"As is said: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Very true but something even more corrupting is that: “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”(Saul Bellow)
In his book 'Why Race Matters', Michael Levin, a philosopher, goes into great lengths explaining the moral and practical consequences of adopting environmental vs. genetic explanations for race differences.
“First, I don't think most people who say these things really mean it. It's often used as a kind of agnostic middle position by those who know the truth.”
Yes, this is clearly true for the kinds of people you started the article with. But it's not merely them saying it as a polite fiction with a twinkle in their eye: they are deliberately lying in order to preserve their comfortably affluent positions in the hierarchy.
I see your point about how genetic causation matters for the discourse. Personally, I don’t understand why egalitarians so angrily dismiss genetic causation for group differences, but they do, so I guess something is going on there. But like maybe they’re just socialists first and they’re looking for a way to justify their preferred system second? I think that is how someone like Paige Harden would see the issue. After all, her book argues that genetics is real and you can still be a good socialist; ie, socialists can accept reality and keep their self-concept as good people.
I would add that some genetically caused issues are treatable, myopia--> glasses, Add--> stimulants, so, to me, genetic causation doesn’t automatically rule out policy interventions. It probably would rule out easy interventions, like just give away money. But it might rule in more coercive interventions, like banning gambling or other things stupid/lazy ppl can’t help but do too much of.
I buy that, as the enlightenment is now understood in modern flowering. And I get that some things are just sacred, end of story. Interesting tho that notions of “some ppl are just better”lived on till around 1850 in practice thru land requirements for voting, layered electoral systems.
The funny thing is that these "reactionaries" of the past also seemed to be right: the aristocrats of ancient times figuratively had "blue blood" - genetically higher intelligence:
> Interesting tho that notions of “some ppl are just better”lived on till around 1850 in practice thru land requirements for voting, layered electoral systems.
I've read some contemporary literature on the subject. Even most of those justifying those laws assumed the differences in question were entirely nurture.
1) A lot of socialism states that the government should pay UMC professionals money to provide services (education, healthcare, social work, etc) to people who either can't benefit from those services or whose behavior juices the demand for those services.
2) Upper class people want to engage in hedonism-lite. They want to sleep around a little. Experiment with drugs a little. They know it isn't good for them and it's total poison for the underclass, but THEY WANTS IT! If they have to ally with the underclass to fight off middle class moralism, so be it.
Another reason for dismissals of IQ is a reaction against managerialism, and the failures of early twentieth century attempts at scientific technocracy.
Below is my write up on "Eugenicons" I posted in response to Brian Chau. Here is the except on Bukele:
4) On democracy it should be pretty obvious that people like Bryan and Hanania are very anti-democracy. In fact Hanania's conversion on immigration seems to relate to the idea that democracy can be easily subverted and is meaningless.
His solution to crime is Bukele. This is a man that enlisted the military to surround the legislator, entered with armed men, and told them to vote the way he wanted. When the Supreme Court objected to his moves he dismissed them. He's basically created a strongman dictatorship along the same lines Putin did, and using the same rhetoric (cleaning up the streets, etc).
I happen to support Bukele, but only because I think being ruled by a strongman (or strongmen) is inevitable for dysgenic countries. Bukele is superior to rule by gang kingpins, but it's not a great solution. You can't lament Jan 6th and love Bukele.
Being forced to choose between different kind of lawlessness is a bad choice to be put in. It is the kind of thing Charles Murray specifically warned about happening in The Bell Curve when he talked about immigration. Saying "we can solve crime if we empower a strongmen" is something I already knew but has a lot of issues. I'd prefer to just have a country of naturally law abiding Eugenicons that don't need a strongman to be kept in line.
Moreover, the entire idea that our system is superior to say the Chinese is based on the idea that democracy and checks and balances stops things like COVID in China from happening. But of course how did Bukele first come into conflict with the Supreme Court. When they told him that his draconian COVID lockdowns were unconstitutional and that he couldn't just grab random people off the street and throw them in concentration camps because they were outside when he didn't want them to be outside. The same issues with imprisoning anyone with a tattoo can also be used against anybody Bukele doesn't like for any reason. That's how strongmen work, it feels awesome when the do what you want and sucks when they don't.
