Murray positions _Human Diversity_ as a corrective to a "blank slate" orthodoxy that refuses to entertain any possibility of biological influences on psychological 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 that I would 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." He likewise "state[s] explicitly that [he] reject[s] claims that groups of people, be they sexes or races or classes, can be ranked from superior to inferior [or] that differences among groups have any relevance to human worth or dignity."
-I think this strategy is sympathetic but [ultimately ineffective](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/). Murray is trying to have it both ways: challenging the orthodoxy, while denying the possibility of any [unfortunate implications](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications) of the orthodoxy being false. It's like ... [theistic evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution): satisfactory as long as you _don't think about it too hard_, but among those with a high [need for cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition), who know what it's like to truly believe (as [I once believed](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/)), it's not going to convince anyone who hasn't _already_ broken from the orthodoxy.
+I think this strategy is sympathetic but [ultimately ineffective](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/). Murray is trying to have it both ways: challenging the orthodoxy, while denying the possibility of any [unfortunate implications](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications) of the orthodoxy being false. It's like ... [theistic evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution): satisfactory as long as you _don't think about it too hard_, but among those with a high [need for cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition), who know what it's like to truly believe (as I once believed), it's not going to convince anyone who hasn't _already_ broken from the orthodoxy.
Murray concludes, "Above all, nothing we learn will threaten human equality properly understood." I [_strongly_ agree with](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/) the _moral sentiment_, the underlying [axiology](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/28/contra-askell-on-moral-offsets/) that makes this seem like a good and wise thing to say.
Murray opens the parts of the book about sex and race with acknowledgements of the injustice of historical patriarchy ("When the first wave of feminism in the United States got its start [...] women were rebelling not against mere inequality, but against near-total leagl subservience to men") and racial oppression ("slavery experienced by Africans in the New World went far beyond legal constraints [...] The freedom granted by emancipation in America was only marginally better in practice and the situation improved only slowly through the first half of the twentieth century"). It feels ... coerced. It probably _is_ coerced. (To his credit, Murray is generally pretty forthcoming about how the need to write "defensively" shaped the book, as in a sidebar in the introduction that says that he's prefer to say a lot more about evopsych, but he chose to just focus on empirical findings in order to avoid the charge of telling "just-so stories.")
-But this kind of defensive half-measure satisfies no one. From the oblivious-science-nerd perspective—the view that agrees with Murray that "everyone should calm down"—you shouldn't _need_ to genuflect to the memory of some historical injustice before you're allowed to talk about Science. But from the perspective that cares about Justice and not just Truth
+But this kind of defensive half-measure satisfies no one. From the oblivious-science-nerd perspective—the view that agrees with Murray that "everyone should calm down"—you shouldn't _need_ to genuflect to the memory of some historical injustice before you're allowed to talk about Science. But from the perspective that cares about Justice and not just Truth, an _insincere_ gesture or a strategic concession is all the more dangerous insofar as it could function as camoflage for a nefarious hidden agenda. If your work is aimed at _destroying the anti-oppression Schelling-point belief_, a few hand-wringing historical interludes and bromides about human equality having no testable implications (!!) aren't going to clear you of the suspicion that you're _doing it on purpose_.
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-OUTLINE of hazardous part—
- * I would prefer to write a science book review for science nerds
- * But we don't have a discipline of Acutal Social Science
- * The _reason_ we don't have a discipline of Actual Social Science is because people are afraid that, e.g., talking about race and IQ will be used to justify oppression: can't oppress people on the basis of race if you mindfuck everyone into believing that race _doesn't exist_; structural oppression and actual differences can both exist at the same time! They're not contradicting each other!
- * Murray tries to spin himself as nonthreating, but it's not convincing
+ * structural oppression and actual differences can both exist at the same time! They're not contradicting each other!
* People who are mad at Murray about this book aren't really bad about the SNP scatterplots; they're still mad about Ch. 13 and 14 of _The Bell Curve_, and they think Murray is "hiding the ball"
* I don't know how to build a better world, but my first step is to go a little meta and talk about why we can't talk, and take seriously the possible harms from talking, rather than just asserting that free speech and civil discourse is Actually Good the way the likes of Cofnas/Winegard/Murray do (being a nobody blogger probably helps; I have an excuse)
* A few things are actually _worse_ than the ball-hiders make it seem ("treat ppl as individuals" doesn't work; "IQ isn't morally valuable" doesn't work)
* Embryo selection looks _really important_; I don't want to give amunition to racists, but I need to talk about that—and the recent Dawkins brouhaha says we can't even talk about that; and the ways I'm worried about eugenics being misused aren't even on the radar
+Galileo and Darwin weren't _trying_ to undermine Christianity—they had much more interesting things to think about—but religious authorities were _right_ to fear heliocentrism and evolution: if the prevailing coordination equilibrium depends on lies, then telling the truth _is_ a threat and it _is_ disloyal. And if the prevailing coordination equilibrium is basically _good_, then you can see why purported truth-tellers striking at the heart of the faith might be believed to be evil.
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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.)
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff