of your population to work in jobs other than food production. You don’t grow a whole lot of crops in cities, but you do do things like metal casting, building cool stuff, trade, learning to read…
Hi!
Delete1). Rome is in Europe, that is true. However, most of Europe (and all of Europe that had not been conquered by Rome) was in a state of human-sacrificing barbarism 2,000 years ago. Europeans + Culture + Nutrition = Classy Romans. Europeans - Culture - Nutrition = Barbarian Teutonics.
If we're going to make a distinction between Anglo-Saxons and the Scotch/Irish, making a distinction between Romans and uncivilized European barbarians is more than fair.
2). The current scholarly consensus is that ancient Egyptian civilization was a mixture of what we would today refer to as North African and Sub-Saharan African. There is evidence of the physical traits of both groups in paintings/sculpture/DNA analysis of the dead. North Africa was not primarily Arabian/Semitic until after the Muslim conquest.
Even after the Muslim conquest, the kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa were extremely wealthy and advanced. Europe doesn't start to truly pull ahead in terms of wealth or technology until the Renaissance/Enlightenment is in full swing.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteWhat I am getting at is that it is much, much easier to build a civilization in places that it is easier to gain a food surplus. In places like the Nile delta, it floods every year and leaves behind rich, easy to work with soil. In northern Europe, the soil is much heavier and requires things like iron plows to work it. Not only that, but it has a cold winter with snow. If you were to be stripped of all technology and sent somewhere back in time to survive, would you rather be in a place like the Nile delta or northern Europe in the winter? What place do you think you would eat better at? India and the Middle East also had the advantage of regularly flooding rivers and mild Winters. Think about this, if you sent 100 men and women with IQs of 90 to an island with plenty of food, and another 100 men and women with IQs of 120 to an island with little food, what would happen? If you came back in a year or two, what would you see. The people with 90 IQs would most likely have more “stuff” and a higher population just due to the fact that less of them had to work in food production to feed everyone. Some of them could spend their time building stuff. They would have a higher level of civilization then the people with 120 IQs. The same could be true for Egypt vs Northern Europe 6000 years ago. One area allowed for some people to do things other than make food.
“Yes, I really did blame culture. No, I did not blame Whitey's unfair standards. If culture doesn't matter, why didn't Northern Europeans drag themselves out of the mud until the Romans forced them to implement changes to their nutrition and culture?”
Again, if you notice, the great civilizations went in time from south Mediterranean (Egypt) to north Mediterranean/south Europe (Greece, Rome) to north Europe (Germany, France, England). That is what you would expect even if north Europeans had higher genetic IQs then southern Europeans/north Mediterraneans, and Southern Europeans/ north Mediterraneans had higher genetic IQs then south Mediterraneans. It is hard to build a civilization from scratch in a place that has a truly cold winter. Surviving in such a place does however require things like long term planning. See “The Ant and the Grasshopper” story. Those people who could not plan for the winter died out and did not pass on their genes. Once things like the iron plow were introduced, however, it was off to the races for northern Europe.
I hope this helps.
"What I am getting at is that it is much, much easier to build a civilization in places that it is easier to gain a food surplus."
DeleteMaybe a subsistent civilization. But there are plausible claims, such as in Toynbee's classic Study of History, that the lack of resource pressure leads to intellectual stagnation. With that in mind, it is not at all obvious that a well-fed IQ-90 island would do better in the long run than a less-well-fed IQ-120 island.
It depends on how long the "long run" is... I do agree that resource pressure may help lead to intellectual growth as the stupids die out. My point is that one would expect that if you had two groups of people with zero tech, and one starts in an area where it only takes 75% of the people to work to get food for everyone, with the other in an area that it takes 95% of the people to get food for everyone, the one with the free 25% of people that can work on things other then getting food has a jump start on civilization, even if they had the same genetic IQ or not. They have five times as many people who can do things like be scribes, metal and stone workers, philosophers, and other specialized work. You can now build cities for trade of both goods and ideas. Its hard to do that if everyone is out farming or hunting and gathering all day everyday.
DeleteFair enough. There is probably a sweet spot between scarcity vs. abundance - a civilizing Laffler Curve if you will. (Even Toynbee covered examples of barely-surviving civilizations due to extreme scarcity, like the Eskimo.)
DeleteI would guess that there is some kind of sweet spot. If things are to easy, people can just be lazy and never build tech. If things are to hard, you can never really grow your population and build cities.
DeleteAh, that's right, there was more than that first comment.
DeleteSimilar to what Frank was saying, if the environment is good enough, higher-intelligence genes will likely not express themselves. This is why the intelligence level ON DISPLAY in a given population at a given time is not necessarily the genetic maximum. Europe 6,000 years ago was not the maximum genetic potential of all Europeans.
OK, this is going to be a long, multi-part one.... I don't know how many slots it will take up, but I will tell you when it is the end of the post.
ReplyDeleteHey Rev, thanks for responding!
Do you think my answers to your points were adequate?
Going on to your new points:
“1). Rome is in Europe, that is true. However, most of Europe (and all of Europe that had not been conquered by Rome) was in a state of human-sacrificing barbarism 2,000 years ago. Europeans + Culture + Nutrition = Classy Romans. Europeans - Culture - Nutrition = Barbarian Teutonics.
If we're going to make a distinction between Anglo-Saxons and the Scotch/Irish, making a distinction between Romans and uncivilized European barbarians is more than fair.”
I think I covered this in part 2 of my post. Winter + heavy soil = takes longer to build civilization due to lack of food.
“2). The current scholarly consensus is that ancient Egyptian civilization was a mixture of what we would today refer to as North African and Sub-Saharan African. There is evidence of the physical traits of both groups in paintings/sculpture/DNA analysis of the dead. North Africa was not primarily Arabian/Semitic until after the Muslim conquest.”
The Egyptians were Copts. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copts
I agree that there was some black influence on Egypt, but that mostly came from a 75 year stretch when Egypt was ruled by blacks. Egypt had been disunited and was invaded from the south. See:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/black-pharaohs/robert-draper-text.html
If you look at the Great Sphinx, it does have a black looking face, but it also has a head that is much to small for its body. That implies that maybe after it was first built, someone came along later and carved a new head out of the first, larger head.
Zahi Hawass had this to say about the whole “Black Egypt” thing:
“CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour.
"Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters.
"Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency.
Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory.”
Also, Ramses the Great, along with others, had RED hair. Some even had BLONDE hair! Most did have brown/black though. See:
http://hiddenincatours.com/the-mystery-of-ancient-egypts-red-haired-mummies/
Just so you know, I am not in any way saying that I think the Egyptians were white. I they were Copts. If you look at the pictures in the Wikipedia post on Copts, that is what I think most Egyptians looked like.
Some more info on Egyptian views of colors from Zahi Hawass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUaWazRHTLg
http://archive.worldhistoria.com/zahi-hawass-fed-up-with-racial-politics-and-lies_topic21929_page1.html
“Even after the Muslim conquest, the kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa were extremely wealthy and advanced. Europe doesn't start to truly pull ahead in terms of wealth or technology until the Renaissance/Enlightenment is in full swing.”
ReplyDeleteBut why? Where did their wealth come from? Today, Saudi Arabia is a wealthy and advanced country. But it is a resource economy. It imports manufactured goods by selling oil. Saudi Arabia is not known for scientific advancement or discovery. It just sells oil, but due to that, it is rich and influential. It can buy the trappings of advanced civilization without having to really build it.
Now if you look at say, Mansa Musa, who some say was the richest man in history, how come he was so rich? What did his kingdom’s economy look like? Well, he sold slaves, gold, and ivory to other civilizations who in turn sold him manufactured goods. It was a resource economy that could buy some of the trappings and know-how of advanced civilization without ever really building it from within. Its just like the gulf oil states today.
Most places in sub-Saharan Africa didn’t have a written language or the wheel. They never domesticated many paints and animals that could have been domesticated. Some (Jared Diamond) have argued that Africa was to hard to farm and its animals, like Zebras, are to hard to domesticate. This is demonstrably untrue. See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhlOkEpvFgQ
White people had no problems farming in Africa. The Boers (with means
“farmer”) of South Africa farmed just fine in Africa. Rhodesia was the bread basket of Africa when it was white-governed. It also had a currency stronger then the US dollar. It did this with a population of only 5% white people and they were under international sanctions. They had to invent and retrofit all kinds of things themselves. After it went to black majority rule, food production collapsed, the economy collapsed, and they needing outside aid. There was hyperinflation and outbreaks of disease.
If you look at the objective (objective!) standards of living of black people in South Africa with a white government under apartheid vs black government today, they were much, much higher under white government. The same was true in Rhodesia, which never had apartheid. Blacks could vote there if they met objective standards.
“Europe doesn't start to truly pull ahead in terms of wealth or technology until the Renaissance/Enlightenment is in full swing.”
ReplyDeleteEurope wasn’t exactly lacking in technological know how before that, though. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartres_Cathedral
“Similar to what Frank was saying, if the environment is good enough, higher-
intelligence genes will likely not express themselves. This is why the intelligence
level ON DISPLAY in a given population at a given time is not necessarily the
genetic maximum. Europe 6,000 years ago was not the maximum genetic
potential of all Europeans.”
I agree with this. My point is that even after being given advanced tech from outsiders, some people still just can’t make things work right. Contrast Sub-Saharan Africa with Japan. When Japan was opened by Commodore Perry back in the 1850s, he brought along a working model of a steam locomotive as a gift for the Japanese Emperor. The Japanese reverse engineered it and started building their own, full scale locomotives. You just don’t see that kind of industriousness with some other people. When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and the blacks seized white owned farms, the blacks sold all the farm equipment for scrap metal! Then they starved! They went for sort-term gain at the expense of much greater long-term pain. Winter has a way of taking these kinds of people out of the gene pool. Sub-Saharan Africa never had that selective pressure.
Thoughts?
End of posts.
1). I stand by my statement that non-Roman Europe was largely barbarian 2,000 years ago.
DeleteI agree that if non-Roman Europe had the same climate advantages as Rome, they would likely have developed true civilization sooner. Winter + Heavy Soil = Longer to build a civilization is valid, but it does not contradict my main point that human intelligence is greatly affected by culture and nutrition.
Conversely, if Europe had had a more comfortable climate, there would likely have never a scientific revolution. It was the desire to access the wealth of China, Africa, and the New World that drove Europe to work smarter instead of harder.
2). Japan pulled through the Meiji Restoration because there was a burgeoning nationalist movement even before the country was opened to the West. While the bulk of Japanese commoners did not see themselves as Japanese (each Daimyo's fief was practically a separate country), Japanese intellectuals were already moving in that direction. The Emperor system helped. Convincing the Japanese that they were one people was less difficult than convincing the tribes randomly grouped into nations in post-colonial Africa that they were natural allies.
The conditions under which the tech comes into a society matters. Japan already had a history of bringing in culture and technology from an advanced rival (China). China had a history of being the Center of the World. As a result, China dismissed Western technology until it was too late. Japan saw what the West did to China and decided that they had to learn or die.
Many Africans still resist Western medical science to this day due to a history of exploitation at the hands of Westerners. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Conspiracy Theory. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa simply did not have a cultural precedent for what was happening, and ended up rejecting the West as evil.
3). Let's agree that the ancient Egyptians were not White. Let's also agree that the ancient Egyptians were not Black in the modern sense. I'm not forwarding the Kemetist argument that ancient Egyptians were indistinguishable from modern Blacks. I'm arguing that haplogroups consistent with Sub-Saharan ancestry were commonplace among Egyptians. If you want to call this admixture of Northern African and Sub-Saharan "Coptic," I'm cool with that. I just want to point out that the presence of a significant amount of Sub-Saharan DNA was present.
4). Yes, Mansa Musa had access to a wealth of resources. He was also a sponsor of science, culture, and education. Wealth allows for patronage of the arts and sciences. Europe's scientific revolution was built on Arabic scholarship and South American silver. Why is it "borrowed trappings" when Arabs and Africans do it?
Part 1 of 2:
ReplyDeleteHey again Rev,
Thanks for responding.
I totally agree with point #1. Yes, Northern Europe 2000 years ago was barbarian. Culture and nutrition do matter, but so does biology. I would also argue that biology does have an effect on culture and vice versa. Culture can even have an effect on nutrition, if it says what one is allowed to eat. The environment they evolved in effects all three.
