There are some other forums that complain about a certain “SJW takeover” of LW. I think it is not entirely true, still, reading e.g. Star Slate Codex comments, who are generally from the LW community, sometimes make me go “holy fuck”. The issue is, the whole SJW thing has little influence here in Europe and I swear it had little influence on the English-speaking, American-majority Internet before 2009. But I think around that date basically liberal college students decided that their former collective political hobby, namely: hating Bush, is no longer relevant and hating religious conservatives is a too low hanging fruit, and basically decided to hate each other as a new hobby, and thus even people with good liberal/progressive credentials got called stuff like transphobic or not a staunch enough feminist ally or whatnot, and it is a death spiral of hate, posturing and small-team squabbling. Resembing the groupuscules, mini-groups of the French student revolutionaries in 1968.
I don’t think this takeover happened entirely, still the fact that Scott Alexander has to fight against the worst, least compassionate, least understanding, and least intellectual honest aspects of SJWism suggests that even the LW community cannot entirely shut out this new social phenomenon, is not entirely waterproof to it.
The “entryism” some right-winger babble about seems to be unfortunately and surprisingly, true. There are SJWs entering “neutral” institutions and generate hatred and faction inside. And I think I do see some “entryism” in LW.
And it is IMHO sad, because I do think causes like feminism or trans-acceptance have very positive aspects to them. However SJWism is not that, it is rather that abusing these causes to generate hatred between generally good people who are generally sympethetic to these causes. And it lowers intellectual quality. And that is what is problematic. Above all, there is one thing Euro social democrats could never understand American liberals: their propensity to guilt-trip themselves and each other. To hate themselves for crimes they did not actually personally commit. Now with SJW stuff I see this behavior on steroids really, and this is where I draw the line. I won’t hate myself being a largely masculine-oriented straight guy as long as I know I am not a bigot with women or gays. And I want to help people who suffer from self-hatred problems—although, admittedly, in this article the self-hatred was instilled in them by very masculine, patriarchical bullies, not by SJWs. Still, I am sensitive to self-hatred issues coming from other sources, like, this kind of guilt-tripping.
Nevertheless, that the same author would write a story which can be partially summerised as saying “Wouldn’t it be awesome to be a T-Rex! You could kill homophobes! I’d laugh so hard!” is pretty disturbing.
But its not as disturbing as the people who decided that debating using logic is racist, and first rap should be allowed in formal debates, and then the US national debate championship was won by people screaming incoherently.
Entryism isn’t new it’s been around for at least a century (possibly longer):
Look at what “entryism” in science fiction in America.
Look at what entyism did to non-speculative fiction (or the visual arts) in the western world.
I won’t hate myself being a largely masculine-oriented straight guy as long as I know I am not a bigot with women or gays.
That’s your problem right there. What do you mean by “bigot”? Do you even have a coherent definition for that word, since in practice it means whatever the SJW’s say it does.
IMHO real bigotry is largely understood as trying to either increase one’s status or feel better about one’s status by undermining the status of others. A classic example is when people use excuses like “not enabling unhealthy habits” to be a huge prick to fat people online, largely to feel better about oneself comparatively. This is obviously a facade, “haha look at that hippo” is not really about worrying about the health of others but more like “I am better, I may be unemployed and single, but at least thinner”. Sometimes it is about real status—using discrimination to undermine competition. I think it is not hard to understand.
For example, my non-bigotry about gays is plain simply not having the slightest interest in them their either way, not spending a second of my time on them. Let them marry a car for all I care or adopt an ox, it is no skin off my back. I am selfish enough to not be hateful—means, largely focusing on what I want, not really being much interested in loving or hating people who don’t really have anything I want. And I don’t need to crutch up my masculinity by calling some else a sissy. I am fairly certain in it anyway. With women, it is largely trying to evaluate coworkers etc. by their actual individual merits or faults. I don’t need generalized heuristics. I don’t to wonder about theories whether women in general make good leaders. I can just give a temporary leadership to every individual for two weeks and try them out. And in relationships I don’t try some kind of exactly measured equality, I am not ideological, but I am simply trying to pay attention to the desires and views of my partner and not dismissing them thinking it is just woman-talk. That is all really, I consider it common sense, not ideology.
Non-speculative fiction: I am confused, isn’t Ludlum, Clancy etc. actually kinda borderline conservative?
Visual arts: another name for bullshit, yeah, but I think they did not get ideologized, they got simply colonized by talentless self-congratulating snobbery of artists who could not draw a fruit bowl accurately.
IMHO real bigotry is largely understood as trying to either increase one’s status or feel better about one’s status by undermining the status of others.
This is a useless definition. Since status is more-or-less zero sum this means that anyone trying to increase his status is being a bigot. In practice of course, this definition is applied selectively, i.e., you’re not a bigot if you’re raising your status in an SJW-approved way or a member of an SJW-approved group.
A classic example is when people use excuses like “not enabling unhealthy habits” to be a huge prick to fat people online, largely to feel better about oneself comparatively.
For example, isn’t the above sentence technically bigoted by your definition since you’re raising your status by lowering the status of people who engage in “fat shaming”?
Non-speculative fiction: I am confused, isn’t Ludlum, Clancy etc. actually kinda borderline conservative?
I meant high-brow fiction, e.g., Finnegan’s Wake.
Visual arts: another name for bullshit, yeah, but I think they did not get ideologized, they got simply colonized by talentless self-congratulating snobbery of artists who could not draw a fruit bowl accurately.
It was ideologically while the takeover was happening, i.e., in the first half of the 20th century. A lot of modern artists justified they’re “art” by arguing how they were rebelling against bourgeoisie respectability.
I think the main issue is assuming that outside SJW groups nobody cares about things like bigotry, homophobia or sexism. I think they do—in obviously lower-profile, less incisive, less loud, unfortunately less noticable ways. But more functional and saner ways.
I agree that my definition of this later may not be very good, because ultimately it is not really an ideology outside that, just a sort of a common sense and common decency which is hard to nail down exactly.
One thing is certainly style and manners. I used the fat-shamer group as an example because the basic philosophy does not come accross as very wrong (“don’t enable unhealthy habits by uncritically approving them”) yet the style is both abrasive and puerile at the same time.
One weird thing I recently realized that 2-3 generations ago people may have had worse ethics, but better manners. For example a lot of people were racists but less obvious ways than today because they were still able to talk with POC in a polite way. They would not let their kids harass POC kids because in their mind being born so was something sort of a disability and a “well bred” kid would not harass e.g. people who were born blind either, right? At least not in 1950 or so.
So, weirdly enough, I think a large part of non-SJW non-bigotry is not even ethics but just resisting the poor manners of these times, just the common old-fashioned idea to not insult and offend people if you can avoid it. Terms like “tact” that somehow went out of fashion.
There is one other aspect I could identify. One, trying to treat people as individuals, not representatives of groups. In this sense, non-SJW non-bigotry is actually centrist, because both extremes seem to not do it, some folks dismiss the views of women in STEM, while SJWs dismiss the views of white straight men in politics. So this centrist attitude is simply giving everybody a chance or two to prove themselves as individuals. I would say, it is working from an experience of plenty - an attitude that things are not so hurried, time is not so expensive as to have to resort to prejudices, essentially heuristics, when individual “tests” can be used.
I agree that my definition of this later may not be very good, because ultimately it is not really an ideology outside that, just a sort of a common sense and common decency which is hard to nail down exactly.
What do you mean by “just a sort of a common sense and common decency”? You yourself later admit that until extremely recently no one considered these ideas to be “common sense”. What you are thinking of as “a common sense and common decency” is nothing more then SJW (and their predecessors’) memes that you’ve acquired by osmosis.
For example a lot of people were racists but less obvious ways than today because they were still able to talk with POC in a polite way. They would not let their kids harass POC kids because in their mind being born so was something sort of a disability and a “well bred” kid would not harass e.g. people who were born blind either, right?
What on earth are you talking about? You appear to have no idea either what the USA was like in the 1950′s or what it’s like now. The above statement has so little relation to reality I don’t even know where to start. Really, you might want to look for sources of news about what’s going on in other countries that don’t have an absurd level of “left-wing/SJW” bias.
One, trying to treat people as individuals, not representatives of groups.
Except the groups people are members of is correlated with their properties as individuals. Thus, someone who treated people based on merit would still wind up treating members of different groups differently.
some folks dismiss the views of women in STEM
What evidence convinced you of this? That they oppose “women in STEM” initiatives? That they wind up hiring fewer women then men and when asked to justify this point out sex differences?
The former would seem to be the kind of opposition to “treating people as members of groups” that you seem to condone, the latter is a consequence of the kind hiring people based on merit you also claim to approve of. (Incidentally here is another case where it is useful to have true, as opposed to “non-sexist”, beliefs in order to see what’s going on.)
I would say, it is working from an experience of plenty—an attitude that things are not so hurried, time is not so expensive as to have to resort to prejudices, essentially heuristics, when individual “tests” can be used.
