Two kinds of freedom of speech
I've argued a few times (sometimes conveying my message successfully sometimes not), that freedom of speech is not merely a legal issue centering on the first amendment, but also a cultural issue, centering on our willingness to tolerate the presence and the words of those we disagree with – even when we know that those ideas aren't merely foolish (e.g. preferring Chocolate ice-cream over a good French Vanilla), but actively destructive to individuals, families, and nations (take your pick – abortion pro/con, immigration pro/con, etc.) ( I note in passing that I've been called an "Enlightenment fundamentalist" by one of my Popehat co-bloggers for my willingness to engage with people outside the Overton window, and, no, he didn't intend it as a compliment; quite the opposite.)
I've even argued for years something sillier – silly because it should have to be argued at all – that we should enjoy non-political products by people that we disagree with politically (I gave as an example how I read books by China Mieville – a member of the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Workers Party).
Culture considered more important than law
In my earlier Gamer Gate post I talked about "entryism":
As a poet once said: Cthulhu swims slowly, but he only swims left. Isn't that interesting?
The blue team has made amazing progress over the last three hundred years. Occasionally by force of arms, but usually by a much more clever strategy: entryism.
Entryism, for those not hip to the lingo, is "a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. In situations where the organization being 'entered' is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right."
Since World War II the Blue team in the US has entered into the stodgy old universities (taking advantage of the GI Bill and the resulting explosion in size of secondary education institutions), and taken them over completely. It has taken over the media (now called the "mainstream media" or MSM by the red team), because of this. It has taken over many corporate boards (although not all attempts have succeeded).
Over the last few years blue team has been rolling up red team's flank in a new battle: the tech world (or, pace Scott Alexander, they're actually trying to roll up the flank of a minor Red faction / ally that should perhaps be called "Gray": techno-libertarians).
This is a really smart move for Blue, as much of the economy has stalled out over the last ten years, and tech is the only area of growth. Who wants to own 90% of a stalled boat, when you could own 90% of a boat that's going somewhere?
Entryism is not a political or legal or economic mode of warfare ; it is a cultural mode.
But what are politics, law, and economies other than cultural structures?
Once you control Harvard Law, you control the courts. Once you control the courts, you control the laws. Once you control the laws, you control the people.
Or, alternatively: once you control the technology conferences you control the team leads, once you control the team leads, you control the engineers, once you control the engineers, you control the tech industry, once you control the tech industry, you control the 21st century economy.
(Godwin lulz: you know who else tried to take over education?)
If enlightenment law is destroyed, but enlightenment culture survives, we can rebuild the law.
…but if enlightenment culture is destroyed, then law necessarily follows, and there is no foundation to ever rebuild the lost freedoms on.
Thus one mote in the eye of the culture of free speech bothers me more than a beam in the eye of the law of free speech.
An anonymous email
Perhaps because I've written about free speech, or perhaps because I've written about "Urbit" twice before, or perhaps because of both I received an email with a pastebin URL.
The timeline
As best I can tell the the timeline of events is this:
Some time on or before 1 June the Strangeloop tech conference threw open its submissions process and Curtis Yarvin of the Tlon corporation submitted a proposal about his Urbit network / functional programming language. (Note: the Urbit talk description is at archive.is, because it's been memory-holed at the StrangeLoop website).
On 3 June Alex Miller of the Cognitect corporation sent told Curtis that his proposed speech was interesting enough to be worthy of being heard by "the creators and users of the languages, libraries, tools, and techniques at the forefront of the industry."
Then around 1pm on 3 June @bobpoekert noticed, in a relatively calm way, that Curtis had some off beat politics.
Moldbug is speaking at strangeloop http://t.co/9k3ytdVo6H
— bob (@bobpoekert) June 3, 2015
The calmness didn't last; @aphyr declared
What in the actual fuck https://t.co/uDLeBxYmro
— Arf Installation (@aphyr) June 3, 2015
And @bodil perceives that an error – the error of tolerance – has been committed, and hopes that it occurred only by accident, and will soon be corrected:
Suddenly I'm not sure I want to attend @strangeloop_stl. Hope this was an accident that gets promptly corrected. 😞 https://t.co/2pJYp1KdgC
— Bodil Stokke (@bodil) June 3, 2015
@joescii wonders how such an error of tolerance could possibly have happened
@bodil so I know nothing about this person, but he looks rather notorious. I’m curious how he got accepted. // @kf
— Joe Barnes (@joescii) June 3, 2015
And @kf suggests that the tolerance was accidental – perhaps the Party merely forgot to do its due diligence and failed to ask software engineers if they are now, or have ever been, a card carrying member of any party right of center:
@joescii @bodil I honestly don't know–perhaps the organizers forgot his name and neglected to Google? @strangeloop_stl
— Katherine Fellows (@kf) June 3, 2015
And one social justice warrior, @steveklabnik noted that
…oh, that's odd … the tweet is gone and the account is protected.
I guess Steve didn't like his own words being quoted to show that he like violence? Anyway, no problem, I took screenshots:
Who is this Steve Klabnik, by the way? Oh, just your average rails coder and violent communist!
The point being: Steve really, really, really doesn't like fascism. But initiating violence against his political enemies? That's different, and ggggggreat! And up there with initiating violence is getting thought criminals banned from technical conferences, it seems.
So there was a bit of a tempest in an organic, fair-trade teapot, and after five or so tweets, Alex Miller realized that Strangeloop had invited someone to speak on functional programming languages who might not, in his heart of hearts, agree that Thomas Carlyle was a dead white man who should be forgotten.
And thus, Alex Miller "fixed the glitch": he emailed Curtis and said that even though Curtis thoughts on functional programming were interesting enough to be heard at the conference, because of Curtis's thoughts on Carlyle and such, he was no longer welcome to talk to decent people about functional programming:
From: Alex Miller
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 5:45 PM
Subject: Re: Strange Loop 2015 submission "urbit, a clean-slate functional stack"Hi Curtis,
When your talk was posted on the Strange Loop web site today, I had immediate and vigorous feedback about the fact that you would be speaking at Strange Loop. I do not generally make any attempt to audit or care about the particular opinions or ideology of the people that I accept as speakers; I am generally focused on the content of the talks themselves.
However, in this case it is clear to me that your opinions in areas outside your talk are concerning enough for a significantly large number of attendees that those reactions are overshadowing the talk and acting as a distraction for launching the conference as a whole. Because of this, I am sorry that I must rescind your invitation and I will not be able to accept or include your talk at the conference. My apologies if this causes you any inconvenience.
Alex Miller
Or, to be a precise, it was alleged by an email I received that Alex had said this. Had Alex actually?
I reached out on 4 June and asked Alex if it was true:
1/ received an (alleged) leaked email from @puredanger to Curtis Yarvin banning him from @strangeloop_stl bc of his conservative politics.
— ClarkHat (@ClarkHat) June 4, 2015
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong. Can you hear me, Alex Miller?
Despite several tweets asking for confirmation, Alex never responded to me. (Or at least that's my belief – I checked my mentions closely, but it's possible that a response slipped through.)
However the next day I saw a link being tweeted around; Alex, it seemed, had finally responded.
Strangeloop conference doubles down
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sl-notes/yarvin.txt
Curtis Yarvin submitted a talk in the Strange Loop 2015 Call for Presentations. The talk went through the review process and was one of about 60 talks selected for the conference out of about 360. The subject of the talk was urbit (attached below). While we use a multi-stage review process, ultimately all final decisions are made by me.
Earlier this week we published the bulk of the 2015 Strange Loop session list, including Curtis's talk. I quickly received feedback that Curtis also has an online persona under the name "Mencius Moldbug" where he has posted extensive political writings.
A large number of current and former speakers and attendees contacted me to say that they found Curtis's writings objectionable. I have not personally read them.
I am trying to create a conference where the focus is on the technology and the topics being presented. Ultimately, I decided that if Curtis was part of the program, his mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk and become the focus. This would not serve the conference, the other speakers, the attendees, or even Curtis.
Thus, I chose to rescind Curtis's invitation and remove him from the program…
Alex Miller
So there we have it: Alex Miller believes in the heckler's veto:
If several people contact him saying "person X will speak on topic Y, but is bad because of opinion Z which he will not speak on, but I – the emailer – dislike", then Alex will exclude person X from his conference.
I defend Strangeloop on legal grounds
Now, Strangeloop is a private conference, and if Curtis' speech was going to violate one of the Strangeloop policies, I'd entirely support the legality of their decision.
Heck, even though Curtis' scheduled speech was entirely in keeping with every single one of their policies, and Strangeloop blatantly made up policies ad hoc in order to achieve the desired result, I support their right to do so. I've long supported the legal right of free association. The law (i.e. the government monopoly on violence) should not force people to socialize, work, or do business with those they prefer not to.
