-I agree with Murray that this kind of psychology explains a lot of the resistance to hereditarian explanations. But as long as we're accusing people of motivated reasoning, I think Murray's solution is engaging in a similar kind of denial, but just putting it in a different place. The idea that people are unequal in ways that matter is [legitimately too horrifying to contemplate](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faHbrHuPziFH7Ef7p/why-are-individual-iq-differences-ok), so liberals [deny the inequality](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/), and conservatives deny [that it matters](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NG4XQEL5PTyguDMff/but-it-doesn-t-matter).
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-But I think if you _really_ understand the fact–value distinction and see that the naturalistic fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy (and not even a tempting one), that the progress of humankind has consisted of using our wits to impose our will on an [indifferent universe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god), then "too horrifying to contemplate" fails to compute. The map is not the territory: _contemplating_ doesn't make things worse.
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-The author of the _Xenosystems_ blog mischievously posits [five stages of knowledge of human biodiversity](http://www.xenosystems.net/five-stages-of-hbd/) (in analogy to the famous, albeit [reportedly lacking in empirical support](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model), five-stage Kübler-Ross model of grief), culminating in Stage 4: Depression ("Who could possibly have imagined that reality was so evil?") and 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 ..."). I think I got stuck halfway between Stage 4 and 5.
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-You can't brainwash a human with random bits; they need to be specific bits with something _good_ in them.
+I agree with Murray that this kind of psychology explains a lot of the resistance to hereditarian explanations. But as long as we're accusing people of motivated reasoning, I think Murray's solution is engaging in a similar kind of denial, but just putting it in a different place. The idea that people are unequal in ways that matter is [legitimately too horrifying to contemplate](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/faHbrHuPziFH7Ef7p/why-are-individual-iq-differences-ok), so liberals [deny the inequality](/2017/Dec/theres-a-land-that-i-see-or-the-spirit-of-intervention/), and conservatives deny [that it matters](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NG4XQEL5PTyguDMff/but-it-doesn-t-matter). But I think if you _really_ understand the fact–value distinction and see that the naturalistic fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy (and not even a tempting one), that the progress of humankind has consisted of using our wits to impose our will on an [indifferent universe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god), then the very concept of "too horrifying to contemplate" becomes a grave error. The map is not the territory: _contemplating_ doesn't make things worse; not-contemplating that which is _already there_ can't make things better—and can blind you to opportunities to make things better.