How are tests any less heuristics than what you dismiss as “prejudices”? For example, why aren’t tests bigoted for treating people as members of the groups “passed” and “failed” rather than individuals?
What you are thinking of as “a common sense and common decency” is nothing more then SJW (and their predecessors’) memes that you’ve acquired by osmosis.
But a large aspect of it is actually very old. Look at how a gentleman talks to a lady in any old movie. Politely etc. Or in novels from the 19th century. Monte-Cristo, whatever. Concepts like tact, polite and gentle behavior, and taking other people’s feelings into account stems from much older times than SJW stuff. Imagine an old novel or movie hero like Monte-Crisot meeting a gay person. Likely he has a very, very negative opinion of it but he still does not go “lol look at the faggot, did you suck many dicks today lol” because that 4chan level behavior is not allowed to an old fashioned gentleman. Most likely he keeps a stiff upper lip, discusses the weather politely and does not say anything directly at all, although later on he may whisper in his friends eye “the Viscount is apparently practicing unspeakably unnatural vices”.
I am still fairly “well bred”, not on that 19th century level, but I was taught to be polite way before I ever heard about any other left wing or progressive idea than socialism. And I don’t understand the confusion here. What are we even talking about? Isn’t it obvious that for example Vox Day has the kinds of manners and style any people who were raised to be polite in a conservative family who never subscribed to progressive ideas still find repulsive? I am confused what is even the issue here.
You appear to have no idea either what the USA was like in the 1950′s or what it’s like now. The above statement has so little relation to reality I don’t even know where to start. Really, you might want to look for sources of news about what’s going on in other countries that don’t have an absurd level of “left-wing/SJW” bias.
The other way around. I am not from Internet Default Country (I actually hate the defaultism) and probably this is why we may have a misunderstanding of manners. Recently America got overally poor manners, e.g. calling places people eat burgers with their hands, not using utensils, still “restaurants”. But I think this was not always so. William F. Buckley Jr. had acceptable gentleman manners to my standards, i.e. my parents could invite him over dinner and he would fit in. Would Buckley be anything but polite to minorities? Would he let his kids go all 4chan on POC kids? Contemplate this please.
Thus, someone who treated people based on merit would still wind up treating members of different groups differently.
That is theoretically acceptable—he is not treating groups a such at all, just individuals. In practice this is not an issue because there are early filter. If blue people have 30% lower IQ than green people, and to graduate from a university takes 110 and your job requirement is 110, every blue and green graduate has an equal chance at you: because of the university pre-filtering.
How are tests any less heuristics than what you dismiss as “prejudices”?
Excuse me? You have a team of 3 women 2 men. Instead of going “well women don’t make good leaders” you can test every member as a temp leader for 2 weeks. How is that not better?
The former would seem to be the kind of opposition to “treating people as members of groups” that you seem to condone, the latter is a consequence of the kind hiring people based on merit you also claim to approve of.
Now you got me thinking. I don’t actually condone of the treating people as members of groups, I think if I was I would just join the SJWs :) Individuals it is. However, my biases of evaluating individuals are influenced by prejudice, and prejudice is one of the many things that affects the behavior of other individuals, like, internalizing it and so on. This simply means that you examine some individuals more carefully than others. Again I find it common sense and not ideology.
Our boxing trainer is a refugee from Kosovo, a hugely conservative society with zero SJW influence. Yet he does this instinctively, because it makes sense. Some big muscular 28 years old guy comes for the first training, T oozing out his ears, he quickly gets he is probably feels okay with all this and will not be very bad at it, so he does not need to invest much attention into him, just go through the routine training. Some meek and timid 14 years old girl comes for the first training, he invests a lot of attention, because he needs to figure out she is really clumsy or just needing encouraging, and similar things. She is in an environment that feels hostile for her due to gender roles and all that, she needs more investment to get up to speed. Does this feel like SJW ideology to you? To me it is such a common sense thing...
Likely he has a very, very negative opinion of it but he still does not go “lol look at the faggot, did you suck many dicks today lol” because that 4chan level behavior is not allowed to an old fashioned gentleman.
Those are two very different social registers. 4chan/8chan is the analogue of what people say in say a wild west saloon. (Keep in mind most westerns you saw cleaned up the language to be kid-friendly).
Outside of the chans there is very little overt “bigotry” in America. Heck careers have been ended because someone said something the could be interpreted as “racist/sexist/etc.” if you squinted enough.
If blue people have 30% lower IQ than green people, and to graduate from a university takes 110 and your job requirement is 110, every blue and green graduate has an equal chance at you: because of the university pre-filtering.
Except universities aren’t actually doing this pre-filtering. Also, what if your job requires 120?
How are tests any less heuristics than what you dismiss as “prejudices”?
Excuse me? You have a team of 3 women 2 men. Instead of going “well women don’t make good leaders” you can test every member as a temp leader for 2 weeks. How is that not better?
1) Would you mind actually answering my question.
2) Assuming you mean that trying people out for 2 weeks gives you more data then just the gender, I agree. Of course, it also takes 2 weeks per person and you might have problems under some of the less competent test-leaders, not to mention potential for drama.
Yet he does this instinctively, because it makes sense. Some big muscular 28 years old guy comes for the first training, T oozing out his ears, he quickly gets he is probably feels okay with all this and will not be very bad at it, so he does not need to invest much attention into him, just go through the routine training. Some meek and timid 14 years old girl comes for the first training, he invests a lot of attention, because he needs to figure out she is really clumsy or just needing encouraging, and similar things.
In particular, he’s using all the information available to him, including gender, in determining how to treat the person. This is what I’m advocating. Of course if he leads her to believe she’ll ever be as strong as the typical man, that’s borderline fraud and I wouldn’t approve.
In another thread you mentioned that merely knowing how race and sex correlated with other important characteristics constituted being a bigot. Here you seem to be trying to back-paddle.
Since I am trying honestly, I probably did not understand your question fully. I suspect a methodology / epistemology issue here?
2) Assuming you mean that trying people out for 2 weeks gives you more data then just the gender, I agree.
I am vary of statistical decision making when it comes to judging individuals. I would use them for judging things. For example many heuristics predict my marriage is not supposed to be working and yet it does. The reason is that we are not typical people. Atypical people cluster and this why groups of atypical people generate a statistics-distorting gravity field :) I think if I posted a job ad about a LISP programming job, that would such attract such atypical people that all statistics would be near useless. Now, posting a job ab about a bartender job, they would be way more useful. Let’s just say I am not very interested in typical people and what they do. So if statistics works for evaluating them, great, but not interested.
Watching purplepilldebate.reddit.com gives me precisely this impression. The RP side is largely about “how to be attractive for statistically typical women” while the BP side is “we are atypical, stop generalizing over us”.
In particular, he’s using all the information available to him, including gender, in determining how to treat the person. This is what I’m advocating.
That is obvoiously a good idea. However the point is, gender info is like 10-20% of the picture, and actually empirical individual features like being clumsy at the sandbag make up 80-90%. My point is simply suspending judgement until the most of the information available is individualized. “Prejudice” IMHO literally means “too fast judgement, not waiting for the individual data to roll in”.
I am vary of statistical decision making when it comes to judging individuals.
Taken literally the above sentence is anti-rational nonsense.
The reason is that we are not typical people.
Great, another Special Snowflake(tm).
Atypical people cluster and this why groups of atypical people generate a statistics-distorting gravity field :) I think if I posted a job ad about a LISP programming job, that would such attract such atypical people that all statistics would be near useless.
What do you mean by that. That it’s impossible to do statistics on the people who show up for a job ad about LISP programing? Hint: “using statistics” =/= “assume everyone is average”.
Watching purplepilldebate.reddit.com gives me precisely this impression. The RP side is largely about “how to be attractive for statistically typical women” while the BP side is “we are atypical, stop generalizing over us”.
And yet the Red Pillers have more success then the Blue Pillers. Furthermore, people routinely overestimate their “specialness”. Something like 75% of people believe themselves to be above average intelligence. What I suspect the Blue Pillers are really objecting to is that people are using the outside view on them.
“Prejudice” IMHO literally means “too fast judgement, not waiting for the individual data to roll in”.
That’s what the word originally meant, but that’s not how it’s used today. Today “prejudice” is the proverbial reason what police arrest blacks at a higher rate then whites. The fact that blacks commit crimes at a higher rate then whites is considered one of those “statistical” things you aren’t supposed to apply to people.
I think you are turning a bit hostile now and not being as constructive as before. Please try to do it again, you will rarely get with your kinds of views a debate partner who is disagreeing and yet non-dismissive, so I may be kinda useful for you.
Yes, there are “special snowflakes” and statistics about average people are poor predictors of them. In fact the very fact you are here at LW instead of upvoting pictures of cute cats on Reddit makes you a bit special, too.
