Okay, maybe this was a bad example; topology in general really is kind of a mindfuck. (Remind me to tell you about the long line, which is like the line of real numbers, except much longer.)
-Anyway, as soon as we start to ask questions _about humans_—and far more so _identifiable groups_ of humans—we enter the domain of _politics_. Instead of just getting _the right answer for the right reasons_ (which can conclude _conditional_ answers: if what humans are like depends on _choices_ about what we teach our children, then there will still be a fact of the matter as to what choices lead to what outcomes), everyone _and her dog_ has some fucking _agenda_—and the people who claim not to have an agenda are lying. (The most I can credibly claim for myself is that I try to keep my agenda reasonably _minimalist_—and the reader must judge for herself to what extent I succeed.) You can't _just_ write a friendly science book about "things we know about some ways in which people are different from each other"—to write and be understood, you have to do some sort of _positioning_ of how your work fits in to [the war](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/).
+In any case, as soon as we start to ask questions _about humans_—and far more so _identifiable groups_ of humans—we enter the domain of _politics_. Instead of just getting _the right answer for the right reasons_ (which can conclude _conditional_ answers: if what humans are like depends on _choices_ about what we teach our children, then there will still be a fact of the matter as to what choices lead to what outcomes), everyone _and her dog_ has some fucking _agenda_—and the people who claim not to have an agenda are lying. (The most I can credibly claim for myself is that I try to keep my agenda reasonably _minimalist_—and the reader must judge for herself to what extent I succeed.) You can't _just_ write a friendly science book for oblivious science nerds about "things we know about some ways in which people are different from each other"—to write and be understood, you have to do some sort of _positioning_ of how your work fits in to [the war](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/).
-Murray positions his work as a corrective to a "blank slate" orthodoxy that refuses to entertain any possibility of biological influences on group differences. The three parts of the book are pitched not simply as "stuff we know about biological influences on sex, race, and class difference" (the oblivious science nerd approach I prefer), but as a rebuttal to "Gender Is a Social Construct", "Race Is a Social Construct", and "Class Is a Function of Privilege." At the same time, however, Murray is careful to position his work as nonthreatening: "there are no monsters in the closet, no dread doors that we must fear opening." The introductions of the sex and race parts of the book do the obligatory historical context-setting of emphasizing that old-timey patriarchy and chattel slavery were Actually Really Bad.
-
-I'm sympathetic, but I feel like Murray is kind of trying to have it both ways: challenging the orthodoxy without analyzing the _functions_ served by the orthodoxy, that taboos exist for _reasons_. We mustn't fear opening the dread meta-door in front of whether there actually _are_ dread doors that we must fear opening.
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-[claim to be non-disprovable](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fAuWLS7RKWD2npBFR/religion-s-claim-to-be-non-disprovable)
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-> Above all, nothing we learn will threaten human equality properly understood.
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-Murray quotes Stephen Pinker: "Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group."
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-[where I agree with the moral _sentiment_, but that platitude doesn't solve all the problems (notably, that's not how Bayesian reasoning works)]
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-[my thought: but you need causality to know the effects of interventions! Maybe that's _why_ we don't have any useful outside interventions!]
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-[polygenic scores are useful in the context of society's structure]
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-> Women in combat? It's not an issue of female courage. But from early childhood into adulthood, males are far more attracted than females to physical contests, including ones involving violence, and are more physically aggressive and risk-taking than women.
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-[...]
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-> I think at the root is the new upper class's conflaction of intellectual ability and the professions it enables with human worth. Few admit it, of course. BUt the evolving zeitgeist of the new upper class has led to a misbegotten hierarchy whereby being a surgeon is _better_ in some sense of human worth than being an insurance salesman, being an executive in a high-tech firm is _better_ than being a housewife, and a neighborhood of people with advanced degrees is _better_ than a neighborhood of high-school graduates. To put it so baldly makes it obvious how senseless it is. There shouldn't be any relationship between these things and human worth. And yet, among too many in the new upper class, there is.
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-As [Harold Lee points out](https://write.as/harold-lee/seizing-the-means-of-home-production),
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-> The conflcation of intellectual ability with human worth helps to explain the new upper class's insistence that inequalities of intellectual ability must be the product of environmental disadvantage. Many people with high IQs really do feel sorry for people with low IQs. If the environment is to blame, then those unfortunates can be helped, and that makes people who want to help them feel good. If genes are to blame, it makes people who want to help them feel bad. People prefer feeling good to feeling bad, so they engage in confirmation bias when it comes to the evidence about the causes of human differences.
