cult conversions … occur by using doctrine to resolve some core emotional vulnerability. … A… clear sign that one is dealing with a cult indoctrination … is making the mark live up to contradictory demands. You must understand racism and admit that you cannot understand racism. You must admit to your complicity in racism and pledge to do better knowing that it is impossible to do better. You must be an ally but accept that you will always do your allyship wrong. … these impossible and paradoxical demands dramatically deepen commitment to the cult … The concept of “white fragility” in the antiracist Woke cult is exactly this sort of emotional shakedown. … Lead the mark to take a step further in, coach them into rationalizing why that step was good, and then repeat with a further step. … when the mark rationalizes these objectively bad decisions and the cognitive dissonance that doing them causes, they nearly always rationalize themselves much further into the cult.
The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness analyses how it spots and indoctrinates its marks, but says little about the mark’s original issue that the woke exploit:
Sometimes, the underlying emotional vulnerability is there for personal reasons, or as a result of life events.
Sometimes, indeed it is – their prime targets are students, who often arrive at university with plenty of youthful insecurity and teenage angst. But wokeness itself can provide the distress as well the abusive ‘resolution’. Students arriving at a politically-correct university are immediately plunged into an artificial racial reality that they are forbidden to notice: affirmative-action admissions ensure that the academic ability of their fellow students correlates strongly with skin colour. Next, the disparate impact theory they are taught offers them only two explanations, one explicit, the other implicit, for the disparities it highlights:
– blacks are statistically unequal to whites because of white racism
– blacks are statistically unequal to whites because they are inferior
No third option is allowed into any target’s mind – not if the woke can help it (if they even know one themselves!). So the mark has a simple choice: believe in the explicit explanation, or become the moral equivalent of Hitler by believing the implicit one. No-one wants to be morally equivalent to Hitler, so, since they know no third option (since the very idea there could be any other alternative to the evil implicit one has never risen into their awareness), every doubt that subtle white racism explains the discrepancy, every argument that denies that white racism, however hidden, is at the root of the differences they’re taught to hate and the even more obvious differences they’re forbidden to notice, threatens them with becoming that object of loathing to their (and society’s) principles, a racist! When these two alternatives are the only ones that a student knows deep down (and up top, in the surface of the mind, they hardly dare think of the implicit one) then the claim that one is either a racist or else admits to being a racist seems to make sense.
(It was the same under Stalin and Mao. In both Russia and China, the mass famines were followed a few years later by the mass purges. Either you accepted that saboteurs, wreckers and enemies were fouling up the scientifically-proven socialist dream, or you were a vile capitalist-roader, an exploiter. One communist who had served the Party in the Ukraine famine and been shaken by what he saw, later wrote:
For that very reason, however, my conscious mind reached out desperately for alibis, for compromises with conscience. … It was imperative to squelch these emotions, to drive them into the underground of my mind. I laboured to repair my loyalties. With the purge in the offing, this urgency was even greater.
“With the purge in the offing …” – the far lesser but real dangers of cancel culture have a similar effect of ‘encouragez les autres’. This encouraging of indoctrinated minds to discipline themselves is as important to wokeness as the conscious fear that cancel culture inflicts on outsiders.)
So, does a better understanding of the problem point us towards any solutions?
The only ways I know of to effect a deprogramming of this are these three: (1) striking right to the heart of the point of vulnerability in a completely different and more healthy way …
The first of the three is what I will talk about. However,
None of this is easy. In fact, it’s all usually very difficult … … People who have been reprogrammed into a cult mentality will perceive all attempts to free them from the cult as malicious attempts to drag them … back to the Bad Emotional Place that they have come to strongly associate with that awful feeling of vulnerability that was used to initiate them into the cult in the first place. The doctrine is the opium that dulls their emotional pain … anyone trying to talk sense to a fully reprogrammed cult member … will be, in a very real sense, interpreted as trying to do harm to them … because the cult doctrine is the proffered resolution to the … emotional vulnerability that led them to be indoctrinated and reprogrammed in the first place. And you must appreciate just how much that vulnerability has been inflamed by the cult initiation, indoctrination, and reprogramming process.
At this point it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room; that third explanation (for why blacks in the US today can be statistically unequal to whites) which, of all others, wokeness most trains its victims never to see. Political correctness is a parasite on the backs of those it pretends to help.
“Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion’, the big agenda on the left is dependency.”
I owe that quote to Thomas Sowell, who has described how lucky he was to be born at a moment when the old prejudices about blacks were dying, and the new ones with which the PC would replace them had not yet grown strong (read his books). Sowell’s long life also lets him witness against what another coloured academic calls the woke’s “ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations”. A third black analyst concludes that
“woke whites would do more good by doing nothing”
So in a way, I’m not disagreeing with those woke whites who say they’re racists. THAT’S MY POINT! They are – just not in the way they’ve been led to believe. That fact is the ‘more healthy way’ to confront their distress. Even in a struggle session, with leaders organised and ready to shout or sneer you down, it may sometimes be better – and even safer – to be last heard expressing the ‘wrong sort’ of anti-racism than just denying their sort. In a private conversation with an early inductee, it may even be productive.
cult deprogramming almost always proceeds from an initial doubt that spirals out of control
I agree with Edmund Burke that “lying and falsehood are allowed in no cause whatever … but a man may speak the truth by measure, that he be allowed to speak it longer”. If you can either avoid triggering the emotional vulnerability at the very start of a personal discussion or else trigger it in “a more healthy way”, then you may manage to speak the truth for longer – maybe as long as can save a soul from the woke lie. The very fact that your truth is more costly to adopt than their current lie can be turned to polemical advantage. Robert Conquest became a communist at 17 – and also ceased to be a communist while still 17. Thomas Sowell was a marxist in his early 20s – but not thereafter. Modern victims of the education establishment experience are more propagandised than those two ever were, but can still be reached.
Of course, woke leaders (and many a follower – those who believe the dogma for other reasons or none, or because they were not infected with emotional vulnerability by indoctrinating educators but brought a personal one with them to university), will not be reached by this, but as the increasingly abusive rituals of politically-correct ‘anti’-racism show, there are a lot of self-flagellating followers.
— [ADDED TWO YEARS LATER] —
Only recently did I discover that crude Ibram Kendi (born Ibram Rogers) had once spelt it out in an interview with Vox:
“There’s only two causes of, you know, racial disparities,” Kendi said on a Vox podcast. “Either certain groups are better or worse than others, and that’s why they have more, or racist policy. Those are the only two options.”
(Quoted in The New Definition of Racism, h/t Critical Race Theory and the Long March Through the Institutions). The idea also seems to be presented with a cruder obviousness in his book ‘How to Be an Antiracist’ than in the work of white CRT intellectuals – an opinion that Ibram would doubtless insist has to be either false or proof of his innate genetic inferiority, but which I suggest can have another cause. 🙂
Is the first paragraph addressed to the Duke of Sussex, a man whose choice of wife seems eminently sensible if you are Johnny Depp?
Thomas Sowell should be required reading for all teenagers and for all politicians.
– blacks are statistically unequal to whites because of white racism
– blacks are statistically unequal to whites because they are inferior
Well sooner or later, the IQ issue will need to be addressed and acknowledged. Otherwise the left will implement an explicitly anti-white agenda because of the first point.
I’ve read a fair bit of Thomas Sowell. Another author worth reading is Eric Hoffer, especially The True Believer.
“Well sooner or later, the IQ issue will need to be addressed and acknowledged. Otherwise the left will implement an explicitly anti-white agenda because of the first point.”
Or a few on the right will implement an explicitly anti-black agenda because of the second point. The problem is that neither hypothesis is true, and the political fight between the two sides excludes any discussion of alternative hypotheses, blocking solutions. *Both* sides are equally wrong and equally to blame, and need to be opposed.
It’s the same sort of thing as the Flynn effect. Humans from different populations all start off pretty much the same, on average, but the circumstances in which we grow up have a big effect. Culture, education, nutrition, wealth, and health – they can all impact how well we do in life.
‘Race’ is genetically insignificant, a handful of genes among thousands, a meaningless and arbitrary distinction, like dividing people on the basis of blood group, or astrological sign. But such cultural distinctions can have cultural consequences. If the cultural assumption is that Capricorns or Geminis are stupid, and that affects how they’re educated, or how they behave, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To fix it we all have to stop treating people differently or regarding them differently, even when we’re trying to ‘help’, and just find out what works. We’re all just ‘people’. All lives matter.
The problem is that neither hypothesis is true – This is a barefaced lie.
All the wishful thinking in the world wont make it so, and making policy based on a lie will fail.
So get stuffed.
And just to be clear its terrible that its true. But ignoring it doesn’t help one iota.
So get stuffed again.
That’s a very good read. Thank you.
I’m reading a book called ‘Irreversible Damage’, by Abigail Shrier, about the huge rise in transgender identification among young girls. She has an interesting analysis about what the drivers might be that cause young girls especially to flock to this particular cult-like belief system. She posits as the cause the fact that most young people in Western societies are becoming more-and-more depersonalized, interacting with others on a personal level less and less, and turning more-and-more to the hive mind/echo chamber of social media, where you can quite-easily find a belief system or a social structure that seems appealing, and then simply never have to encounter an opposing point of view, ever again. Any contradictory opinion that does intrude is easy countered by referring back to the foundational beliefs – what is characterized by ‘woke’ activists as ‘Do the work!”, as though reading/experiencing what they have come to believe will simply validate it, a priori.