Special snowflakery is an expected and rational outcome if we take the Maslow pyramid seriously (I not always, not sure if it is well evidenced, but it is so accepted that I will use it now) and see the last 50 or so years in rich countries as collectively moving up on it. A “collapse” could kick people down to the lowest level of it, but as of currently, more and more people travelled to the self-actualization peak (or esteem subpeak) and yes, it made them different.
So due to this societal pyramid-climbing, there are more atypical people now than a few decades before.
Interesting anecdotal evidence: I remember when everybody was a “rocker” or “raver” in Mitteleuropa. Now it seems people are into this band or that band, building up an individually customized musical taste, not joining one “army” or other.
Hint: “using statistics” =/= “assume everyone is average”.
Customized stats are perfectly right, if they are done at all—but that is my point. “Prejudice” is usually average stats, uncustomized.
And yet the Red Pillers have more success then the Blue Pillers.
I suspect people who spend too much time complaining on Reddit about women are probably not that successful: the succesful ones must be the “silent” ones who learn the methods but do not waste much time about this online bitterness-fest. In fact, besides the time wasted, I suspect bitterness alone must be a success-inhibitor. Specific example:I have the impression that while Vox Day’s bio shows all the high-status checkmarks and he looks handsome, he is simply too bitter to be an efficient seducer. I don’t think a startpoint of resentment can efficiently start something that is supposed to evolve into something like romantic love. Finally, I would say, success means getting what you want, and I think the BP side simply does not want loveless and trustless, selfish, transactional relationships at all. If my marriage was a bargain instead of a strong “alliance for life” for mutual help when one of us is down, I would rather be alone. In other words, I have zero interest in selfish women while RP is optimized precisely on them—in fact, they are even saying only selfish ones exist, but I think they mainly think so because they are selfish men and these two types tend to find each other.
Note: I mean selfish in the sense of “going for a narrow range of short-term visceral benefits”, I don’t mean in the sense of expecting any benefit at all, in that sense everybody is selfish: nobody starts a romantic relationship out of pure pity.
Unselfishness is understood as broad range of longer-term conscious benefits, something sort of a precommitment (called marriage vow actually) “I would not let you suffer in loneliness if you would ever become disabled, disfigured or whatever, and expect the same”. At the end of the day, I mean by unselfishness the mutual acceptance of weakness, bad luck, faults and generally unsexy qualities, now or potentially in the future, and thus not expecting lust to be always generated and fulfilled. Selfishness, from this angle, seems a lot like overconfidence/hubris: I will always be perfectly desirable/lustable and I expect my partner to do the same.
I know this sounds like an unusual definition of these terms, but just look at e.g. how children are raised: when kids who share cookies are praised for being unselfish, they are effectively trained to value the broader, long-term, conscious benefit of approval and popularity over the short-term, narrow, visceral benefit of MOAR sugar high.
Blue Pillers are really objecting to is that people are using the outside view on them.
Absolutely agreed. But I don’t think it is bad if you are sure you are atypical enough, the important part is “roughly similar previous cases”. Roughly similar. As long as you have reasons to think the outside view is based on NOT roughly similar cases, you are good.
Epistemologically, similarity means similar causal factors. This is why all this evidence-based forecasting (this all came from Joel Spolsky) seems a bit bogus: if you know the important causal factors, you may as well quantify their effect directly, if you don’t, you don’t know if it is similar or not. Spolsky invented evidence-based forecasting of software project deadlines to be based on the mis-estimates of the same team of programmers working on similar problems. This is IMHO the major difference. It was never about the mis-estimates of other people. Who are the actual people in question totally matters.
To put it differently, evidence-based forecasting or the outside view works for you if you look at your past 10 relationships and see why they ended or what the issue was, but you cannot randomly choose 10 people and assume their lessons apply to you.
The outside view is especially nefarious in PPD because what I see is a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them. This reminds of me of religious people insisting that atheism is only a different religion or racists insisting anti-racist means anti-white: the inability to understand that the other group is truly different: that is why they are different group.
In fact, originally one of the reason programming companies were so bad at forecasting (which created the demand for this) is that they used the outside view of “brick-laying”, trying to forecast like a construction project after the blueprints are closed—with catastrophic results see The Mythical Man-Month.
That’s what the word originally meant, but that’s not how it’s used today.
Today = left-wing extremes I care little about and probably you should, too.
Special snowflakery is an expected and rational outcome if we take the Maslow pyramid seriously (I not always, not sure if it is well evidenced, but it is so accepted that I will use it now) and see the last 50 or so years in rich countries as collectively moving up on it.
Yes, as people ascend Maslow’s pyramid they desire to express themselves, in our culture one way of doing that is by chanting in unison about how unison about how unique you are.
At the end of the day, I mean by unselfishness the mutual acceptance of weakness, bad luck, faults and generally unsexy qualities, now or potentially in the future, and thus not expecting lust to be always generated and fulfilled. Selfishness, from this angle, seems a lot like overconfidence/hubris: I will always be perfectly desirable/lustable and I expect my partner to do the same.
So, sort of like the standard Blue Pill concept of love based on that “special feeling” and being confident it will never disappear.
I have the impression that while Vox Day’s bio shows all the high-status checkmarks and he looks handsome, he is simply too bitter to be an efficient seducer.
Well, Vox Day is now happily married with a beautiful wife and a son.
The outside view is especially nefarious in PPD because what I see is a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them.
Didn’t we (generalized we) have this debate last century about capitalism vs. socialism. How did that turn out?
This reminds of me of religious people insisting that atheism is only a different religion or racists insisting anti-racist means anti-white
That’s because anti-white is the only explanation consistent with the anti-racists’ actions.
Today = left-wing extremes I care little about and probably you should, too.
That’s because your country’s government and state apparatus hasn’t been taken over by them to extent mine has.
Speaking of definitions. You still haven’t said whether your definition of “racist” includes believing true things about how race correlates with things like IQ or criminality.
Yes, as people ascend Maslow’s pyramid they desire to express themselves, in our culture one way of doing that is by chanting in unison about how unison about how unique you are.
Unconstructive snark. You can do better.
So, sort of like the standard Blue Pill concept of love based on that “special feeling” and being confident it will never disappear.
No, don’t confuse it with Disneydiots. More like the mutual respect and support based on admitting our own weakness and forgiving the weaknesses of the other, because it is mutually beneficial and also develops an attachment, is stable. It is more like two incomplete people making one more functional whole, where they can make up for each others faults and so on.
Well, Vox Day is now happily married with a beautiful wife and a son.
That is a far easier achivement than “spinning plates”. Any BP can do it, in the worst case compromising on the beauty aspect which is not necessarily very important.
Didn’t we (generalized we) have this debate last century about capitalism vs. socialism. How did that turn out?
Very well. We learned socialism does not scale up to whole societies, but it works well enough in a small enough scale, if people have a strong attachment. Conservative societies practiced this mini-scale socialism all the time. Extended family etc. For a unit of a whopping two people it is supposed to work. For two million, not.
To be fair it gives me a shudder that you even doubt two-people socialism or ten-people socialism. Obviously I doubt million-people socialism too, but if you are unable to form such kinds of bonds even with family, spouse, or blood-brothers in the Donovanian sense, it comes accross as almost pathological to me, like narcissism, sociopathy or reading too much Ayn Rand. Do you have children? There is no way in hell a person can be anything but socialist with his own kids.
You still haven’t said whether your definition of “racist” includes believing true things about how race correlates with things like IQ or criminality.
To determine that, first race needs to be real thing. The issue is, race is largely a grouped model developed in the colonial era to deal with a suddenly huge number of of ethnicities and nationalities. So English and Dutch were grouped into white, Yoruba, Hausa and Ethiopian into black and Han and Japanese and Vietnamese into yellow. Except when you look at a world map of IQ you see a sharp drop between China and Vietnam even though they are the grouped into the same yellow race. Things like this suggest racial categorizations not being predictive enough, we need more detailed ethnicity or genetic clusterrs. There is another problem: a measure that does not predict the differences between Canada, Mexico, Mali and India does not look like a very useful measure. Or there is a methodology, data-collection issue.
Don’t even start criminality, all you do is make the job of the leftists easy with that. Criminality is extremely easy, even trivial to argue from a social oppression angle, be that lack of opportunities, culture fucked up through brutalized childhood or simply the oppressor classes defining what is a crime. If you look at how many things were called crimes in history or even today how screwed up things are crimes in say Iran, even from my moderate angle it largely shows how rulers rule societies, not much else. At the very least you need to define a subset of crime. Violent crime is better for example, but still not perfect at all.
Yes, as people ascend Maslow’s pyramid they desire to express themselves, in our culture one way of doing that is by chanting in unison about how unison about how unique you are.
Unconstructive snark.
I was being serious. How about you try taking my arguments seriously rather then dismissing them as snark.
Didn’t we (generalized we) have this debate last century about capitalism vs. socialism. How did that turn out?