As for point #2, I agree with your points about Japan and China. I also understand that there is a lot of magical thinking in Africa, even today. I'm not sure how you think that proves they are just a smart. I knew a black guy from Liberia who had been in the US for like two decades. He was still convinced that General Butt Naked had magical powers and could do things like deflect RPGs with his mind. Not sure how that proves they are just a bright as everyone else....
You have to understand that in places like Rhodesia, white people had been farming there for a long time when it went back to black rule. There were black people who had worked on some of those farms. There where some blacks who owned there own farms. There were more black millionaires in Rhodesia then white millionaires. Of course the white population was only 5%, so a higher percentage of the white population where more likely to be millionaires then the percentage of the black population. Talented blacks where able to learn and be successful there. The white government spent money trying to educate them. When the farms were taken from the whites by the blacks, I am pretty sure that most if not all blacks understood that farming was not magic. They had the context for it, just not the time preference. They saw a way to make some money quickly and sold the farm equipment for scrap. They didn’t think about the long-term effects.
Meanwhile, in Japan, they had no context for something like the steam locomotive. If anyone should have thought something was magic, it would have been them. Yet, they understood that it could be reverse-engendered and copied. I think that shows industriousness and intelligence. Selling off farm equipment that you already know the context of for scrap to make a quick buck does not.
About this: “Convincing the Japanese that they were one people was less difficult than convincing the tribes randomly grouped into nations in post-colonial Africa that they were natural allies.”
What about places like Ethiopia? They had a country with a king. They had slavery well into the 20th century. They were only ruled by Italy for about four years, and when the British kicked out the Italians in WWII, they put the king back in power with the condition that there could be no more slavery.
What about places like Liberia and Haiti? They have been independent states for a long time. What about places like Detroit? That was one of the richest cities in the world when it was majority white, now look at it. The black democrats have governed that city for decade after decade, and things just got worse and more corrupt.
Part 2 of 2:
DeletePoint #3. There didn’t seem to be much Sub-Saharan DNA in the leadership. It is unlikely that you get red hair with a significant amount of Sub-Saharan DNA (I understand it is possible, I’m just saying it is unlikely).
Point #4. The issue is what one does with the wealth when one has it. Many times when a poor person wins multimillions in the lotto, they end up poor again just a few years later. They blew it all on bells and whistles. There was a reason they were poor and playing the lotto in the first place. Think about it, if you gave two people 10 million dollars each, and a few years later one is broke and the other has invested and saved, who do you think has the higher IQ and lower time preference? Spain has a lower average IQ then northern Europe. If you look at how Spain spent all their new world wealth, they totally squander it. Meanwhile, England had new world possessions that were far less rich, yet due to the English’s greater enterprise and time preference, they ended up making their new world possessions much more valuable.
There is no hard break between population groups, just like there is no hard break between the colors of the rainbow. When does green become blue? But green and blue are still different colors. Europeans and Asians have 2% to 4% Neanderthal DNA, sub-Saharan Africans have 0%. Don’t you think that could have an effect? Adoption studies have shown that when east Asians, whites, mulattoes, and blacks are adopted into white middle class homes, the IQ rank order still ends up east Asians, whites, mulattoes, then blacks. On average, black children who grow up in households in the top 10% of income end up scoring worse on tests then white children who grew up in households in the bottom 10% of income.
I guess my over all point would be for this entire talk would be, that yes, things like nutrition and culture do matter, but so do the differences within human biology. Evolution does not do equal. The bushmen of Africa and the Australian Aborigines have never had anything that could be described as an advanced civilization, and I don’t think they ever will.
I think you may enjoy these following videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFMrp_0g4TQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjEtkwpygi0
Part of the silver fox experiment even had them taking embryos made from aggressive parents, and put them inside tame mothers. So they had the tame mother womb environment, and are birthed and raised by a tame mother. The pups still ended up being highly aggressive! Its in the genes! It had nothing to do with environment or culture or food! More on this here:
http://cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behaviour/history.htm
“Experiments undertaken in the 1970s included experimental cross-breeding of tame and aggressive animals, cross-fostering of newborn pups and transplantation of embryos, and demonstrated the genetic basis of the tame and aggressive phenotypes”
Have a great day and keep up the good work!
Hey hey, Anon! I've been enjoying this a lot :)
ReplyDeleteAnd now I've got a massive multiparter.
1). I repeat, "Why is it 'borrowed trappings' when Arabs and Africans do it?" It seems to me that when Westerners/East Asians leverage their wealth/power to acquire learning and expand on it, you say it is proof of their intelligence. When Arabs/Africans leverage their wealth/power to acquire learning and expand on it, you say it is mere "borrowed trappings." This strikes me as inconsistent.
Again, this may be something I am reading into your statements, but that's part of why I would like it clarified.
2). As you agree that culture and nutrition play into it, I agree that genetics plays into it. Intelligence must be partially genetically based; otherwise Gorillas could attain the same intellectual heights as humans. What we are disagreeing about is the extent to which genetics plays into it and the extent to which intelligence is determined by "race."
It's interesting that you point out the "blue blending into green" aspect of genetic science. This has always seemed like a weak point for the argument that "races" as such are scientifically valid concepts. Spaniards would undeniably fall under the umbrella of the "White race," and yet they share the same time-preference problem you ascribe to Blacks. I've seen similar statements about Slavs, Celts, etc. being inferior to Anglo-Saxons, Aryans, Romans elsewhere. How is the term "White Race" a useful concept for describing anything other than general European ancestry?
3). The persistence of "magical" thinking among Africans (ie, the rejection of the Western scientific naturalist mindset) is not necessarily due to genetic inferiority. I have argued that it is a natural reaction to centuries of brutal colonialism at the hands of Westerners.
You saw similar trends in China circa the Opium wars - belief that Western doctors were black magicians, etc. It was not until Japan successfully demonstrated that Western tech could be integrated into Eastern culture that China/Korea started getting their acts together.
The cultural context of intercultural technology transmission matters. It's arguable that in Africa the cycle of dependence on the West and exploitation by the West is simply too current to disentangle from scientific rationalism.
But the China/Japan stuff is off-point. Let's move a little closer to home. I am a Christian, which means I believe in things that cannot be explained with Western scientific naturalism. Does this mean that I am operating on an inferior intellectual level to an Atheist/Agnostic? Am I simply not capable of moving on to accepting a purely naturalistic universe?
Part 2 of 2
Delete4). This is a tangent, but how likely would you think it is that a White population living in Africa would eventually succumb to the abundance of resources/lack of need for innovation? I ask because Europe/America are experiencing perhaps the most abundant resource glut in history. Sure, that's largely due to tech, but the average person doesn't know how the hot dog gets made, just what button to press.
What I'm driving at is that maybe the recent IQ drop-off in the West isn't due to genetic mixing, but to reduced selection pressures. Life is simply not as short, brutish, or nasty as it was in Victorian times. Maybe these higher intelligence genes are simply not expressing themselves due to environmental factors? Just a thought.
5). It's actually quite refreshing to talk about race and genetics beyond the usual PC context. I am, of course, a filthy mixed-race mongrel with all the biases that implies, but the HBD angle is clearly different from the "Whites rule, everyone else drools" arguments of my youth.
Which raises an issue for me. How can White Supremacy be anything other that anti-scientific nonsense? Assuming this research is valid, the clear winner is East Asians. If intelligence affects time-preference which prevents crime, improves civilization, and the thousand other things, Whites are at best middle-managers.
I've mentioned this before, but assuming the ideas floating around on Vox Popoli are valid, there are only two possible rational forms of civilization, and neither of them seem to get much support: rule by Christian East Asians or a race-blind meritocracy. After all, an African on the high end of their Bell Curve is objectively preferable to a European on the low on of theirs.
Seeing this HBD data just makes it all the more disappointing when people revert to the old "Whites rule" or "Europe FTW" tropes. Clearly the situation is more complex than the old definitions of race. So why do I see so many people sliding back into statements that only make sense in that discredited context?
I don't know how many posts this will take, but I will let you know when it is the end.
DeleteI have been enjoying this, too!
Point 1:
Understand that I am going to be speaking in general and relative terms. Averages. The point I was trying to get to was what do they do when they become rich? There are many white and Asian rich people who keep on working. In other cultures it is more common when one becomes rich to just lay about. If you look at oil rich Arab states, not just the manual labor is done by outsiders, but the technical work as well. While Mexicans can be hard workers when they are poor, they don’t tend (tend!) to be hard workers if they become rich or are able to get resources though government means. There are exceptions, of course. It is a matter of % within the population. That is what I was trying to get at when I was talking about a poor guy who won the lotto ending up poor a few years later. Lets say a tech was invented that made oil worthless. What do you think would happen to the oil states of the gulf? Also, what I was getting at when I was talking about west African wealth gotten though the sale of slaves, gold, and ivory was that they just used the windfall to buy manufactured goods from elsewhere. They never really developed their own serious manufacturing base and know-how. Something kind of like that happened with Spain and its new world wealth. They did build more ships and such, but they never really invested the money to grow their economy and instead wasted a lot of it. They hired a bunch of Frenchmen to do a lot of the work they wanted done. Not only that, but despite having access to all that new wealth, the Spanish government defaulted on its debts over and over again, as it would always borrow against the future income from the mines in the new world to buy stuff it wanted NOW. They kept borrowing more and more. And once they were cut from easy money they became a third-rate power.
Everything in HBD is relative to everything else. I would say that the Spanish, in general, have a higher IQ and lower time preference then the west Africans, but they have a lower IQ and a higher time preference then the English or Germans. You could do the same thing just among black people. Some black ethnic groups have higher average IQs and lower time preferences then others. Everything is a matter of degree.
Going back to what people want to do when they have wealth, if you look at the American colonists, particularly the northern ones, one of the bitches they had with England was that England had set up a economic system where the colonies had to sell raw materials, such as wood, to England, and England sold manufactured goods it made from the raw materials back to the colonies. Many in the north wanted to grow and expand there own industries and be able to buy/sell from others besides English monopolies. On average, the English in the colonies had a higher standard of living then those back in England, but they still wanted to improve their own lives though building their own industries. You can also see the difference between northern whites vs southern whites in that way. The north ended slavery and built an industrial base while the south seemed happy to live off the labor of slaves. There wasn’t much industry or enterprise in the south and much of it that was built was build by northern transplants or newer people coming in from other places in Europe. The cotton gin, the most important invention for the south, was invented by a northerner! Different people be different, yo.
Point 2:
DeleteAll categories are constructs created by humans to describe things, because we find it useful to do so, to order things in our brains. The color blue exists, but it didn’t have to be categorized the way it is. In some cultures blue and green are the same. The concept of “mammal” is a human construct we have placed on a bunch of animals to order them in our brains because we find it useful to do so. One of our descriptors of what defines “mammals” is that they give live birth. Yet we still count the Duck Billed Platypus as a “mammal”, even though it lays eggs, because we think it fits the human created concept of “mammal” the best. We could have said no, we are not going to count the DBP as a mammal and instead call it something else, but we didn’t. I think the concept of “race” is a useful descriptor, if you don’t thats fine. I will say that there are many subspecies of animals that science has not problem defining as such that have less genetic distance from each other then do what some would call the different human races. If we are going to be scientifically consistent, then if we are going to say such and such differing phenotypic and genetic traits = subspecies, then I think we have to count the human races as subspecies. There are even subspecies that are on the endangered list. It is not that the whole species is endangered, just a subspecies of it, so there are laws protecting them.
It isn’t a question of what percent of intelligence is caused by genetics vs what percent is caused by environment. That is a totally meaningless question. Without genetics we would not exist. With out the environment, we couldn’t live. The question is how much of the variation in observed phenotypic traits between individuals and between groups is genetic vs environmental. If we are ONLY talking about the observed differences between individuals and between groups within the USA and other advanced countries, I would say that genetics plays the lions share of the role. If we are talking about the USA vs the Congo, I would say that while genetics still plays a large role, the environment also plays a large role as well.
Children in the US, unless their parents are complete dirtbags (I’m talking beat them every day, don’t feed them, lock them in the closet for days kind of dirtbags, not just run of the mill shitty parenting) then children have the ability to access and create to a certain extent their own environment. They can check books out of the library for free if they have the urge to do so. They have access to a free education. It is just a matter of motivation. Understand, there are majority black school districts that spend way more per pupil then the national average, yet blacks still lag. Think Washington DC. So it isn’t a money issue. Not only that, like I said before, adoption studies show that even when you have children of different races being raised by white middle class people, you still end up with the same rank order for things like IQ. And the “system” as a whole is not “racist”. If you adjust for IQ, like you are comparing East Asians with IQs of 100, whites with IQs of 100, blacks with IQs of 100, then you have very similar life outcomes. They make about the same amount of money, get arrested at about the same rates, et cetera. The issue is that the average IQ of blacks within the US is only 85. If you look at whites with an IQ of 85, they make about as much money and get arrested around the average of the black population.
