Aaaaaaaa. This is such a bad idea that I don’t even know where to start.
Racism as it’s presently conceptualized isn’t a simple matter of fear or hatred of ethnic others, unfortunately. That would be comparatively easy to deal with. It’s an enormously messy tangle of signaling and countersignaling and I really can’t do it justice without reading a few books for background and then devoting a sequence to it (which I’m not going to do for reasons that should be obvious), but as an oversimplification you can probably sum up most of the Western world’s high-status thinking regarding race as follows:
Everything even tangentially related to race is ineradicably tainted by ingroup/outgroup biases.
Because of this, attitudes and social prescriptions appearing to differentiate in any way by ethic background, or by any factor that can plausibly be linked to ethic background, are automatically suspect and should be compensated for as soon as discovered.
That includes these rules.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
So yes, conceptually your project should be seen as noble, if you accept all its prerequisites. But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
Might be. Might be. Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
If the so-called “HBD-sphere” or “Reactosphere” in general, for all its flaws (and I see some pretty fucking horrific flaws in it) can get away with a lot more, so can the LW Discussion section, or that semi-private enclosure being proposed around here.
Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
That’s a common argument against it, actually, although it’s usually framed in class terms. Maybe the most common once you filter out all the various manifestations of “ew, that’s gross”.
Not one that I accept myself, but like I said I only buy an approximation of the thinking above. There’s plenty of places it’ll steer you wrong at the margins.
Also, I’m indeed feeling a significant pressure to agree wholeheartedly with this comment and retract everything, because you and the high-status mainstream thinkers would be for me retracting it, and people like the HBD Bi- sorry, HBD Chick would be derisive of such “self-censorship”. Now I can feel for myself just how insidious the Blue vs Green pattern in your head can get when it’s really trying to override you.
Aaaaaaaa. This is such a bad idea that I don’t even know where to start.
Racism as it’s presently conceptualized isn’t a simple matter of fear or hatred of ethnic others, unfortunately. That would be comparatively easy to deal with. It’s an enormously messy tangle of signaling and countersignaling and I really can’t do it justice without reading a few books for background and then devoting a sequence to it (which I’m not going to do for reasons that should be obvious), but as an oversimplification you can probably sum up most of the Western world’s high-status thinking regarding race as follows:
Everything even tangentially related to race is ineradicably tainted by ingroup/outgroup biases.
Because of this, attitudes and social prescriptions appearing to differentiate in any way by ethic background, or by any factor that can plausibly be linked to ethic background, are automatically suspect and should be compensated for as soon as discovered.
That includes these rules.
Now, that’s a fairly cynical way of putting it (I’m optimizing for brevity), but to a first approximation I don’t think it’s even wrong.
So yes, conceptually your project should be seen as noble, if you accept all its prerequisites. But no one’s going to try to evaluate those prerequisites on their merits. Instead you won’t make it five steps before someone links to “The White Man’s Burden” and things get nasty.
Of course not. That would subject accusations of racism to falsifiability.
Might be. Might be. Yet can’t you envision e.g. transhumanism being tabooed like that if found to be “ineradicably tainted” by the human lust for power and an insidiously corrupting desire for a “legitimate” reason to feel superior to the people you currently associate yourself with?
If the so-called “HBD-sphere” or “Reactosphere” in general, for all its flaws (and I see some pretty fucking horrific flaws in it) can get away with a lot more, so can the LW Discussion section, or that semi-private enclosure being proposed around here.
That’s a common argument against it, actually, although it’s usually framed in class terms. Maybe the most common once you filter out all the various manifestations of “ew, that’s gross”.
Not one that I accept myself, but like I said I only buy an approximation of the thinking above. There’s plenty of places it’ll steer you wrong at the margins.
Also, I’m indeed feeling a significant pressure to agree wholeheartedly with this comment and retract everything, because you and the high-status mainstream thinkers would be for me retracting it, and people like the HBD Bi- sorry, HBD Chick would be derisive of such “self-censorship”. Now I can feel for myself just how insidious the Blue vs Green pattern in your head can get when it’s really trying to override you.