So, while I might not throw myself in front of literal tanks to keep the government from forcing Strangeloop to accept Curtis, I'd surely throw metaphorically throw myself in front of some metaphoric tanks, while I sit in my easy chair and type.
Side note: Lefties are Ayn Rand Acolytes
I've noticed a fascinating phenomena: ask a stereotypical rightist about some private action he doesn't like, and he'll say "anyone who doesn't like it should take their money elsewhere". As in "if a baker won't make cakes for gay couples, gays should take their money elsewhere", or "if Starbucks doesn't allow open carry, gun owners should take their money elsewhere".
Leftists are often more nuanced than this. Instead of using just a few of the ethical bases that Jonathan Haidt identified, as conservatives do, they use more.
Thus, instead of only embracing the "exit" branch of the "loyalty, voice, and exit" fork, they also embrace the "voice" branch: Whole Foods should stop selling meat, stop carrying Eden Foods products, abjure security guards, and open a new location.
Well, they're nuanced up to a point. It's been my sad experience to run into a majority of lefties who, as soon as you suggest to a leftist that they might change how they're doing things to be more progressive and congruent with the goals of an open and freedom-loving society, turn into Ayn Rand acolytes: "this is my bakery, and if you don't like it, go somewhere else!"
Curious.
But, still, I agree with them.
A call for consistency
I'll make a deal with lefties: I'll keep throwing myself in front of metaphorical tanks to defend their legal right to exclude Curtis and other wrongthink badfun people, if they'll defend a privately owned bakery, or a hobby craft store, or a –
Hey, wait, where are you guys going?
A few questions for Alex and the other conference organizers
Questions for Alex Miller (@puredanger), Ryan Senior (@objcmdo), Mario Aquino (@marioaquino), Nick Cowan (@notetoself_stl), and Bridget Hillyer(@bridgethillyer):
- Alex says that he does not "generally" consider political opinions, but – apparently – he does at least on occasion. What are the boundaries of acceptable opinions that one may quietly hold inside one's head while at Strangeloop ? May one hold a belief in a flat income tax? In no income tax? May one be a professed communist, wishing for the proletarians to rise up in armed revolution?
- If the organizers of Strangeloop have not read Curtis' political writings, how do you know that his beliefs are outside the bounds allowable at Strangeloop?
- If the answer is "significantly large number" of people complain, what is that number? One ? Two ? More ?
- Will that numeric threshold be applied in the future? If two or three conference attendees email you to say that some presenter's advocacy of, say, polyamory, or lesbianism, or whatever would make the conference something other than a "safe space", will you disinvite the speakers so that your conference attendees aren't forced to be in the same building as people they disagree with?
- Do you support the legal right of other conferences to discriminate against speakers based on characteristics that have nothing to do with their presentations?
- As adherents of the dominant (and growing!) ideology in America (Progressivism) do you think that diversity of opinions is our strength, or would you think that we would be better served by an ideological mono-culture?
- If you think "no", would that stance change if American society suddenly lurched to the right?
- Alex told Curtis that Strangeloop was canceling his talk because "reactions [ to his presence would ] act as a distraction for launching the conference". In light of the last few days, do you (plural) still think that banning Curtis was the most pragmatic approach to keeping attention focused where you wanted it?
- As your conference is intended to help curious and open-minded developers "make connections with the creators and users of new languages", and you've decided not to let them meet Curtis or hear about Urbit, where do you suggest they go for more information ?
A few questions for the conference sponsors
Questions for the corporate sponsors of Strangeloop, including Sparx, Machinezone, Cisco, Twosigma, Basho, Engineyard, Wolfram, Criteo, Mandrill, 8thlight, Asynchrony, Oreilly, Oasisdigital, Riotgames, Context.io, and Adzerk:
- In any of your HR documents do you describe your firm and workplace as "tolerant", "diverse", "welcoming", or "open"?
- Do you ask prospective employees about their personal beliefs, religion, or politics anywhere in the hiring process?
- Do you ask employees post-hiring about their personal beliefs, religion, or politics ?
- Have you ever found that excluding conservative candidates from your hiring process increases your pool of candidates?
- Would you fire an employee for personal beliefs, religion, or politics if you received emails complaining about opinions they held, but never mentioned at work?
- Do you think that your sponsorship and financial support of strangeloop is consistent with your corporate culture of tolerance?
