From 6aa1cac8b8cd72fbe68bb9b95a3f531e81452b36 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:04:53 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Human Diversity review: nibbling at items --- content/drafts/book-review-human-diversity.md | 2 +- notes/human-diversity-notes.md | 29 +++++++++++++------ 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/drafts/book-review-human-diversity.md b/content/drafts/book-review-human-diversity.md index 14ab4c8..ae0834a 100644 --- a/content/drafts/book-review-human-diversity.md +++ b/content/drafts/book-review-human-diversity.md @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ Hypotheses that accept IQ test results as unbiased, but attribute group differen And so on. -In mentioning these arguments in passing, I'm _not_ trying to provide a comprehensive lit review on the causality of group IQ differences. (That's [someone else's blog](https://humanvarieties.org/2019/12/22/the-persistence-of-cognitive-inequality-reflections-on-arthur-jensens-not-unreasonable-hypothesis-after-fifty-years/).) I'm not (that) interested in this particular topic, and [without having mastered the technical literature, my assessment would be of little value](https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#mu). Rather, I am ... doing some context-setting for the problem I _am_ interested in, of fixing public discourse. The reason we can't have an intellectually-honest public discussion about human biodiversity is because good people want to respect the anti-oppression Schelling point and are afraid of giving ammunition to racists and sexists in the war over the shared map. "Black people are, on average, genetically less intelligent than white people" is the kind of sentence that pretty much only racists would feel _good_ about saying out loud, independently of its actual truth value. In a world where most speech is about manipulating shared maps for political advantage rather than _getting the right answer for the right reasons_, it is _rational_ to infer that anyone who entertains such hypotheses is either motivated by racial malice, or is at least complicit with it—and that rational expectation isn't easily cancelled with a _pro forma_ "But, but, civil discourse" or "But, but, the true meaning of Equality is unfalsifiable" disclaimer. +In mentioning these arguments in passing, I'm _not_ trying to provide a comprehensive lit review on the causality of group IQ differences. (That's [someone else's blog](https://humanvarieties.org/2019/12/22/the-persistence-of-cognitive-inequality-reflections-on-arthur-jensens-not-unreasonable-hypothesis-after-fifty-years/).) I'm not (that) interested in this particular topic, and [without having mastered the technical literature, my assessment would be of little value](https://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#mu). Rather, I am ... doing some context-setting for the problem I _am_ interested in, of fixing public discourse. The reason we can't have an intellectually-honest public discussion about human biodiversity is because good people want to respect the anti-oppression Schelling point and are afraid of giving ammunition to racists and sexists in the war over the shared map. "Black people are, on average, genetically less intelligent than white people" is the kind of sentence that pretty much only racists would feel _good_ about saying out loud, independently of its actual truth value. In a world where most speech is about manipulating shared maps for political advantage rather than _getting the right answer for the right reasons_, it is _rational_ to infer that anyone who entertains such hypotheses is either motivated by racial malice, or is at least complicit with it—and that rational expectation isn't easily cancelled with a _pro forma_ "But, but, civil discourse" or "But, but, the true meaning of Equality is unfalsifiable" [disclaimer](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html). To speak to those who aren't _already_ oblivious science nerds—or are committed to emulating such, as it is scientifically dubious whether anyone is really that oblivious—you need to put _more effort_ into your excuse for why you're interested in these topics. Here's mine, and it's from the heart, though it's up to the reader to judge for herself how credible I am when I say this— diff --git a/notes/human-diversity-notes.md b/notes/human-diversity-notes.md index c0957ba..cbb9d26 100644 --- a/notes/human-diversity-notes.md +++ b/notes/human-diversity-notes.md @@ -1,21 +1,36 @@ TODO— - 1. need to clearly define before casually using later: "cognitive repetioires", "egalitarian", "renormalized" + 1. need to clearly define before casually using later: "cognitive repetioires", "egalitarian", "renormalized", "human _bio_-diversity" +_cognitive repetioires_—the phrase being Murray's device for shaving nine syllables off "personality, abilities, and social behavior" + 2. "genders have been identified" -"I realize I am writing in an LGBT era when some argue that 63 distinct genders have been identified," Murray writes at the beginning of Appendix 2. But I think this would fail to pass the [Ideological Turing Test](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html). +"I realize I am writing in an LGBT era when some argue that 63 distinct genders have been identified," Murray writes at the beginning of Appendix 2. But this oblique acerbity fails to pass the [Ideological Turing Test](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html). The language of _has been identified_ suggests an attempt at scientific taxonomy—a project, which I share with Murray, of fitting categories to describe a preexisting objective reality. I don't think the people making 63-item typeahead select "Gender" fields for websites are thinking in such terms to begin with. The specific number 63 [is ridiculous and can't exist](/2019/Dec/on-the-argumentative-form-super-proton-things-tend-to-come-in-varieties/); it might as well be, and often is, a fill-in-the-blank free text field. + +If you don't trust taxonomists to be acting in good faith—if you think they're trying to bulldoze the territory to fit a preconcieved map— + -The language of _has been identified_ 3. Loury— +https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GSz8SrKFfW7fJK2wN/relevance-norms-or-gricean-implicature-queers-the-decoupling + As economist Glenn Loury points out in _The Anatomy of Racial Inequality_, cognitive abilities decline with age, and yet we don't see a moral panic about the consequences of an aging workforce, because older people are construed as an "us"—our mothers and fathers—rather than an outgroup. - 4. * 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 + 4. * Embryo selection looks _really important_—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 5. stages of HBD +The author of the _Xenosystems_ blog mischievously posits five stages of human biodiversity + +http://www.xenosystems.net/five-stages-of-hbd/ + +> Stage-4 (Depression): "Who could possibly have imagined that reality was so evil?" + +> Stage-5 (Acceptance): "Blank slate liberalism really has been a mountain of dishonest garbage, hasn’t it? Guess it’s time for it to die ..." + + 6. I have an excuse; telling the truth is a Schelling point (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tCwresAuSvk867rzH/speaking-truth-to-power-is-a-schelling-point)—and finish 7. more examples of sex difference effect sizes, elaborate on "big" doesn't mean anything @@ -32,6 +47,7 @@ As economist Glenn Loury points out in _The Anatomy of Racial Inequality_, cogni 13. work in individual-level stereotypes + 14. individual-level differences are less threatening because people don't perceive them as forming a coalition (Murray disagrees with this!) ------ @@ -50,11 +66,6 @@ As economist Glenn Loury points out in _The Anatomy of Racial Inequality_, cogni -http://www.xenosystems.net/five-stages-of-hbd/ - -> Stage-4 (Depression): "Who could possibly have imagined that reality was so evil?" - -> Stage-5 (Acceptance): "Blank slate liberalism really has been a mountain of dishonest garbage, hasn’t it? Guess it’s time for it to die ..." (Okay, I was brainwashed by progressivism pretty hard, but ideologies need to appeal to something in human nature; you can't brainwash a human with random bits; they need to be specific bits with something good in them.) -- 2.17.1