Very well. We learned socialism does not scale up to whole societies, but it works well enough in a small enough scale, if people have a strong attachment. Conservative societies practiced this mini-scale socialism all the time. Extended family etc. For a unit of a whopping two people it is supposed to work. For two million, not.
My point was that when you see “a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them”, the ‘selfish’ people are generally correct.
To be fair it gives me a shudder that you even doubt two-people socialism or ten-people socialism.
Two-people socialism can work under the right circumstances. Ten-people socialism can sort of work (for small values of work) under extremely special circumstances at best. Then you would insist it does makes me wonder to what extent you’re dealing with reality there.
To determine that, first race needs to be real thing. The issue is, race is largely a grouped model developed in the colonial era to deal with a suddenly huge number of of ethnicities and nationalities.
Yes, and the colonial-era model more-or-less cuts reality at the joints as modern genetic analysis confirms.
Except when you look at a world map of IQ you see a sharp drop between China and Vietnam even though they are the grouped into the same yellow race.
Do you have more information about the data for that map? It certainly doesn’t agree with the data I’ve seen, at best it appears to be trying to show data on “indigenous populations”. Here is a map that I found after a little searching. I can’t vouch for it’s data source either, but it certainly seems a lot more believable.
And frankly your argument amounts to a version of the fallacy of gray.
Don’t even start criminality, all you do is make the job of the leftists easy with that.
I am not interested in your concern trolling.
Criminality is extremely easy, even trivial to argue from a social oppression angle, be that lack of opportunities, culture fucked up through brutalized childhood or simply the oppressor classes defining what is a crime.
Yes, anything is easy to argue if your willing to dismiss contrary evidence as “racist”.
Violent crime is better for example, but still not perfect at all.
Sure, restrict to murder. You still get extremely strong correlations with race.
There are two separate issues here:
1) Is it “racist” to observe that race correlates with propensity to commit murder.
2) Investigating the cause of that correlation. One explanation is different rates of poverty. This explanation can be tested by comparing black and white populations of the same economic status. (Spoiler: the correlation doesn’t go away.)
Of course, in order to investigate the cause one must first admit that the pattern exists.
How about you try taking my arguments seriously rather then dismissing them as snark.
I am trying, but “chanting in unison” is simpy not constructive. It is a fact that human interests and identities in rich nations multiplied beyond counting. I don’t know what is so chanty or unisonic about it. Also, it probably comes from having basic needs met a lot of free time. I think we should be understanding it instead of dismissing it as chanting, snowflakery, or that famous scene from Brian’s Life. But it seems you are trying to judge it hard or dismiss it instead of engaging with it.
I mean I understand your dislike for it—you like to be in surival mode and I respect that—I am in between, hedging my bets for the need for that but also preparing for a world beyond scarcity. But it is useful to set that aside and try to understand society as it is, without judging it quickly.
My point was that when you see “a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them”, the ‘selfish’ people are generally correct.
Yes, because “unselfish” ideas in the last 100-150 years were crazily beyond the Dunbar number: world peace, socialism for all, and so on. But this is no reason to dismiss it within that number, simply that habit of correctly dismissing universalist unselfishness is not useful for that. It is simply a different thing.
Ten-people socialism can sort of work (for small values of work) under extremely special circumstances at best.
Yes, and the colonial-era model more-or-less cuts reality at the joints as modern genetic analysis confirms.
Which analysis? I think the genetic distance between 2pac Shakur and Haile Selassie must be fairly big.
Let’s get real here. How high is a chance that pre-scientific categories based on mere looks would just magically happen to be true? What would make them so? Do you think behavior genes move together closely with UV-protection (or D-vitamin uptake) genes? Why would they ever?
Specifically for the US, it would be more useful to think in terms for ex-slaves rather as blacks: it could have more explanatory power on both sides, social prejudice and discriminatory institutions, both problematic sub-culture and yes even some dysgenic effects. Why a sample size of 1 is not that useful, it seems interesting that that most powerful half-black man in the US is not of ex-slave stock.
Here is a map that I found after a little searching.
Thanks, I was simply lazy with my googling. Yet, the problem is that it works exactly the same way the infamous book “The Spirit Level”, who present similar stats for inequality. And it is problematic for the very same reason, it breaks down if you apply the trend to more detailed cases. Since Italy is obviously more stupidly organized in every possible way than Denmark or Canada, whatever the tests behind the map measure is simply not that relevant for real life…
Have you ever considered such a thing as test-taking ability? Such as the East Asian habit of cramming hard and studying your ass off increasing your test-taking ability: and reversed for lower-IQ groups?
I am not interested in your concern trolling.
Wait a bit ,CT is something done inside a political community. Since I am not inside yours but in between yours and your opponents, this does not apply. IMHO a prerequisite for CT is to first identify as allies.
Sure, restrict to murder. You still get extremely strong correlations with race.
And restrict it to being a murder victim and you get the same correlation. If black-on-black murder is the most common in the US i.e. gang war the first prediction that comes to me is “holy shit, that is some intense competition for drug-dealing positions”, and then I would to investigate what made that niche so desirable to compete for, perhaps lack of other niches?
Investigating the cause of that correlation. One explanation is different rates of poverty. This explanation can be tested by comparing black and white populations of the same economic status. (Spoiler: the correlation doesn’t go away.)
A classic case of reversed stupidity. Lefties do this i.e. The Spirit Level and you just reversed it. No, it is absolutely wrong methodology to start from an observed correlation, control for some factors and then assume whatever was not controlled out and I like it is true.
Correlation tends to be so incredibly misleading that if it was on me I would do away with those kinds of studies entirely and focus on purely studying individual factors with clear casual chains.
E.g. it was an excellent criticism of The Spirit Level that by the same logic selective garbage collection leads to suicide. (Scandinavia). You may as well claim on the same logic that having nordic genes leads to suicide. This is simply pointless.
Correlation is IMHO a mind-killer because it diverts attention away from causality. The problem with correlation is having things exactly backward, going from effects to causes instead of causes to effects. it is “this is this aggregate phenomenon, how do I explain it?” which is an absolutely wrong approach, the correct approach being “here is this singular factor, what does it cause”?
IMHO one rule of rationality is to ask very, very rarely what caused X as long as X is something aggregate. Rather ask what does Y cause.
It would be funny to watch you debate with someone who believes in The Spirit Level. Very similar methodology.
Ten-people socialism can sort of work (for small values of work) under extremely special circumstances at best.
Is this so special?
The extended family isn’t socialism, as seen by the fact that it’s members own most things separetly and cooperate on a more-or-less reciprocal basis. At least as reciprocal as the Red Pillers you’re calling “selfish”.
I think the genetic distance between 2pac Shakur and Haile Selassie must be fairly big.
Wow, inpresive conclusions from what is effectively a single gene.
Let’s get real here. How high is a chance that pre-scientific categories based on mere looks would just magically happen to be true?
What do you mean by “mere looks”, no the victorian era categories weren’t based only on skin color, they involved other things including behaviour.
What would make them so? Do you think behavior genes move together closely with UV-protection (or D-vitamin uptake) genes? Why would they ever?
No, but they move together with having antcectors from the same continent, thus being in the same gene pool.
Thanks, I was simply lazy with my googling. Yet, the problem is that it works exactly the same way the infamous book “The Spirit Level”, who present similar stats for inequality. And it is problematic for the very same reason, it breaks down if you apply the trend to more detailed cases. Since Italy is obviously more stupidly organized in every possible way than Denmark or Canada, whatever the tests behind the map measure is simply not that relevant for real life...
It’s relevant, it’s just not the only relevant thing.
Wait a bit ,CT is something done inside a political community. Since I am not inside yours but in between yours and your opponents, this does not apply. IMHO a prerequisite for CT is to first identify as allies.
Then make your objections in your own name. Don’t try to disguise them as tactical advise about how by telling the truth I “make the lefties’ job easier”.
And restrict it to being a murder victim and you get the same correlation. If black-on-black murder is the most common in the US i.e. gang war
Note the conclusion you’re jumping to, on apperantly no evidence besides highly distorted ideas filtered through pop culture.
the first prediction that comes to me is “holy shit, that is some intense competition for drug-dealing positions”, and then I would to investigate what made that niche so desirable to compete for, perhaps lack of other niches?
And yet for some reason poor whites don’t kill other poor whites at the same rate. Also, the black on black murder rate was much lower back during the Jim Crow days when the niches available to blacks really were more limited.
A classic case of reversed stupidity. Lefties do this i.e. The Spirit Level and you just reversed it. No, it is absolutely wrong methodology to start from an observed correlation, control for some factors and then assume whatever was not controlled out and I like it is true.
What do you think I assumed is true? Could you point me to where I assumed it. I’m not sure what causes this correlation, or rather how much of it is genetic versus culture. You seem to be agreeing with the SJW position that says we souldn’t even be allowed to think about explanations other then “white racism”.
Correlation tends to be so incredibly misleading that if it was on me I would do away with those kinds of studies entirely and focus on purely studying individual factors with clear casual chains.
So you’d do away with all science except physiscs and parts of chemistry? Or do you only apply this standard when the conclusions make you uncomfortable?
IMHO one rule of rationality is to ask very, very rarely what caused X as long as X is something aggregate.
So since temperature is the aggregate of the movement of the molecules in a substance, we shouldn’t investigate what causes temperature changes? To say nothing of investigating, say the causes of diseases.
No, but they move together with having antcectors from the same continent, thus being in the same gene pool.
The earliest succesful migration out of Africa is 60K years ago, that is calculation with 15 years 4K generations. The rest is largely the math how much evolution is even possible in such a timeframe.
You seem to be agreeing with the SJW position that says we souldn’t even be allowed to think about explanations other then “white racism”.
Not really, that is an equally bogus one, because that kind of explanation assumes there is something uniquely bad about whites. Really is closer to a shitfest of all the tribes against all the tribes and then some are winning. The most likely explanation is—I am more or less a Fukuyamaist, I tend to think just about everything comes from social capital i.e. trust—trust, cooperation, coordination breaking down when people look or act to alien to each other.
So you’d do away with all science except physiscs and parts of chemistry? Or do you only apply this standard when the conclusions make you uncomfortable?
What? No. It is perfectly doable in social science. E.g. experimenting with throwing better schools in this hood, more police in that one, jobs in a third one, rewards for snitches in the fourth etc.
So since temperature is the aggregate of the movement of the molecules in a substance, we shouldn’t investigate what causes temperature changes? To say nothing of investigating, say the causes of diseases.
I think I should explain it in longer detail in a post… but in a nutshell going back from effects to causes is always way harder than the other way around: you can easier observe what a lighting strike causes than what causes a lightning strike. With aggregate effects it becomes even harder and it is easy to err, and thus it is easy to mislead intentionally (“there is a correlation, most common causes A, B, C can be ruled out thus it must be my pet idea D!”). If the goal is to improve, not blame, you are better off playing with individual variables and see if they improve things.
The most likely explanation is—I am more or less a Fukuyamaist, I tend to think just about everything comes from social capital i.e. trust—trust, cooperation, coordination breaking down when people look or act to alien to each other.
Or when the system to punish defectors breaks down.
If the goal is to improve, not blame, you are better off playing with individual variables and see if they improve things.
We’ve been doing that for the past ~60 years (WRT black achievement), things haven’t been improving.
Or when the system to punish defectors breaks down.
I have a theory for that, just don’t know how to test it. The idea is that the community the defection seems like happening from is not the actual community. It is based on what Theodore Dalrymple experienced in East Africa, I think Tanzania, which rhymes with some of my experiences near the underworld of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Basically what they do or did there is villages sacrificing a lot to get 1-2 guy educated and into a government job, who will then use corruption, bribery, pull to divert resources into his village. Being corrupted is a community duty and virtue with regard to his village. It looks like defection, but only as long as you think the nation-state and its rules and laws are his real community. If the real community is the village, it is not a defection.
I think e.g. the oligarchical gangsterism in Russia after the Soviet collapse was not defection: there was nowhere from, the state and nation/empire as a community, in the consciousness sense, stopped existing. The actual community these people operated in was the nomenclature’s Old Boys Networks and they did obey the rules and laws of that community e.g. remember a repay favors, deliver the service you were bribed to deliver and so on.
I know very little about the situation in the US, but the anecdote that studying well may be seen as acting white and thus defection from the black community is something you should be investigating. Are the people defecting from the white / national community even parts of it, in their own eyes?
I think e.g. the oligarchical gangsterism in Russia after the Soviet collapse was not defection: there was nowhere from, the state and nation/empire as a community, in the consciousness sense, stopped existing.
The reason the nation/empire stopped existing as a community is because so many people were defecting from it. The “nomenclature’s Old Boys Networks” was a substitute community that developed among parts of the elite, and my understanding is there was a lot of defection and back-stabbing even within it.
Today “prejudice” is the proverbial reason what police arrest blacks at a higher rate then whites. The fact that blacks commit crimes at a higher rate then whites is considered one of those “statistical” things you aren’t supposed to apply to people.
This is part of a very complicated set of issues. Note that although almost all drugs (with the notable exception of crack) are used more frequently by whites than blacks according to anonymous surveys. See for example data here. But blacks are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites. The entire racial crime issue is really complicated. I recommend reading Yvain’s piece on race and the judicial system. Any simple explanation of what is going on really doesn’t easily meet all the facts.
Note that although almost all drugs (with the notable exception of crack) are used more frequently by whites than blacks according to anonymous surveys. See for example data here. But blacks are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites.
I suspect a Simpson’s paradox here. To avoid this you would have to show that drugs are used more frequently by whites than by blacks of similar socioeconomic status. Otherwise, showing that whites use more drugs may just mean that whites can afford more drugs.
There are some other forums that complain about a certain “SJW takeover” of LW. I think it is not entirely true, still, reading e.g. Star Slate Codex comments, who are generally from the LW community, sometimes make me go “holy fuck”. The issue is, the whole SJW thing has little influence here in Europe and I swear it had little influence on the English-speaking, American-majority Internet before 2009. But I think around that date basically liberal college students decided that their former collective political hobby, namely: hating Bush, is no longer relevant and hating religious conservatives is a too low hanging fruit, and basically decided to hate each other as a new hobby, and thus even people with good liberal/progressive credentials got called stuff like transphobic or not a staunch enough feminist ally or whatnot, and it is a death spiral of hate, posturing and small-team squabbling. Resembing the groupuscules, mini-groups of the French student revolutionaries in 1968.
I don’t think this takeover happened entirely, still the fact that Scott Alexander has to fight against the worst, least compassionate, least understanding, and least intellectual honest aspects of SJWism suggests that even the LW community cannot entirely shut out this new social phenomenon, is not entirely waterproof to it.
The “entryism” some right-winger babble about seems to be unfortunately and surprisingly, true. There are SJWs entering “neutral” institutions and generate hatred and faction inside. And I think I do see some “entryism” in LW.
Look at what “entryism” in science fiction in America. When shit like this deserves a Nebula and is nominated for Hugo then yes, SJW “entryism” does lower quality: http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/
And it is IMHO sad, because I do think causes like feminism or trans-acceptance have very positive aspects to them. However SJWism is not that, it is rather that abusing these causes to generate hatred between generally good people who are generally sympethetic to these causes. And it lowers intellectual quality. And that is what is problematic. Above all, there is one thing Euro social democrats could never understand American liberals: their propensity to guilt-trip themselves and each other. To hate themselves for crimes they did not actually personally commit. Now with SJW stuff I see this behavior on steroids really, and this is where I draw the line. I won’t hate myself being a largely masculine-oriented straight guy as long as I know I am not a bigot with women or gays. And I want to help people who suffer from self-hatred problems—although, admittedly, in this article the self-hatred was instilled in them by very masculine, patriarchical bullies, not by SJWs. Still, I am sensitive to self-hatred issues coming from other sources, like, this kind of guilt-tripping.
I don’t think that story got a Nebula—the author won a Nebula for this:
http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2010/fiction_the_lady_who_plucked_red_flowers_beneath_the_queens_window_by_rache
[EDIT: My mistake, both stories won Nebulas.]
Nevertheless, that the same author would write a story which can be partially summerised as saying “Wouldn’t it be awesome to be a T-Rex! You could kill homophobes! I’d laugh so hard!” is pretty disturbing.
But its not as disturbing as the people who decided that debating using logic is racist, and first rap should be allowed in formal debates, and then the US national debate championship was won by people screaming incoherently.
This is how civilisation dies.
Entryism isn’t new it’s been around for at least a century (possibly longer):
Look at what entyism did to non-speculative fiction (or the visual arts) in the western world.
That’s your problem right there. What do you mean by “bigot”? Do you even have a coherent definition for that word, since in practice it means whatever the SJW’s say it does.
IMHO real bigotry is largely understood as trying to either increase one’s status or feel better about one’s status by undermining the status of others. A classic example is when people use excuses like “not enabling unhealthy habits” to be a huge prick to fat people online, largely to feel better about oneself comparatively. This is obviously a facade, “haha look at that hippo” is not really about worrying about the health of others but more like “I am better, I may be unemployed and single, but at least thinner”. Sometimes it is about real status—using discrimination to undermine competition. I think it is not hard to understand.
For example, my non-bigotry about gays is plain simply not having the slightest interest in them their either way, not spending a second of my time on them. Let them marry a car for all I care or adopt an ox, it is no skin off my back. I am selfish enough to not be hateful—means, largely focusing on what I want, not really being much interested in loving or hating people who don’t really have anything I want. And I don’t need to crutch up my masculinity by calling some else a sissy. I am fairly certain in it anyway. With women, it is largely trying to evaluate coworkers etc. by their actual individual merits or faults. I don’t need generalized heuristics. I don’t to wonder about theories whether women in general make good leaders. I can just give a temporary leadership to every individual for two weeks and try them out. And in relationships I don’t try some kind of exactly measured equality, I am not ideological, but I am simply trying to pay attention to the desires and views of my partner and not dismissing them thinking it is just woman-talk. That is all really, I consider it common sense, not ideology.
Non-speculative fiction: I am confused, isn’t Ludlum, Clancy etc. actually kinda borderline conservative?
Visual arts: another name for bullshit, yeah, but I think they did not get ideologized, they got simply colonized by talentless self-congratulating snobbery of artists who could not draw a fruit bowl accurately.
This is a useless definition. Since status is more-or-less zero sum this means that anyone trying to increase his status is being a bigot. In practice of course, this definition is applied selectively, i.e., you’re not a bigot if you’re raising your status in an SJW-approved way or a member of an SJW-approved group.
For example, isn’t the above sentence technically bigoted by your definition since you’re raising your status by lowering the status of people who engage in “fat shaming”?
I meant high-brow fiction, e.g., Finnegan’s Wake.
It was ideologically while the takeover was happening, i.e., in the first half of the 20th century. A lot of modern artists justified they’re “art” by arguing how they were rebelling against bourgeoisie respectability.
I think the main issue is assuming that outside SJW groups nobody cares about things like bigotry, homophobia or sexism. I think they do—in obviously lower-profile, less incisive, less loud, unfortunately less noticable ways. But more functional and saner ways.
I agree that my definition of this later may not be very good, because ultimately it is not really an ideology outside that, just a sort of a common sense and common decency which is hard to nail down exactly.
One thing is certainly style and manners. I used the fat-shamer group as an example because the basic philosophy does not come accross as very wrong (“don’t enable unhealthy habits by uncritically approving them”) yet the style is both abrasive and puerile at the same time.
One weird thing I recently realized that 2-3 generations ago people may have had worse ethics, but better manners. For example a lot of people were racists but less obvious ways than today because they were still able to talk with POC in a polite way. They would not let their kids harass POC kids because in their mind being born so was something sort of a disability and a “well bred” kid would not harass e.g. people who were born blind either, right? At least not in 1950 or so.
So, weirdly enough, I think a large part of non-SJW non-bigotry is not even ethics but just resisting the poor manners of these times, just the common old-fashioned idea to not insult and offend people if you can avoid it. Terms like “tact” that somehow went out of fashion.
There is one other aspect I could identify. One, trying to treat people as individuals, not representatives of groups. In this sense, non-SJW non-bigotry is actually centrist, because both extremes seem to not do it, some folks dismiss the views of women in STEM, while SJWs dismiss the views of white straight men in politics. So this centrist attitude is simply giving everybody a chance or two to prove themselves as individuals. I would say, it is working from an experience of plenty - an attitude that things are not so hurried, time is not so expensive as to have to resort to prejudices, essentially heuristics, when individual “tests” can be used.
What do you mean by “just a sort of a common sense and common decency”? You yourself later admit that until extremely recently no one considered these ideas to be “common sense”. What you are thinking of as “a common sense and common decency” is nothing more then SJW (and their predecessors’) memes that you’ve acquired by osmosis.
What on earth are you talking about? You appear to have no idea either what the USA was like in the 1950′s or what it’s like now. The above statement has so little relation to reality I don’t even know where to start. Really, you might want to look for sources of news about what’s going on in other countries that don’t have an absurd level of “left-wing/SJW” bias.
Except the groups people are members of is correlated with their properties as individuals. Thus, someone who treated people based on merit would still wind up treating members of different groups differently.
What evidence convinced you of this? That they oppose “women in STEM” initiatives? That they wind up hiring fewer women then men and when asked to justify this point out sex differences?
The former would seem to be the kind of opposition to “treating people as members of groups” that you seem to condone, the latter is a consequence of the kind hiring people based on merit you also claim to approve of. (Incidentally here is another case where it is useful to have true, as opposed to “non-sexist”, beliefs in order to see what’s going on.)
How are tests any less heuristics than what you dismiss as “prejudices”? For example, why aren’t tests bigoted for treating people as members of the groups “passed” and “failed” rather than individuals?
But a large aspect of it is actually very old. Look at how a gentleman talks to a lady in any old movie. Politely etc. Or in novels from the 19th century. Monte-Cristo, whatever. Concepts like tact, polite and gentle behavior, and taking other people’s feelings into account stems from much older times than SJW stuff. Imagine an old novel or movie hero like Monte-Crisot meeting a gay person. Likely he has a very, very negative opinion of it but he still does not go “lol look at the faggot, did you suck many dicks today lol” because that 4chan level behavior is not allowed to an old fashioned gentleman. Most likely he keeps a stiff upper lip, discusses the weather politely and does not say anything directly at all, although later on he may whisper in his friends eye “the Viscount is apparently practicing unspeakably unnatural vices”.
I am still fairly “well bred”, not on that 19th century level, but I was taught to be polite way before I ever heard about any other left wing or progressive idea than socialism. And I don’t understand the confusion here. What are we even talking about? Isn’t it obvious that for example Vox Day has the kinds of manners and style any people who were raised to be polite in a conservative family who never subscribed to progressive ideas still find repulsive? I am confused what is even the issue here.
The other way around. I am not from Internet Default Country (I actually hate the defaultism) and probably this is why we may have a misunderstanding of manners. Recently America got overally poor manners, e.g. calling places people eat burgers with their hands, not using utensils, still “restaurants”. But I think this was not always so. William F. Buckley Jr. had acceptable gentleman manners to my standards, i.e. my parents could invite him over dinner and he would fit in. Would Buckley be anything but polite to minorities? Would he let his kids go all 4chan on POC kids? Contemplate this please.
That is theoretically acceptable—he is not treating groups a such at all, just individuals. In practice this is not an issue because there are early filter. If blue people have 30% lower IQ than green people, and to graduate from a university takes 110 and your job requirement is 110, every blue and green graduate has an equal chance at you: because of the university pre-filtering.
Excuse me? You have a team of 3 women 2 men. Instead of going “well women don’t make good leaders” you can test every member as a temp leader for 2 weeks. How is that not better?
Now you got me thinking. I don’t actually condone of the treating people as members of groups, I think if I was I would just join the SJWs :) Individuals it is. However, my biases of evaluating individuals are influenced by prejudice, and prejudice is one of the many things that affects the behavior of other individuals, like, internalizing it and so on. This simply means that you examine some individuals more carefully than others. Again I find it common sense and not ideology.
Our boxing trainer is a refugee from Kosovo, a hugely conservative society with zero SJW influence. Yet he does this instinctively, because it makes sense. Some big muscular 28 years old guy comes for the first training, T oozing out his ears, he quickly gets he is probably feels okay with all this and will not be very bad at it, so he does not need to invest much attention into him, just go through the routine training. Some meek and timid 14 years old girl comes for the first training, he invests a lot of attention, because he needs to figure out she is really clumsy or just needing encouraging, and similar things. She is in an environment that feels hostile for her due to gender roles and all that, she needs more investment to get up to speed. Does this feel like SJW ideology to you? To me it is such a common sense thing...
Those are two very different social registers. 4chan/8chan is the analogue of what people say in say a wild west saloon. (Keep in mind most westerns you saw cleaned up the language to be kid-friendly).
Outside of the chans there is very little overt “bigotry” in America. Heck careers have been ended because someone said something the could be interpreted as “racist/sexist/etc.” if you squinted enough.
Except universities aren’t actually doing this pre-filtering. Also, what if your job requires 120?
1) Would you mind actually answering my question.
2) Assuming you mean that trying people out for 2 weeks gives you more data then just the gender, I agree. Of course, it also takes 2 weeks per person and you might have problems under some of the less competent test-leaders, not to mention potential for drama.
In particular, he’s using all the information available to him, including gender, in determining how to treat the person. This is what I’m advocating. Of course if he leads her to believe she’ll ever be as strong as the typical man, that’s borderline fraud and I wouldn’t approve.
In another thread you mentioned that merely knowing how race and sex correlated with other important characteristics constituted being a bigot. Here you seem to be trying to back-paddle.
Since I am trying honestly, I probably did not understand your question fully. I suspect a methodology / epistemology issue here?
I am vary of statistical decision making when it comes to judging individuals. I would use them for judging things. For example many heuristics predict my marriage is not supposed to be working and yet it does. The reason is that we are not typical people. Atypical people cluster and this why groups of atypical people generate a statistics-distorting gravity field :) I think if I posted a job ad about a LISP programming job, that would such attract such atypical people that all statistics would be near useless. Now, posting a job ab about a bartender job, they would be way more useful. Let’s just say I am not very interested in typical people and what they do. So if statistics works for evaluating them, great, but not interested.
Watching purplepilldebate.reddit.com gives me precisely this impression. The RP side is largely about “how to be attractive for statistically typical women” while the BP side is “we are atypical, stop generalizing over us”.
That is obvoiously a good idea. However the point is, gender info is like 10-20% of the picture, and actually empirical individual features like being clumsy at the sandbag make up 80-90%. My point is simply suspending judgement until the most of the information available is individualized. “Prejudice” IMHO literally means “too fast judgement, not waiting for the individual data to roll in”.
Taken literally the above sentence is anti-rational nonsense.
Great, another Special Snowflake(tm).
What do you mean by that. That it’s impossible to do statistics on the people who show up for a job ad about LISP programing? Hint: “using statistics” =/= “assume everyone is average”.
And yet the Red Pillers have more success then the Blue Pillers. Furthermore, people routinely overestimate their “specialness”. Something like 75% of people believe themselves to be above average intelligence. What I suspect the Blue Pillers are really objecting to is that people are using the outside view on them.
That’s what the word originally meant, but that’s not how it’s used today. Today “prejudice” is the proverbial reason what police arrest blacks at a higher rate then whites. The fact that blacks commit crimes at a higher rate then whites is considered one of those “statistical” things you aren’t supposed to apply to people.
I think you are turning a bit hostile now and not being as constructive as before. Please try to do it again, you will rarely get with your kinds of views a debate partner who is disagreeing and yet non-dismissive, so I may be kinda useful for you.
Yes, there are “special snowflakes” and statistics about average people are poor predictors of them. In fact the very fact you are here at LW instead of upvoting pictures of cute cats on Reddit makes you a bit special, too.
Special snowflakery is an expected and rational outcome if we take the Maslow pyramid seriously (I not always, not sure if it is well evidenced, but it is so accepted that I will use it now) and see the last 50 or so years in rich countries as collectively moving up on it. A “collapse” could kick people down to the lowest level of it, but as of currently, more and more people travelled to the self-actualization peak (or esteem subpeak) and yes, it made them different.
So due to this societal pyramid-climbing, there are more atypical people now than a few decades before.
Interesting anecdotal evidence: I remember when everybody was a “rocker” or “raver” in Mitteleuropa. Now it seems people are into this band or that band, building up an individually customized musical taste, not joining one “army” or other.
Customized stats are perfectly right, if they are done at all—but that is my point. “Prejudice” is usually average stats, uncustomized.
I suspect people who spend too much time complaining on Reddit about women are probably not that successful: the succesful ones must be the “silent” ones who learn the methods but do not waste much time about this online bitterness-fest. In fact, besides the time wasted, I suspect bitterness alone must be a success-inhibitor. Specific example:I have the impression that while Vox Day’s bio shows all the high-status checkmarks and he looks handsome, he is simply too bitter to be an efficient seducer. I don’t think a startpoint of resentment can efficiently start something that is supposed to evolve into something like romantic love. Finally, I would say, success means getting what you want, and I think the BP side simply does not want loveless and trustless, selfish, transactional relationships at all. If my marriage was a bargain instead of a strong “alliance for life” for mutual help when one of us is down, I would rather be alone. In other words, I have zero interest in selfish women while RP is optimized precisely on them—in fact, they are even saying only selfish ones exist, but I think they mainly think so because they are selfish men and these two types tend to find each other.
Note: I mean selfish in the sense of “going for a narrow range of short-term visceral benefits”, I don’t mean in the sense of expecting any benefit at all, in that sense everybody is selfish: nobody starts a romantic relationship out of pure pity.
Unselfishness is understood as broad range of longer-term conscious benefits, something sort of a precommitment (called marriage vow actually) “I would not let you suffer in loneliness if you would ever become disabled, disfigured or whatever, and expect the same”. At the end of the day, I mean by unselfishness the mutual acceptance of weakness, bad luck, faults and generally unsexy qualities, now or potentially in the future, and thus not expecting lust to be always generated and fulfilled. Selfishness, from this angle, seems a lot like overconfidence/hubris: I will always be perfectly desirable/lustable and I expect my partner to do the same.
I know this sounds like an unusual definition of these terms, but just look at e.g. how children are raised: when kids who share cookies are praised for being unselfish, they are effectively trained to value the broader, long-term, conscious benefit of approval and popularity over the short-term, narrow, visceral benefit of MOAR sugar high.
Absolutely agreed. But I don’t think it is bad if you are sure you are atypical enough, the important part is “roughly similar previous cases”. Roughly similar. As long as you have reasons to think the outside view is based on NOT roughly similar cases, you are good.
Epistemologically, similarity means similar causal factors. This is why all this evidence-based forecasting (this all came from Joel Spolsky) seems a bit bogus: if you know the important causal factors, you may as well quantify their effect directly, if you don’t, you don’t know if it is similar or not. Spolsky invented evidence-based forecasting of software project deadlines to be based on the mis-estimates of the same team of programmers working on similar problems. This is IMHO the major difference. It was never about the mis-estimates of other people. Who are the actual people in question totally matters.
To put it differently, evidence-based forecasting or the outside view works for you if you look at your past 10 relationships and see why they ended or what the issue was, but you cannot randomly choose 10 people and assume their lessons apply to you.
The outside view is especially nefarious in PPD because what I see is a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them. This reminds of me of religious people insisting that atheism is only a different religion or racists insisting anti-racist means anti-white: the inability to understand that the other group is truly different: that is why they are different group.
In fact, originally one of the reason programming companies were so bad at forecasting (which created the demand for this) is that they used the outside view of “brick-laying”, trying to forecast like a construction project after the blueprints are closed—with catastrophic results see The Mythical Man-Month.
Today = left-wing extremes I care little about and probably you should, too.
Yes, as people ascend Maslow’s pyramid they desire to express themselves, in our culture one way of doing that is by chanting in unison about how unison about how unique you are.
So, sort of like the standard Blue Pill concept of love based on that “special feeling” and being confident it will never disappear.
Well, Vox Day is now happily married with a beautiful wife and a son.
Didn’t we (generalized we) have this debate last century about capitalism vs. socialism. How did that turn out?
That’s because anti-white is the only explanation consistent with the anti-racists’ actions.
That’s because your country’s government and state apparatus hasn’t been taken over by them to extent mine has.
Speaking of definitions. You still haven’t said whether your definition of “racist” includes believing true things about how race correlates with things like IQ or criminality.
Unconstructive snark. You can do better.
No, don’t confuse it with Disneydiots. More like the mutual respect and support based on admitting our own weakness and forgiving the weaknesses of the other, because it is mutually beneficial and also develops an attachment, is stable. It is more like two incomplete people making one more functional whole, where they can make up for each others faults and so on.
That is a far easier achivement than “spinning plates”. Any BP can do it, in the worst case compromising on the beauty aspect which is not necessarily very important.
Very well. We learned socialism does not scale up to whole societies, but it works well enough in a small enough scale, if people have a strong attachment. Conservative societies practiced this mini-scale socialism all the time. Extended family etc. For a unit of a whopping two people it is supposed to work. For two million, not.
To be fair it gives me a shudder that you even doubt two-people socialism or ten-people socialism. Obviously I doubt million-people socialism too, but if you are unable to form such kinds of bonds even with family, spouse, or blood-brothers in the Donovanian sense, it comes accross as almost pathological to me, like narcissism, sociopathy or reading too much Ayn Rand. Do you have children? There is no way in hell a person can be anything but socialist with his own kids.
To determine that, first race needs to be real thing. The issue is, race is largely a grouped model developed in the colonial era to deal with a suddenly huge number of of ethnicities and nationalities. So English and Dutch were grouped into white, Yoruba, Hausa and Ethiopian into black and Han and Japanese and Vietnamese into yellow. Except when you look at a world map of IQ you see a sharp drop between China and Vietnam even though they are the grouped into the same yellow race. Things like this suggest racial categorizations not being predictive enough, we need more detailed ethnicity or genetic clusterrs. There is another problem: a measure that does not predict the differences between Canada, Mexico, Mali and India does not look like a very useful measure. Or there is a methodology, data-collection issue.
Don’t even start criminality, all you do is make the job of the leftists easy with that. Criminality is extremely easy, even trivial to argue from a social oppression angle, be that lack of opportunities, culture fucked up through brutalized childhood or simply the oppressor classes defining what is a crime. If you look at how many things were called crimes in history or even today how screwed up things are crimes in say Iran, even from my moderate angle it largely shows how rulers rule societies, not much else. At the very least you need to define a subset of crime. Violent crime is better for example, but still not perfect at all.
I was being serious. How about you try taking my arguments seriously rather then dismissing them as snark.
My point was that when you see “a bunch of selfish (as defined above) people insisting that a bunch of unselfish people are totally like them”, the ‘selfish’ people are generally correct.
Two-people socialism can work under the right circumstances. Ten-people socialism can sort of work (for small values of work) under extremely special circumstances at best. Then you would insist it does makes me wonder to what extent you’re dealing with reality there.
Yes, and the colonial-era model more-or-less cuts reality at the joints as modern genetic analysis confirms.
Do you have more information about the data for that map? It certainly doesn’t agree with the data I’ve seen, at best it appears to be trying to show data on “indigenous populations”. Here is a map that I found after a little searching. I can’t vouch for it’s data source either, but it certainly seems a lot more believable.
And frankly your argument amounts to a version of the fallacy of gray.
I am not interested in your concern trolling.
Yes, anything is easy to argue if your willing to dismiss contrary evidence as “racist”.
Sure, restrict to murder. You still get extremely strong correlations with race.
There are two separate issues here:
1) Is it “racist” to observe that race correlates with propensity to commit murder.
2) Investigating the cause of that correlation. One explanation is different rates of poverty. This explanation can be tested by comparing black and white populations of the same economic status. (Spoiler: the correlation doesn’t go away.)
Of course, in order to investigate the cause one must first admit that the pattern exists.
I am trying, but “chanting in unison” is simpy not constructive. It is a fact that human interests and identities in rich nations multiplied beyond counting. I don’t know what is so chanty or unisonic about it. Also, it probably comes from having basic needs met a lot of free time. I think we should be understanding it instead of dismissing it as chanting, snowflakery, or that famous scene from Brian’s Life. But it seems you are trying to judge it hard or dismiss it instead of engaging with it.
I mean I understand your dislike for it—you like to be in surival mode and I respect that—I am in between, hedging my bets for the need for that but also preparing for a world beyond scarcity. But it is useful to set that aside and try to understand society as it is, without judging it quickly.
Yes, because “unselfish” ideas in the last 100-150 years were crazily beyond the Dunbar number: world peace, socialism for all, and so on. But this is no reason to dismiss it within that number, simply that habit of correctly dismissing universalist unselfishness is not useful for that. It is simply a different thing.
Is this so special?
Which analysis? I think the genetic distance between 2pac Shakur and Haile Selassie must be fairly big.
Let’s get real here. How high is a chance that pre-scientific categories based on mere looks would just magically happen to be true? What would make them so? Do you think behavior genes move together closely with UV-protection (or D-vitamin uptake) genes? Why would they ever?
Specifically for the US, it would be more useful to think in terms for ex-slaves rather as blacks: it could have more explanatory power on both sides, social prejudice and discriminatory institutions, both problematic sub-culture and yes even some dysgenic effects. Why a sample size of 1 is not that useful, it seems interesting that that most powerful half-black man in the US is not of ex-slave stock.
Thanks, I was simply lazy with my googling. Yet, the problem is that it works exactly the same way the infamous book “The Spirit Level”, who present similar stats for inequality. And it is problematic for the very same reason, it breaks down if you apply the trend to more detailed cases. Since Italy is obviously more stupidly organized in every possible way than Denmark or Canada, whatever the tests behind the map measure is simply not that relevant for real life…
Have you ever considered such a thing as test-taking ability? Such as the East Asian habit of cramming hard and studying your ass off increasing your test-taking ability: and reversed for lower-IQ groups?
Wait a bit ,CT is something done inside a political community. Since I am not inside yours but in between yours and your opponents, this does not apply. IMHO a prerequisite for CT is to first identify as allies.
And restrict it to being a murder victim and you get the same correlation. If black-on-black murder is the most common in the US i.e. gang war the first prediction that comes to me is “holy shit, that is some intense competition for drug-dealing positions”, and then I would to investigate what made that niche so desirable to compete for, perhaps lack of other niches?
A classic case of reversed stupidity. Lefties do this i.e. The Spirit Level and you just reversed it. No, it is absolutely wrong methodology to start from an observed correlation, control for some factors and then assume whatever was not controlled out and I like it is true.
Correlation tends to be so incredibly misleading that if it was on me I would do away with those kinds of studies entirely and focus on purely studying individual factors with clear casual chains.
E.g. it was an excellent criticism of The Spirit Level that by the same logic selective garbage collection leads to suicide. (Scandinavia). You may as well claim on the same logic that having nordic genes leads to suicide. This is simply pointless.
Correlation is IMHO a mind-killer because it diverts attention away from causality. The problem with correlation is having things exactly backward, going from effects to causes instead of causes to effects. it is “this is this aggregate phenomenon, how do I explain it?” which is an absolutely wrong approach, the correct approach being “here is this singular factor, what does it cause”?
IMHO one rule of rationality is to ask very, very rarely what caused X as long as X is something aggregate. Rather ask what does Y cause.
It would be funny to watch you debate with someone who believes in The Spirit Level. Very similar methodology.
The extended family isn’t socialism, as seen by the fact that it’s members own most things separetly and cooperate on a more-or-less reciprocal basis. At least as reciprocal as the Red Pillers you’re calling “selfish”.
Wow, inpresive conclusions from what is effectively a single gene.
What do you mean by “mere looks”, no the victorian era categories weren’t based only on skin color, they involved other things including behaviour.
No, but they move together with having antcectors from the same continent, thus being in the same gene pool.
It’s relevant, it’s just not the only relevant thing.
Then make your objections in your own name. Don’t try to disguise them as tactical advise about how by telling the truth I “make the lefties’ job easier”.
Note the conclusion you’re jumping to, on apperantly no evidence besides highly distorted ideas filtered through pop culture.
And yet for some reason poor whites don’t kill other poor whites at the same rate. Also, the black on black murder rate was much lower back during the Jim Crow days when the niches available to blacks really were more limited.
What do you think I assumed is true? Could you point me to where I assumed it. I’m not sure what causes this correlation, or rather how much of it is genetic versus culture. You seem to be agreeing with the SJW position that says we souldn’t even be allowed to think about explanations other then “white racism”.
So you’d do away with all science except physiscs and parts of chemistry? Or do you only apply this standard when the conclusions make you uncomfortable?
So since temperature is the aggregate of the movement of the molecules in a substance, we shouldn’t investigate what causes temperature changes? To say nothing of investigating, say the causes of diseases.
The earliest succesful migration out of Africa is 60K years ago, that is calculation with 15 years 4K generations. The rest is largely the math how much evolution is even possible in such a timeframe.
Not really, that is an equally bogus one, because that kind of explanation assumes there is something uniquely bad about whites. Really is closer to a shitfest of all the tribes against all the tribes and then some are winning. The most likely explanation is—I am more or less a Fukuyamaist, I tend to think just about everything comes from social capital i.e. trust—trust, cooperation, coordination breaking down when people look or act to alien to each other.
What? No. It is perfectly doable in social science. E.g. experimenting with throwing better schools in this hood, more police in that one, jobs in a third one, rewards for snitches in the fourth etc.
I think I should explain it in longer detail in a post… but in a nutshell going back from effects to causes is always way harder than the other way around: you can easier observe what a lighting strike causes than what causes a lightning strike. With aggregate effects it becomes even harder and it is easy to err, and thus it is easy to mislead intentionally (“there is a correlation, most common causes A, B, C can be ruled out thus it must be my pet idea D!”). If the goal is to improve, not blame, you are better off playing with individual variables and see if they improve things.
Or when the system to punish defectors breaks down.
We’ve been doing that for the past ~60 years (WRT black achievement), things haven’t been improving.
I have a theory for that, just don’t know how to test it. The idea is that the community the defection seems like happening from is not the actual community. It is based on what Theodore Dalrymple experienced in East Africa, I think Tanzania, which rhymes with some of my experiences near the underworld of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Basically what they do or did there is villages sacrificing a lot to get 1-2 guy educated and into a government job, who will then use corruption, bribery, pull to divert resources into his village. Being corrupted is a community duty and virtue with regard to his village. It looks like defection, but only as long as you think the nation-state and its rules and laws are his real community. If the real community is the village, it is not a defection.
I think e.g. the oligarchical gangsterism in Russia after the Soviet collapse was not defection: there was nowhere from, the state and nation/empire as a community, in the consciousness sense, stopped existing. The actual community these people operated in was the nomenclature’s Old Boys Networks and they did obey the rules and laws of that community e.g. remember a repay favors, deliver the service you were bribed to deliver and so on.
I know very little about the situation in the US, but the anecdote that studying well may be seen as acting white and thus defection from the black community is something you should be investigating. Are the people defecting from the white / national community even parts of it, in their own eyes?
The reason the nation/empire stopped existing as a community is because so many people were defecting from it. The “nomenclature’s Old Boys Networks” was a substitute community that developed among parts of the elite, and my understanding is there was a lot of defection and back-stabbing even within it.
This is part of a very complicated set of issues. Note that although almost all drugs (with the notable exception of crack) are used more frequently by whites than blacks according to anonymous surveys. See for example data here. But blacks are more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites. The entire racial crime issue is really complicated. I recommend reading Yvain’s piece on race and the judicial system. Any simple explanation of what is going on really doesn’t easily meet all the facts.
I suspect a Simpson’s paradox here. To avoid this you would have to show that drugs are used more frequently by whites than by blacks of similar socioeconomic status. Otherwise, showing that whites use more drugs may just mean that whites can afford more drugs.