- What message do you think your sponsorship of Strangeloop sends to conservative or libertarian engineers who are looking for their next job?
- What message do you think your sponsorship of Strangeloop sends to conservative or libertarian customers who are considering your products?
- Do you think that your sponsorship of a tech conference that excludes people based on their personal beliefs is a net win for your firm?
tl;dr
The legal right of free speech is important and worth defending.
The culture of free speech is important and worth defending.
We all profit in the long term if we tolerate – and even encourage – speech that we disagree with.
We all profit in the long term if we tolerate – and even encourage – non-disagreeable speech from people that we dislike for other reasons.
Tolerating everything except the outgroup is no sort of tolerance at all.
It is valid to use cultural means (e.g. this blog post) to pressure people and groups (e.g. Strangeloop) to advance from the Dark Ages to the futuristic year 1650 and accept Enlightenment ideas.
Further reading on Strangeloop vs Curtis Yarvin
A partial list of news articles and blog posts that have caught my attention:
- Breitbart.com
- Slate.com
- omniorthogonal.blogspot.com
- amerika.org (1)
- amerika.org (2)
- news.ycombinator.com (1)
- news.ycombinator.com (2) – about this post!
- xenosystems.net (1)
- xenosystems.net (2)
- tteclod.wordpress.com
- sydneytrads.com
- slatestarcodex.com
and finally – and ironically – a blog post by Curtis himself two years ago that is hugely prescient: Technology, communism and the Brown Scare.
Last 5 posts by Clark
- Clark's Farewell To Popehat - December 30th, 2015
- The Current Refugee Crisis - November 18th, 2015
- Top Seven Things I Like About Internet Shame Mobs - July 29th, 2015
Gamer Gate vs Anti Gamer GateA Civil Discussion on Inclusiveness - June 23rd, 2015- Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or #Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin) - June 10th, 2015
The problem with the Overton Window is that it only focuses on beliefs not behavior.
"No, (freedom of speech) it's not absolute." – @popehat
Great article and a good point. They can either have universal tolerance, and we all serve each other in business/social situations, OR they can have the right to exclude, at which point we get the same for any possibly arbitrary reasons of our own.
Personally, I prefer the latter, which is why I've already begun recommending against the products of one of StrangeLoop's sponsors in my day work. No one should object to that; I think they're fascists, and therefore they should be no platformed.
Clark,
I'm confused. People did threaten to vote with their feet, to "take their business elsewhere," by not coming to the conference – but prior to doing so, they expressed their intent to do so, and the conference organizers decided they didn't want their customers "taking their business elsewhere" and thus changed their business model. How is this NOT doing the conservative thing? How is this not the market solving the problem?
Good, although I hoped for a deconstruction of the ridiculous claims such as Yarvin being an advocate of Slavery and such.
And a question for Ken: when you say "leftists," do you include Chait?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html
There appear to be more than two teams here. Or perhaps, more accurately, dividing them into red and blue isn't the right division for the discussion you want to hold. There are a gracious plenty of people in the Tea Party who are philosophically compatible with the "leftists" you're railing against.
There is no Ken here, there is only Clark.
@alan:
Alan,
You've got me confused with a conservative.
I care about economics, yes, but I also care about culture.
I absolutely think that "voice" via voting-with-a-checkbook is a good thing…but that hardly means that I think that voice-via-voice is a bad thing.
Both mechanisms are good. …but I'm making a point one meta-level up from there.
I am not sure how many of these conferences you have been to, especially the REAL technical ones (where there is more talk about compilers and how to shave 10ms off application start times than alcohol consumption and people would rather sit around using their laptops than their company card on nice dinners) but the participants tend to have a particular demeanor that does not take well to rocking the boat on anything non-technical. I have seen a large % of users actually leave a conference and not come back due to much less controversial issues than this being brought up. Why? because to this group the (at the very least in person) conflict over things that don't matter (in terms of the conference) is so stressful that being at the conference is no longer worth it.
The fact that a large part of who he is and what he preaches will most likely be controversial and have nothing to do with the conference and is almost definitely going to come up makes sense for the organizes to say umm no.
That being said if you look at any technical discussion about this 'project' have been met with criticism of the foundation, lack of spec, etc the response from Urbit has basically been you don't understand and therefor your wrong, you just don't get my genius. And lack of a spec in this world is a large issue… imagine walking into court and arguing that you are right the judge is wrong and you have no way to back it up (ie no case law or statutes) other than because you are a genius and no one else gets you.