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-https://write.as/harold-lee/seizing-the-means-of-home-production
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-Moldbug's denying the moral worth of IQ: https://archive.is/9Ezk3
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-
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-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aud7CL7uhz55KL8jG/transhumanism-as-simplified-humanism
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-https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faHbrHuPziFH7Ef7p/why-are-individual-iq-differences-ok
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-http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/
+Murray positions his work as a corrective to a "blank slate" orthodoxy that refuses to entertain any possibility of biological influences on group differences. The three parts of the book are pitched not simply as "stuff we know about biologically-mediated group differences" (the oblivious science nerd approach I prefer), but as a rebuttal to "Gender Is a Social Construct", "Race Is a Social Construct", and "Class Is a Function of Privilege." At the same time, however, Murray is careful to position his work as _nonthreatening_: "there are no monsters in the closet," he writes, "no dread doors that we must fear opening." The start of the introductions to the sex and race parts of the book do the obligatory historical context-setting of emphasizing that old-timey patriarchy and chattel slavery were Actually Really Bad.
+Needless to say (it _should_ be needless to say), I agree that old-timey patriarchy and chattel slavery were Actually Really Bad. However, I feel like Murray's overall positioning strategy is trying to have it both ways: challenging the orthodoxy, while downplaying the possibility of any [unfortunate implications](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications) of the orthodoxy being false. This is sympathetic, but [ultimately ineffective](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/), and I think we can do better by going meta and analyzing the _functions_ being served by the constraints on our discourse and seeking out clever self-aware strategies for satisfying those functions _without_ [lying about everything](/2017/Jan/im-sick-of-being-lied-to/). We mustn't fear opening the dread meta-door in front of whether there actually _are_ dread doors that we must fear opening.
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-* * *
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-(Although in some critical social-media commentary, William Buckner notes that
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["Being Steven Pinker is a lot more fun than being Charles Murray"](https://archive.is/bNo2q)—and Pinker knows it. Similarly, being Charles Murray is a lot more fun than being J. Philippe Rushton—and Murray knows it.
Hyde/Fine binary notes: p. 388
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y4bkJTtG3s5d6v36k/stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away
-https://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
\ No newline at end of file
+https://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
+
+
+Clueless [presentist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)) conservatism of the form, "Old-timey patriarchy and white supremacy were Really Bad, but that's over and everything is Fine Now" is unlikely to satisfy those who _don't_ think everything is Fine Now,
+
+https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTWkjCJScy2GFAgDt/dark-side-epistemology
+https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/rescue_utility
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aud7CL7uhz55KL8jG/transhumanism-as-simplified-humanism
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faHbrHuPziFH7Ef7p/why-are-individual-iq-differences-ok
+
+[claim to be non-disprovable](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fAuWLS7RKWD2npBFR/religion-s-claim-to-be-non-disprovable)
+
+> Above all, nothing we learn will threaten human equality properly understood.
+
+Murray quotes Stephen Pinker: "Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group."
+
+[where I agree with the moral _sentiment_, but that platitude doesn't solve all the problems (notably, that's not how Bayesian reasoning works)]
+
+[my thought: but you need causality to know the effects of interventions! Maybe that's _why_ we don't have any useful outside interventions!]
+
+[polygenic scores are useful in the context of society's structure]
+
+> Women in combat? It's not an issue of female courage. But from early childhood into adulthood, males are far more attracted than females to physical contests, including ones involving violence, and are more physically aggressive and risk-taking than women.
+
+[...]
+
+> I think at the root is the new upper class's conflaction of intellectual ability and the professions it enables with human worth. Few admit it, of course. BUt the evolving zeitgeist of the new upper class has led to a misbegotten hierarchy whereby being a surgeon is _better_ in some sense of human worth than being an insurance salesman, being an executive in a high-tech firm is _better_ than being a housewife, and a neighborhood of people with advanced degrees is _better_ than a neighborhood of high-school graduates. To put it so baldly makes it obvious how senseless it is. There shouldn't be any relationship between these things and human worth. And yet, among too many in the new upper class, there is.
+
+As [Harold Lee points out](https://write.as/harold-lee/seizing-the-means-of-home-production),
+
+> The conflcation of intellectual ability with human worth helps to explain the new upper class's insistence that inequalities of intellectual ability must be the product of environmental disadvantage. Many people with high IQs really do feel sorry for people with low IQs. If the environment is to blame, then those unfortunates can be helped, and that makes people who want to help them feel good. If genes are to blame, it makes people who want to help them feel bad. People prefer feeling good to feeling bad, so they engage in confirmation bias when it comes to the evidence about the causes of human differences.
+
+https://write.as/harold-lee/seizing-the-means-of-home-production
+
+Moldbug's denying the moral worth of IQ: https://archive.is/9Ezk3
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff