From what I have read from the subjects of hit pieces online, these types of people send the target an email letting them know they are the subject of the hit piece and give them six hours or so to comment on questions designed to make them look bad.
This article really has it all, from overuse of the adjective "far-right," scurrilous references to Jim Crow and of course Nazi Germany, uses of the passive voice ("in many cases to be met with swift condemnation" -- designed to mean "as everyone knows"), needlessly confrontational discrediting adjectives and verbs, strawmen ("No matter how hard people try, however, race cannot be reduced to the results of an IQ test"), and non sequiturs ("but intelligence is not like height"). It's as if they prompted AI (albeit probably a more sophisticated one than exists at the moment) to write an article containing all of the normal MSM tropes when writing about those they disagree with.
How about this: "but even if you add them all together they predict only a small fraction of someone’s IQ score." Small fraction being a mere 15%? I.e., the average difference between the mean white IQ and the mean black IQ?
Speaking of small fraction: I saw government media once triumphantly declare that 20% of people were in favor of something regarding immigration, I forget what specifically. That was the headline. When you read the text it showed that almost 80% were against.
The media quickly learned to abolish comment sections online. Remember those? When people started getting the internet at home, the comment sections were praised as "the next big step in democracy." People could add information and "a consensus will build."
But what people pointed out again and again was how the journalists hid the racial aspect and the immigration facts. The comment sections eventually disappeared with no discussion.
The NYT tried to control its comment sections for a time. They'd promote two comments to the top: One that was "readers' choice" and one that was "editor's choice." These being at the top they would of course then get by far the most likes. Clever manipulation. But people could still add comments below, and even that was too much, apparently.
Not so many race-crime comments in the NYT comment section, but a lot about how the endless wars at the time were the result of Israel-loyal neocons, who only attacked pro-Palestinian Muslim nations, allying with all the rest.
One day, the Atlantic's Village will be mugged by reality--or just mugged.
I couldn't find Breland's education or background, other than writing for Mother Jones until this Spring, but normal people would have to seek out forbidden texts and data. Have you, Steve, done research on which search engines do a better job of hiding your work and its underlying, I mean, lying data?
At my liberal farts college, the Symbolic Logic course could count toward either the religion/philosophy or the math requirement. It was an easy A for us math/sci. majors needing another r/p course but a rough ride for the r/p majors in dire need of math and logic.
I think he is from the Houston area. Whenever I meet someone who went to UT-Austin, my first question is whether they got in on the top 10% rule (now top 6% required).
At least they didn't go to Walz's U Hou, which I discovered in the 90s had 75% of enrolled SATs below 1160 (recentered). In 2019, UT-A's 25th% (78% reporting) was 1240! Someone must be telling a lot of those 10%ers (wisely) not to go there.
One needs to read up about the top 10% rule and the firewalls that UT-Austin has in place. Just because a student is accepted under a top 10% rule does not mean they can major in what they want. The College of Engineering and College of Business have separate admission criteria.
A good question for a high school counselor in Texas is whether a student would be better off majoring in communications or sociology at UT-Austin or business/engineering at Texas Tech or Houston.
It’s the top 6% of an individual’s high school class, not the state as a whole. There are high schools in large parts of major cities where the valedictorians score below a 1,000 on the SAT. Back in the 1970s an academic recruiter for Notre Dame told me that there were high schools in south Dallas where the valedictorian scored in the 800s.
True, for sure, but that's not the point. It's not a matter of intelligence, it's that they *must* oppose and mock any inconvenient thought or speech that reveals their lies.
Perhaps so, but more importantly for a philosophy student, obviously a major failure in epistemology. Her inferences from the data are nothing but appeals to authority.
Breland is clearly pretty smart. He has good taste in which problematic right-wing thinkers are the most "threatening" (read: intellectually interesting).
I’m wondering what my 9th grade mathematics teacher would have done if 9 of the 12 students in his class had written the same incorrect solution on the chalkboard (remember chalkboards?) and declared it correct due to consensus instead of reason?
Do you remember when in its eagerness to be "contrarian" that the Atlantic editors ran a piece, nay I believe a cover story, thanking our fighting men and women for their service by asserting that they didn't seem to be all that bright, unlike previous generations of soldiers, or at least not bright like its own kids?
If you read the article in the "consensus view," you will discover that they define race as follows:
Race: a sociopolitically constructed system for classifying and ranking human beings according to subjective beliefs about shared ancestry based on perceived innate biological similarities; the system varies globally."
I guess race can't be biological if you define it as such.
Also, you will find one of those fruity land acknowledgments, which, if said the right way, sound less like admissions of guilt and more like colonial boasting.
For maybe the last 10-12 years I keep running into the phrase "X is a human construct", where X might be race, gender, sexual affinity...whatever the author wants to portray as illusory and objectively non-existent.
But what does this *mean*, exactly?
So I created my own test for whether X is a "human construct", and it's this: removing language and communication with other humans, does any human individual perceive a difference between the attributes labeled "X" and other members of the human population in terms of that attribute?
E.g., would a human with an amputated leg be recognized and classified as being different from the other members of the human population? If yes, not a human construct, but an objective observation from which a generalization can be drawn. The subject could be classified as a member of the sub-group "amputees". Generalizations about that individual's ability to walk 20 miles a day are justified.
Would a black sub-Saharan African, having lived in a degree of isolation, note significant differences when first encountering Caucasian Europeans? I contend that they would, and did. It would be an objective observation, and the European might be put in a class of "not like us, or any other tribe we've yet encountered".
Further less apparent but consistently observable, difference might accumulate as well.
This, then is the core of the actual on-the-ground definition of "race". One can equivocate and temporize ad infinitum, but the objective fact remains that in skin color, *at least*, there is a predictable and consistent difference around which objective observers can generalize.
Checking data sets for other, less overt, differences finds that there are other attributes that vary between the distinct groups (races) and can be characterized as trends of varying degrees of predictability, just like skin color. Compelling trends emerge: it's true that in the full set of sub-Saharan Africans one might find some individuals with skin *lighter* than the full set of European Caucasians--but would one want to bet that the next 10 S-S Africans that one encounters at random include *any* who have lighter colored skin than the next 10 C-Europeans that one encounters? The next 100?
"Seriously, as I’ve been trying to explain to American elites for several decades, it’s highly likely that rapidly improving genetic science will ultimately determine that there are indeed racial differences in things like sprinting speed and IQ, so we should be trying to get ready to not go insane over the scientific findings. But The Atlantic increasingly favors insanity."
I think that for many people, the deconstruction of biological categories such as race and sex are a moral crusade. They truly believe that these categories were invented in order to oppress people (for example the common claim that Europeans invented race in order to justify colonialism), and they are unfortunately backed up by social scientists who started to push these social constructivist arguments after World War 2. In their minds, "the science" has proven that race is not real.
"... "the science" has proven that race is not real."
...even though they are unwilling to drive the length of Firestone Blvd on a Saturday night.
But I had a "light-bulb" moment when I realized a few years back that such people really either do not understand the term "hypocrisy"--have no understanding of the trait--or they consider it personal trait of only trivial importance if it applies to themselves--which is itself a striking example of hypocrisy.
I suppose that the reason the Left so fears the scientific reality that average group differences in social behaviors, abilities, and personality traits have a substantial genetic component is that it undermines their characterization of the world as a structure of oppression which is the basis of their melioristic claims to authority.
Yup. If you look at the likes of Sam Bankman-Fried, many elites no doubt recognize all this BS for the patent nonsense it is, but pay lip service to it as a means to accruing power.
To paraphrase Seneca (or was it Gibbon?): "Wokeism is regarded by the left as true, by the right as false, and by the rulers as useful."
Exactly--and I suspect that most or even all financial elites who profess that the wealth owe more taxes in support of the general society are simply camouflaging their true natures to inoculate themselves (in the event of civil unrest) and/or their financial interests (PR) against populist reaction.
...and it really doesn't matter if they *say* that they've set up their estate to be given to just causes; there's a gap between saying and doing, and also they never mention any "set-asides" that happen before the amount of their estate is determined.
Steve, you're a smart guy, a curious guy who wants to know the actual answers, a rare high IQ "don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining type". We (I put myself in the same category) are a tiny minority of the people who are, let's say 'intrigued', by race science. The overwhelming majority of the intrigued, are into race science because it helps them rationalize their hatred (see your previous comments section for examples). The audience/writers of the Atlantic therefore hear these arguments far more often from haters than scientists. It's no wonder they shut down and don't want to hear it anymore.
Society teaches us to revere scientists, but most people actually hate them (up close, in person, having a conversation).
Also the race not being biological thing is bizarre. Everyone, except the writers of "The Jeffersons" knows that black parents have black kids and white parents have white kids. You could poll a hundred people and ask them to classify a group of a hundred people as either black or white (or mixed) and the errors would be in the single digits. So what do they mean? They never question it or define it. Do they mean there isn't a single, or a handful, of genes where one variant makes you black and the other makes you white?
Your first paragraph there is a very important point. I absolutely think that the reason they come out so hard against someone like Steve is that they believe that people are literally incapable of handling this knowledge without spiraling into hatred and possibly genocide. So they feel the need to obfuscate and nuance troll with the goal that people will say “ahh it’s really complicated” and move on. I actually understand this perspective, because as you mention the vast majority of people who I encounter on this topic are using it to justify their racist hatred. They will typically just disregard the areas where it is more nuanced.
The thing about Steve is that he’s able to discuss these topics without ever descending into racism or misanthropy. He seems to have a genuine appreciation for the differences between groups of people and the ways that makes the world a more interesting place.