With socialism it's the same story. Putting aside the empirically unsound "diversity induced social distrust will shrink government" argument, Hanania mostly seems to believe that the elite should just cut the government because Hanania makes a good argument and democracy is easy to subvert. His plan for entitlement reform is "lie about it and do it anyway".
Fair enough, but why hasn't it happened already? Why haven't a bunch of enlightened centrist reforms happened already. Could it be that democracy does impose limits on elite incentives and actions? Could it be that the demographics of democracy impact those limits and incentives. Does the deep blue-ening of the coasts and cities not show this? Does Reagan 2.0 (Romney) losing with a higher white vote share then Reagan 1.0 not show this?
And if we did do away with the limits and incentives of democracy on the elite, how do we not just replicate the situation in China? Isn't it a good thing in some cases that the elite is limited.
I don't think there is too much daylight between what he outlines and Hanania, etc.
-------
Full Comment:
1) Eugenicons don't believe in forced sterilization, but they certainly believe in voluntary eugenics. And they would probably be in favor of trying to get poors to agree voluntarily to getting IUDs, abortions, etc. Many wouldn't object to linking state welfare to sterilization. No violation of the non-aggression principal there.
2) While they wouldn't force anyone to marry or prevent them from marrying, I think all would agree with the statement that pairings amongst the eugenic class creates eugenic offspring and those offspring create human progress. Hanania would look on that approvingly and Murray with trepidation, but they wouldn't dispute the facts.
3) View on dysgenic immigration are mixed in this group. Hanania has changed his mind on immigration because he no longer thinks it makes socialism/crime/dysfunction inevitable, but others like Murray, Sailer, Kirkegaard, Jones, etc disagree. If Hanania could be convinced that demographics were destiny then he would oppose it.
Personally, I think Hanania's conversion relates more to how being pro-immigration is necessary for him to get access to mainstream revenue sources then a dispassionate review of the evidence.
4) On democracy it should be pretty obvious that people like Bryan and Hanania are very anti-democracy. In fact Hanania's conversion on immigration seems to relate to the idea that democracy can be easily subverted and is meaningless.
His solution to crime is Bukele. This is a man that enlisted the military to surround the legislator, entered with armed men, and told them to vote the way he wanted. When the Supreme Court objected to his moves he dismissed them. He's basically created a strongman dictatorship along the same lines Putin did, and using the same rhetoric (cleaning up the streets, etc).
I happen to support Bukele, but only because I think being ruled by a strongman (or strongmen) is inevitable for dysgenic countries. Bukele is superior to rule by gang kingpins, but it's not a great solution. You can't lament Jan 6th and love Bukele.
Being forced to choose between different kind of lawlessness is a bad choice to be put in. It is the kind of thing Charles Murray specifically warned about happening in The Bell Curve when he talked about immigration. Saying "we can solve crime if we empower a strongmen" is something I already knew but has a lot of issues. I'd prefer to just have a country of naturally law abiding Eugenicons that don't need a strongman to be kept in line.
Moreover, the entire idea that our system is superior to say the Chinese is based on the idea that democracy and checks and balances stops things like COVID in China from happening. But of course how did Bukele first come into conflict with the Supreme Court. When they told him that his draconian COVID lockdowns were unconstitutional and that he couldn't just grab random people off the street and throw them in concentration camps because they were outside when he didn't want them to be outside. The same issues with imprisoning anyone with a tattoo can also be used against anybody Bukele doesn't like for any reason. That's how strongmen work, it feels awesome when the do what you want and sucks when they don't.
With socialism it's the same story. Putting aside the empirically unsound "diversity induced social distrust will shrink government" argument, Hanania mostly seems to believe that the elite should just cut the government because Hanania makes a good argument and democracy is easy to subvert. His plan for entitlement reform is "lie about it and do it anyway".
Fair enough, but why hasn't it happened already? Why haven't a bunch of enlightened centrist reforms happened already. Could it be that democracy does impose limits on elite incentives and actions? Could it be that the demographics of democracy impact those limits and incentives. Does the deep blue-ening of the coasts and cities not show this? Does Reagan 2.0 (Romney) losing with a higher white vote share then Reagan 1.0 not show this?