Top all of this off with they have removed their online presence… what would you expect from a conference organizer?
BTW I am in no way connected with Strange Loop nor have I ever been to one of their conferences, however I do go to a few high level tech conferences every year and I do not see any of them allowing him to talk… While he may have some decent ideas, he has shown he cannot present them and when pressed about the ideas it turns into a who is smarter than who conversation. Based on that alone I would think that the pull of the talk makes the most sense.
"lack of spec"?
What do you mean there's no spec?
What could be clearer than THIS?
I'm joking, of course.
I find that to be the worst "spec" I've ever seen.
Our group at work will not attending StrangeLoop this year because of what Alex did. I want to have nothing to do with these fascist leftists.
Let's get something straight. When these socialists, SJWs call someone a racist, it's code word for conservative or republican. They just don't have the cajones to say it….yet.
"Strange Loop is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, or tabs vs spaces preference. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue."
http://www.thestrangeloop.com/policies.html
I suppose one way to prevent harassment is to exclude anyone who might be harassed, but IMHO there's more than a touch of hypocrisy here.
Your article is horseshit, or more likely, chickenshit.
Please get together your own technical conference where outright racists can speak about their juvenile political ideas between sessions on their really juvenile attempts at functional programming.
The rest of us, yeah, will continue to vote with our feet. Shitheads like Moldbug can post their technical rants on Stormfont or some other free-speech venue.
Oh, and "Mike Danlog", since your "group at work" is so exercised about Strangeloop, why don't you go ahead and post your company name so we can all get a look at the kind of company that shares your views.
Please. Do that right here for us.
"Yours is … superior."
Real neoreactionary god-kings don't whine at such length.
Patrick, who are you quoting?
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/curtis_yarvin_booted_from_strange_loop_it_s_a_big_big_problem.html
Alex Miller says he made the decision on his own. I agree it was a decision that goes against people having a right to their own beliefs. There are many liberals that would disagree and say that you can't allow this sort of thought to exist. I disagree with them on this. I also consider most of my views to be far left. If you want to describe a monolithic view of right or left I would refer you to the group pigeon holed as "Christians' If you think they all believe the exact same things you haven't spent much time with them. So acting like to is some hypocrisy just on the left may make a nice column, but is just not true.
Gerry's not even being subtle here with his threats.
Yeah, Mike. That's a nice company you've got there. IT'D BE A SHAME IF SOMETHING WERE TO HAPPEN TO IT.
"Please get together your own technical conference where outright racists can speak about their juvenile political ideas between sessions on their really juvenile attempts at functional programming."
So… strangeloop's technical vetting process is insufficient for determining if the functional programming talks are worthwhile, they have to examine the speaker's political views? And of course you don't have to talk to anybody between sessions if you don't want to.
I think I heard a Log Cabin Republican at CPAC talking about this.
I should think that the strong would invite any speaker they wished, without concern for weak ideas about egalitarianism.
@Clark,
It's deja vu all over again. I seem to recall that this sort of thing happens at colleges and universities all the time, proving once again: there's no shortage of douchebags across the political spectrum. Our educational system is doing a fine job.
.
P.S. Only a total asshat would prefer chocolate ice cream over French vanilla.
In retrospect, maybe Yarvin should have, as a practical matter, taken greater care to prevent his IRL persona from being linked to his blog handle.
The whole episode underscores the importance of anonymous/pseudonymous speech in a context where people (or a least certain noisy and apparently powerful or at least influential people) can't, or won't, compartmentalize the political from the personal.
As does Gerry's response (threat?) to Mike. Wouldn't you love to unmask the shitlord whose handle you contemptuously put in air quotes?
And yet this is exactly what Indiana attempted to do which got all the Lefties so outraged. Double standard for these very same Tweeters you quoted?
Maybe they just figured Moldbug would follow his usual form and load his presentation up with so much verbose meandering horseshit that nobody else would get a chance to speak.
In any case, isn't the Neoreactionary ethos that one should bend over and take it from those more powerful? Moldbug's response should be "Thank you strangeloop, can I have another?"
(Granted, neoreactionaries universally believe that *they* will be the powerful philosopher-king types were their preferred system to come to be. They delude themselves.)
"Yours is … superior."
Joachim to Khan, after having a bridge fall on him.
Nice post on the culture of tolerance. That said, I think you mistake brokism for entryism.