"...people are literally incapable of handling this knowledge without spiraling into hatred and possibly genocide."
Yes, and this is parallel to the issue of private gun ownership in the US. Many of the intellectually elite types fear that *all* gun owners are likely, at any time, throw away all social responsibility and re-enact "Escape from New York". So, just like the common man cannot be trusted with data, they cannot be trusted with guns.
Really, it's pretty paternalistic, isn't it?
The particular *objective* fact of groups we call "races" for convenience--identifiable, fairly predictable--I really DON"T CARE where I, or the group I'm in, ends up on any comparative chart or graph. What I *DO* care about is that someone is trying to tell me that no such graphs can accurately exist, under NO circumstances, and on the surface of it, it seems impossible that this could be true, just based on life experience.
This is just plain gaslighting, like in the classic film, and I take it personally, as a personal insult and a sign of personal disrespect.
Her father was "Jamaican", I keep hearing. They're trying to trick people to believe he was black; he was half black, so she's 1/4 black, 1/4 white, 1/2 indian.
But then she went to an historically black college and pledged the top sorority. That has to bump her black credentials up a bit. As an African American that might put her above Obama
The trick there is people wouldn't be thinking about half Indian. I think the next thought experiment is you bring in paired couples, one black couple, one white couple, and then bring in all their children. How well would people do matching the children to the parents? Close to 100%. I think people would even do pretty well with Kamala on that one.
Their panic is understandable. They've foolishly put all their moral and political eggs in one basket, and it's the one marked "equality is the only good."
Their days are numbered, and they feel it in their bones, even if they can't (and dare not) express it to themselves.
I know an Iranian girl here in Western Europe, who called her mother and said, "Back home you can't criticize religion, but here you can't criticize Blacks!"
Her mother said, "WHAT?"
The rest of the word has no idea what kind of suppression of the truth that goes on in the West.
A woman from Bulgaria said she couldn't understand why we had so many Third World immigrants, and the only explanation she could think of was "to get cheap labor." I said the social democrats were the ones who started this everywhere, and they are importing voters. The Left wouldn't have won any national election in Western Europe after the 1990s without immigrant votes. She gasped. Apparently they can't even imagine. In Bulgaria, or Turkey, or Iran (or Japan, Taiwan, etc), the Left such as it is wouldn't think of suggesting that plan, because they'd be voted down. The Left can only do it in the West because of the nature of the *media owners.
------------------
Unfortunately Poland and Estonia are ready to fall. A woman of a certain *religious persuasion came over to Poland from the U.S. with investment money from a U.S. media conglomerate in the 1990s and started buying up media on the cheap. The state-allied *Bonnier family in Sweden (original name Hirschel from Germany, which owns three of the five largest newspapers, got to run Channel 4 on the government-built land network when the government TV/radio monopoly was abolished in the 1990s instead of through expensive satellites, and writes many of the school textbooks) also bought media in Poland and the Baltic states, and people there said the tone changed immediately.
Here's an LA Koreatown publication. Interesting how they state the Korean man was attacked by "a Black." This is how Koreans talk (in Korean, to themselves), they talk PC to non-Koreans:
I really wish the Poles would wake up. Estonia seems to derive too much satisfaction from kicking Russia in the balls while standing next to America. They may be hopeless. Chihuahuas can be like that.
But Poland... they need to take a page from Orban or even Lukashenko: ban and van these people before it's too late.
Reminds me of a small female cat who was threatened by a bigger cat that entered the garden. But her fellow cat came out to stand in between them. She stood behind him and then peered out around him to hiss at the intruder.
The Latvian embassy where I live has moved their own flag two meters to the side on the outer wall, to put Ukraine's flag above the entrance instead. Think about that. The symbolism isn't what they thought it would be.
I have seen college papers from Estonia written in "sociology" class and all the assorted classes like studying Third World aid, female studies, etc. The sociology papers are exactly like the Cultural Marxist crap in Western classes. All the textbooks in these classes come from the U.S. When there are domestic textbooks they're knock-offs, introducing some local context but it's based on what the Marxists in the U.S. coastal universities say.
For one thing, the East Europeans saw their economies being driven into the ground, while they were forbidden to leave and had to work for the ruling clique. So then they want to do like the West, which includes the sociology textbooks, thinking those are part of the success. People outside the West have no idea what's going on here. Also, those who go to those classes are typically the worst people, so it fits them. Spout dogma without having to do any actual work.
The first textbook you get in sociology even praises Karl Marx as "the founder of sociology" in the introduction, and then goes on to praise Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse. (You see the common denominator.)
In Iran a few years back they banned sociology. Shut down the classes in the universities. They said it was "Western decadence." It's anti-Western decadence, but wise choice.
By the way, it doesn't help that Putin makes up a fake history where you can separate the slave state the Soviet Union from the communism that produced it and ran the economy into the ground. It's a history where you admit no fault, just go rah-rah because the Soviet Union was tough and feared and financed armed movements on different continents. The Russians in the satellite states still wave Soviet flags because in Soviet times their people was in control. In the 1990s the communist statues were removed but Putin put them back again. "They're part of our history!" Of course it pisses people off.
In Ukraine the communists killed 14 MILLION people but Russia doesn't care one bit about the Holodomor. And the Ukrainians see some in Donbass waving Soviet flags alongside imperial Russian flags. They're practically begging the Ukrainians to fall into the hands of the U.S. Democrats, today's actual communists.
Yes-- I think most people of the former East bloc have no idea just how far gone America is, and what it is they're aligning with.
The irony is that much of the US deep state's mischief would be hamstrung if the Poles and Czechs just resisted a bit more. The Hungarians and Slovaks have done this, which is precisely why you see Fico and Orban being attacked.
As to your prior entry: Sadly, America has lots of people who have flown the Ukrainian flag, but would never fly an American one. And large parts of this country will put you in prison for burning BLM or rainbow flags, but not for burning an American one. Sodomy, race guilt, and Zionism: this is what we're reduced to.
I always remember an old Russian man who moved to the U.S. and said that the U.S. has more communist propaganda than the Soviet Union had in the 1980s. And he said that around 2010. Now it's far worse. We've moved from the takeover to the Maoist Red Guard.
Yes, I've discussed this with a few people from Russia. Sadly, there is this difference which puts America in a worse position: by the end of the Soviet union, very few Russians believed the propaganda. I wish we could say that here.
It also occurs to me that a lot of the specialness of the IQ genetics debate comes down to hurt feelings, and hurt group feelings. Intelligence is a special trait in that people remain touchy about it into adulthood. Kids care about being strong and fast, but most adults just accept they aren't very strong or very fast. Why do I need to bench press 400 pounds? When was the last time I needed to sprint? You tell me I'm not fast? Fine. You tell me I'm dull witted? Them's still fighting words!
> SS: I also brought up the huge increase in average height in South Korea over recent generations (and the comparable increase in raw IQ test scores) as suggesting that nurture can play a large role.
And the concomitant fact that they are now much taller than North Koreans, even though genetically they are the same people. Also, I just noticed that your initials are SS; I'm surprised they don't bring up that fact to discredit you.
So far as I can see, the major driver of pre-emptive rejection of *any* datasets that show differences between races consistently is that those who--like the Atlantic editorial staff and many of their readers--take Rousseau-ian egalitarian humanism as a religion. It fulfills a need for both security ("the world works *this* way...and it's a *nice* world") and social inclusion ("we are the devout...the chosen people") and is and emotional necessity for them.
I repeat: it is based on satisfying one's emotions. Subjective, with any connection with objective reality purely by circumstance.
As with religion, logic and/or empiricism has no effect whatsoever.
The short answer to your question is, no, Atlantic readers (and leftists in general) aren't ignorant of fundamental crime and IQ stats. For them, they're inconvenient truths, like the laws of supply-and-demand, that must be mocked and deemed unworthy of discussion because, you know, racism. Limiting free speech, along with controlling public education, is part of their arsenal. No lie is beyond the pale for them--at the DNC, Biden claimed that he and Kamala ("The Ugandan Nightmare"; c'mon, if you were a wrestling fan in the 80's that comes to mind every time!) had fought to keep our schools open during the pandemic!!
At my most pessimistic, I tell myself at least I've got a front-row seat to the decline and fall of Western civilization. 😒
It's funny how the rejection of the transcendent in favor of empiricism has undermined the basis of empiricism:
If truth is only the result of consensus then "consensus," whatever it may be, becomes truth.
Rejection of the transcendent also implies that human value is entirely based on physical characteristics, in which case the only fault of the Nazis was that they may have been mistaken about which humans were worthy and which lacked value, although "the consensus" seems to agree with them about the infirm and mentally defective.
I notice The Atlantic actually asked Steve for comments on their story. They quoted Steve. That's a major shift in style at Atlantic.
Protestations aside, they did let some facts slip through. That's not nothing
From what I have read from the subjects of hit pieces online, these types of people send the target an email letting them know they are the subject of the hit piece and give them six hours or so to comment on questions designed to make them look bad.
Part of the timing to keep them from running to some other outlet and getting their side out first.
Steve's typically rapid response probably foiled that strategy to some extent.
This article really has it all, from overuse of the adjective "far-right," scurrilous references to Jim Crow and of course Nazi Germany, uses of the passive voice ("in many cases to be met with swift condemnation" -- designed to mean "as everyone knows"), needlessly confrontational discrediting adjectives and verbs, strawmen ("No matter how hard people try, however, race cannot be reduced to the results of an IQ test"), and non sequiturs ("but intelligence is not like height"). It's as if they prompted AI (albeit probably a more sophisticated one than exists at the moment) to write an article containing all of the normal MSM tropes when writing about those they disagree with.
How about this: "but even if you add them all together they predict only a small fraction of someone’s IQ score." Small fraction being a mere 15%? I.e., the average difference between the mean white IQ and the mean black IQ?
At least they asked you for comment.
...And they managed to tie it all to Trump!
Speaking of small fraction: I saw government media once triumphantly declare that 20% of people were in favor of something regarding immigration, I forget what specifically. That was the headline. When you read the text it showed that almost 80% were against.
The media quickly learned to abolish comment sections online. Remember those? When people started getting the internet at home, the comment sections were praised as "the next big step in democracy." People could add information and "a consensus will build."
But what people pointed out again and again was how the journalists hid the racial aspect and the immigration facts. The comment sections eventually disappeared with no discussion.
The NYT tried to control its comment sections for a time. They'd promote two comments to the top: One that was "readers' choice" and one that was "editor's choice." These being at the top they would of course then get by far the most likes. Clever manipulation. But people could still add comments below, and even that was too much, apparently.
Not so many race-crime comments in the NYT comment section, but a lot about how the endless wars at the time were the result of Israel-loyal neocons, who only attacked pro-Palestinian Muslim nations, allying with all the rest.
One day, the Atlantic's Village will be mugged by reality--or just mugged.
I couldn't find Breland's education or background, other than writing for Mother Jones until this Spring, but normal people would have to seek out forbidden texts and data. Have you, Steve, done research on which search engines do a better job of hiding your work and its underlying, I mean, lying data?
BA Philosophy from University of Texas.
Maybe a tad light on statistics?
Austin, I assume. Any idea where he's from?
At my liberal farts college, the Symbolic Logic course could count toward either the religion/philosophy or the math requirement. It was an easy A for us math/sci. majors needing another r/p course but a rough ride for the r/p majors in dire need of math and logic.
I think he is from the Houston area. Whenever I meet someone who went to UT-Austin, my first question is whether they got in on the top 10% rule (now top 6% required).
Now, that's an icebreaker!
At least they didn't go to Walz's U Hou, which I discovered in the 90s had 75% of enrolled SATs below 1160 (recentered). In 2019, UT-A's 25th% (78% reporting) was 1240! Someone must be telling a lot of those 10%ers (wisely) not to go there.
One needs to read up about the top 10% rule and the firewalls that UT-Austin has in place. Just because a student is accepted under a top 10% rule does not mean they can major in what they want. The College of Engineering and College of Business have separate admission criteria.
A good question for a high school counselor in Texas is whether a student would be better off majoring in communications or sociology at UT-Austin or business/engineering at Texas Tech or Houston.
It’s the top 6% of an individual’s high school class, not the state as a whole. There are high schools in large parts of major cities where the valedictorians score below a 1,000 on the SAT. Back in the 1970s an academic recruiter for Notre Dame told me that there were high schools in south Dallas where the valedictorian scored in the 800s.
I was a r/p guy in college and symbolic logic was my favorite course and received an A+ I object to your assumption.
It wasn't an assumption. It was a small class, and I heard their plaintive cries. Of course, other years may have been different.
True, for sure, but that's not the point. It's not a matter of intelligence, it's that they *must* oppose and mock any inconvenient thought or speech that reveals their lies.
Perhaps so, but more importantly for a philosophy student, obviously a major failure in epistemology. Her inferences from the data are nothing but appeals to authority.
Breland is clearly pretty smart. He has good taste in which problematic right-wing thinkers are the most "threatening" (read: intellectually interesting).
Consensus science.
I’m wondering what my 9th grade mathematics teacher would have done if 9 of the 12 students in his class had written the same incorrect solution on the chalkboard (remember chalkboards?) and declared it correct due to consensus instead of reason?
Keep noticing.
Do you remember when in its eagerness to be "contrarian" that the Atlantic editors ran a piece, nay I believe a cover story, thanking our fighting men and women for their service by asserting that they didn't seem to be all that bright, unlike previous generations of soldiers, or at least not bright like its own kids?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
If you read the article in the "consensus view," you will discover that they define race as follows:
Race: a sociopolitically constructed system for classifying and ranking human beings according to subjective beliefs about shared ancestry based on perceived innate biological similarities; the system varies globally."
I guess race can't be biological if you define it as such.
Also, you will find one of those fruity land acknowledgments, which, if said the right way, sound less like admissions of guilt and more like colonial boasting.
For maybe the last 10-12 years I keep running into the phrase "X is a human construct", where X might be race, gender, sexual affinity...whatever the author wants to portray as illusory and objectively non-existent.
But what does this *mean*, exactly?
So I created my own test for whether X is a "human construct", and it's this: removing language and communication with other humans, does any human individual perceive a difference between the attributes labeled "X" and other members of the human population in terms of that attribute?