Many young people are now living more-or-less full-time in a Sim World that exists entirely in their minds and on their screens, and of course, when you do not have to factor in physical realties, it’s easy to construct and maintain a perfect world. That’s not a bad definition of a cult, and so that may be why we see all sorts of cult-like belief systems coming into sudden and violent contact with the real world – with predictable results. As Sowell wrote, so many of these belief systems rely utterly on a sense of dependency, and that dependency is amplified a hundred-fold by the blinkered vision that social media (can) impose. It was supposed to expose us all to an infinite spectrum of information and beliefs, but it was not really perceived that it is also uniquely adapted to narrow one’s viewpoint rather than broaden it.
Peter Hitchens has written that WW1 was the first of Kierkegaard’s perfect revolutions, where the buildings and the outward signs of the existing order remain standing, but the driving currents are completely altered. I suspect that our headlong descent into social media virtual-reality will be another such. The complete, data-free, emotion-driven cataclysm that is the Covid-19 panic is merely the latest manifestation. It will be interesting times.
llater,
llamas
Llamas, there was a report recently about a group of 9 schoolgirls from the same school that had previously claimed to be trans.
Since lockdown, 7 of the 9 had reverted to their feminine selves, indicating that peer pressure and/or attention seeking may be significant factors.
Whatever the cause, it does highlight the utter evil of the rush to surgery/drugs of organisations like Mermaids…
“She posits as the cause the fact that most young people in Western societies are becoming more-and-more depersonalized, interacting with others on a personal level less and less, and turning more-and-more to the hive mind/echo chamber of social media, where you can quite-easily find a belief system or a social structure that seems appealing, and then simply never have to encounter an opposing point of view, ever again.”
I always find it a bit odd when people say that social media is not interacting with others on a personal level. It’s as if they imagine the people at the other end of the link are not real people.
I’ve actually seen the same phenomenon playing out in more ‘conventional’ social situations. Boys are expected to act like boys, girls are expected to act like girls, and they compete to fit in to the roles expected of them. Boys become obsessed with demonstrating how macho and manly they are. Girls become obsessed with their appearance. Any hint of non-conformity or resistance meets with derision, social rejection and isolation, and norm-enforcing bullying. I’ve seen boys pushed into carrying out the most stupid, dangerous stunts out of terror of being labelled ‘a girl’ by their peers if they don’t. Sporting prowess is encouraged, even at the cost of unbalanced priorities in life, constant sports injuries, and being driven to taking steroids. Rejection of educational attainment by boys is common for the same reason – ‘swots’ are unmanly. The demands on boys are contradictory – you are required to reject effeminate or geeky behaviour, and at the same time accept that they are not macho enough and must try harder. Likewise the demands on girls – they must seek to be slim and beautiful, and they can never be slim and beautiful enough. The contradictory demands twist their minds inside out – caught between the terror of social rejection, of admitting to being one of the hated outcasts that as members of the cult they have spent years denigrating, and the damage and harm that conformity is doing to them, and the constant fear of slipping up and betraying ‘imperfection’ as seen by the cult.
In face-to-face contacts there is no escape from the dominant majority culture. You fit in or you take damage. But with the internet it’s far easier now to find alternative sub-cultures to give you that psychological support of membership, at a lower performance cost. And that in turn makes the phenomenon more visible, because it is the conflicts *between* cults, where each sees the aberrant behaviour (by their standards) of the other, that triggers the alarms. If you’re brought up in a cult where children are *required* to conform to gender norms, seeing a group where they’re acting differently rings all the cult-conformity bells. It’s not just strange and different – it’s threatening and dangerous, undermining the stability of society’s foundations/values.
Cults are just an extreme form of normal human behaviour, and are more common than you would think. You don’t see them when you’re inside one. So the ones we’re *all* inside remain invisible.
To Thomas Sowell fans: honorable mention to Walter E. Williams. From Wiki:
“In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a “certificate of amnesty and pardon” to all white people for Western Civilization’s sins against blacks – and “thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry.” He still offers it to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.”
“I always find it a bit odd when people say that social media is not interacting with others on a personal level. It’s as if they imagine the people at the other end of the link are not real people.”
Its the old adage – 90% of communication is non verbal
What are the penalties and costs of moving from libertarian position to republican or democrat? If a libertarian says “I think I have to vote Trump this election”, do they get ostracized for not being staunchly for JoJo? Of course not. Even within this blog, there are differences of opinions about libertarian doctrine and things never rise above a little spicy language.
If you want to see how the woke handle things, see how Dr Karlyn Borysenko or Thunderf00t (and many others) have been treated when they didn’t bend the knee.
I have been coming here for a long time. I have sometimes expressed opinions that I had based on erroneous information. I have been calmly corrected by other, better informed, visitors and learned something new from the interaction. On no occasion have I ever been ostracized or been made to feel unwelcome for disagreeing with others here. The fact that people are not in the least dogmatic and that there are differences of opinion is why I keep coming here.
There’s an old Jewish joke which applies equally to Libertarians. Two Jews, three opinions. That’s probably why Libertarians are a fringe movement. And precisely why Mr Black is wrong.
One thing that is puzzling me. What precisely is our doctrine? I’ve been coming here for quite some time and I didn’t know that we had one.
Beyond the non aggression principle, there isn’t one.
Mr. Black is always wrong. He also a blogroach who makes no actual arguments which is why I just kick/banned him.
Utter bullshit on every level. But experience has shown me that pointing out the manifest absurdities in race/IQ discussions is a repetitive exercise in futility.
[…] From Niall Kilmartin at Samizdata. […]
PdH: “Utter bullshit on every level.”
Africans and Europeans have had different evolutionary pressures applied for, by some accounts nearly a million years. But it’s made no difference what so ever to either?
Does that mean the theory of evolution is being dragged down off it’s plinth too?
Poor old Darwin, constantly being held up to support lazy and/or self-serving racist theories by American segregationists and actual literal Nazis alike. I suppose that is the trouble with making the very finest of hooks, you really can’t control who will hang what on it.
“Africans and Europeans have had different evolutionary pressures applied for, by some accounts nearly a million years. But it’s made no difference what so ever to either?”
Nope. Homo Sapiens evolved about 200,000 years ago. Africans first moved into Europe about 40,000 years ago, and the genes for lighter skin first appeared (so far as we can tell) in Northern Europe around 12,000-8000 years ago, and spread to the rest of Europe in several waves around 5800 and 4800 years ago.
There is far more genetic diversity between different tribes in Africa than there is between Africans and Europeans. Most of the evolutionary separation is between different African tribes, and Europeans are effectively a blend of just three tribes, who moved out of Africa at different times and by different routes.
European ‘white’ skin colour is primarily the result of a handful of gene alleles: SLC24A5, SLC45A2, TYR, and HERC2/OCA2. That’s out of a total of 25,000 genes, so it’s genetically trivial. SLC45A2 only became common 5800 years ago with the spread of farming from the Middle East into Europe, or about 230 generations ago.
There are many other genes that could be used to divide humanity into ‘races’ that date back a lot further. Blood group, for example. Orang-utans have the same set of ABO blood groups as we do (Chimpanzees are mainly blood group A with some O, Gorillas exclusively B), so that particular ‘racial’ division dates back to before we were human. Only the Japanese have managed to invent blood group racism – bura-hara – but if you’re going to argue on the basis of evolutionary time since we split, it’s a far better candidate.
Every allele of every gene has its own family tree. You can divide humanity into those with the gene variant, and those without, and all those with the variant are related, parent to child, in one big happy family. When we do this with the skin colour genes, we get the conventional ‘races’, but doing the same with any other gene is just as meaningful, genetically, and gives us a different division into ‘races’. That’s why geneticists and evolutionary biologists regard the very concept of ‘race’ as a nonsense.
PdH: “Poor old Darwin, constantly being held up to support lazy and/or self-serving racist theories”
So it *is* your contention that there no evolutionary differences between Africans and Europeans, or Asians and Europeans?
Perhaps in your mind if racial differences exist, then one set is worse or better than another set.
If that’s your problem you should put that thought aside. In fact each set of characteristics was optimal for the environment in which they evolved.
Regarding race and IQ, Nassim Taleb made a quite good take down of the statistical methedology (or lack of it) that lies behind it. His conclusion, and one which I agree with on reading his paper, is that IQ tests are effective at measuring two things (1) extreme lack of intelligence, and (2) the ability to take an IQ test. Considering that much of the original research and developing of IQ testing was done by the US military to measure the ability to be trained as an infantryman [retain information on how to complete simple, repetitive tasks] these limitations intuitively seem reasonable.
PdH: “Poor old Darwin, constantly being held up to support lazy and/or self-serving racist theories”
Presumably if Darwin’s ToE isn’t bullshit, we could take some fast breeding creature with a short life cycle ( maybe the fruit fly ), and apply some constant evolutionary pressure over say, 20,000 generations, and observe its descendants evolve into mice?