Point 3a:
Delete“The persistence of "magical" thinking among Africans (ie, the rejection of the Western scientific naturalist mindset) is not necessarily due to genetic inferiority. I have argued that it is a natural reaction to centuries of brutal colonialism at the hands of Westerners.”
“The cultural context of intercultural technology transmission matters. It's arguable that in Africa the cycle of dependence on the West and exploitation by the West is simply too current to disentangle from scientific rationalism.”
Ireland was under brutal colonialism for 750 years. The British massacred them, stole land, starved them, sold them into slavery, used them as cannon fodder. The British governed/exploited Ireland far longer then it governed/exploited any African colony. And I would argue that while it was brutal, the Irish today have a higher standard of living then they otherwise would have had without the British influence. If you look at Africa, it was those areas that had British rule the longest that are doing the least badly. When the British showed up, Ireland was a totally disunited island with a bunch of different clans. When Saint Patrick arrived in Ireland, he was surprised that the Irish were using slave girls as their economic unit of account. Everything was priced in slave girls. The Irish my have never forged a national identity without the British. Ireland today is a relatively nice place to live, certainly much nicer then ANY African county. I think it disproves your views on the long term negative effects of colonialism. Colonialism, at least by the British, seems to be a long-term good, despite how nasty it was in the past, there were benefits to it. Though I will note that Ireland is one of the PIIGS, the only one not in southern Europe.
Also, how do you explain Singapore? It was a colony. It never had a national identity. It is a mix of displaced Chinese, Malays, and Indians who were brought there by the British. They have less in common with each other then any of the hodgepodge African colonies you could name. They have two things going for them, though. One, they had British rule. Two, the Chinese make up about 74% of the population. If it had been, say 74% black, I don’t think it would be doing so well. The Chinese also do well in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the USA. Hell, back in the 1950s when the Indonesians went on a CIA backed anti-communist killing spree, they killed a bunch of random Chinese shop keepers. Not because they were communists, but because they were rich “outsiders” and they wanted their stuff.
Right now in South Africa many Zulu are attacking and robbing stores owned by Indians.
Point 3b:
DeleteI agree with your point about the Boxers during the Opium wars. Magical thinking happens in all populations. What I am saying is that it is a matter of degree. Desperate people often turn to religion and superstition, but I would still say it is a matter of percentages under more “normal” circumstances. Ain't no group perfect.
“It was not until Japan successfully demonstrated that Western tech could be integrated into Eastern culture that China/Korea started getting their acts together.”
China’s decline from the 1400’s to the 1900’s was mostly self inflicted due to stupid government policies. In the 1400’s China was so far ahead of everyone that it felt it had nothing to learn from anyone else. Not only that, but the Emperor was afraid of the fact that Chinese merchants were making so much money. He felt that they could be a threat to his rule, so he shut down much of the contact with the outside world. I think this happened soon after Zheng He returned from from his voyages. The Chinese had an amazingly large and advanced fleet of ships that they just got rid of. That was how over confident they were about themselves. Stupid government policy can destroy the prosperity and advancement of even the smartest, most industrious peoples. Look at East Germany vs West Germany during the cold war. Look at North Korea vs South Korea today. The differences where completely based on stupid government policies.
However, if the people are lacking in the right, lets call it “genetic infrastructure,” then even with well thought out government policies, they can sill lag behind. They would still be better off then otherwise, though. That is why northern blacks did better then southern blacks. That is way blacks in Rhodesia did better then blacks in the black run countries around it. Patrick Kombayi, a black Zimbabwean businessman and elected official, had this to say about Ian Smith, the leader of the predominately white government of Rhodesia:
“The roads that we are using today were all built by Smith. All the infrastructure is Smith’s. We never suffered the way we are suffering now because Smith took care of the economy that supported all people and they had enough to eat. When he left power the [British] pound was on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, but President Mugabe has killed all that.”
Point 3c:
Delete“I am a Christian, which means I believe in things that cannot be explained with Western scientific naturalism. Does this mean that I am operating on an inferior intellectual level to an Atheist/Agnostic? Am I simply not capable of moving on to accepting a purely naturalistic universe?”
I guess that would depend on the Atheist/Agnostic.
What I find is that people are able to engage in a huge amount of cognitive dissonance, compartmentalization, and rationalization when dealing where some subjects. I am an atheist, have been since 5th grade. I was raised Christian but I couldn’t deal with all the cognitive dissonance, trying to rationalize the clear contradictions and just outright nonsense. I become an atheist without any outside influence at all. I didn’t even know what an atheist was when I stopped believing in god. I didn’t know anyone else who didn’t believe in god at the time. I was frustrated by the fact that everyone else, including the adults, especially the adults, just seemed to not be able to reason vary well. I felt that their answers to my questions were greatly lacking. I even talked to a couple of priests, and their answers were garbage, too. For a long time in my youth I was so frustrated that everyone seemed to be so fucking stupid. Even the people who were otherwise smart, rational people seemed not to apply the same reason when dealing with religion as they would with other subjects. But here is the thing, though my (vary limited) study of things like the effects of genetics and such, I have come to understand that there is most likely a genetic variable that makes some people more likely to subscribe to a religion and to mystical thinking. Not that they are genetically Christian or Hindu or whatever, but that they are just more likely to follow some religion based on their genes. So now I am less frustrated with things in that regard, because at least I think (think!) I know why otherwise smart people believe what I think are silly things.
So someone can be religious but not really have that effect how they behave and think in regard to other things. They are able to compartmentalize things in their brain.
Some atheists didn’t become atheists because they came to it though reason. Some atheists became atheists because they didn’t like what “god” had to say, then justified their rejection later based on “reason and evidence.” Some atheists are highly irrational, just like some religious people. Some atheists will mock creationists (I think rightly so) for denying things like evolution, but those same atheists will deny evolution when it comes to human differences. Whether it be in race or sex differences. They tend to be the SJW types, though not always. So they pick and choose what parts of evolution to believe in just like some of them criticize Christians for picking and choosing what parts of the Bible to follow. So I would say that atheists can sometimes be just as irrational as the religious when it comes to some things, while some of the religious can be perfectly rational in things other then their own religion. They can see all the flaws in the other religions, but don’t apply the same standards to their own. Kind of like how some atheists can see all the flaws in creationism, yet can’t see that they are engaged in the same kind of creationist thinking when they say that the races and sexes are all the same. There is no way that could happen though an evolutionary process.
Point 4:
Delete“This is a tangent, but how likely would you think it is that a White population living in Africa would eventually succumb to the abundance of resources/lack of need for innovation? I ask because Europe/America are experiencing perhaps the most abundant resource glut in history. Sure, that's largely due to tech, but the average person doesn't know how the hot dog gets made, just what button to press.
What I'm driving at is that maybe the recent IQ drop-off in the West isn't due to genetic mixing, but to reduced selection pressures. Life is simply not as short, brutish, or nasty as it was in Victorian times. Maybe these higher intelligence genes are simply not expressing themselves due to environmental factors? Just a thought.”
I think that there are dysgenic breeding patterns though out all races in the west, but that it is effecting black people the most. I think that while there have been environmental improvements in the west that boost IQ over time (Finn Effect), there have also been a lessening of the selective pressures that select for intelligent people. Stupid people can have as many kids as they want and most will make it to reproductive age due to government and social programs and modern tech. There are two basic parenting strategies. One is to have a few offspring and take really good care of them, making those few likely to make to reproductive age; the other is to have a ton of offspring and not have much involvement with them and hope enough survive to reproductive age. The second one worked OK in Africa, where many children didn’t know who their father was and the mother’s brother helped rase them vs the first one that works better in places like Europe with it’s selective pressure of winter.
I think that the environmental improvements that I think have been causing the Finn Effect have about run their corse in most of the west. People have access to enough calories and live in an immersive environment where abstract thinking is common everyday thing and the knowledge of the world is at their fingertips.
Point 5a:
ReplyDeleteWhite supremacy IS anti-scientific nonsense. When did I ever claim otherwise? Different peoples are good at different things due to selective pressures in their environments (both natural and man-made environments) over time. The best long distance runners come from east Africa, the best sprinters from west Africa. The best weight lifters come from Europe. The reason that (Ashkenazi) Jews run Hollywood, dominate the media and entertainment, and are the top lawyers is that they have extremely high verbal intelligence. It isn’t a conspiracy.
“Assuming this research is valid, the clear winner is East Asians. If intelligence affects time-preference which prevents crime, improves civilization, and the thousand other things, Whites are at best middle-managers.”
Well, it depends on what it is you personally value. I believe in self-determination. If black Africans would rather be governed by other blacks who are like them rather then more compantent whites, even if that leads to widespread corruption, violence, poverty, and other such chaos, thats on them. That is a choice they should be free to make. That is also why I don’t want to have my country swamped with people who would except that kind of government. Immigration matters for what kind of country we will have in the future.
Point 5b:
DeleteI have been all over the world. Japan is very clean and safe. Cleaner and safer then much of Europe and the USA. Guess what, I would still rather live in the USA. Why? Maybe its my own biases as an US born white guy. However, I much prefer the greater freedom and individuality you find in the US then just about anywhere else. There are other western democracies that will put people in jail for unpopular speech. Not in the US. Asians who come to work in the US often do get high paying technical jobs, but are rarely good managers or leaders. They defer to much to authority, even when the authority is being stupid. Understand, I am not saying ALL Asians are like this, just on average relative to whites. That is one of the reasons I think so many of the world’s advancements, discoveries, and inventions were made by white people despite the fact that they don’t have the highest average IQ. White people seem more prone to challenge orthodoxy and push at the limits. The Chinese could have easily been the ones to explore and map the world. They had the know-how. Yet they didn’t. The Europeans did. They were willing to take the risks of truly global exploration. The space race was between two predominately white countries. Only white people have so far been to the moon, despite it first happening over 45 years ago. It doesn’t look like China will get there for the next several years, either, although I suspect that at some point they will. White people came up with the idea of self-rule. Things like democracy and republics. Things like constitutional law and the idea of universal human rights. White people today get a lot of flak for slavery and colonialism. Yet slavery was practiced everywhere though out the world well before white people showed up, and colonizing and exploiting others was also common though out the world, not just with white people. It is just that before the “Age of Colonialism,” most peoples just colonized and exploited their neighbors rather then people on the other side of the globe. It was due to European innovation that they could do so. You don’t think Shaka Zulu would have liked to have had a fleet of warships with cannons if he could have had one!? Europe (with the exception of Spain) didn’t become rich and advanced due to having colonies, they got colonies because they were rich and advanced. Running the colonies ended up costing more then then they were worth. The Ottoman Turks were imperialistic, the Mongols were imperialistic (but they sucked at navies), the Zulu were imperialistic, the Aztecs were imperialistic (and made war just to capture people for human sacrifices). None of that was due to white people. But it seems only white people are required to take any blame for imperialism. Every negative thing you can point to white people doing in history, I can point to other people doing the same. Yet there are many great accomplishments in history that we have only white people to thank for. Ending slavery mostly everywhere is a big one. The legal equality of women being another. In India, they had a practice called “Sati,” where when a man died, his widow was burned alive on his funeral pyre.
From Wikipedia:
General Sir Charles James Napier, the Commander-in-Chief in India from 1849 to 1851 is often noted for a story involving Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of sati by British authorities.
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
There are a lot of other great things I could talk about as well that really only whites have jump-started, but I think you get my point.
Point 5c:
Delete“I’ve mentioned this before, but assuming the ideas floating around on Vox Popoli are valid, there are only two possible rational forms of civilization, and neither of them seem to get much support: rule by Christian East Asians or a race-blind meritocracy. After all, an African on the high end of their Bell Curve is objectively preferable to a European on the low on of theirs.”
I am have not been a long term reader of Vox Popoli, so I am not sure I can speak to that. I am not a “follower” of Vox Day. I just like that he takes it to the SJWs. SJWs are nothing but a bunch of would-be-censors, and they are a pox on the whole of the western world. I am fine with people like Vox even if we may disagree on some things. The reason for this is because he is NOT an intellectual pussy. Every single SJW is. Every. Single. One.
Going to the issue of the Bell Curve…. and this is the depressing but true part. The thing is that there is something called “regression to the mean” when it comes to IQ. Different groups of people regress to different average means. So even if two smart black people got married and had children, there children would likely be stupider then them. The average Japanese-America IQ is 105, the average black-American IQ is 85. So if you had two Japanese parents with and average IQ of 95, and two black parents with the same IQ of 95, their children would regress toward different means. The Japanese children would likely end up with a higher IQ then their parents, and the black children would likely end up with a lower IQ then their parents. But the parents started with the same IQs. This is why the children of poor whites and Asians outperform the the children of rich blacks in school and on tests. They regress towards different means. So just bringing in the smartest black people you can find into your country my not be such a great idea in the long run. It is kind of depressing for smart blacks.
“Seeing this HBD data just makes it all the more disappointing when people revert to the old "Whites rule" or "Europe FTW" tropes. Clearly the situation is more complex than the old definitions of race. So why do I see so many people sliding back into statements that only make sense in that discredited context?”
I think I already covered this. it depends what one values. If your top values are having a safe, clean society, then go to Japan or Singapore. If your top values are things like liberty and innovation, then it is the USA all the way. But if the US ends up getting swamped with more and more people who don’t really understand and may only superficially value those things, well…. Hell, it may already be to late for us.
Watch those videos I linked you to last time. They are not long.
BTW, for what I think is the best defense of your view that culture played the dominant role in the differences between people within the US, I think you should read “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” by Thomas Sowell. He makes a very strong case that the differences are caused by culture, and I learned a lot from it.
I will be gone this weekend, so don’t expect a reponce to anything you post right away.
End of posts.
Okay, so there is more stuff here than I have time to respond to, but I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. Many of the issues I have with your arguments are things that I am in the process of researching, so back-and-forth at this moment is likely to be unproductive.
DeleteAt any rate, here's the "for now" version.
1). Focusing on the Northern State/Southern State divide for a moment.
Sure, you can argue that the Southern genetic stock led to a relative preference for indolence and the exploitation of others. But what about the English Lords and Ladies? I don't see them engaging in farm work after having conquered their way to the top.
The bilious nobility of England were more than happy to let the peasants do the work for them. They viewed engaging in manual labor to be beneath them. And before you say that the nobility were not the ones colonizing, we could make the same statements about the industrial Overlords of the Northern States.
The North rejected slavery because it was economically infeasible, not because Northerners love work so very much. The colonies (rather, the wealthy, influential colonial leaders) resisted England's economic plan because it was preventing them from making money
Besides, Virginia basically ran the US up until the Civil War. That's a pretty neat trick for genetically sub-standards.
Different people be different, but not as different as you may think.
2). The blue/green divide is actually one of my favorite go-to examples. The color blue is defined as wavelength 450-495 nm, frequency 606-668 THz. The Japanese 青い (aoi) refers to a broader spectrum - wavelength 450-570 nm, frequency 526-668 THz, or as we would say, both blue and green.
The point is, human language is descriptive, not ontologically accurate. It refers to the real world but is not the real world. Japanese speakers and English speakers are exposed to the stimuli, but describe them differently. Japanese speakers are fully capable of distinguishing blue （青空 blue sky, 青鳥 blue bird） and green （緑茶 green tea, 緑玉石 green emerald), they just don't make as firm of a distinction.
But now I'm really off topic.
It's not entirely accurate to say that all children in America face the same environment. Certainly, there is not as much difference between White American Child and Black American Child as between Black American Child and Congo Child, but the difference is real and significant.
A white child that works hard, goes to the library, gets schooling can be more confident in an eventual economic payout for this labor than a black child. When you perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the system is stacked against you, you are not as motivated to improve your circumstances.
It's not a money issue, it's an economics issue. Whites have a higher rate of return for the same labor (mental or physical). Why should Blacks contribute the same work for less reward? Why not simply "turn on, tune in, drop out"?
3). Without passing over your larger argument, I wonder if part of the issue is indeed the time factor. Would Africa be better off if colonialism had lasted longer? Certainly Northern/Western Europe benefited from Roman rule. I realize this strays dangerously close to "White Man's Burden" territory, but it's worth a mental exercise.
What if Western imperialism had been long-term and race-blind after the fashion of the Roman empire? Romans didn't give a shit about race; they cared about citizenship - about citizen vs. barbarian. I think colonialism could have been a lot more mutually beneficial under these circumstances. Certainly we would have been less likely to see the magical thinking backlash.
Side note - English domination of Ireland doesn't quite fit the example. England and Ireland were on more comparable tech levels. The Irish weren't going to condemn the Longbow as sorcery.
Also, thanks for clarifying. It might be fun to have a follow-up argument on Christianity vs. atheism when we both have more time.
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"When you perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the system is stacked against you, you are not as motivated to improve your circumstances."
DeleteThe motivation to improve one's circumstances should come from one's own needs and desires, not from perceptions of other people's returns from their work or the differently stackedness of the system. If I want my family to have a better life then now, I will try to work harder, regardless of whether the guy down the street has an easier time doing the same thing.
Because you never hear White Americans complaining about how Obama's social policies are holding them back.
DeleteI'm saying "not as motivated" not "have no motivation." There are Black Americans that do get out of the crab pot. It's just harder than it would be if they were White.
People will work harder for higher rewards. But systematic racism puts the higher rewards out of the hands of most Blacks - even Blacks on the right-hand side of the bell curve.
More work + less reward = less motivation.
Actually, let's double down on that equation:
DeleteMore work + less reward + lower chances of reward = less motivation.
Even if someone thinks of it in those terms, it is IMHO a counter-productive and defeatist response to an unequal world. It is not one we should be endorsing.
DeleteOne should push hard toward whatever goals one can attain - regardless of how hard others are pushing for their respective independent goals.
Here's the real twist, though. Human being are going to seek their own good, no matter what (food, shelter, mates). They WILL reach for what they can attain, but not necessarily by playing within the rules.
DeletePart of the reason we see so much anti-social behavior among poor Blacks is because society is anti-them. Which promises higher levels of fulfillment and success:
1). Struggling within a societal framework that is prejudiced against you.
2). Working outside/parallel that societal framework
Think of the gentleman who was murdered recently by police for selling "loosies" - single cigarettes. That guy was never going to be CEO of Phillip Morris, but he could still turn a profit by operating outside of the social order which privileges owners of Capital.
I'm not saying that all Blacks are criminals, but that criminal enterprises in general offer higher rates of return in that they do not limit success on racial lines. Sure, a Black won't get very high in the ranks of the Italian Mafia, but there's a sort of equal-and-opposite discrimination in operation.
So. Let's say that you want good for yourself and your family. You can either play by the rules and work at a job where you know you will be paid less on the basis of your ethnicity or you can try to game the system and reap greater rewards. What's the rational choice?
This, I think becomes increasingly clear as we look at White counter-strategies to Affirmative Action/diversity quotas.
(I won't defend anti-"loosie" regulations.)
Delete"You can either play by the rules and work at a job where you know you will be paid less on the basis of your ethnicity or you can try to game the system and reap greater rewards. What's the rational choice?"
Isn't the same choice available to anyone, substituting something personally convenient for "on the basis of your ethnicity"? "on the basis of my aversion to hard work ... I prefer a life of crime!".
Society is and must be set up in order to allow lawful pursuits to be the rational choice. That's independent of inequalities of various sorts.
"Society is and must be set up in order to allow lawful pursuits to be the rational choice. That's independent of inequalities of various sorts."
DeleteI will agree with "must be," but not with "is."
Don't conflate ethnicity with a choice to be lazy. As a multi-ethnic in the South, I am discriminated against without reference to any sort of choice on my part. I personally chose to work within the system largely due to strong family support/religious upbringing, and so far it has paid off. Likely not as much as if I had been an Aryan Dudebro, but enough that crime is not attractive.
This is why I disagree with the "is" part of the equation. For poor blacks/illegal immigrants/etc., the lawful pursuit is objectively not the rational choice - or at least, the unlawful pursuit is objectively equally rational.
Consider the loosies of the field. It is objectively more rational to choose the unlawful activity of selling loosies it terms of effort to payoff calculations.
Could you phrase that "unlawful pursuit is objectively equally rational" in an empirically testable way?
DeleteBut how did we get to the lawful vs. unlawful divide anyway? You were saying that people's "motivatedness" is influenced by other people's success, and I was pointing out that even if that were true for some, it should not be (it being unhealthy in a way). Surely there's a big spectrum of "less motivated" state before one flips over into the "life of crime" level of depression or aggression.
I am not saying that "motivatedness is influenced by other people's success." I am saying that Whites have a higher expected payoff for their effort, and thus a higher motivation. The point is not "why should I try when a White person would make more," the point is "even if I try, I'm not going to get very much out of it."
DeleteLet's start by phrasing it in a more logical way:
IF
1. ([race=black] + lawful profession = sub-standard income)
2. ([race=white] + lawful profession = standard income)
3. [(race=black] + unlawful profession = standard income)
4. [(race=white] + unlawful profession = standard income)
THEN
1. ([race=white] + lawful profession = [race=white] + unlawful profession)
2. ([race=black] + lawful profession < [race=black] + unlawful profession)
Or in other words, if blacks do indeed receive less compensation for equal work within our social system, working outside our social system will logically result in better reward-to-effort payoff.
You can argue against the assertion that blacks receive less compensation for equal work. You cannot argue that it is rational to work within a system that is prejudiced against you.
The only exception would be something along the lines of:
([race=black]+lawful profession = $10,000)
(race=white]+lawful profession = $15,000)
([race=black]+unlawful profession = $5,000)
([race=white]+unlawful profession = $5,000)
In which case:
([race=black]+lawful profession) > ([race=black]+unlawful profession)
The numbers are largely immaterial at this point, but unless working within the system provides greater incentives to Blacks than working outside the system, the objectively superior choice is to work outside the system.
In my case, this exception would hold true - I receive greater compensation within the system than I would without, although arguably less than an Aryan Dudebro. For me:
([race=mystery mongrel]+lawful profession) > ([race=mystery mongrel]+unlawful profession)
Is that more clear?
"I am not saying that "motivatedness is influenced by other people's success."
DeleteBut you are! "... the point is "even if I try, I'm not going to get
very much out of it."". That "very much" is by definition compared to
other people's "much", i.e., success. You can't worry about keeping
up with the Jones' lifestyle and at the same time claim you aren't
influenced by the Joneses.
"1. ([race=white] + lawful profession = [race=white] + unlawful profession)
2. ([race=black] + lawful profession < [race=black] + unlawful profession)"
Your hypothetical math is unwisely limited to income. People evaluate
their choices on other ways too, such as personal morality, risk to
health, or in your scenarios, risk of incarceration.
"You can argue against the assertion that blacks receive less
compensation for equal work."
One certainly can; hat off to Anonymous for pushing this angle.
"You cannot argue that it is rational to work within a system that is
prejudiced against you."
One certainly can. Perceived prejudice is not license to violate the
laws of the system. (Again imagine the reductio ad absurdum I
outlined above: "The system is prejudiced against the lazy, so I'll
rob.".)
But beyond that, the system is normally still more powerful than one's
"working outside" is going to be. In your prejudice-justifies-crime
scenario, law enforcement still exists, and will generally catch up
with the bad guys/gals.
Let's consider the less inflammatory prejudice-justifies-less-work
hypothetical ("less motivated"). Given that the "system" won't care
about the individual and won't budge, what kind of incentives may lead
one rationally to believe that less work is going to make them better
off than more work? Are such incentives provided by governments, and
if so, are they a good idea?
No, that is not my point. Please reread this statement:
Delete"Whites have a higher expected payoff for their effort, and thus a higher motivation"
Which offer is more motivating:
1). "Hey, I'll give you $10 to mow my lawn."
2). "Hey, I'll give you $20 to mow my lawn."
It doesn't matter if some kid in Monte Carlo gets $500 to mow lawns or if the kid down the block gets $2. A higher reward means higher motivation, period.
"That "very much" is by definition compared to other people's "much", i.e., success"
Again, the only reason to bring the earning power of Whites into the conversation is as a control group. Group A is discriminated against by a system and thus does not feel particularly attached to it. Group B receives benefits from a system, and thus feels attached to it. It's an example of a control group to demonstrate how different social pressures result in different ratios of effort/reward.
"Your hypothetical math is unwisely limited to income. People evaluate
their choices on other ways too, such as personal morality, risk to
health, or in your scenarios, risk of incarceration."