And if we did do away with the limits and incentives of democracy on the elite, how do we not just replicate the situation in China? Isn't it a good thing in some cases that the elite is limited.
5) Anyway, my response to Eugenicons is that it's a great idea. I support most of what he lists, and the only real difference you're pointing out is that Eugenicons are more into voluntary action than involuntary (with the issue of immigration being complex).
If I were to point to a something the article gets at, Hanania has snearing contempt for whoever he decides is lower than him and a superiority complex. You can get a lot of the same stuff with a lot more humility and empathy from a Murray or Sailer, and I've always thought on Hanania as edge lord regurgitations of Sailer designed for click bait. If you want takes on this problem see here:
I don't begrudge Hanania doing what he has to do to make a good living. But I don't see him adding much to the conversation. His views on this stuff are pretty confused and contradictory and he doesn't really like having honest debates with those that disagree with him because doing so might expose these problems (and risk his revenue sources).
"(The Constitution) does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest..."
The "compelling interest" argument is capable of making the entire Constitution permanently moot, by a multiplication of unconstitutional policies (that "further a compelling interest") instituted simultaneously and continuously. The Constitution does not, in fact, authorize any excuse for its suspension, at any time, for any reason. Made-up BS by SCOTUS, which has a long history of made-up, self-serving BS.
If Non-whites can be white supremacists, then what is a white supremacist? Could it be as simple as being a regular person who opposes the rainbow brigade?
Could it be person who opposes mutilating and sterilizing children?
What happened with the Native Americans? I feel that if some highly educated powerful people don't start at least looking at the truth, we will have to deal with 1. A regressive and dumbed down society that gets more and more aggressive because they don't want to be pulled down 2. A tinder box of anger, some from misplaced jealousy and some from being penalized for immutable characteristics they can't change (genetics).
It is quite common for laissez-faire market supporters to use environmental causation to defend their positions. It's the famous pull yourself by your bootstraps line, or everyone can get rich/succeed with hard work line, or something like that. Now, some of this stuff doesn't make sense even if gaps in IQ were environmental, because obviously not everyone can be a wealthy business owner, but basically almost all of the rhetoric of laissez-faire market supporters these days at least implicitly assumes environmental causes for IQ gaps and personality differences or even that IQ doesn't matter and that personality is easily changeable.
On the other hand, sophisticated liberals and socialists, such as John Rawls and Gerald Allan Cohen, include in their justification for redistribution, or socialism, that people are not to blame for their social condition, whether due to environmental or genetic factors. If it's genetics, then that case can be made even clearer, because it's just extremely obvious that no one is guilty or praiseworthy for having inherited their IQ or a certain personality type, and you also can't blame the parental environment. An interesting historical fact is that some of the most famous founders of the Welfare State were also eugenicists.
Not one of his better posts. Basically his argument is nonsense, the only reason society seems fixed is because every attempt at intervention has failed, exactly what one would expect if the differences are genetic.
Emil, you deliberately did not address Richard Hanania's point about about crime. For stopping crime, policy is the only thing that matters. Debating about the degree of impulse control among the different ethnic groups doesn't matter that much when people are getting randomly punched in the face just walking down the street. El Savador's president Bukele is doing God's work there.
We already knew that a strong man that runs roughshot over checks and balances can reduce street crime if he wants to. The problem is that this solution has its own drawbacks. Maybe those drawbacks are better than gang rule in third world shitholes, but LatinAm strongman rule or any other kind of police state technocracy would be a downgrade from first world checks and balances.
It's a lot better to just have a people genetically pre-disposed to good behavior that don't need a strongmen to enforce basic public behavior.
If we choose to keep our democracy and checks and balances, then demographics are going to matter for public policy. And its clear that polities that have seen large influxes of dysgenic demographics have lurched to the left and become radically deficient on policy.
Have you seen the African migrants that are being bussed to New York City lately? Texas Governor Abbott is deliberately sending the sub-saharan Africans to NYC to give liberal New Yorkers some cultural enrichment. Most of the illegals coming across are still from Central America though.