Might be something that could be tested in a lab over a period of, twenty years.
NiV wrote
‘Nope. Homo Sapiens evolved about 200,000 years ago. Africans first moved into Europe about 40,000 years ago, and the genes for lighter skin first appeared (so far as we can tell) in Northern Europe around 12,000-8000 years ago, and spread to the rest of Europe in several waves around 5800 and 4800 years ago.
There is far more genetic diversity between different tribes in Africa than there is between Africans and Europeans. Most of the evolutionary separation is between different African tribes, and Europeans are effectively a blend of just three tribes, who moved out of Africa at different times and by different routes.
European ‘white’ skin colour is primarily the result of a handful of gene alleles: SLC24A5, SLC45A2, TYR, and HERC2/OCA2. That’s out of a total of 25,000 genes, so it’s genetically trivial. SLC45A2 only became common 5800 years ago with the spread of farming from the Middle East into Europe, or about 230 generations ago.’
That’s funny. In the US, we are being told – with a straight face – that the reduced melanin resulting from these trivial genetic variations is an absolute marker for unfathomable savagery and evil in those with the variations. Who knew evolution was so powerful?
llater,
llamas
IQ tests are effective at detecting two things:(1) lack of intelligence, (2) ability to take IQ tests.
I think you forgot cultural bias.
You could say the same for a typical physics degree (or any other real subject)
Oh wait, “BAME” racists do.
PdH: “Poor old Darwin, constantly being held up to support lazy and/or self-serving racist theories”
Just refer to the Olympics.
Compare the 100M track sprint finalists with the 100M Breaststroke finalists.
None of this has anything really to do with skin colour.
“Whiteness” is just a term the Frankfurt School Marxists use to mean “capitalism” – civilisation.
“Victim groups” whether of the race, sex, or whatever are just USED by the Marxists for their objective of destroying the “exploitation” and “oppression” of Western “capitalism”.
The refusal to address the Frankfurt School of Marxism as the Frankfurt School of Marxism is rather annoying.
“Critical Theory” including “Anti Racism” “Diversity and Inclusion” doctrine is the Frankfurt School of Marxism.
I am reminded of the 1980s when Conservatives made weak jokes about “political correctness gone mad” – rather than actually doing anything to stop the Marxists taking over the institutions.
Conservatives and libertarians will not oppose the Frankfurt School of Marxism – they will not even say its name. They just make weak jokes instead. And write other stuff that misses the point.
So the Marxists win by default.
None of this has anything really to do with race – it is irrelevant to discuss biological race.
It has nothing to do with “gender” or sex or sexuality.
Fight the Marxists as the Marxists they are.
Sure, because IQ and ankle structure and totally the same thing. Seriously, get stuffed.
IQ measures IQ and not much else. It is significantly limited. For a start by the medium of it and time/scope of it. An IQ tests shows how we react to a mistake? of course not…
We can asee huge differences in outcomes between brothers. So the significance of it is small.
There are also many levels of intelligence.
Someone might be good for a structured approach, others show their genius in fluid situations but are not at top in formalized structures.
For those that study 2nd World War it is clear to see you could get leaders that were only good at Battalion level , others at Divisional level and others at Army or staff level. All this tell us that intelligence is too vast to be measured properly. Rommel was good at Divisional, Corps level but beyond it he was out of is league, Eisenhower could only make it a Strategic level. Then there is hubris…
“Compare the 100M track sprint finalists with the 100M Breaststroke finalists.”
I guess you’re referring to the observation there’s one Kenyan tribe that produces a large fraction of the world’s elite runners. Unfortunately for your theory, this has nothing at all to do with their ‘race’, except coincidentally. Most Africans don’t have the relevant genes. Most Africans don’t make great runners. The genes for performance running have nothing at all to do with the genes for black skin. They are two different things. It makes as much sense as recruiting pygmy tribesmen to your basketball team because they happen to be black, and ‘everybody knows’ black people make the best basketball players. It’s stupid.
Cats have four legs. Fido has four legs. Therefore Fido is a cat. People who make such logical errors are failing a very basic IQ test.
There are genetic differences by group. Some Africans have a tendency to sickle-cell anemia. Ashkenazim are vulnerable to a number of diseases. People from herding cultures usually can digest lactose; people who aren’t, usually can’t. Inuit, I am told, have on average a lower surface-to-volume ratio, which helps defend against cold. Amish have a relatively high concentration of genetic disease because of inbreeding. People from the north tend to have lighter skin than people from the equator. (It’s a Vitamin A thing. Just think – when the neanderthals met the cro-magnon, the neanderthals quite possibly were white and the cro-magnon dark. Now that we can find and sequence genomes, we might have an answer to that one.)
And of course people who live in different environments will bend their cultures, as well as their genes, to suit their worlds.
Call it what you will – races, cultures, groupings – different people are different. Sometimes they learn to get along with us, and we with them. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way. I do not WANT to learn to get along with Black Lives Matter. BLM is even more determined not to get along with me. I think it’s culture. They think it’s race. As a White Devil, I don’t have the moral authority to argue about it.
I will happily confess to being a raging culturist. Some cultures just . . . suck.
“Look no further than the assertion that it is impossible for different races to have different levels of intelligence.”
Of course it’s not impossible. But it’s not because of their race. As we’ve said repeatedly, correlation does not imply causation.
Have you not noticed Mr. Black that the subject is being openly discussed with opinions from both sides and commenters supporting their assertions with evidence?
This quote is from an article by journalist Emily Yoffe – who appears to dislike Trump a lot (and/or think it advisable to advertise that fact) but who is also concerned at what cancel culture is doing to society. Why is she concerned? Well, this is also from her article:
What does this have to do with a post on deprogramming PC-followers? Well, I quote below instapundit’s witty take on the latest news of Schaaf:
I say at the end of my post that PC leaders will not be saved by the approach I describe. But their desire to save themselves can do wonders. 🙂
As for Yoffe, whom will she vote against in November (and which other will she thereby vote for): Trump or cancel culture? Does even she know? And will anyone else ever know? Thanks to cancel culture, perhaps not.
Libby Schaaf: “whoever put those nooses in our public trees, in our sacred public space here in Oakland, intentions don’t matter.”
“in our sacred public space ” Another word down the shitter, thanks to the lefty loons.
Loonie Libby then, has a fair bit in common with some individuals around this ‘ere manor.
“Compare the 100M track sprint finalists with the 100M Breaststroke finalists.
Sure, because IQ and ankle structure and totally the same thing. Seriously, get stuffed.”
Are you being deliberately dense? I’m pointing out that certain ethnic groups show a higher level of aptitude for certain functions than others.
And why is brain development for example, so utterly different to ankle structure or muscle fibre density?
Why are there close to zero internationally competitive black swimmers?
You’re arguing like a leftist.
“I’m pointing out that certain ethnic groups show a higher level of aptitude for certain functions than others.”
Yes, and you’re wrong. What your observation showed was that people with a high level of aptitude for certain sports are of certain ethnic groups. That’s not the same thing at all. And it’s got nothing at all to do with their skin colour.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Nullius – you are being repeatedly disingenuous.
The assertion is not that race “causes” anything. That is your straw man.
It is asserted that:
There is a genetic influence on IQ, just as there is for a host of other traits.
There are genetic differences in groups from different areas and ethnicities.
There are consequences when these truths meet up with the fictional “tabula rasa” doctrine of Woke liberalism (NOT classical liberalism).
These truths directly collide with the mawkishly sentimental politics of “you can be anything you want!” – which has led to falsified acheivement.
It is sufficient to demonstrate that these genetic difference exist to disprove the “tabula rasa” approach. (Lots of fun watching people quote the genetics of skin color as if it disproves these points…)
… an essential part of the modern race/identity hustle has been to simultaneously insist that race/gender Should Not Matter – while simultaneously insisting that the differences are formative, pervasive, and to be “celebrated”. The Rest of Us have been jerked around for decades by Sacred Victim Groups that insist on equal treatment on Mondays and Wednesdays, then demand special treatment on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This has kicked into high gear as the current radicals have discarded equality as a goal, and have pushed double-bind doctrines like “unconscious bias” to perpetuate these differences.
It’s especially delightful – and quizzical – to see you twist to deny the reality of inborn variation now, as the Left completely jettisons the equality claim, and goes all-in for resegregation based on irresolvable differences – essentially extending “born that way” determinism to cultural phenomena… All to perpetuate the hustle.
Let me help you out:
The foundational Judeo Christian Western notion that “All men are created equal” does not mean equal in talents or abilities.
Start from there…
Nope. A couple decades of watching people ‘debate’ race & IQ has shown me that the assertion race “causes” things eventually follows just as surely as night follows day, all that varies is how long, convoluted & disingenuous the path is to get there.
“There is a genetic influence on IQ, just as there is for a host of other traits.
There are genetic differences in groups from different areas and ethnicities.”
Both of those are true statements, but saying them one after the other gives the impression that the genetic differences you’re talking about are the same in both sentences. They’re not.