Now there's a valid criticism. Yes, and I will freely admit that limiting it to income is oversimplification. There are many factors involved in discrimination. We could also discuss the social discrimination faced by high-achieving Blacks from both racist Whites and jealous Blacks. Achieving success in a system prejudiced against Blacks is seen as proof that one is a race traitor. Success outside of that system (or indeed, in defiance of that system) is seen as proof that one is a folk hero.
Again, I'm not going to put all of the blame on Whitey. But there are very real social factors that make working outside of the system more attractive to the oppressed. Were the Helots wrong for breaking the laws of the Spartans?
" A higher reward means higher motivation, period."
DeleteThe way you're using it, it's just a circular definition. Let's operationalize it. What should it mean to person X that (arguendo) person Y might get more for the same work? That person X should therefore reject the offer? Of course not, if person X wants the (smaller) reward.
"Were the Helots wrong for breaking the laws of the Spartans?"
Slavery is a whole different bowl of wax.
I am having difficulty understanding why you are having difficulty understanding this. I am going to assume I am not explaining it properly.
DeleteIt means nothing to person X that person Y gets more for the same work.
It does not even matter if person X knows how much person Y is getting paid.
The higher the reward offered for work, the more willing a person will be to do it.
Let's break out of the X/Y entirely. I'm going to give you two job offers:
1). Mow Neighbor A's lawn for $10.
2). Mow Neighbor B's lawn for $20.
If both lawns are the same size/require the same amount of effort, it is clear which one you will be more motivated to do.
Of course, there could be other factors - maybe Neighbor B is a jerk or Neighbor A is an old man who needs help. But, and this is the critical point, ABSENT THESE OTHER FACTORS, you will naturally prefer the job that pays more for the same amount of effort.
Now let's bring X/Y back into it.
Does it matter to X that Y gets paid more? No, not if there are no other jobs available. But if there is other work available that X can get paid more for, it is reasonable for X to gravitate towards those jobs.
"Slavery is a whole different bowl of wax."
Indeed. But you seemed to be implying that law was some sort of sacred principle that no right-thinking person would ever violate. You cannot act surprised when a person refuses to participate in a system that is prejudiced against them.
"Does it matter to X that Y gets paid more? No, not if there are no other jobs available. But if there is other work available that X can get paid more for, it is reasonable for X to gravitate towards those jobs."
DeleteAt this point, you're just reinventing normal microeconomics & capitalism - welcome to the fold! Yes, people will gravitate to whatever they believe will benefit them most. That's totally independent of what the reasons may be, or whether the calculations / preferences are different between different people. This is utterly routine.
"But you seemed to be implying that law was some sort of sacred principle that no right-thinking person would ever violate."
No. And I do occasionally speed and break inconsequential or stupid laws. (For others, some drug laws may be in this category.) But there's a huge quantitative gulf between having a perception of being worse off than someone else, and deciding "screw it, I'll rob & kill, or live off of the EBT", which is what you sound like you're talking about.
4). Looking at this from a broader historical perspective, this may be what contributes to the Fall of Empires. The ruling classes of successful empires are not as subjected to selective pressures. The weak are not culled from their offspring, their offspring are not as forced by environmental pressures to adapt, etc.
ReplyDeleteOf the two parenting strategies, the "many children" track seems to be more effective in the long term. Societies that limit the number of children borne tend to breed themselves out of existence, even absent pressures outside of demographics.
Irony: long-term time preference is dysgenic in the longer-term.
5). I'm going to have to fact-check the regression to mean thing. Which is part of why I'm hesitant to continue this conversation without doing a lot more research first. I can continue shooting from the hip or I can buckle down and dig through the evidence.
"White Supremacy is anti-scientific nonsense." I wasn't saying that you are a White Supremacist. I was saying that I still see White Supremacists running around IRL and on the web and I don't understand how those people can still exist.
I apologize for lumping you in with the VFM. Still, if you start reading the comments at Vox Popoli on the regular, you'll see what I'm talking about.
The breakup of the United States is probably the only thing that could create the society you want. I mean, I assume that you wouldn't want to live even in the American South with the Scotch-Irish. Demographically speaking, the Anglo-Saxons don't have a shot in hell.
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“Sure, you can argue that the Southern genetic stock led to a relative preference for indolence and the exploitation of others. But what about the English Lords and Ladies? I don't see them engaging in farm work after having conquered their way to the top.
ReplyDeleteThe bilious nobility of England were more than happy to let the peasants do the work for them. They viewed engaging in manual labor to be beneath them.”
“Besides, Virginia basically ran the US up until the Civil War. That's a pretty neat trick for genetically sub-standards.”
When I was writing to you before about the differences between the north and south of the American colonies, I debated with myself about how in depth I wanted to go for an already long comment. There were other parts of the UK, with different kinds of people went to different parts of the colonies. The people who mostly settled in Virginia were the “Cavaliers.” They were the people back in England who were on the losing Royalist side. They fought against the Parliamentarian forces in the English civil war. The Cavaliers came mostly from southwestern England.
From: https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/the-cavaliers/
Quite unlike the Puritan settlement in New England or the Quaker colony in the Delaware valley, the Cavaliers had not come to America to create any sort of utopian society. Instead, they came for conquest and prestige. The aristocratic landowners thought that they’d replicate some of the Spanish imperial success in America, and immediately battled the Natives in an attempt to subjugate and/or exterminate them.
I would also say that most of the white people of the south were not rich plantation running, slave owners. Most white southerners were poor.
For more on the “American Nations” see:
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/american-nations-series/
“And before you say that the nobility were not the ones colonizing, we could make the same statements about the industrial Overlords of the Northern States.”
DeleteOK, that is just nonsense. Industrialists were always working and innovating, if they didn’t, they would fail. Andrew Carnage drove down the price to steel to an unbelievable degree, making everyone richer. Cornelius Vanderbilt drove down the price of both ferry and railroad transport, making everyone richer. John D. Rockefeller drove down the price of oil, making everyone richer. He saved a whole lot of whales in the process. Henry Ford created the Model T and the assembly line, driving down the price of automobiles, making everyone richer. No one was forced to work for them. They had no slaves, and they raised wages. The reason people worked for them was because they could get higher wages and a higher standard of living then they could have had otherwise. What you call “industrial Overlords” were responsible for improving everyone’s lives to a degree never before enabled in all of human history. You really need to stop listening to leftist propaganda. That most likely includes much of what you may have been told in school on the subject.
“The North rejected slavery because it was economically infeasible, not because Northerners love work so very much. The colonies (rather, the wealthy, influential colonial leaders) resisted England's economic plan because it was preventing them from making money.”
This is only partly true. The moral feelings of New England felt that everyone could be brother in Christ. Anyone could become one of them if they met the high moral standards of the community. They pushed for the end to slavery on moral grounds. The same reason the north forced the south to end Jim Crow. It had no effect on the north, but northerners still went on the Freedom Rides and got their brains bashed in by southerners because they thought that it was the morally right thing to do.
And I think I already went over the fact that the north was more industrious then the south. They did have a stronger work ethic.
“The point is, human language is descriptive, not ontologically accurate. It refers to the real world but is not the real world.”
My point is if scientists are going to say that such and such differences in within other species = sub-species, then they should apply the same standards to humans.
“It's not entirely accurate to say that all children in America face the same environment. “
DeleteWhen did I ever say they did?
What I said was that the differing environments one generally finds in the US are not extreme enough to have a large effect on the variation in IQ one sees between individuals and between groups. We can see this in adoption studies, separated-at-birth twin studies, and the fact that black kids who grow up in rich families have lower scores on tests then white and Asian children who grow up in poor families. We can see that the amount of spending in schools has zero effect on outcomes.
“A white child that works hard, goes to the library, gets schooling can be more confident in an eventual economic payout for this labor than a black child.”
“It's not a money issue, it's an economics issue. Whites have a higher rate of return for the same labor (mental or physical). Why should Blacks contribute the same work for less reward?”
No, just no. People should NOT be paid for their labor, only their productivity. You could spend all day digging and then filling back in a hole in the ground. You did a whole lot of labor, but were not productive. The idea that value comes from labor is communistic. It is only productively that matters.
IQ has a very strong correlation to earning power. Like I said before, black people with IQs of 100 make about as much as whites or Asians with IQs of 100. Any variation is explainable by the cost of living where they live. For example, a lot of black people live in Mississippi, and Mississippi has a lower cost of living then most of the rest of the states.
“Without passing over your larger argument, I wonder if part of the issue is indeed the time factor. Would Africa be better off if colonialism had lasted longer? Certainly Northern/Western Europe benefited from Roman rule. I realize this strays dangerously close to "White Man's Burden" territory, but it's worth a mental exercise.”
Wait, weren’t you saying last time that colonialism was bad for Africa? Now you are asking if it would have been better if it had lasted longer?
I think it would have been better if British rule had lasted longer. We can see today that the areas that were colonized longest by the British are doing better (in general) than areas that were colonized for a shorter time or by other powers. Belgium rule in the Congo, not so great.
“What if Western imperialism had been long-term and race-blind after the fashion of the Roman empire? Romans didn't give a shit about race; they cared about citizenship - about citizen vs. barbarian. I think colonialism could have been a lot more mutually beneficial under these circumstances. Certainly we would have been less likely to see the magical thinking backlash.
Side note - English domination of Ireland doesn't quite fit the example. England and Ireland were on more comparable tech levels. The Irish weren't going to condemn the Longbow as sorcery.”
Explain Singapore. Explain Hong Kong. Explain South Korea and Taiwan today (They were under brutal Japanese occupation until 1945. These were areas that when colonized by the English and the Japanese were far behind them in tech.
“Also, thanks for clarifying. It might be fun to have a follow-up argument on Christianity vs. atheism when we both have more time.”
No. I have zero interest in this subject anymore, but back in High School you couldn’t get me to shut up about it. The issue today is Islam vs everyone else. I am fine with Christianity for the most part. I don’t agree with it, but it isn’t really that big of a deal to me.
“I was saying that I still see White Supremacists running around IRL and on the web and I don't understand how those people can still exist.”
DeleteThey are around for the same reason you have people who are black supremacists, Chicano supremacists, Jewish supremacists, Chinese supremacists…. Its not a great mystery.
“The breakup of the United States is probably the only thing that could create the society you want. I mean, I assume that you wouldn't want to live even in the American South with the Scotch-Irish. Demographically speaking, the Anglo-Saxons don't have a shot in hell.”
How do you know what kind of society I want? I am not an Anglo-Saxon, but I understand we have them to thank for a great many good things. The Scotch-Irish make great soldiers. The Confederacy had great soldiers. Patton was Scotch-Irish. Andrew Jackson who beat the bloody British at the Battle of New Orleans was Scotch-Irish.
I think the US has been altruistic to an insanely gullible and possibly suicidal degree when it comes to who we have been letting into the country for the last several decades. I REALLY, REALLY hate to say it, but I think that the US could do with some less altruism and more intolerance in regard to SOME outsiders. I think it is insane that the US has been doing things like flying in Somali Muslims to live in Minneapolis.
“People will work harder for higher rewards. But systematic racism puts the higher rewards out of the hands of most Blacks - even Blacks on the right-hand side of the bell curve.”
Bullshit. Companies are always hunting for competent blacks. They are like gold. Blacks with an 130 IQ make about as much (within a few hundred bucks per year) as everyone else who has an 130 IQ.
“Part of the reason we see so much anti-social behavior among poor Blacks is because society is anti-them.”
Bullshit. Society bends over backwards for blacks. They can score much lower on tests and still get into collages and jobs that whites and Asians have to score much higher on. Hell, the Japanese were put in camps in WWII. They were discriminated against. The Chinese were discriminated against. They are doing just fine today.
You see tons of black people in sports and entertainment.
You always hear about how it is hard for blacks to get cabs to pick them up in places like NYC. Well, most cabs are not driven by white people, they are driven by brown and black people. In fact, cabs driven by black people are less likely to pick up black people, due to their own experiences, or the experiences of their friends being stiffed or robbed by other blacks.
Let me ask you a question. If there were two teams of basketball players, both with about the same height s and builds, but one was black and the other was northeast Asian, who would you guess would win? If you guessed right you win a million dollars, but if you guess wrong, you get shot in the head. Which team do you pick? Same question but now they are taking a math test. Who do you pick? Guess what, you are discriminating, and that is OK sometimes.