I'm bringing this up because like it or not, the current demographic trends predict that the US will be a hispanic plurality country in the near future. Our society will look like that of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. WHEN that happens, we will need a strongman like Bukele.
Checks and balance won't matter that much in that scenario.
"Second, there's a good reason that egalitarians resist the conclusion with the emotional force that they do. Clearly, it matters to them a lot."
Egalitarians often accuse proponents of hbd of "obsessing" over race and intelligence. But no one obsesses over it more than those who don't want to accept the possibility that it could be true.
"If the current gap is environmental in origin, [...] it may require completely redesigning society.."
Covid was the official launch of this redesign. There are memes in everything at all levels of society depending how much is known; take 'closing the gap' if 'The Gap' is the difference between the old world and the new. It's the closing out and total decomposition of a full zodiacal cycle back in to Aquarius, an air sign, for eventual renewal. See internet, digital tech./currency, leaf blowers, hand driers, whatever. If it's air-based tech. it'll find an investor. This is a form of evidence. (And also a sign of hope if required.) Society has to be utterly festering in blackened decomposition under the weight of its own 'academic' left brain. Give it another seven years.
System justification theory is cope for people trying to blow fresh breath in to a rotten corpse, dead since the early 1900's. Academia is Artificial Intelligence festering in the noosphere to keep egos in a state of zombification. "We can solve these problems if we just think really really hard on all the data..." No. It's the Kali Yuga. Nothing can be saved that is as dead as medicine, religion, law, academia etc.. They're 'filling the gaps' until reality kicks in.
The jump in homicides post-Floyd is exactly in and of itself a consequence of egalitarianism as are all other crime jumps in recent times from the 60s onwards. They are caused by policies based on egalitarian assumptions.
"As is said: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Very true but something even more corrupting is that: “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”(Saul Bellow)
In his book 'Why Race Matters', Michael Levin, a philosopher, goes into great lengths explaining the moral and practical consequences of adopting environmental vs. genetic explanations for race differences.
“First, I don't think most people who say these things really mean it. It's often used as a kind of agnostic middle position by those who know the truth.”
Yes, this is clearly true for the kinds of people you started the article with. But it's not merely them saying it as a polite fiction with a twinkle in their eye: they are deliberately lying in order to preserve their comfortably affluent positions in the hierarchy.
I see your point about how genetic causation matters for the discourse. Personally, I don’t understand why egalitarians so angrily dismiss genetic causation for group differences, but they do, so I guess something is going on there. But like maybe they’re just socialists first and they’re looking for a way to justify their preferred system second? I think that is how someone like Paige Harden would see the issue. After all, her book argues that genetics is real and you can still be a good socialist; ie, socialists can accept reality and keep their self-concept as good people.
I would add that some genetically caused issues are treatable, myopia--> glasses, Add--> stimulants, so, to me, genetic causation doesn’t automatically rule out policy interventions. It probably would rule out easy interventions, like just give away money. But it might rule in more coercive interventions, like banning gambling or other things stupid/lazy ppl can’t help but do too much of.
> Personally, I don’t understand why egalitarians so angrily dismiss genetic causation for group differences
Because the premise that all people have the same potential was one of the axioms of the Enlightenment.
I buy that, as the enlightenment is now understood in modern flowering. And I get that some things are just sacred, end of story. Interesting tho that notions of “some ppl are just better”lived on till around 1850 in practice thru land requirements for voting, layered electoral systems.
The funny thing is that these "reactionaries" of the past also seemed to be right: the aristocrats of ancient times figuratively had "blue blood" - genetically higher intelligence:
https://www.amren.com/news/2023/07/a-mainstream-look-at-social-mobility/
> Interesting tho that notions of “some ppl are just better”lived on till around 1850 in practice thru land requirements for voting, layered electoral systems.
I've read some contemporary literature on the subject. Even most of those justifying those laws assumed the differences in question were entirely nurture.
1) A lot of socialism states that the government should pay UMC professionals money to provide services (education, healthcare, social work, etc) to people who either can't benefit from those services or whose behavior juices the demand for those services.