E.g., would a human with an amputated leg be recognized and classified as being different from the other members of the human population? If yes, not a human construct, but an objective observation from which a generalization can be drawn. The subject could be classified as a member of the sub-group "amputees". Generalizations about that individual's ability to walk 20 miles a day are justified.
Would a black sub-Saharan African, having lived in a degree of isolation, note significant differences when first encountering Caucasian Europeans? I contend that they would, and did. It would be an objective observation, and the European might be put in a class of "not like us, or any other tribe we've yet encountered".
Further less apparent but consistently observable, difference might accumulate as well.
This, then is the core of the actual on-the-ground definition of "race". One can equivocate and temporize ad infinitum, but the objective fact remains that in skin color, *at least*, there is a predictable and consistent difference around which objective observers can generalize.
Checking data sets for other, less overt, differences finds that there are other attributes that vary between the distinct groups (races) and can be characterized as trends of varying degrees of predictability, just like skin color. Compelling trends emerge: it's true that in the full set of sub-Saharan Africans one might find some individuals with skin *lighter* than the full set of European Caucasians--but would one want to bet that the next 10 S-S Africans that one encounters at random include *any* who have lighter colored skin than the next 10 C-Europeans that one encounters? The next 100?
"Seriously, as I’ve been trying to explain to American elites for several decades, it’s highly likely that rapidly improving genetic science will ultimately determine that there are indeed racial differences in things like sprinting speed and IQ, so we should be trying to get ready to not go insane over the scientific findings. But The Atlantic increasingly favors insanity."
I think that for many people, the deconstruction of biological categories such as race and sex are a moral crusade. They truly believe that these categories were invented in order to oppress people (for example the common claim that Europeans invented race in order to justify colonialism), and they are unfortunately backed up by social scientists who started to push these social constructivist arguments after World War 2. In their minds, "the science" has proven that race is not real.
"... "the science" has proven that race is not real."
...even though they are unwilling to drive the length of Firestone Blvd on a Saturday night.
But I had a "light-bulb" moment when I realized a few years back that such people really either do not understand the term "hypocrisy"--have no understanding of the trait--or they consider it personal trait of only trivial importance if it applies to themselves--which is itself a striking example of hypocrisy.
They actively favor double standards. Their behavior is allowed, their opponents is not, regardless of what the behavior is.
I guess I should thank The Atlantic for turning me on to two Twitter accounts. But I'll thank Steve instead.
They look good. One of them has his own Substack too. I’m checking it out.
I suppose that the reason the Left so fears the scientific reality that average group differences in social behaviors, abilities, and personality traits have a substantial genetic component is that it undermines their characterization of the world as a structure of oppression which is the basis of their melioristic claims to authority.
Yup. If you look at the likes of Sam Bankman-Fried, many elites no doubt recognize all this BS for the patent nonsense it is, but pay lip service to it as a means to accruing power.
To paraphrase Seneca (or was it Gibbon?): "Wokeism is regarded by the left as true, by the right as false, and by the rulers as useful."
Hah! Hah!
Exactly--and I suspect that most or even all financial elites who profess that the wealth owe more taxes in support of the general society are simply camouflaging their true natures to inoculate themselves (in the event of civil unrest) and/or their financial interests (PR) against populist reaction.
...and it really doesn't matter if they *say* that they've set up their estate to be given to just causes; there's a gap between saying and doing, and also they never mention any "set-asides" that happen before the amount of their estate is determined.
A show for the rubes, really...
See, most recently, Yvon Chouinard and his handling of his Patagonia clothing company.
Oh, I think moneyed conservationists have a *much, much* better track record than do others with their various causes. See Douglas Tompkins.
I wonder if their support of Big Abortion for "urban" "communities" does too.
Also, the Socialists' fervent belief in the infinite malleability/improveability of man's nature over time.
Steve, you're a smart guy, a curious guy who wants to know the actual answers, a rare high IQ "don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining type". We (I put myself in the same category) are a tiny minority of the people who are, let's say 'intrigued', by race science. The overwhelming majority of the intrigued, are into race science because it helps them rationalize their hatred (see your previous comments section for examples). The audience/writers of the Atlantic therefore hear these arguments far more often from haters than scientists. It's no wonder they shut down and don't want to hear it anymore.
Society teaches us to revere scientists, but most people actually hate them (up close, in person, having a conversation).
Also the race not being biological thing is bizarre. Everyone, except the writers of "The Jeffersons" knows that black parents have black kids and white parents have white kids. You could poll a hundred people and ask them to classify a group of a hundred people as either black or white (or mixed) and the errors would be in the single digits. So what do they mean? They never question it or define it. Do they mean there isn't a single, or a handful, of genes where one variant makes you black and the other makes you white?
Your first paragraph there is a very important point. I absolutely think that the reason they come out so hard against someone like Steve is that they believe that people are literally incapable of handling this knowledge without spiraling into hatred and possibly genocide. So they feel the need to obfuscate and nuance troll with the goal that people will say “ahh it’s really complicated” and move on. I actually understand this perspective, because as you mention the vast majority of people who I encounter on this topic are using it to justify their racist hatred. They will typically just disregard the areas where it is more nuanced.
The thing about Steve is that he’s able to discuss these topics without ever descending into racism or misanthropy. He seems to have a genuine appreciation for the differences between groups of people and the ways that makes the world a more interesting place.
"...people are literally incapable of handling this knowledge without spiraling into hatred and possibly genocide."
Yes, and this is parallel to the issue of private gun ownership in the US. Many of the intellectually elite types fear that *all* gun owners are likely, at any time, throw away all social responsibility and re-enact "Escape from New York". So, just like the common man cannot be trusted with data, they cannot be trusted with guns.
Really, it's pretty paternalistic, isn't it?
The particular *objective* fact of groups we call "races" for convenience--identifiable, fairly predictable--I really DON"T CARE where I, or the group I'm in, ends up on any comparative chart or graph. What I *DO* care about is that someone is trying to tell me that no such graphs can accurately exist, under NO circumstances, and on the surface of it, it seems impossible that this could be true, just based on life experience.
This is just plain gaslighting, like in the classic film, and I take it personally, as a personal insult and a sign of personal disrespect.
Some people might classify Kamala Harris wrong if they didn’t know the back story.
Her father was "Jamaican", I keep hearing. They're trying to trick people to believe he was black; he was half black, so she's 1/4 black, 1/4 white, 1/2 indian.
But then she went to an historically black college and pledged the top sorority. That has to bump her black credentials up a bit. As an African American that might put her above Obama
The bad was more than half black.
The trick there is people wouldn't be thinking about half Indian. I think the next thought experiment is you bring in paired couples, one black couple, one white couple, and then bring in all their children. How well would people do matching the children to the parents? Close to 100%. I think people would even do pretty well with Kamala on that one.
Their panic is understandable. They've foolishly put all their moral and political eggs in one basket, and it's the one marked "equality is the only good."
Their days are numbered, and they feel it in their bones, even if they can't (and dare not) express it to themselves.
I know an Iranian girl here in Western Europe, who called her mother and said, "Back home you can't criticize religion, but here you can't criticize Blacks!"
Her mother said, "WHAT?"
The rest of the word has no idea what kind of suppression of the truth that goes on in the West.
A woman from Bulgaria said she couldn't understand why we had so many Third World immigrants, and the only explanation she could think of was "to get cheap labor." I said the social democrats were the ones who started this everywhere, and they are importing voters. The Left wouldn't have won any national election in Western Europe after the 1990s without immigrant votes. She gasped. Apparently they can't even imagine. In Bulgaria, or Turkey, or Iran (or Japan, Taiwan, etc), the Left such as it is wouldn't think of suggesting that plan, because they'd be voted down. The Left can only do it in the West because of the nature of the *media owners.
------------------
Unfortunately Poland and Estonia are ready to fall. A woman of a certain *religious persuasion came over to Poland from the U.S. with investment money from a U.S. media conglomerate in the 1990s and started buying up media on the cheap. The state-allied *Bonnier family in Sweden (original name Hirschel from Germany, which owns three of the five largest newspapers, got to run Channel 4 on the government-built land network when the government TV/radio monopoly was abolished in the 1990s instead of through expensive satellites, and writes many of the school textbooks) also bought media in Poland and the Baltic states, and people there said the tone changed immediately.
Here's an LA Koreatown publication. Interesting how they state the Korean man was attacked by "a Black." This is how Koreans talk (in Korean, to themselves), they talk PC to non-Koreans:
http://www.koreatimes.com/article/20240815/1526214
I really wish the Poles would wake up. Estonia seems to derive too much satisfaction from kicking Russia in the balls while standing next to America. They may be hopeless. Chihuahuas can be like that.
But Poland... they need to take a page from Orban or even Lukashenko: ban and van these people before it's too late.
Reminds me of a small female cat who was threatened by a bigger cat that entered the garden. But her fellow cat came out to stand in between them. She stood behind him and then peered out around him to hiss at the intruder.
The Latvian embassy where I live has moved their own flag two meters to the side on the outer wall, to put Ukraine's flag above the entrance instead. Think about that. The symbolism isn't what they thought it would be.
I have seen college papers from Estonia written in "sociology" class and all the assorted classes like studying Third World aid, female studies, etc. The sociology papers are exactly like the Cultural Marxist crap in Western classes. All the textbooks in these classes come from the U.S. When there are domestic textbooks they're knock-offs, introducing some local context but it's based on what the Marxists in the U.S. coastal universities say.
For one thing, the East Europeans saw their economies being driven into the ground, while they were forbidden to leave and had to work for the ruling clique. So then they want to do like the West, which includes the sociology textbooks, thinking those are part of the success. People outside the West have no idea what's going on here. Also, those who go to those classes are typically the worst people, so it fits them. Spout dogma without having to do any actual work.
The first textbook you get in sociology even praises Karl Marx as "the founder of sociology" in the introduction, and then goes on to praise Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse. (You see the common denominator.)
In Iran a few years back they banned sociology. Shut down the classes in the universities. They said it was "Western decadence." It's anti-Western decadence, but wise choice.
By the way, it doesn't help that Putin makes up a fake history where you can separate the slave state the Soviet Union from the communism that produced it and ran the economy into the ground. It's a history where you admit no fault, just go rah-rah because the Soviet Union was tough and feared and financed armed movements on different continents. The Russians in the satellite states still wave Soviet flags because in Soviet times their people was in control. In the 1990s the communist statues were removed but Putin put them back again. "They're part of our history!" Of course it pisses people off.
In Ukraine the communists killed 14 MILLION people but Russia doesn't care one bit about the Holodomor. And the Ukrainians see some in Donbass waving Soviet flags alongside imperial Russian flags. They're practically begging the Ukrainians to fall into the hands of the U.S. Democrats, today's actual communists.
Yes-- I think most people of the former East bloc have no idea just how far gone America is, and what it is they're aligning with.
The irony is that much of the US deep state's mischief would be hamstrung if the Poles and Czechs just resisted a bit more. The Hungarians and Slovaks have done this, which is precisely why you see Fico and Orban being attacked.
As to your prior entry: Sadly, America has lots of people who have flown the Ukrainian flag, but would never fly an American one. And large parts of this country will put you in prison for burning BLM or rainbow flags, but not for burning an American one. Sodomy, race guilt, and Zionism: this is what we're reduced to.
I always remember an old Russian man who moved to the U.S. and said that the U.S. has more communist propaganda than the Soviet Union had in the 1980s. And he said that around 2010. Now it's far worse. We've moved from the takeover to the Maoist Red Guard.
Yes, I've discussed this with a few people from Russia. Sadly, there is this difference which puts America in a worse position: by the end of the Soviet union, very few Russians believed the propaganda. I wish we could say that here.
It also occurs to me that a lot of the specialness of the IQ genetics debate comes down to hurt feelings, and hurt group feelings. Intelligence is a special trait in that people remain touchy about it into adulthood. Kids care about being strong and fast, but most adults just accept they aren't very strong or very fast. Why do I need to bench press 400 pounds? When was the last time I needed to sprint? You tell me I'm not fast? Fine. You tell me I'm dull witted? Them's still fighting words!
> AB: Carlson said from inside his barn studio
Of course this is an ad hominem attack
> SS: I also brought up the huge increase in average height in South Korea over recent generations (and the comparable increase in raw IQ test scores) as suggesting that nurture can play a large role.
And the concomitant fact that they are now much taller than North Koreans, even though genetically they are the same people. Also, I just noticed that your initials are SS; I'm surprised they don't bring up that fact to discredit you.
Agreed, the Secret Service is in a bad odor these days.
So far as I can see, the major driver of pre-emptive rejection of *any* datasets that show differences between races consistently is that those who--like the Atlantic editorial staff and many of their readers--take Rousseau-ian egalitarian humanism as a religion. It fulfills a need for both security ("the world works *this* way...and it's a *nice* world") and social inclusion ("we are the devout...the chosen people") and is and emotional necessity for them.
I repeat: it is based on satisfying one's emotions. Subjective, with any connection with objective reality purely by circumstance.
As with religion, logic and/or empiricism has no effect whatsoever.
Here is a bonus point * to you for bringing up Rousseau, the original pro-socialism emoter.
The short answer to your question is, no, Atlantic readers (and leftists in general) aren't ignorant of fundamental crime and IQ stats. For them, they're inconvenient truths, like the laws of supply-and-demand, that must be mocked and deemed unworthy of discussion because, you know, racism. Limiting free speech, along with controlling public education, is part of their arsenal. No lie is beyond the pale for them--at the DNC, Biden claimed that he and Kamala ("The Ugandan Nightmare"; c'mon, if you were a wrestling fan in the 80's that comes to mind every time!) had fought to keep our schools open during the pandemic!!
At my most pessimistic, I tell myself at least I've got a front-row seat to the decline and fall of Western civilization. 😒
It's funny how the rejection of the transcendent in favor of empiricism has undermined the basis of empiricism:
If truth is only the result of consensus then "consensus," whatever it may be, becomes truth.
Rejection of the transcendent also implies that human value is entirely based on physical characteristics, in which case the only fault of the Nazis was that they may have been mistaken about which humans were worthy and which lacked value, although "the consensus" seems to agree with them about the infirm and mentally defective.
God indeed forms the basis for empiricism as we learn more of Him by exploring his Works.