One of the issues people like to bring up is when they do studies where they send out applications to employers that are the same except one has a ‘black’ sounding name, with the other one having a ‘white’ sounding name. The ‘white’ sounding named one has more luck in getting an interview. They say this is just evil racism and proves that equally competent blacks are decimated against. I disagree with those findings. The reason for this is because there have been other studies done that show that white people with much lower educational credentials then blacks with higher educational credentials do better on actual tests. They did one where they tested reading comprehension, and if I remember correctly, white high school drop outs had better comprehension then blacks who had four year degrees from collage. This is what affirmative action gets you. Employers, and people in general, are able to recognize patterns. If you keep getting blacks who look good on paper, but many end up showing while working that they can’t do anything right…...
DeleteJP Morgan had a system for how to decide how much to pay their traders in bonuses. It was a simple math problem that figured out how much value a trader brought to the company that year. There was a black trader who sued JP Morgan because he wasn’t paid as large of a bonus as others. But how JP Morgan figured out how much to pay was a MATH PROBLEM! The court ruled in favor of the black trader! Math is racist! That is how much this country bends over for black people. You see that all over the place. Yet when blacks act like that, they hurt other blacks because now employers are afraid to hire them. You don’t want to hire a walking lawsuit.
“Think of the gentleman who was murdered recently by police for selling "loosies" - single cigarettes.”
Sigh. He was not “murdered.” He died resisting arrest due to being massively out of shape. The highest ranking officer on site was black. If a white guy had been doing the same thing, the cops would have done the same thing.
“So. Let's say that you want good for yourself and your family. You can either play by the rules and work at a job where you know you will be paid less on the basis of your ethnicity……”
People in the US are not paid less due to their ethnicity. That is a lie.
“or you can try to game the system and reap greater rewards. What's the rational choice?”
The rational choice is to obey the law so you don’t end up in prison or dead, but, you know, that would take having a low time preference to figure that out.
“Likely not as much as if I had been an Aryan Dudebro, …”
Aryan Dudebro, really?
“Consider the loosies of the field. It is objectively more rational to choose the unlawful activity of selling loosies it terms of effort to payoff calculations.”
Nope, he be dead now.
“Or in other words, if blacks do indeed receive less compensation for equal work within our social system,….”
No they don’t. They are paid the same as whites based on productivity. In some cases they are paid the same as whites even when they are LESS productive. See my JP Morgan example.
“You can argue against the assertion that blacks receive less compensation for equal work.”
I do and I did.
Some links:
A very short video of Prof. Rushton talking about Regression to the Mean in regard to race and IQ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpmlqtnrec8
A good half hour video on the IQ Gap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bps8EXqzLI
A three hour and forty minute long video on Race and Intelligence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-e5XjlmZA
Maybe some weekend you could sit down and watch the whole thing. It is really interesting and debunks a whole lot of common objections to the idea that there are different average innate IQs among people/races.
END OF POSTS.
I mentioned before that I was shooting from the hip while researching this further. I'm going to explain a little bit about what that entails and why I will only be able to shoot from the hip for a while.
ReplyDelete1). Read/watch/listen to materials from one side.
This is the stage I am in right now, and it includes the videos you have been linking to. It will likely take a year or so. The length will depend on how much material is available and how much of it contributes useful information. I want to make sure I have a good feel for the material/evidence/interpretations of evidence before making judgments on its validity.
2). Read/watch/listen to materials written in response to this material.
Specifically, material attacking it and or/providing alternate explanations. This will likely take another year or so (again, depending on what useful material is available). Simply because one side has its evidence/interpretations of evidence does not mean it is necessarily right.
3). Synthesize the material and make judgments.
Self-explanatory.
I am willing to learn and to be confronted by evidence. I am not willing to swallow interpretations of evidence wholesale, particularly when it conflicts with my immediate experience.
And that, for me, has been the largest factor in preventing me from accepting your claims wholesale. I simply have never met the Blacks you are describing. Maybe I have gone my entire life only interacting with the far, far right end of the bell curve, but I simply have not met Blacks of substandard intelligence with a higher frequency than Whites of substandard intelligence.
Can my mind be changed? Yes, with sufficient evidence + sufficient time to interpret that evidence.
If it seems that I am being difficult in cherry picking points to respond to, it's because that's what I'm qualified to do right now. The core elements of your argument are things that I don't know enough about yet to respond to systematically.
You're making big claims. I'm willing to take those claims seriously enough to look into them further. Until then, I am going to cherry pick. If you're cool with that, we can keep talking. If you're not, I'll see you in a year or so.
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...And my browser crashed, eating my next comment. Dammit.
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's try this again.
ReplyDelete1). So the Southern slave owners were English nobility and the Southern commoners were Scotch-Irish commoners. The Anglos has longer time preferences and more dominating instincts.
What this indicates to me is that longer time preferences =/= more hardworking. A person with a long time preference could also be a slaver, that is to say, someone who is willing to put in work in order to dominate others into working for them.
This would actually be an accurate description of most nobility and warrior classes in general. You fight the battles to gain slaves/serfs.
Which ties into what I was saying about Industrialists. While they were initially very competitive, hard-working, etc., they used this skill to build empires, not to work the land for the rest of their lives. I'm not talking about imaginary Marxist capitalists - money-grubbing slavers who contribute nothing to society. I'm talking about men who work hard to build empires. Yes, they usually do improve the world around them. That's not their goal. Their goal is to acquire wealth and power - not that there's anything unnatural about that.
What I'm getting at is that the North industrialized to make more money, not because they were inherently harder-working. Their most popular inventions were labor-saving devices. The cotton gin makes slavery (in terms of slave labor time needed to produce cotton) more profitable. The assembly line makes automobile construction easier and more profitable.
Northerners aren't harder working. They're better at making devices that mean less work.
Moreover, if the differences between Anglos and the Scotch/Irish are indeed this intense, that indicates to me that the idea of a "White Race" is bunk (beyond the purely superficial). Compare it to the European Union. Fiscal policies that work for Germany do not work for Greece. A society for Anglos would not work for the Irish. The society that greatly benefited the Anglo slave-masters did not benefit the Scotch/Irish commoners whose wages were driven down by slave labor.
And we're talking about three ethnic groups from the same island chain. How the heck could we say there is any true genetic kinship between an Irishman and a Romanian?
2). "No, just no. People should NOT be paid for their labor, only their productivity"
I'm talking about the same pay for the same work, not the same pay for different work (or as you put it, different productivity). The JP Morgan example? If that is indeed an accurate description of what took place, then fuck that guy. The company instituted a meritocratic, color-blind policy and he fell short. That's not racism, that's exactly the sort of system we (well, I) want to move to.
However, let me give you a personal example. My roommate sells insurance. He works in an area of Kentucky where customers regularly tell him they would not have let him into the house if he was Black. In my humble opinion, an insurance salesman's race has nothing to do with their ability to sell insurance. And yet, because there are racists in the world, it does affect a Black person's ability to do their jobs.
Does that mean that a Black person should get a higher commission/bonus to even things out? No, of course not. But it does mean that racism is real and that it affects the data.
Even if a Black child is adopted by a White Middle Class family, it most certainly does not mean that they face the same amount of pressure as a White Middle Class child. If anything, it means that they will be more regularly exposed to people who will give them shit about their race. Do they have it as bad as a kid in Somalia? Of course not. But it's enough to have a significant effect on their development.
2 of ?
3). "Wait, weren’t you saying last time that colonialism was bad for Africa? Now you are asking if it would have been better if it had lasted longer? "
ReplyDeleteYes. I'm not working off of a script, Anon. Your comparison between Africa and Singapore, between countries that experienced a short colonial period and a long colonial period, was both apt and accurate. I am most definitely willing to accept and process new information.
"Explain Singapore. Explain Hong Kong. Explain South Korea and Taiwan today (They were under brutal Japanese occupation until 1945. These were areas that when colonized by the English and the Japanese were far behind them in tech."
Up until WWII, Chinese/Korean students flocked to Japan to study Western science and technology because the Japanese had already done the bulk of the work need to Easternize (spell check says that's not a word) it. The Japanese had an entire vocabulary of Sinicized terms that were of immense value in spreading Western tech throughout East Asia in general （電気、列車、歯車、原子 - pretty much every scientific and technical term that didn't exist).
We don't have a Japan in Africa - a nation that was not only able to keep its independence, but to provide an example on how to separate Western tech from Western culture. Because the imperial powers (including white settlers) were the driving edge behind this tech, it was naturally viewed as an outside imposition.
Remember, science was viewed as an outgrowth of Christianity (and Christianity as an outgrowth of Western civilization) in the age of imperialism. It was not presented as something separate from Western dress, Western food, and Western lifestyles. To accept Western tech meant to discard your native culture and become "civilized." Westernized. The enemy.
4). "How do you know what kind of society I want?"
I assumed, given your paeans of praise for the age of exploration and the scientific revolution, that you would generally favor the culture of the Anglo-Saxons. I eliminated the racial groups you considered to have shorter time preferences, including the Scottish, Irish, and Lithuanians.
This was a reasonable assumption. If it was incorrect, feel free to correct it.
So, what is your ideal society?
5). "Bullshit. Society bends over backwards for blacks."
Certain elements of society bend over backwards for blacks. Yes, by the time you get to the college entrance/career stages, everyone wants the soft-spoken Ben Carson archetype or the Reformed Thug archetype around to fill in their Mandated Diversity Bingo Cards. But before that? The level of discrimination I have personally seen against young non-whites defies rational explanation.
I mean, I realize that Ahmed kid's suitcase clock wasn't anything special, but do you really think he would've faced the same level of discrimination if he was white? Granted, he also wouldn't have had as many people rushing to defend him, but there you go.
6). "Aryan Dudebro, really?"
I tried to popularize "Kings of Sweden," but nobody went for it. Alas.
Again, I realize that none of this gets to your main objection (Blacks are genetically intellectually inferior to Whites), but I'm going to get my intellectual house in order before tackling that directly.
Final of 3
Hey Rev, how you doing?
ReplyDelete“Read/watch/listen to materials from one side.”
“Read/watch/listen to materials written in response to this material.”
“Synthesize the material and make judgments.”
That is what you should do. I already told you about the book by Thomas Sowell called “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” that argues for cultural reasons for the gab between blacks and whites.
“And that, for me, has been the largest factor in preventing me from accepting your claims wholesale. I simply have never met the Blacks you are describing. Maybe I have gone my entire life only interacting with the far, far right end of the bell curve, but I simply have not met Blacks of substandard intelligence with a higher frequency than Whites of substandard intelligence.”
You sound like you are pretty educated. My guess is that in the circles you travel in, you interact with blacks who are on the high end of black IQ.
“Can my mind be changed? Yes, with sufficient evidence + sufficient time to interpret that evidence.”
“You're making big claims. I'm willing to take those claims seriously enough to look into them further. Until then, I am going to cherry pick. If you're cool with that, we can keep talking. If you're not, I'll see you in a year or so.”
I understand. It took me a little while to get to where I am right now. I didn’t start out this way. I had to learn this all on my own, but I have an inquisitive mind and don’t care about what others think about it. If the majority, including the schools, believes/teaches something stupid, it is still stupid. I want to know the truth, regardless of what other may think.
“What I'm getting at is that the North industrialized to make more money, not because they were inherently harder-working. Their most popular inventions were labor-saving devices. The cotton gin makes slavery (in terms of slave labor time needed to produce cotton) more profitable. The assembly line makes automobile construction easier and more profitable.
Northerners aren't harder working. They're better at making devices that mean less work.”
Work for works sake is kind of stupid. What I was saying was that they were more industrious. In the north they build bridges across their rivers and streams. In the south they would, in many cases, just ford them over and over. So the north would put in more work now to make things easier later.
“And we're talking about three ethnic groups from the same island chain. How the heck could we say there is any true genetic kinship between an Irishman and a Romanian?”
DeleteLike I said, it is all a matter of degree. There are a million different shades of blue, all with their own names, all alike but different. My issue is that if scientists are going to classify such and such a difference within some other species = sub-species, then we should apply the same standards to humans.
“However, let me give you a personal example. My roommate sells insurance. He works in an area of Kentucky where customers regularly tell him they would not have let him into the house if he was Black. In my humble opinion, an insurance salesman's race has nothing to do with their ability to sell insurance. And yet, because there are racists in the world, it does affect a Black person's ability to do their jobs.”
I agree that it is shitty that good black people sometimes have to deal with being treated with suspicion by people who don’t know them. But that is the thing, the people DON’T know them. They just have to play the odds. Black people are MUCH more likely to commit crimes. They are 12% of the population; yet commit half of all murders. When I was at Fort Bragg, I would often go to an indoor flea market in town because it had a shop that sold some things I liked. The flea market was full of like 80% black shoppers. One day I brought a couple of friends with me. One white and one black. We got out of the car, my black friend saw all the black people, said “there are to many black people here.” He then went back to the car to get his gun to put under his cloths. This was a black guy! It isn’t just white people who treat black that they don’t know with suspicion. Black people do, too. So do Korean shopkeepers. You think maybe there could be a reason for that?
“Even if a Black child is adopted by a White Middle Class family, it most certainly does not mean that they face the same amount of pressure as a White Middle Class child. If anything, it means that they will be more regularly exposed to people who will give them shit about their race. Do they have it as bad as a kid in Somalia? Of course not. But it's enough to have a significant effect on their development.”
How come adopted East Asians in white families do better then white kids? How come half-and-half children end up with IQs halfway between the two races that make them up when they are adults. I am of course speaking in general.
“Up until WWII, Chinese/Korean students flocked to Japan to study Western science and technology….”
DeleteThere were western schools set up in Africa for Africans. Some Africans even went to study in Europe. Most of the leaders of the African independence movements were western educated themselves.
“We don't have a Japan in Africa - a nation that was not only able to keep its independence, but to provide an example on how to separate Western tech from Western culture. Because the imperial powers (including white settlers) were the driving edge behind this tech, it was naturally viewed as an outside imposition.”
Or maybe Africa didn’t have the overall genetic infrastructure to make it work.
Not only that, but Haiti has been independent for 200 years. How long does it take for them to get their act together? You want to know the time in its history it was the least dysfunctional? It was when it was run by the US military from 1915-1934. That was the high point for Haiti.
Liberia has been an independent country in Africa for a long time, too. It was never colonized by Europe. Ethiopia was only colonized for four years.
Look at the mess black-run cities in the USA are today.
“Remember, science was viewed as an outgrowth of Christianity (and Christianity as an outgrowth of Western civilization) in the age of imperialism. It was not presented as something separate from Western dress, Western food, and Western lifestyles. To accept Western tech meant to discard your native culture and become "civilized." Westernized. The enemy.”
Not sure I buy the whole ‘science was viewed as an outgrowth of Christianity’ thing. Maybe some people may have thought that, but I don’t think that is overall the case.
“So, what is your ideal society?”
It would take to way to long to explain everything. Let me put it this way, everyone could vote, but some people’s votes would count more based on OBJECTIVE standards. However, part of the legislature would be picked by lot, with the higher objective standards one meets, the better the odds of your name being picked. There is a lot more to this, but it is a distraction from the topic.
“Certain elements of society bend over backwards for blacks. Yes, by the time you get to the college entrance/career stages, everyone wants the soft-spoken Ben Carson archetype or the Reformed Thug archetype around to fill in their Mandated Diversity Bingo Cards. But before that? The level of discrimination I have personally seen against young non-whites defies rational explanation.”
DeleteWell, I am not from the south, but I have been there. I have also known a number of southern people. My guess is that what you are saying may be true for the south as compared to the north.
You are going to find discrimination everywhere of one form or another. Discrimination isn’t necessarily bad, it is just preferences. I think that the government and the law should treat everyone equally, but should not get involved with private discrimination. There have been to many once nice, low crime, high trust neighborhood and towns that have been completely destroyed due to the government forcing section 8 housing in and forcing landlords and real estate agents to rent/sell to blacks. Right now the Obama administration is starting to give poor blacks even more money for housing and telling them they must move into rich neighborhoods if they want the money for housing. Every time the government tries stuff like this, it just destroys the neighborhood.
“I mean, I realize that Ahmed kid's suitcase clock wasn't anything special, but do you really think he would've faced the same level of discrimination if he was white? Granted, he also wouldn't have had as many people rushing to defend him, but there you go.”
Yeah, because the Somalis in the Twin Cities don’t have a history of joining Islamic terrorist groups…. Oh, wait…..
Please, dude, there was a white kid who was suspended from school due to chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. It is standard these days for schools to over-react to everything, regardless of the race of the kid.
“Again, I realize that none of this gets to your main objection (Blacks are genetically intellectually inferior to Whites), but I'm going to get my intellectual house in order before tackling that directly.”
OK. I am going to link you to some blogs, posts, and videos beyond what I have already. I will come back to check on this spot in a week (or two). At that point if you have any questions, I will do my best to go over them. Does that sound good?
The first is Jayman’s Blog. He is a black guy (not that it matters when it comes to the truth, but I think you know why I point that out). He is even more of a hereditarian then I am. I think environment plays a larger role in observed variation then he does. So I disagree with him on some small things, but I will admit that he knows a lot more about most of this stuff then I do.
Deletehttps://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/
The next is HBD chick. She talks less about race and more about differences within Europe, but not just that.
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/1007-2/
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/start-here/
For the next one, it is a post with an attached youtube video that his just him reading the post, so you can either read the post or just listen to the video. It talks about race differences in intelligence, genes, and crime/poverty.
http://spawktalk.blogspot.com/2014/07/to-zaunstar-on-race-intelligence-and.html
This next post has to do with defending James Watson, the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA! Dr. Watson had said this:
“There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”
He also talked about how he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address.
Well, of course people freaked the fuck out and he got fired from his position for being a double plus un-good thinker.
Anyway, here is the post defending him:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
OK, now for videos:
ReplyDeleteThis first one is ‘Does Race Exist’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHDWlnah3b0
This one deals with Egalitarian Tactics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSoJMppGAAk
This one has him criticizing “Atheistkult” (Atheist SJWs) and talking about how they are just like Creationists when it comes to the topic of race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD0yBdObDlg
These next two videos are from another guy. The first one is about Race and IQ denial. If you are not going to watch the whole thing, at least watch the last part starting at 42 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyWIiJMQgAk
This next one is about race and crime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHwzfpS0d2c
This one is a talk by Prof. Rushton from back in 2000. It is about what was at the time the “Latest Research on Race.” He talks a lot about the differences between blacks, whites, and Asians, and how you see the same ordering among many different traits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1mgrTGeDPM
A short video with Charles Murray talking about the Black/White IQ gap. It is about four minutes long. You should also check out some other videos of Charles Murray talking about the Bell Curve. They are pretty easy to find.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsjCBxiY9z0
This next video is a critique by a guy of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” that I think is worth listening to. He also provides some other links in the low bar under the video to some other critiques of that book if you are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSjv3kEY0hE
Well, that is all for now. Do check out the above links and the things I linked you to before this. I will check back in a week or two. But really I don’t see how someone can believe in evolution yet still say that populations that evolved in massively different environments could possibly end up the same in the brain.
Take care.
END OF POSTS
Hey, me again. This is what Ahmed Mohamed's clock looked like:
ReplyDeletehttps://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/ahmed-hohamed-clock.jpg
Try getting something like that near the President or though the TSA. Well, though the TSA shouldn't be to hard due to them being incompetent....
10 year old arrested for possession of a toy gun:
Deletehttp://alextimes.com/2013/02/10-year-old-student-arrested-for-possession-of-a-toy-gun/
Little girl searched by school admins due to having a paper gun:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/01/24/philadelphia-schools-admin-paper-gun/
Pop Tart gun:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/examiner-recommends-school-board-uphold-pop-tart-suspension/
Child Suspended for Brandishing CHICKEN:
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/feb/01/news/mn-19819
Student suspended for wearing NRA t-shirt:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/13/family-of-8th-grader-suspended-for-nra-t-shirt-sues-school-board/
Student suspended for saying "Bless You":
http://fox13now.com/2014/08/20/student-suspended-for-saying-bless-you-at-school/
It isn't a race thing. Out of all those cases, the one that looked most like a real weapon was the clock.
(People have watched too many bad movies if they are worried by that bit of electronics.)
DeleteMy point was that there have been many white kids who have gotten in trouble for really stupid reasons in schools these days. It isn't a race thing. His stupid clock looked more like a bomb then a Pop Tart or Chicken looks like a gun.
Delete"there have been many white kids who have gotten in trouble for really stupid reasons"
DeleteTrue.
"His stupid clock looked more like a bomb"
Not to me. It looked like a clock. No boom-making-resembling components. (Remember, even in a Hollywood ticking-clock-bomb, the clock is only the trigger. The bomb is the part that goes boom.)
I know what a bomb looks like. Most teachers don't. But teachers do know that a pop tart or a chunk of chicken are not weapons. Do you agree that his clock looked MORE like a bomb then a pop tart looks like a gun? I mean, he could have had the explosives and the blasting cap/fuse hidden somewhere in or near the school to assemble later.
DeleteI think it was stupid to call the cops, and it was stupid to get him in trouble, but it is certainly less stupid then then the pop tart "gun" issue.
Heh, in the absence of an SI stupidity scale, I'd be happy to leave it at both the clock and the pop tart being stupid issues.
DeleteThe kid was a fraud. He didn't invent the clock, he just pulled apart an old clock and put it in the case. He was trolling for a reaction, and he got just what he wanted. His dad is a big anti-Islamophobia activist. They set this up.
DeleteSee:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/18/real-story-istandwithahmed/
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/
http://therightscoop.com/weve-been-had-ahmed-didnt-even-make-that-clock/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEmSwJTqpgY
The kid is a fucking liar who pulled a stunt, and because this country is full of pussies when it comes to race, he was richly rewarded for it.
Hey, one more thing I just found about racial brain diff:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2034240347/2049891353/mmc7.pdf
A new interview with Charles Murray regarding race, ethnic, and gender differences in intelligence.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lsa_97KIlc
Jonathan Haidt talking about leftists in the Social Sciences denying race and gender.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNtOCCSSRc
So, Rev, do you have any questions or anything in regard to what we have been talking about? I know you said you would take a year or so on this topic, but I most likely won't see it whenever you post on the topic a year+ from now. If you want I could check back in in a week or two, but I most likely will have moved on in after a year. I don't tend to keep reading the same blogs for over one year, as I like to learn different things, and be exposed to different ideas. There are only so many hour in a day, so I tend to move from site to site over time to learn new things and ways of thinking.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, it has been fun. Take care.
BTW, something that just came out. Anthropologists have found that they can tell if fingerprints came from a white person or from a black person.
Deletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3253295/Fingerprints-reveal-black-white-Distinctive-patterns-person-African-European-descent.html
Social construct my ass.
Something I should have posted much earlier. Professor Douglas Whitman of Illinois State University discusses human subspeciation.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeb09GS7ids
Hey Anon!
ReplyDeleteMy ideas on the subject currently evolving, but I do want to thank you for the links and analysis. I will get through them all, however slowly.
These thoughts are still in flux, but right now I'm working on:
1). What are the limitations of our current understanding of genetics (ie, what can we say with a high degree of certainty and what is speculation)?
2). Is "race" the most useful concept (when there is also considerable intra-race diversity)?
3). To what extent does social discrimination affect the data (I think it's ridiculous to claim to doesn't affect anything, but there's also a certain burden of proof for saying "discrimination accounts for everything")?
4). Why is there such a gulf between what I see in my direct experience (people living in slums act like idiots regardless of race, people living in good neighborhoods act like intelligent people regardless of race) and what the hard data suggests?
Are the studies working from faulty assumptions/bad samples? Can the results be replicated? I could go on, but the main issue I have is - why the gap between what I see to be observably true in day-to-day life and what these studies claim?
Anyway, my gmail is therev3point0 [insert at signs and so on] if you ever want to drop a line.
Hey,
DeleteI get that working though all this will take a while. I will try to go over your questions really quickly but I think as you just work your way though studying this, you will on your own seek out the info that you are looking for. Even if people are studying the same thing, they will have their own ways of looking at it, and deciding what parts of it to study.
“1). What are the limitations of our current understanding of genetics (ie, what can we say with a high degree of certainty and what is speculation)?”
That question is way to open ended for us to really go over here, and in any case, it is well beyond my own knowledge base. What I would say to really pay attention to though, is look at how things are described in relation to other forms of life vs how they are described in regard to humans. You have to understand that right now there is a kind social-political understanding among most people, and in much of academia that certain kinds of studies in regard to what we have been talking about should be suppressed. It is a form of presentism and social-political pressure of ’right-thinking’ people on how science is done in much of the west. The Chinese have no such hangups. So a great way to see how things are distorted is to look at how similar genetic differences are described among different animals vs how we are allowed to speak about those differences in regard to humans.