2) Upper class people want to engage in hedonism-lite. They want to sleep around a little. Experiment with drugs a little. They know it isn't good for them and it's total poison for the underclass, but THEY WANTS IT! If they have to ally with the underclass to fight off middle class moralism, so be it.
Another reason for dismissals of IQ is a reaction against managerialism, and the failures of early twentieth century attempts at scientific technocracy.
Below is my write up on "Eugenicons" I posted in response to Brian Chau. Here is the except on Bukele:
4) On democracy it should be pretty obvious that people like Bryan and Hanania are very anti-democracy. In fact Hanania's conversion on immigration seems to relate to the idea that democracy can be easily subverted and is meaningless.
His solution to crime is Bukele. This is a man that enlisted the military to surround the legislator, entered with armed men, and told them to vote the way he wanted. When the Supreme Court objected to his moves he dismissed them. He's basically created a strongman dictatorship along the same lines Putin did, and using the same rhetoric (cleaning up the streets, etc).
I happen to support Bukele, but only because I think being ruled by a strongman (or strongmen) is inevitable for dysgenic countries. Bukele is superior to rule by gang kingpins, but it's not a great solution. You can't lament Jan 6th and love Bukele.
Being forced to choose between different kind of lawlessness is a bad choice to be put in. It is the kind of thing Charles Murray specifically warned about happening in The Bell Curve when he talked about immigration. Saying "we can solve crime if we empower a strongmen" is something I already knew but has a lot of issues. I'd prefer to just have a country of naturally law abiding Eugenicons that don't need a strongman to be kept in line.
Moreover, the entire idea that our system is superior to say the Chinese is based on the idea that democracy and checks and balances stops things like COVID in China from happening. But of course how did Bukele first come into conflict with the Supreme Court. When they told him that his draconian COVID lockdowns were unconstitutional and that he couldn't just grab random people off the street and throw them in concentration camps because they were outside when he didn't want them to be outside. The same issues with imprisoning anyone with a tattoo can also be used against anybody Bukele doesn't like for any reason. That's how strongmen work, it feels awesome when the do what you want and sucks when they don't.
With socialism it's the same story. Putting aside the empirically unsound "diversity induced social distrust will shrink government" argument, Hanania mostly seems to believe that the elite should just cut the government because Hanania makes a good argument and democracy is easy to subvert. His plan for entitlement reform is "lie about it and do it anyway".
Fair enough, but why hasn't it happened already? Why haven't a bunch of enlightened centrist reforms happened already. Could it be that democracy does impose limits on elite incentives and actions? Could it be that the demographics of democracy impact those limits and incentives. Does the deep blue-ening of the coasts and cities not show this? Does Reagan 2.0 (Romney) losing with a higher white vote share then Reagan 1.0 not show this?
And if we did do away with the limits and incentives of democracy on the elite, how do we not just replicate the situation in China? Isn't it a good thing in some cases that the elite is limited.
I don't think there is too much daylight between what he outlines and Hanania, etc.
-------
Full Comment:
1) Eugenicons don't believe in forced sterilization, but they certainly believe in voluntary eugenics. And they would probably be in favor of trying to get poors to agree voluntarily to getting IUDs, abortions, etc. Many wouldn't object to linking state welfare to sterilization. No violation of the non-aggression principal there.
2) While they wouldn't force anyone to marry or prevent them from marrying, I think all would agree with the statement that pairings amongst the eugenic class creates eugenic offspring and those offspring create human progress. Hanania would look on that approvingly and Murray with trepidation, but they wouldn't dispute the facts.
3) View on dysgenic immigration are mixed in this group. Hanania has changed his mind on immigration because he no longer thinks it makes socialism/crime/dysfunction inevitable, but others like Murray, Sailer, Kirkegaard, Jones, etc disagree. If Hanania could be convinced that demographics were destiny then he would oppose it.
Personally, I think Hanania's conversion relates more to how being pro-immigration is necessary for him to get access to mainstream revenue sources then a dispassionate review of the evidence.
4) On democracy it should be pretty obvious that people like Bryan and Hanania are very anti-democracy. In fact Hanania's conversion on immigration seems to relate to the idea that democracy can be easily subverted and is meaningless.
His solution to crime is Bukele. This is a man that enlisted the military to surround the legislator, entered with armed men, and told them to vote the way he wanted. When the Supreme Court objected to his moves he dismissed them. He's basically created a strongman dictatorship along the same lines Putin did, and using the same rhetoric (cleaning up the streets, etc).
I happen to support Bukele, but only because I think being ruled by a strongman (or strongmen) is inevitable for dysgenic countries. Bukele is superior to rule by gang kingpins, but it's not a great solution. You can't lament Jan 6th and love Bukele.
Being forced to choose between different kind of lawlessness is a bad choice to be put in. It is the kind of thing Charles Murray specifically warned about happening in The Bell Curve when he talked about immigration. Saying "we can solve crime if we empower a strongmen" is something I already knew but has a lot of issues. I'd prefer to just have a country of naturally law abiding Eugenicons that don't need a strongman to be kept in line.
Moreover, the entire idea that our system is superior to say the Chinese is based on the idea that democracy and checks and balances stops things like COVID in China from happening. But of course how did Bukele first come into conflict with the Supreme Court. When they told him that his draconian COVID lockdowns were unconstitutional and that he couldn't just grab random people off the street and throw them in concentration camps because they were outside when he didn't want them to be outside. The same issues with imprisoning anyone with a tattoo can also be used against anybody Bukele doesn't like for any reason. That's how strongmen work, it feels awesome when the do what you want and sucks when they don't.
With socialism it's the same story. Putting aside the empirically unsound "diversity induced social distrust will shrink government" argument, Hanania mostly seems to believe that the elite should just cut the government because Hanania makes a good argument and democracy is easy to subvert. His plan for entitlement reform is "lie about it and do it anyway".
Fair enough, but why hasn't it happened already? Why haven't a bunch of enlightened centrist reforms happened already. Could it be that democracy does impose limits on elite incentives and actions? Could it be that the demographics of democracy impact those limits and incentives. Does the deep blue-ening of the coasts and cities not show this? Does Reagan 2.0 (Romney) losing with a higher white vote share then Reagan 1.0 not show this?
And if we did do away with the limits and incentives of democracy on the elite, how do we not just replicate the situation in China? Isn't it a good thing in some cases that the elite is limited.
5) Anyway, my response to Eugenicons is that it's a great idea. I support most of what he lists, and the only real difference you're pointing out is that Eugenicons are more into voluntary action than involuntary (with the issue of immigration being complex).
If I were to point to a something the article gets at, Hanania has snearing contempt for whoever he decides is lower than him and a superiority complex. You can get a lot of the same stuff with a lot more humility and empathy from a Murray or Sailer, and I've always thought on Hanania as edge lord regurgitations of Sailer designed for click bait. If you want takes on this problem see here:
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/links-to-consider-89
https://birdman.substack.com/p/hanania-still-sucks
I don't begrudge Hanania doing what he has to do to make a good living. But I don't see him adding much to the conversation. His views on this stuff are pretty confused and contradictory and he doesn't really like having honest debates with those that disagree with him because doing so might expose these problems (and risk his revenue sources).
We have a negro problem! Face that fact!
"(The Constitution) does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest..."
The "compelling interest" argument is capable of making the entire Constitution permanently moot, by a multiplication of unconstitutional policies (that "further a compelling interest") instituted simultaneously and continuously. The Constitution does not, in fact, authorize any excuse for its suspension, at any time, for any reason. Made-up BS by SCOTUS, which has a long history of made-up, self-serving BS.
If Non-whites can be white supremacists, then what is a white supremacist? Could it be as simple as being a regular person who opposes the rainbow brigade?
Could it be person who opposes mutilating and sterilizing children?
What happened with the Native Americans? I feel that if some highly educated powerful people don't start at least looking at the truth, we will have to deal with 1. A regressive and dumbed down society that gets more and more aggressive because they don't want to be pulled down 2. A tinder box of anger, some from misplaced jealousy and some from being penalized for immutable characteristics they can't change (genetics).
It is quite common for laissez-faire market supporters to use environmental causation to defend their positions. It's the famous pull yourself by your bootstraps line, or everyone can get rich/succeed with hard work line, or something like that. Now, some of this stuff doesn't make sense even if gaps in IQ were environmental, because obviously not everyone can be a wealthy business owner, but basically almost all of the rhetoric of laissez-faire market supporters these days at least implicitly assumes environmental causes for IQ gaps and personality differences or even that IQ doesn't matter and that personality is easily changeable.
On the other hand, sophisticated liberals and socialists, such as John Rawls and Gerald Allan Cohen, include in their justification for redistribution, or socialism, that people are not to blame for their social condition, whether due to environmental or genetic factors. If it's genetics, then that case can be made even clearer, because it's just extremely obvious that no one is guilty or praiseworthy for having inherited their IQ or a certain personality type, and you also can't blame the parental environment. An interesting historical fact is that some of the most famous founders of the Welfare State were also eugenicists.
On the other hand, there is the classic SSC post "Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biology-is-mutable/
Not one of his better posts. Basically his argument is nonsense, the only reason society seems fixed is because every attempt at intervention has failed, exactly what one would expect if the differences are genetic.
Emil, you deliberately did not address Richard Hanania's point about about crime. For stopping crime, policy is the only thing that matters. Debating about the degree of impulse control among the different ethnic groups doesn't matter that much when people are getting randomly punched in the face just walking down the street. El Savador's president Bukele is doing God's work there.
See my comment below thread for full argument.
We already knew that a strong man that runs roughshot over checks and balances can reduce street crime if he wants to. The problem is that this solution has its own drawbacks. Maybe those drawbacks are better than gang rule in third world shitholes, but LatinAm strongman rule or any other kind of police state technocracy would be a downgrade from first world checks and balances.
It's a lot better to just have a people genetically pre-disposed to good behavior that don't need a strongmen to enforce basic public behavior.
If we choose to keep our democracy and checks and balances, then demographics are going to matter for public policy. And its clear that polities that have seen large influxes of dysgenic demographics have lurched to the left and become radically deficient on policy.
Have you seen the African migrants that are being bussed to New York City lately? Texas Governor Abbott is deliberately sending the sub-saharan Africans to NYC to give liberal New Yorkers some cultural enrichment. Most of the illegals coming across are still from Central America though.
I'm bringing this up because like it or not, the current demographic trends predict that the US will be a hispanic plurality country in the near future. Our society will look like that of Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. WHEN that happens, we will need a strongman like Bukele.
Checks and balance won't matter that much in that scenario.
"Second, there's a good reason that egalitarians resist the conclusion with the emotional force that they do. Clearly, it matters to them a lot."
Egalitarians often accuse proponents of hbd of "obsessing" over race and intelligence. But no one obsesses over it more than those who don't want to accept the possibility that it could be true.
Y'all are following a eugenicist who wants to replace God with "The Science". Which is just another form of satanism. Time to opt out.
"If the current gap is environmental in origin, [...] it may require completely redesigning society.."
Covid was the official launch of this redesign. There are memes in everything at all levels of society depending how much is known; take 'closing the gap' if 'The Gap' is the difference between the old world and the new. It's the closing out and total decomposition of a full zodiacal cycle back in to Aquarius, an air sign, for eventual renewal. See internet, digital tech./currency, leaf blowers, hand driers, whatever. If it's air-based tech. it'll find an investor. This is a form of evidence. (And also a sign of hope if required.) Society has to be utterly festering in blackened decomposition under the weight of its own 'academic' left brain. Give it another seven years.
System justification theory is cope for people trying to blow fresh breath in to a rotten corpse, dead since the early 1900's. Academia is Artificial Intelligence festering in the noosphere to keep egos in a state of zombification. "We can solve these problems if we just think really really hard on all the data..." No. It's the Kali Yuga. Nothing can be saved that is as dead as medicine, religion, law, academia etc.. They're 'filling the gaps' until reality kicks in.
Homicides in the US went up 30% from 2019 to 2020. I don't think genes changed quite that much on May 25, 2020.
So, yeah, even (hopefully) short-term fads in culture can have big impacts on some social statistics.
The jump in homicides post-Floyd is exactly in and of itself a consequence of egalitarianism as are all other crime jumps in recent times from the 60s onwards. They are caused by policies based on egalitarian assumptions.