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.)
-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/).
+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 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.
+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.
+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. I think this is sympathetic but [ultimately ineffective](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/08/ineffective-deconversion-pitch/). 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 readers who _don't_ think everything is Fine Now, and suspect Murray of standing athwart history yelling "Stop!" rather than aspiring to Actual Social Science.
+
+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.
+
+Murray concludes, "Above all, nothing we learn will threaten human equality properly understood," and quotes Steven 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."
+
+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/) this seem like a good and wise thing to say. But I have been ... trained. Trained to instinctively apply my full powers of analytical rigor to even that which is most sacred. Because my true loyalty is to the axiology—to the function that generates my _current best guess_ as to that which is most sacred. If that which was believed to be most sacred turns out to not be entirely coherent ... then we might [have some work to do](https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/rescue_utility).
+
+"Nothing we learn will threaten _X_ _properly understood_." When you elide the specific assignment _X_ := "human equality", the _form_ of this statement is kind of suspicious, right? Why "properly understood"? It would be weird to say, "Nothing we learn will threaten the homotopy groups of an _n_-sphere _properly understood_." This "properly understood" qualifier seems like the sort of thing you would only say if you _were_ subconsciously worried about _X_ being threatened by new discoveries, and
Footnote 4 to the introduction of Part III recaps the argument. If the black/white IQ gap in the U.S. were caused by racism, you'd predict that blacks would have higher IQs in countries where they're the ruling majority, like in Haiti or most of sub-Saharan Africa, but they don't. You might think racism affects IQ by means of its affect on socioeconomic status (SES), but adjusting for parental SES only diminishes the gap by a third.
+Flynn effect, measurement invariance
+
You might think that the tests are culturally biased, but if that were true, you'd expect the distortion
(And on the hereditarian model, parental SES could be caused by parental cognitive abilities.)
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
-
-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,
+afraid of seeming too flippant to readers who haven't decoverted yet; my own deconversion event is too far in my past
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies
[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.
+https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHQkDNMhj692ayx78/avoiding-your-belief-s-real-weak-points
-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)]
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