Back in Nazi Germany, theoretical physics of the kind practiced by Einstein was called “Jewish Physics” and denigrated by German ‘experts’. At the same time in the Soviet Union, all the ‘experts’ called those same physics “Bourgeoisie Physics” and they were just as denigrated. While the US isn’t anywhere near as intellectually oppressive as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, there is still a ton of institutional force to get people to think the ‘right’ way. Look at what happened to James Watson. This guy won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, yet was professionally purged due to telling the truth as he saw it about Africa.
The present day intellectual environment is more concerned with being politically correct rather then just being correct. I think a good example of the kinds of hoops the ‘right-thinkers’ have to jump though, look at how much the “AAPA Statement on the Biological Aspects of Race” is self contradictory and in many cases vacuous. There was a youtuber called “blackacidlizzard” who did a great job taking it apart. Just so you know, I am NO fan of him, and I think that many of his other views are wrong and I have big issues in regard to his biases in other areas, but he did do a great job on this one video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtqNGCc_oyM
In any case, I think you will have a better understanding of this question once you have gone over the links I posted and have done some digging of your own. Just watch out for how the present social-political environment can warp things, even within so-called ‘science’. Remember about “Jewish Physics”/“Bourgeoisies Physics.”
“2). Is "race" the most useful concept (when there is also considerable intra-race diversity)?”
It is useful if you find it useful. Some scientists my find it useful in their field, others may not. My issue is that I think that today the same standards are not being used in regard to humans as are used in regard to other life forms, and that is not due to real science, but due to the presentism of the current social-political environment of the west. Lee Kuan Yew, the leader of Singapore, had knewn that there were racial differences, and would say so. If he were a US politician, he could not have. So if you want to run for office in the US, talking about racial differences would not be ‘useful’ to you, regardless if it is true. Talking about racial differences would NOT be ‘useful’ if you want to get a job as a teacher or at a university before you have tenure, and maybe not even after. The truth doesn’t matter in much of academia today, only ‘feelz’.
“3). To what extent does social discrimination affect the data (I think it's ridiculous to claim to doesn't affect anything, but there's also a certain burden of proof for saying "discrimination accounts for everything”)?”
DeleteIn the US, North East Asians do better then white people. Asians and whites are discriminated AGANST in collage admissions and for many jobs. Jews have been discriminated against since forever. The Chinese are discriminated against in South East Asia. The number of Chinese who throughout history have been lynched in South East Asia is far, far greater then the number of blacks who were ever lynched in the US. Yet they still do better then the natives.
“4). Why is there such a gulf between what I see in my direct experience (people living in slums act like idiots regardless of race, people living in good neighborhoods act like intelligent people regardless of race) and what the hard data suggests?”
First off, the kind of people who end up living in slums are most likely going to be the worst of that racial group. So, yeah, stupid blacks and stupid whites will end up there, but if you look at the population mix of the slums vs the population mix of the good neighborhoods, I am sure that you will find there is a big difference. One thing to consider is that many (maybe most) of the black middle class have bullshit government jobs. They are not out creating wealth.
There is an exception to the ‘idiots live in slums’ thing, and that is new immigrants from places like China. Many times they will end up in shitty areas and are preyed on by their black neighbors. Their kids will get out of there as adults, though, and go on to have a high standard of life. Blacks tend to just keep living there generation after generation.
“Are the studies working from faulty assumptions/bad samples? Can the results be replicated? I could go on, but the main issue I have is - why the gap between what I see to be observably true in day-to-day life and what these studies claim?”
Steven Pinker says that, unlike much of psychology, (of which most studies are garbage) IQ results/studies are greatly replicable.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/pinker-replicability-crisis-in-psych-doesnt-apply-to-iq-huge-ns-replicable-results-but-people-hate-the-message/
Take care and I hope you learned something.
At risking of starting this up again, I forgot a few other things I'm considering:
Delete5). Plasticity - given the "recent, copious and regional" argument of human evolution to what extent can the intelligence range of a race shift under environmental pressures? I'm not talking about culture and food supply here. I mean, what environmental pressures must be brought to bear to make the top 5% of a given population the new normal? Evolutionarily speaking, what does it take to shift a race's (sub-species') intelligence up or down?
6). To say nothing of side issues, such as if high intelligence is always desirable (given the correlation between high intelligence and depression), the mechanics of interbreeding (does it necessarily bring down average intelligence? what about hybrid vigor?), the role of technology in modifying intelligence, genetic ethics, and a host of other "ripple issues."
I definitely learned one thing: there are holes in my knowledge of the genetic argument. That in itself is worth very much.
Hey again.
DeleteI want another crack at Q2. “2). Is "race" the most useful concept (when there is also considerable intra-race diversity)?”
My concern is not if it is useful, but if it is true. I think that the evidence says that human races do exist. As to usefulness, doctors prescribe some medicines to people based on race. That seems pretty useful. Knowing if a suspect is black or white based on their fingerprints at a crime scene is pretty useful.
"Evolutionarily speaking, what does it take to shift a race's (sub-species') intelligence up or down?"
A lot of things could cause that. It always has to do with selective pressure. The black plague most likely boosted Europe's mean IQ, just because so many people died, with most of them being poor. Welfare most likely leads to a lower mean IQ over time due to stupid people being able to have a bunch of now viable offspring, with smart people putting off reproduction due to having to pay for all the stupid people. Look at what the reproductive rates are for Middle Easterners and Africans in Northern Europe today. If you look at the testing in schools in places like England, the scores are dropping due to all the non-European children in the schools.
People always say how stupid US students are based on the test scores, but if you break it down by race, our white kids do pretty well compared to Europe, our Asians do well compared to Asia, and our Mexicans do well compared to Mexico. It is just that our many browns and blacks drag down the over all score for the USA compared to other first world countries that have less of them. There are some other issues with who/how many students are taking the tests in those other countries as well.
Brains cost a lot of calories, and if people are able to get by and reproduce without having high-functioning brains, then over time those brains will be selected against.
"6). To say nothing of side issues, such as if high intelligence is always desirable "
If you want to be able to maintain civilization, it is. Though humans could get by with out it if they had to. Life would be nasty, brutal, and short, though. The population would be much smaller.
"the mechanics of interbreeding (does it necessarily bring down average intelligence?"
DeleteI'm not sure what you are asking here. A Jew and a North East Asian would most likely have pretty smart kids. A Bushman and a Pakistani, most likely not.
Are you talking about inbreeding? Then, yes, it most likely would.
"what about hybrid vigor?"
I think 'hybrid vigor' is a greatly overstated idea. Look at Mexico, it is mostly made up of a mixed race group. When you think of Mexico, do you really think of 'vigor'? Do they have the best scientists or athletes? One thing they do have are the fattest people on the planet. They are even fatter then Americans despite being much poorer. Look at Brazil. That country has a diverse population, and it is a huge mess of a country. It has high rates of violence, STDs, a crumbling economy, out of control corruption. They are really only kind of good at soccer. If the US stays on the path it is on, we may end up becoming the cold version of Brazil given time.
Something else to think about when people talk about 'hybrid vigor' is something called 'out-breeding depression'. This can happen because within a breading population there are genes that have evolved to work within that population. If someone from that population out-breeds with someone from a much different population, that can have issues too. Mixed race kids tend to be more depressed and there can be issues with finding an organ doner for them if they need one. I'm NOT vehemently anti-race-mixing or anything, but it is an issue to think about. I wouldn't want the US, or any country, to be genitally swamped by outside populations. I would be totally against Japan being flooded with white people. It would stop being Japan.
" the role of technology in modifying intelligence, genetic ethics, and a host of other "ripple issues.""
That is the interesting stuff coming down the pipeline. If science can find a way to make everyone smart regardless of who they are born from. This would have to happen and become widely available before everything goes to total shit in the west. As for right now, I think it would be wise to keep out people from low-IQ groups. I also don't want the US to become more of a welfare state then it already is. If we keep letting in third worlders, the US is going to become poorer and less free. There will be less trust.
"I definitely learned one thing: there are holes in my knowledge of the genetic argument. That in itself is worth very much."
What do you think were the largest holes? Your biggest misconceptions?
Have you watched the long "Make the World Flat" video yet? If so, what did you think about it?
Take care Rev.
PS, speaking of non-Europeans dragging down test scores in England. 55% of Pakistanis in England are inbred. In Pakistan it is 70%. They are a small population in England right now, yet make up over 30% of the birth defects. Somewhere between 30% and 50% of Syrians are inbred, and now a bunch of them, along with other Middle Easterners, Africans, and South and Central Asian Muslims are flooding Europe right now. Many of them are inbred as well.
DeleteThat is all for now.
Have a great day!
Q2). Yes, doctors do prescribe medicines based on race. What I'm asking is, could doctors prescribe medicines more accurately based on categories of human biodiversity which better reflect genetic reality? Do Slavs and Scots also respond differently to medications? Zulus and Ethiopians?
ReplyDeleteInterbreeding - Yeah, but what about a Bushman and a Jew? Are the genes that select for intelligence dominant or recessive? A mix? There seems to be an assumption in these discussions that the lower intelligence genes will necessarily win out. Is this based on demographical, statistical data that could be contaminated by other factors or do we have actual scientific evidence?
Hybrid Vigor/Outbreeding Depression
This is why I shy away from "well X country has Y population and look at them!" arguments. Clearly there are factors beyond genetics that influence the characters of nations. I mean, we could just as easily argue that interbreeding with Native Americans gave the Colonists a genetic advantage over the home countries.
The Largest Hole
Basically, that most of my arguments are based off of personal experience and "common sense" rather than a deep understanding of how human genetics actually works. If I'm going to say that my position is scientifically proven, I need to have a better understanding of that science. I stand by my personal experiences, but unless I do further research, I cannot claim them as anything but opinion.
Hey,
ReplyDelete"What I'm asking is, could doctors prescribe medicines more accurately based on categories of human biodiversity which better reflect genetic reality? Do Slavs and Scots also respond differently to medications? Zulus and Ethiopians?"
Maybe. I would guess so. At some point I think that doctors will be able to look at someone's whole genetic makeup and know what treatment would work best for that one person. That is a ways off though.
My over all point was that 'race' is a legitimate scientific classification. Humans do have sub-species, regardless of what the PC brigade want us to think.
"Yeah, but what about a Bushman and a Jew? Are the genes that select for intelligence dominant or recessive? A mix? There seems to be an assumption in these discussions that the lower intelligence genes will necessarily win out."
Mixed race people as a group have a median IQ between the two races that they are made up from. So mulattoes as a group have a median IQ between whites and blacks. If we import a lot of people from low IQ groups, the median IQ for the country will go down. We see this in London schools today. We even see this in places like Milwaukee.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/scott-walkers-wisconsin-where-social-democracy-came-closest-and-crashed-hardest/
So if you have a high IQ population,and they breed with new coming low IQ groups, the IQ will end up lower then it had been before the new comers.
"This is why I shy away from "well X country has Y population and look at them!" arguments. Clearly there are factors beyond genetics that influence the characters of nations."
I agree, but places like Mexico and many other Latin American countries have been independent democracies for a long time. They are the way they are due to the people as a group, not some outside force.
"I mean, we could just as easily argue that interbreeding with Native Americans gave the Colonists a genetic advantage over the home countries."
No, the white population of the USA is really, really, white. There have been studies where self identified white Americans had DNA tests. The findings show that 'white' Americans are really extremely European in their DNA.
Mexico and other Latin American countries are where you will find a lot of mestizos.
"Basically, that most of my arguments are based off of personal experience and "common sense"......."
Well, "common sense" according to the present social-political way of looking at things. I think HBD does a much better job of explaining real would outcomes and observations then the convoluted ideas of the modern left. Every one of the modern left's plans to try to 'fix' things has failed, and in many cases they have made things much worse. Look at the mess LBJ's "Great Society" programs created. The left has tried throwing money at the problem, they have tried early childhood intervention, they have tried all kinds of programs, nothing works.
I hope you are feeling better.
BTW, I am not really interested in video games, so I don't know how long I will be sticking around here.
Take care.
"I don't know how long I will be sticking around"
DeleteWhat a shame - where else can one read your stuff?
Nowhere. I don't have a website and there is nowhere I post at regulatory. I don't plan on changing that anytime soon. If you are interested in reading about some of the topics I have been talking about, I recommend readings Steve Sailer's work.
Deletehttp://www.unz.com/isteve/
http://takimag.com/contributor/Sailer/6#axzz3oglZ5oCI
Hey Rev,
ReplyDeleteAnon here again. I had a misunderstanding of Regression to the Mean when I told you about it, so I inadvertently gave you some bad info on it. This is me correcting that mistake. You can read up on a better explanation of it here:
http://www.unz.com/jman/regression-to-the-mean/