“… an essential part of the modern race/identity hustle has been to simultaneously insist that race/gender Should Not Matter – while simultaneously insisting that the differences are formative, pervasive, and to be “celebrated”.”
Yes. And the opposition have tried to simultaneously claim both that whites (and men) are inherently morally and intellectually superior, and it’s totally wrong and evil and unreasonable for the Woke to claim that the Woke are morally and intellectually superior. One hierarchy has been replaced by another, but otherwise nothing has changed. The Woke are the new racists, the racists are the new blacks. And it’s hard to feel much sympathy with either.
“The foundational Judeo Christian Western notion that “All men are created equal” does not mean equal in talents or abilities.”
That’s not Judeo-Christian – “the last shall be first”, doesn’t work if everyone is equal. The Christian ethic was “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” As racists do to blacks, so the Woke do to racists. Cosmic justice, you see.
This bit about Homo sapiens evolving about 200,000 years ago, and Africans first moving into Europe 40,000 years ago was nipping at the back of my mind. Homo sapiens? We were doing a lot of evolving before that. The earliest remains of Homo erectus have been discovered in both Africa and East Asia dating back to 2.1 mya, and it is thought that they may have diverged from Homo habilis at about that time.
We can argue about the evolution of genus Homo. Why not? The paleoanthropolgists do! But there’s little doubt that H. erectus was in East Asia two million years ago. Paleontological evidence says Aborigines were in Australia at least 50,000 years ago, and perhaps 65,000 years ago, and isolated from much of humanity for most of that time. They are definitely H. sapiens – or at least the same species we are – because we can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
We have had an order of magnitude longer to evolve differences between Eurasians and Africans than you suggest. I’m not arguing African genetic diversity here – there is a lot of it. Another proof that humans have been evolving in Africa is simple: Africa still has a diverse megafauna. None of the other continents have anything like that diversity. So those animals have been dealing with us way back to the days when our ancestors were australopithecines. They know what to do about us. We came as a terrible shock to the North American megafauna, and while the Eurasian megafauna probably weren’t as startled, we still thinned them out pretty badly.
Look. Genes matter. Everything making up our bodies is controlled by genes, and we don’t all have the same genes, nor the same cultures, nor the same histories. Call them cultures, races, groups, clades, or tribes – there are patterns of human grouping. The groups are different – some mildly so, some drastically. It can’t all be genetic – the Vikings were terrifying a thousand years ago, the Norwegians are well-behaved today – but the patterns of genes and culture MATTER. Don’t try to talk around it.
Three quick points.
Firstly, observe how Perry dismisses the issue of race based IQ with a wave of his hand. He’s right, everyone else is wrong because he says so. Libertarianism cannot work without this central dogma, so it must never be disputed. How very cultish.
Secondly, he is so unfit to support his beliefs that he has to censor views that attack his weak points, dismissing them with the leftist term “racism”.
Thirdly, when he said he would ban me for having these views, not one person objected in principle to that.
“This bit about Homo sapiens evolving about 200,000 years ago, and Africans first moving into Europe 40,000 years ago was nipping at the back of my mind.”
Good points! It’s a complicated story, which I simplified grossly for the sake of exposition. (And because people moan if my comments overflow their soundbite/Tweet-sized mental buffers!)
“Look. Genes matter. Everything making up our bodies is controlled by genes, and we don’t all have the same genes, nor the same cultures, nor the same histories. Call them cultures, races, groups, clades, or tribes – there are patterns of human grouping. The groups are different – some mildly so, some drastically. It can’t all be genetic – the Vikings were terrifying a thousand years ago, the Norwegians are well-behaved today – but the patterns of genes and culture MATTER. Don’t try to talk around it.”
I don’t disagree with that, and I’m not trying to talk my way around it. My objection is that we have 25,000 genes, any one of which can be used to divide humanity into ‘races’, but people have hung their hats on a particular tiny collection of just a dozen or so, not because they have anything at all to do with the construction of brains or bones or muscles, but because their effect on skin colour is easily visible at a distance. You can see it at a glance.
There’s no reason to think that these particular genes out of the 25,000 have anything at all to do with intelligence, or sporting prowess. They affect the skin colour. That’s all. (It’s not absolutely impossible in principle, but it’s been extensively tested and found not to be true.) It’s like thinking that red and black cars are somehow faster than green and blue cars. That’s not to say cars don’t have differences in their top speed, but the colour of the paint has nothing to do with it.
The problem is that the internal subtleties of brain construction and personality are not visible from the outside. All we have to go on is somebody’s external appearance. And we’ll start by trying to correlate the most obvious visible classifications with what we really want to know. Our inbuilt pattern-matcher is crude by default, and thinks correlation implies causation, and quickly jumps to conclusions about the contents from the packaging. If skin colour or hair colour ‘works’, in the sense of being correlated, they’re not going to bother with the subtleties of ear lobe shape or forehead depth or eyebrow thickness or shoe size. If everyone has the same skin colour, they’ll move on to more subtle indicators, like an Irish accent, but it’s the same principle. Externally visible markers are being used as crude proxies for invisible internal characteristics. Such proxies are usually positively medieval in their inaccuracy. But when somebody’s sense of self-worth is based on them being on the same side of some arbitrary dividing line as the intelligent and successful, nothing will ever convince them of it.
We know from things like the Flynn effect that a large fraction of the influences on intelligence are environmental. The book Freakonomics reported that when black kids are adopted by white families, they grow up with typical white levels of attainment. It’s been recently noted that the group falling furthest behind in UK schools is white working class boys. We all know that richer parents have harder-working, smarter kids, and loser parents have dumb kids, but that when an area becomes more prosperous, people get smarter. The group-average differences observed between white and black intelligence are almost certainly driven by culture and upbringing, not skin colour or other genetics.
The primary determinant of how clever and successful you are is how hard you work. And that’s not a message that the knuckle-dragging racists on either side want to hear. They’re looking for an easier way to get themselves put into the ‘smart set’.
Culture is fixable. Genetics is not. By ascribing to genetics what is really about culture, we sabotage at the root any attempt to fix it. And that’s a tragedy.
” the issue of race based IQ ”
You are really dense. IQ does not measure intellectual capability it only measure well…IQ whatever it means like i said above.
“IQ does not measure intellectual capability it only measure well…IQ whatever it means”
It measures some aspect of intellectual capacity, approximately and with considerable measurement error, but intellectual capacity is multi-dimensional, and not the only factor affecting success in life. It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing either.
It’s complicated.
We seem to be at loggerheads over racism, with one group of racists screaming “Blacks are stupid and violent!” and another group of racists screaming “Whites are horrible slavers and cultural imperialists, and they don’t respect me!” There’s yet another bunch muttering “I’m tired of the noise.” And then there are the complaints about sexism, ableism, and all the rest – and other groups saying “nothing to see here, move on.”
Perhaps it’s best to note this phenomenon is often a local thing, and we’re dealing with the local Blacks and Whites. We’re using the word ‘race’ but we really mean ‘culture’. And we don’t know the whole world. We know the part we live in. It’s not fair, but it’s undeniable. And what is really unfair is that from the pictures of riots, a lot of the violence is coming from white supporters of Black Lives Matter, and Antifa. (If you call that support.) The image they present, the slogans they scream and wave, and the damage they do are not helping the image of the black world.
And really, local is all we can trust. The newspapers and TV have agendas, everybody on the Web has an agenda, and the only thing I really can trust is my lying eyes.
IQ measures a very small span of intellectual capability.
Does IQ tests measures intellect vs time? is a person that can handle very complex problems but only with time have more intellectual capability than one that can adapt much faster to changing circumstances? Does it measures intellect vs physical space? how do you measure the intellect of an F1 pilot? does IQ measures intellect vs social contact , how we handle other persons? does IQ measure learning capability?
I posted above the example of military leaders that vary in capability as the size of unit/formation they control. If you use a battalion as an IQ test well probably Eisenhower will not show much of it.
My point is that IQ is very very limited. For a start is limited by the medium it uses to measure.
“IQ measures a very small span of intellectual capability.”
Of course. Much bigger components are what you know, and what you’re interested in. Studying physics for ten years to PhD level makes a big difference compared to someone leaving school at 12, no matter how natively intelligent they are. An interest in engineering is more useful in business than an interest in chess. You learn tricks and methods and strategies for solving problems, you learn background knowledge, conventions, conceptual frameworks, logical rules. And of course a lot of what makes somebody a good worker or a success has nothing to do with intelligence – it’s about personality, work ethic, honesty, integrity, generosity, empathy, ambition, and so on.
General inborn intelligence is only a small part of the picture. Culture and attitude are more important.
“We seem to be at loggerheads over racism, with one group of racists screaming “Blacks are stupid and violent!” and another group of racists screaming “Whites are horrible slavers and cultural imperialists, and they don’t respect me!” There’s yet another bunch muttering “I’m tired of the noise.” And then there are the complaints about sexism, ableism, and all the rest – and other groups saying “nothing to see here, move on.”
The core argument is the one the left is making with the full support of the establishment – that everyone is equal and if there are disparities, then its purely due to white racism/supremacism etc.
Various people here are making propositions that this isn’t so.
If we dont defeat this narrative there will be racial civil war. After all whites are guilty because they’re white.
I dont think sitting on the sideline arguing “muh principles” will save you.
If we’re all equal, how come whites are the bad guy? We’re equal to everybody else, so they have no complaint. 👿
These 4 statements seem to me to be prima facie true. If anyone disagrees with any of these 4 I’d be interested to know why.
1. Race exists and there are different races.
2. Economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes (whether for individuals, races, or other groups) are impacted by both nature (innate characteristics) and nurture (culture, values, influence of parents, influence of teachers, influence of media, etc).
3. When measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.
4. Scientists can empirically study the EXTENT to which the differences in outcomes by race (#3 above) are attributable to nurture and the extent to which those differences are attributable to nature.
If all 4 of the above statements are true, then I’d be interested in scientific studies that have done #4. Does anyone have any sources for scientific empirical studies that have studied the EXTENT to which educational, economic, or socioeconomic outcomes by race are attributable to differences in nurture versus nature?
@Flubber
Correct.
We can argue race, IQ or whatever. We can disagree vehemently and violently, but that violence is metaphoric. I give credit to any body posting here, no matter how I may disagree with them or they with me and no matter what might get posted, if I were to meet anybody in the flesh all I would expect is another argument and perhaps some name calling.
The “woke” racists are coming for you and me, everybody – if we let them! Nobody will be spared, least of all the vast bulk of “woke” racists who are too dense to realise what they actually are – useful idiots at best.
What America does today we do tomorrow. If we let it!
Ellen,
The Left has already explained that they think the whites are the bad guys because of their actions – current white racism and current systemic racism of American/western society and historical white racism and slavery and oppression.
Perry,
1. IQ is only one measure of intelligence. IQ is also only one measure of a KIND of intelligence.
2. Is it your position that two groups of people that differ to a statistically significant extent in certain physical talents are unable to differ to a statistically significant extent in certain mental talents? This is an illogical position without any evidence to support it.
Nullius in Verba,
1. Correlation does not preclude causation.
2. Do you think that certain ethnic groups do not show a higher level of aptitude for certain functions than others? If so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_athletics_in_Iceland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethiopian_male_long-distance_runners
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40330255?seq=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates
Now, whether each of these is due to nature or nurture is a legitimate question, but the idea that certain ethnic groups do not show a higher level of aptitude for certain functions than others is silly because there is a wealth of evidence indicating otherwise.
Nullius in Verba,
Correlation does not preclude causation.
“The core argument is the one the left is making with the full support of the establishment – that everyone is equal and if there are disparities, then its purely due to white racism/supremacism etc. Various people here are making propositions that this isn’t so. If we dont defeat this narrative there will be racial civil war. After all whites are guilty because they’re white.”
The left in the 1940s made the opposite argument – Nazi eugenics, Final Solution, Blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan Master Race, slavery, segregation, skinhead thugs and Ku Klux Klan, and so on. It rather put people off the idea. The general public realised racists were a bunch of authoritarian bastards, that their theories were self-aggrandizing tosh, and they ought to be got rid of. And surely we can all give a small cheer that this nasty bit of leftist authoritarianism got canned?
But authoritarians never give up. Spotting that the winds of public opinion were shifting, they reset their sails and declared that racism was (and always had been) a *right*-wing ideology that must be opposed, to save the poor blacks and foreigners from persecution, and society should grant them the power to stamp down good and hard on the racists. And since the public was by now thoroughly persuaded that racism was bad/wrong/dangerous, they agreed. The public disgust for racism was what justified and enabled the new authoritarians grab for power – exactly the same power that the old racist authoritarians had over blacks.
You can’t defeat authoritarianism with authoritarianism. It’s no good replacing the authoritarian racists with authoritarian anti-racists. Just as it’s no good replacing authoritarian anti-racists with authoritarian racists. The problem with previous revolutions has been that we always concentrate on the particular arbitrary and unjustified dividing line that the authoritarians use to divide ‘us’ from ‘them’, and we ignore the authoritarian methods used. So you always end up with the new boss being the same as the old boss, using the same methods, but on a different set of people. The Woke are as bad as the racists. But by the same token, the racists were as bad as the Woke, and we don’t want them back.
Supporting free speech for racists is a different game to supporting racism. You can make an abstract argument for the former on purely libertarian grounds, but the message is tainted if you give the impression that you’re only doing it because you’re a racist and you’re only concerned about *your* freedom. Even authoritarians believe in and will fight for *their own* freedom. If you want the public to understand that freedom means freedom even for people you despise, you have to make it clear that that’s the argument you’re making. You want freedom for everyone, not just yourselves. Or why should they care about *your* freedom, rather than just their own?
Authoritarians always chip away at freedom using the most publicly despised as targets, to get public support. So fighting for free speech is always going to involve some degree of holding one’s nose. But there’s no sense in making the stench any worse than it has to be. Arguing not only that racists deserve free speech, but that racists are somehow right is going to put most sensible people off. Racists won’t win that argument, but in the process, freedom might end up losing the argument too. And then we’ll keep on going round the cycle once more, one nasty bunch of authoritarians endlessly replacing another.
So it comes down to why you want to win – what you’re really fighting for. Do you want people to be free to believe and speak and live however they choose? Or do you want society to go back to being racist? You have to pick a side.
Once you’ve won the war for freedom, you can go back to arguing for what you believe in. But it doesn’t help to mix the messages.
“If anyone disagrees with any of these 4 I’d be interested to know why.”
1. for the reason given above.
“Is it your position that two groups of people that differ to a statistically significant extent in certain physical talents are unable to differ to a statistically significant extent in certain mental talents?”
We don’t consider these particular groups to differ in physical talents, unless you’re counting the physical talent of making vitamin D from sunlight, or reflecting light. The genes for sporting prowess have nothing to do with the genes for skin colour. African pygmies may be black-skinned, but they’re still reeeally bad at basketball.
There are 25,000 different genes on which some version of ‘race’ could be defined, and all the definitions are different. Stop assuming there’s only one way to divide up humanity.
It is rarely worth arguing with ‘scientific’ racists, one finds that however absurd the propositions they put forward the mere fact of them being ‘politically incorrect’ is apparently ipso facto proof that they are some sort of Hard Truth.
“3. When measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.”
A couple thousands years ago the Egyptians were at top of the “outcomes” did they lost IQ? Did the others won?
What was the IQ difference between East Germans and West Germans?
Oh so true. To repeat a remark I made earlier: A couple decades of watching people ‘debate’ race & IQ has shown me that the assertion race “causes” things eventually follows just as surely as night follows day, all that varies is how long, convoluted & disingenuous the path is to get there.
So Perry, whats your answer to the accusation that differences in outcomes for different racial groups is due to white racism?
Because as I said earlier “I dont think sitting on the sideline arguing “muh principles” will save you.”
“So Perry, whats your answer to the accusation that differences in outcomes for different racial groups is due to white racism?”
That was explained in the original post, up at the top.
Have we all spent so much time arguing about option 2 that we missed the elephant behind door number 3?
lucklucky,
Nothing you say here contradicts my statement.
Nullius in Verba,
Who is the “we” you think you speak for, exactly?
This is a belief you have. Maybe it is true and maybe it is false, but the mere fact that you think saying this claim makes it true speaks volumes about the quality of your thought process.
What is your point, precisely?
So, what’s your point?
There are many ways to divide up humanity. For example, there are people who think critically and then there are people who have beliefs unrelated to any evidence.
All of your comments have failed to provide any logical reason or empirical evidence that any of the following four statements are false:
1. Race exists and there are different races.
2. Economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes (whether for individuals, races, or other groups) are impacted by both nature (innate characteristics) and nurture (culture, values, influence of parents, influence of teachers, influence of media, etc).
3. When measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.
4. Scientists can empirically study the EXTENT to which the differences in outcomes by race (#3 above) are attributable to nurture and the extent to which those differences are attributable to nature.
The irrelevant discussion continues – as if any of this Frankfurt School of Marxism Critical Theory “Diversity” stuff was really about biological race.
It is so stupid. The “right”, for want of a better term, deserve to lose.
In Portland the young people are singing “Hands Up, please don’t shoot me”.
The thug in Ferguson Missouri did not have his hands up and did not say anything like this – he was on drugs, had just robbed a store, and was using his hands to beat a police officer who was half his size. But the young people do not care about any of that – they have been taught that there is no such thing as objective truth, even the ones who have science degrees have been taught that.
Remember the young people in Portland (nearly all biologically “white”) think that David Dorn in St Louis Missouri (biologically “black”) was guilty of “whiteness” – and, therefore, deserved to be killed.
Ditto the black store owners that BLM and Antifa have burned alive – they were guilty of “whiteness” as well and so deserved to be killed.
None of this is anything to do with biological race or with biological sex.
What makes you think the ‘right’ are particularly well represented among those who frequent Samizdata?
As to bickering and ‘disunity’ on the right leading to defeat. It wouldn’t be impossible that the SJW types are here running interference. And then, if you look at the Tory party today, compared to the Tory party in 1983, there is no comparison.
What is there in the Political landscape for the ‘right’ to rally around? Definitely not the Tory party. The party that has just put the whole population under house arrest, stopped 80-90% of commercial activity for three months and cut the GDP by 20% for absolutely no good reason.
And now I learn, we will likely be wearing masks into 2021.
But on the left, all you need is a mindless slogan and the mindless SJWs will rally to the cause, … mindlessly.
The battle has long been lost, and the underpinnings of our defeat was Thatcher choosing to ‘deregulate’ the legal system, rather than deregulation and denationalisation of the education system.
Bullshit of course, but the usual ‘follow the science’ (but historically illiterate) racist cunts will then conclude that if it isn’t white racism, that proves it must therefore be genetics. This is why I usually just kick/ban people the moment these discussions start as it is all so fucking predictable. All that varies is how long, convoluted & disingenuous the path is to get there.
Shlomo Maistre
July 25, 2020 at 12:09 am
lucklucky,
“3. When measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.”
A couple thousands years ago the Egyptians were at top of the “outcomes” did they lost IQ? Did the others won?
What was the IQ difference between East Germans and West Germans?
Nothing you say here contradicts my statement.”
It does, you could have well write this:
“across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of people from different European countries”
“across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of people from different European cities”
“across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of people that prefer black shoes vs ? ”
“across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of people that like to drive vs do not”
etc…
Summary: caring for your children is racist (link safe – goes to Victory Girls, who link to the NYT article from which I quote above; no prizes for guessing what Darleen Click, the particular Victory Girl reacting to the NYT, thinks about this).
Exactly how the NY education establishment is going to keep schools closed while simultaneously fighting all this vile white parental racism is unclear to me – and to their own subconsciouses, I think.
(BTW, I have the impression that Thomas Sowell showed the same kind of caring behaviour over his children’s education; Walter Williams too, I expect.)
[…] Samizdata – Why they fear their lying eyes. […]
“but the mere fact that you think saying this claim makes it true speaks volumes about the quality of your thought process.”
The mere fact that you assumed without evidence that my only reason for thinking it true was that I said it speaks volumes about yours! 🙂
“What is your point, precisely?”
It is often claimed that ‘black people are better at basketball’ for genetic reasons. African pygmies are black people and really bad at basketball, for genetic reasons. That’s a counterexample to the claim. Black skin doesn’t help.
The correct causality is that *tall* people tend to be better at basketball. The genes for tallness are entirely separate from the genes for black skin. It so happens that genes for tallness appear locally clustered in some areas in Africa, which means many of them happen to have black skin, but that’s just coincidence. ‘Tallness’ is not ‘blackness’. Skin colour self-evidently has nothing to do with sporting performance, any more than the colour of your shorts does. People making that elementary confusion are like people who think red paint makes a car run faster, because the fastest car they know about happens to be red. Idiots, in short.
The world is a mechanism of a billion potential causes, but racists can see only one. By shining the spotlight on this one tiny area, they sometimes catch a glimpse of the edge of some larger shape in the surrounding darkness. But they’re blind to anything that does not conform to their obsession.
“So, what’s your point?”
My point is there’s nothing special, genetically or causally speaking, about this one definition of race compared to any of the others. Or for that matter, any of the millions of non-genetic ways to divide humanity. The apparent connections arising from spurious correlations that such people see are illusory, stemming entirely from their own obsessive choice to consider only this one shibboleth. Having no visibility of or familiarity with the wider world, they don’t understand how correlations can be spurious. It blinds them to every other possibility.
“There are many ways to divide up humanity. For example, there are people who think critically and then there are people who have beliefs unrelated to any evidence.”
Quite. And racism is a belief unrelated to any evidence.
Correlation does not imply causation. Racism is a basic but historically persistent error arising from the belief it does.
—
“This is why I usually just kick/ban people the moment these discussions start as it is all so fucking predictable.”
And that’s part of why racism persists – because nobody even argues with it any more, so nobody remembers the arguments against it. It’s one of the more important reasons for free speech.
Again, nothing you say here contradicts my statement. The fact remains that when measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.
My post suggests an approach to one psychological cause of wokeness. I joke about how to cure another form above. A third treatment, of course, is comedy. In this compilation of Ryan Long short comic clips, the best is first but the others have their moments too (h/t Guido and instapundit).
“The fact remains that when measured in aggregate across the western world, there are statistically significant divergences in the economic, educational, and socioeconomic outcomes of different races.”
The fact remains there is a statistically significant correlation between rising global temperature and the decline of piracy. Hence the Pastafarians participation in ‘Stop Global Warming: Talk Like A Pirate Day’!
Correlation does not imply causation. ‘Statistical significance’ is a much trickier concept than naively assumed when it comes to lumpy data. Confounders abound.
I never said that correlation implies causation. In fact, I specifically stated:
So perhaps X% of the differences in educational, economic, and/or socioeconomic outcomes by race are due to nurture (culture, parenting, media, schools, community, values etc) and (1-X)% of those differences are due to nature. I’m not saying what X is, but I am saying that it can be studied empirically.
0% of species of worms are unable to build a car. I claim this is due primarily to nature (95%+) not nurture. This hypothesis can be studied and tested empirically with evidence.
Should say “0% of species of worms are able to build a car.”
I am surely unfair, but not very, when I state that this is the first sensible thing Nullius has said in this thread, albeit sensible enough that perhaps the rest was worth wading through.
– Effectively, the PC shout in the ear of every doubter (and every bigot that isn’t their kind of bigot) that “We have to silence you (because we cannot argue)” – and as they first silence debate amongst themselves, they do indeed swiftly lose whatever poor ability they ever had to defend their viewpoints. As a method of persuasion, “‘Shut up’, he explained” is (I sincerely hope) meeting its limits.
– If either bigot or doubter meet those who won’t cancel them, they often merely meet the ‘arguments’ of those who knew their answer long before they sought some arguments with which to defend that answer, and so give very short intellectual weight. I’ve met the “handful of genes among thousands” argument from evolutionary popularisers and others, and never failed to think its only effect could be to make questioners ask, “Is this the best that the ones who do allow discussion can offer?”
An intelligent treatment of the issue can be found in Thomas Sowell’s works, by any who take the time to seek it there: it is foolish to expect groups not to show disparate impacts when all history shows that disparity is the norm and the PC-implied norm of equality is the exception; it is wise to remember Cicero telling his fellow Romans not to buy British slaves because they were too stupid to be worth even their cheap price, and to be aware how unwise your remarks might sound two millennia hence if you imitate Cicero’s conviction that this (perhaps honestly-observed) ‘stupidity’ would never change. (I apologise to all Thomas Sowell readers for this brutally brief inadequate summary.) My own take on how people who know what they don’t know can still make all lives better quite quickly is here.
(Just to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the above is not to complain of Perry’s decision. It is Perry’s blog and libertarians should respect that. It is not an easy thing – especially at this time – to run a libertarian blog where standards of debate are maintained. Perry has always asserted his right to smite specific comments, a right he uses very rarely. It’s his blog, and if anything expresses libertarianism, it is a reluctance to have third parties second-guess the decisions of owners.
Someone – Perry I guessed, I never asked – removed the angriest of neonsnake’s angry comments against me for my “blatantly racist act of supporting ‘All Lives Matter’” in this thread. I would have left it, though of course it did not please me, but it’s Perry’s blog and I respect his right to decide – if it was him.
I observe the removal of Mr Black’s initial comment did not prevent the responses to it running over all this thread, largely to the exclusion of a discussion of my post. Seeing his comment did not please me, not least because I foresaw that might well happen!, although I would have left it. Of course, perhaps my post deserved no better than to be a mere peg for a thread of reactions to Mr Black, but you will understand my preference for John’s opinion. 🙂
Mr Black’s remaining comment above expresses well enough his original one – that we libertarians are obliged by ideology to reject his preference for what I called ‘the implicit explanation’. The variety of opinions expressed in the thread should show him he was wrong, that some libertarians are ready to know what they don’t know – a form of wisdom I recommend him to adopt.
Lastly, consider two more extracts from ‘The Cult of Wokeness’:
I could joke that ‘that’s a very nice distinction’ – but the question of who exactly one is talking to and what exactly they believe and why will always remain tricky. I defend Perry’s right to make his decisions for his own blog, even as I also defend knowing what one does not know.)
“I’m not saying what X is, but I am saying that it can be studied empirically.”
And it has. While the variation in normal intelligence does have a heritable component, it appears to be strongly polygenic, being a combination of the influence of thousands of genes, any individual one of which has less than 1% influence on the outcome. Trawls have been done on a wide range of genes, not just those for skin colour, and so far none have been found that individually have any strong connection. Systematic variations observed between populations appear to be close to 100% nurture.
http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/nisbett2012int.pdf
Yes, I really do need to return to my earlier & long standing nuke-early-and-often policy when the deranging topic of race & IQ pukes itself onto the blog yet again. Ellen Ripley was entirely correct.
Nullius in Verba,
That study does not show what you think it shows. I cannot fully respond because my comment would then be deleted by the moderator. Genuine, open discussion of the scientific study of race is not acceptable here. Their house, their rules. Best of luck.
“I am surely unfair, but not very, when I state that this is the first sensible thing Nullius has said in this thread”
🙂
“I observe the removal of Mr Black’s initial comment did not prevent the responses to it running over all this thread, largely to the exclusion of a discussion of my post.”
I don’t think I even saw Mr Black’s comment. I thought the discussion was around Flubber’s comment on the false dilemma between “blacks are statistically unequal to whites because of white racism” versus “blacks are statistically unequal to whites because they are inferior”. It’s clear that *both* sides of the argument are using it in the same way – if you don’t accept one, then the other must be true. If you don’t want to surrender to the Woke, then you have to discuss the inferiority of blacks. Racists (like cults and the Woke) try to avoid discussing any third option, too. And I don’t think that’s coincidental.
“An intelligent treatment of the issue can be found in Thomas Sowell’s works, by any who take the time to seek it there: it is foolish to expect groups not to show disparate impacts when all history shows that disparity is the norm and the PC-implied norm of equality is the exception; it is wise to remember Cicero telling his fellow Romans not to buy British slaves because they were too stupid to be worth even their cheap price, and to be aware how unwise your remarks might sound two millennia hence if you imitate Cicero’s conviction that this (perhaps honestly-observed) ‘stupidity’ would never change.”
Sure. But isn’t that exactly what the racists would say you should expect? Roman Britons are a different breed to those extant today. Teutonic Master Race, and all that…
I expect I would agree with Sowell, if we were to fill in the gaps. But there are lots of different arguments, and I see no reason to restrict ourselves to only one perspective.
“Yes, I really do need to return to my earlier & long standing nuke-early-and-often policy when the deranging topic of race & IQ pukes itself onto the blog yet again.”
I feel very much the same way when the similar anti-LGBT topic raises its ugly head again. But Free Speech…
the false dilemma between “blacks are statistically unequal to whites because of white racism” versus “blacks are statistically unequal to whites because they are inferior”.
As I keep asking in this thread, if neither are true, then why the difference in outcomes. If “we” cant counter the discrimination argument with an argument based on science because PdH et al dont like it, then what is the argument to put forward?
This is about fighting the discrimination narrative especially as it becomes ingrained in the establishment – witness Priti awful Patel announcing mandatory “‘comprehensive’ training on the history of migration and race” – i.e. blame whitey training ; otherwise there will be civil war. You cannot demonise “white people” forever without a reaction. And if you want to sit on the sidelines preaching “muh principles” then the reaction will come from the worst extremists, because no one else has the “courage” to speak up.
Either you think political correctness is a harmless little fad and good for its proteges or you agree with me (and everyone else here, surely) that it is an incubus on all of us. In the latter case, you should agree with my post’s point that it is especially a parasite on the backs of blacks (no enemy more harmful than a false friend).
The question of what, if anything, would be left to explain a generation or two after we were all freed of that curse can be left open till that happy time arrives. Meanwhile the curse of political correctness is undoubtedly something about which something can in principle be done, to the great benefit of all. Making all lives better matters.
Show of hands for how many people have had their minds changed in this thread?
(Generational paradigms don’t ever change, they only die out when the generation dies.)
Then you could perhaps start by nuking Mr Kilmartin’s original post, or at least taking it to metaphorical workshop for some modification with power tools. “Inferior” is one of those words that inflames and biases the discussion right at the outset. It’s heavy on connotations, light on precision. He posted bait, and caught fish.
Arguably, “inferior” is a word which should be considered so underspecified it’s downright ungrammatical when freestanding, a bit like saying “false”. You can’t have “a false”, but you can have for example “a false statement”.
The phrase ‘because they are inferior’ needs an adverb. Genetically inferior? Morally inferior? Physically inferior? Intellectually inferior? The possible interpretations of the phrase include the obviously true, the a priori false, and the incoherent.
bobby b (July 26, 2020 at 3:12 am), C.S.Lewis, explaining how he cured himself of a young man’s tendency to “argue for victory” explained that – while principle was key – he also realised that arguing to win changed very few minds, whereas if you argued honestly and civilly then
Milton Friedman says something related in ‘Free to Choose’: the person you ‘convinced’ to agree with you in an hour’s discussion may be convinced of the opposite by another hour’s discussion with someone else tomorrow; that only time and personal critical reflection turns opinions into convictions.
Hannah Arendt notes the other side of the coin in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: Nazi ideology had been so completely ‘realised’ in the form of the ‘cancel culture’ it created that it evaporated with the death of that society, leaving people who.
The surviving German people were prolific with personal excuses, not ideological commitment.
All of which is a long way of saying, maybe you should ask in a year.
Erik (July 26, 2020 at 8:32 am), my post mentions ‘the implicit alternative’ as an idea in the unconscious, or at least unanalysed, part of the mind of a weak-charactered woke-propagandised university student. Of course the phrase is ill-specified in that context – as my post says,
so that anything that could be perceived as implying any kind of current inferiority is perceived by them as a guilty temptation. (Hence the success of “You’re a racist – admit it!” propaganda; it can have a psychological reality to its victims.) Analysis might resolve their concerns – at the cost of undermining their faith in politically-correct methods – but analysis is what they dare not do.
The assertion that ethnnic groups are uniquely disadvantaged in White society is untrue. This article from 2003 in the Guardian says among other things, “Cannibalism has re-emerged throughout eastern Congo as the last vestiges of colonial influence have been eroded during the war.”
Western racism = you get all the benefits of Western civilisation, medical care, free education ( which you are at liberty to disregard, and many do ), welfare. But if you don’t achieve the results you think you deserve, that’s the fault of the wicked white racists.
African racism = Pygmies, Hmmm! delicious.
My response, go away and fix black racism. Then, and only then will I give three minutes of thought to Whites* whinging about white racism in Western countries.
*Looking at the photographs of the toppling of Edward Colston a careful scan of the crowd, shows perhaps one, maybe three black individuals who are present.
‘Anti racism’, and ‘BLM’ are a white racist cause.
BLM and antifa are just skin suits for the commie war o The west anyway.
Racial analysis of IQ is just a way of making whitey and the rest angry and at each others throats…..
Blacks are taught they can only succeed with a white saviour. Whites are taught that they should hate themselves. Great Marxist fun
Niall K, I hope you didn’t take my comment as a disparagement of the OP. It was a disparagement of the direction the comment thread took that OP.
And I admire your optimism.
I rather suspect that this isn’t the first time in the last two decades that “PdH et al” have been introduced to the argument that different races have different levels of IQ/intelligence/what-have-you.
And further, that they’ve checked the facts, satisfied themselves that the idea is, in fact, utter bollocks, and feel no need to indulge or debate people who can check those facts themselves. Especially when those facts are two decades old.
His house, his rules *shrugs*
(and that includes me, being someone who’s probably been spanked with a “behave yourself son” more than most *smirks*)
Yup, that’s pretty much it.
Minneapolis gun violence this year has already exceeded its annual average for the previous ten (h/t instpundit). 82% of the victims are black, 8% white. Those white trust-fund students that make up so much of BLM are having an impressively disparate impact.
Data like this is more useful to offer any “I’m white so I’m structurally racist” woke-indoctrinees you’d like to liberate (by not exactly disagreeing, but explaining in a more healthy way that they are racists) than most that has been said here. On the other side of the coin, neonsnake, by feeling
just ruled himself out of debating with Thomas Sowell, who believes that more recent data would show a slight but definite uptick in black IQ scores, but is hampered in his desire to show that old IQ data is not a last judgement by the politically-correct, who in recent decades have gone to extraordinary lawfare lengths to prevent fresh data being collected. That is why “those facts are two decades [and more] old” – a fact which anyone on the far side of this argument likely knows and treats as evidence for his view.
To me, it’s just another example of my post’s point; when they fight data collection, the politically-correct betray to everyone (including their mirror images) that “the implicit alternative” does indeed haunt the cellar of their minds, and direct their actions.
Meanwhile, I hope bobby b and Ellen continue to avoid becoming a statistic. It’s good to hear from you from time to time, and not just for any insights you bring.
Let me rephrase my sentence to better serve its intended purpose – “the facts have been around for two decades or more, and I’m reasonably certain that PdH et al have given them all the attention that they feel is warranted”. I didn’t mean to imply that the “facts” are two decades out of date, although I appreciate that my phrasing left that implication open.
I chose two decades to represent the approximate age of Samizdata, and to reflect an earlier statement of his that “a couple of decades of watching people debate…”.
It’s reasonably obvious to anyone paying even mild attention to Perry that he’s no fan of racism, and even less of a fan of scientific racism or “race realism”. It even says so in the “Social Responsibility” link up top. He’s extremely consistent on this.
My post was merely to reflect that this is Perry’s blog, his “personal property”, if you like, and he gets to call the shots, just as if we were debating in his living room.
If he wants to throw people out of his living room because he doesn’t appreciate the topic under discussion, that’s his absolute right.
If he wants to call time on a debate, that’s his absolute right.
This absolutely counts for me, as well, btw – if he wants to show me the door or simply silence me when I get a bit too pissy and start mouthing off at people – that’s his absolute right, and I have no reasonable grounds for complaint if he does the online equivalent of telling me to “Behave yourself, this is my house, and I will not have you speak to my guests in that manner.”
That’s all my post was intended to note.
————-
I have little interest in the subject under debate. I satisfied myself a long time ago that any differences between races are minor at best (and probably a statistical error) and not caused by actual race; but that environmental/social factors are far more likely to hold the answer. It’s a knotty subject, and not one with easy answers, to be sure.
My own experience of “race realism” is that its very rarely in “good faith” – its nearly always argued by people who really want to believe that black people are inferior in intelligence, or are inherently thuggish or violent. I don’t have a lot of time for the type of people that hold those kind of motivations.
neonsnake (July 27, 2020 at 1:34 pm) I accept your clarification. (Hopefully my information about Sowell, etc., had some interest.)
Or if he wants to maintain the standard of debate and/or the libertarian focus or (the reason that could influence me were it my blog that I was weeding) he thought they were trolls, or planters of fake hate, or indeed real actual haters with no useful thoughts or ability to notice others’.
Such decisions about commenters are qualified guesses – who knows who is really who on the web. When I was very young, a Heinlein juvenile taught me a very valuable lesson:
Another told me that
You or I, were we making such calls, would make calls that others, e.g. I or you – or Perry, might not make. I wished very much that this thread would have been about my post and not a little-related subject, and repeatedly commented myself to direct people back to the subject, but some had not the strength of mind to ignore temptation. However there is no-one in this thread so far that I myself would have blocked from a blog I ran; my post requires mention of the implicit explanation so you can’t exactly say it’s wholly OT. Eventually I decided the blocking question was itself sufficiently interesting to discuss – so joined in this subthread. Perry has been restrained – rather reminding people he reserves the right to act than acting – which, as a lover of this blog and of free speech, suits me.
He has indeed, and that’s something that I think earns him a enormous amount of respect. Certainly from me.
The comment about “trolls” is interesting. Are you implying that you think I’m a troll? “Libertarianism” has so many different forms, and the old joke of “put two libertarians in a room and you’ll get three different opinions” holds true.
Tricky.
I don’t have the same view on “PC” or “wokeness” as you do, Niall. That’s not likely to change, so I haven’t commented on this thread until posting a message in support of Perry. I’ve been reading it, but I don’t have a lot to offer on the subject. PC, wokeness, SJW, etc, it’s not stuff that agitates me. I hope you understand why. But all I’m trying to get across is that libertarianism is not a “left/right” divide, but a north/south divide. People seem to be very against that idea, and instead appear to think that it’s a left/right divide (which puts an awful lot of so-called libertarians in the top-right “authoritarian-right” box, while pretending that they’re in the bottom-right “libertarian-right” box)
I’m surprised you should ask, as I specifically said there was no-one in this thread I would block (you are in this thread) and that a troll was someone I could imagine blocking, were I administering a blog that sought to encourage free speech. The only person I ever called troll on samizdata was the gary-troll (has resurfaced in the thread of Natalie’s latest post) – c.f. here and here for my reasons.
Seeing this quoted by you in isolation, I feel the need to clarifyingly recast it in an active voice: (with respect to his wish not to have the discussion at all) Perry has acted with restraint. Like the “two decades” in your prior comment, the passive tone, when quoted in isolation, lends itself to a misreading. 🙂
I share with many the view that these are a serious and growing threat to free speech today – which motivated, for example, this post, assessing one kind of propagandised victim and one possible course of action.
In a happier future world we may see what, if anything, will remain of them when their power over free speech is ended – much the same point as I make on another subject here – and meanwhile, in a blog sufficiently safe for free speech, e.g. samizdata, we will at times discuss it, but as you say, not too relevant to my post, at least to anyone who accepts that my post is describing a real phenomenon.
Gary seems to do drive-by posts. I don’t know him well enough to form a view, to be honest. I agree with some stuff,I disagree with others, but I’d appreciate a chance to have a proper chat about it, in all honesty. I don’t think I’ll get that chance, with him, in the same way that I have with you.
I guess. I just want people to understand that “left-lib” is not an oxymoron, I suppose. At best, I’m right on the edge of acceptability in terms of “samizdatas” opinion of what libertarianism is. AT worst, I’ve been called a Marxist and a Fascist.
This is one of the most pointed comments I’ve met on the net. It goes right up there with Glen Reynolds’ “Embrace the healing power of ‘and’.” Extremely useful in disputations.
There are two other truths I’ve learned from pop culture. “Let the Wookie win,” and “You don’t always get what you want — but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” Those are more useful in life. (The first has helped me deal with road ragers and other matters. The second helps me sort out what is really important to me.)
While the first two are useful, the second two tell me not to fool around in this particular series of comments any more.
Thank you Ellen.
OP:
I went to a law school that was deeply enmeshed in Affirmative Action. I ended up with a number of black friends who got there that way.
Some were brilliant, and went on to be great lawyers. More were normal, and went on to be good lawyers.
But a lot of them came to law school completely unprepared. It wasn’t that they were dumb. It was their training.
Many came from colleges that recruited them via AA. Many came from completely dysfunctional lower-ed systems in which they received a fraction of the learning that the rest of us got. Their schools growing up were disaster zones – violent, racist, gang-infested places where it was all a teacher could do to stay uninjured.
And when they got to college, standards were simply adjusted for them so that they could feel success. The colleges didn’t deem education to be as important as was affirmation. You don’t need to meet objective standards to win a college diploma. The college just chooses to award you one.
And so these people arrived at law school with what I considered to be a 7th-grade education. And law schools had to meet objective standards – there’s this thing called a bar exam, and the schools couldn’t afford to allow the percentage of their grads failing that exam to grow. You get discredited that way.
And so these people – nice people, hard-working, intelligent – after a year were just shell-shocked. They had no educational base to build on. They couldn’t write – and lawyering is about half to three-quarters writing. So they failed out in droves.
Many of those who succeeded would talk about how the best thing they could do for their communities was to go back and practice law in those communities, for the benefit of those people still there, and we’d get in arguments over this. I told them the best thing they could do was to go back and make it impossible for the cult of low expectations – the cultural “don’t act white” thing” – to continually trap their communities in an uneducated dependent state.
Some of them did eventually understand that it was the white social-worker and white education-administration system that was convincing the entire black community that it could not succeed without their help and guidance, and that that was a self-fulfilling prophecy. They understood finally that those people were not the friends of the black community.
And when they went back and tried to encourage schools to discipline kids and hold them to standards and make and attain goals, they were called racist, and white-lovers, and sellouts.
It was not politically acceptable within those communities to spread such a narrative. No one ever seemed to argue with them – they merely labeled them as outside the Pale, and ignored them as race traitors.
PC works to make it unmentionable to point out that progressive whites use urban blacks to attain and keep power, and that they can never succeed in helping blacks without causing their own loss of power. The curse of PC is that you’re not wrong – you’re evil.
bobby b: “And when they went back and tried to encourage schools to discipline kids and hold them to standards and make and attain goals, they were called racist, and white-lovers, and sellouts.”
vide Thomas Clarence, Candace Owens.
Very sad. Very true. Very obvious (and has been for a long time). Very worth repeating.
And now we are into the end-game – or (that may be too hopeful) into their next lying game. My post’s phrase ‘the implicit one’ links to this:
How times change – and how the New York Times has changed! They don’t publish Sowell there any more – but they have clearly (in a sense) drawn his predicted conclusion. Like 1930s communists realising, as they survey the starving ruins of their brutally-imposed policies, that the Russian people must be cured of daring to believe their lying eyes or their rumbling bellies (as Boris Pasternak explained the great purge), so the PC turn to something stronger than “euphemisms and apologetics” to maintain what really matters to them – their power and self-belief. Thus we get astonishingly frank statements that “black people just don’t have it” very thinly disguised as “expecting politeness is racist”, “expecting punctuality is racist”, “expecting grammar is racist”, etc.
No surprise to see that the contest between demeaning black people and questioning the wisdom of their own policies proved no contest to the PC.
I suppose this is as good a place to post the COVID-19 statistics for England, as any.
Looks like we have been the victims of a massive con trick.
Of the 28,993 people who died with ( my italics ) COVID-19, only 1,374 had no pre-existing medical condition.
If you were under 60, you had a vanishingly small chance of dying from COVID-19. Sorry and all that, but not a reason to shut the country down for three months. Nor making everyone wear a mask for the next six months.
The two big co-morbidities were:
Dimentia 5,124 – COVID-19 might have been considered a blessed release.
And, Diabetes 7,214 – which probably includes a fair number of the obese.
The BAME figures don’t suggest to me the disproportionate death rate the BBC has been so eager to report. So probably, another lie.
One wonders just how thin that disguise has to be before people say “hey, wait a minute, what you’re saying is . . . ” and stop voting monolithically for progressives.
Cults disintegrate slowly, then real quick. Look at Tory membership last year. They were staring complete destruction in the face. Might do again this year(hopefully). Labour is protected by trade unions insisting on membership by default.
You have to read quite a way down this wordy article on DiAngelo to get to
but, despite the prolixity of its beginning, when it gets to the meat, the article does complement my post (and my post’s quoted article on the cult dynamics of wokeness) with some specific technique information, so is worth recording here.
Etc.