Eg, my brother in law is extremely conservative and also an accountant. Unsurprisingly, he avoids culture because it does not pay. My wife is an artist and trends liberal.
People embarking on imaginary professions are also likely to trend liberal.
Besides, progressives look to the future and conservatives to the past. Long term, progressives win.
Can a tech conference remain useful as a tech conference with participants dodging (or throwing) potential (or actual) culture war rhetoric from the right (or left) without descending into tiresome blowharditude?
Can a post about free speech?
Guess we get to find out.
You can watch this 1 hour debate between Yarvin and Robin Hanson here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-6ikXdOzE
Surprisingly no one was harmed or collapsed mid talk during the filming.
@Erwin:
Please rephrase your objection in the form of a reference to the [ former ] Soviet Union.
Mencius Moldbug is a nutcase who, among other craziness, preaches a return to feudalism. I have no sympathy for the guy whatsoever, and I have no clue why anyone is wasting their time on this crap.
"preaches a return to feudalism"
Citations, quotes, links?
Google is your friend. "Moldbug feudalism" and a few minutes searching will doubtless give you all the data you're looking for. I'm not going to waste any further time on this issue. He's a nutcase and I'm done.
Moldbug: "A Bourbon Gulag or a Tudor Holocaust are entirely inconceivable. Even St. Bartholomew's was a peccadillo by the standards of a Marat, a Lenin or a Mao. Why? Because imperium is conserved. A stable monarch has no reason to massacre the Jews or shoot the Old Bolsheviks. Being stable, holding a monopoly of power, he has nothing to fear. Stalin and Hitler did. Hence, tyranny results not from the concentration of imperium, but from its dispersal."
"A stable monarch has no reason to massacre the Jews"
That'll be some comfort to the Jews of Spain around 1492.
The dude is nuts.
Broad strokes prognostication about the coming totalitarian nightmare because of overzealous action at a tech conference 99.999% of people have not heard of, nor care about? It's hard to see with all the straw blowing around here. My boss's boss's boss, who is a PhD scientist, just stepped down from a VP-level position at our scientific research facility so that he could be an executive director at his evangelical church. I thought this odd for someone in his position, and his religious exhortations when he made the announcement seemed somewhat inappropriate, but I didn't then extrapolate to the collapse of the technological civilization and a benighted age of superstition and heretic burning.
Troutwaxer:
I'm not sure I understand your objections, or the objections of others. Certainly he has questionable political beliefs, but does the Urbit framework itself has any merit? I installed it myself just to see what would happen, yet I have no urges to bow down and make a shrine to Carlyle.
It may come as a surprise to some, but it is possible for a person to have odious opinions and thoughts on subjects X Y and Z, but might actually have something interesting to say on subject A. Don't they teach people how to filter out non-relevant information when pursuing a subject?
Brian Josephson believes in parapsychology, cold fusion, and a variety of other nonsense that has nothing whatsoever to do with what he shares a Nobel Prize for, experimental verification of quantum tunneling. His half is for some of the theoretical underpinnings that was validated by experiment. Would you tell him to leave a conference because he might start babbling about water memory?
Maybe, just maybe, you can separate the crazy ideas from the ideas you can actually use, and put them to good use. If the ideas have merit, they should stand on their own. if the other ideas do not have merit, they can be ignored. To do otherwise wastes the information, and makes Mr Spock sad.
@Troutwaxer:
But not yours, it seems. Because if it was so easy to find Moldbug asserting this, you'd do it, and then rub the link in our faces.
I've read the complete archives. Twice. And I've not seen this.
1) wild-assed assertion
2) refusal to back up assertion with cite ; insistence that it's trivially easy to do so
3) angry stomping out
Always fun to debate a fellow intellectual, Trout.
"That'll be some comfort to the Jews of Spain around 1492."
Is that the worst example you can come up with? Conversion or expulsion with the opportunity to leave with your belongings? Moldbug seems generally right here, it's hardly the gulags or the holocaust.
Yeah, I disagree with your premise. There is a strong societal benefit in not allowing the government to suppress speech that it doesn't like, but there is also a strong benefit in private citizens responding to speech they don't like. Private citizens have indicated that they don't like some of this man's views, and that they don't want to associate with him. In my opinion, this is another form of open discourse. And if you disagree with that decision, you are free to blog about it, and I am free to write my own response to your blog. You don't have to let me comment here, and I would respect that. Private groups are allowed to invite speakers who represent there own views, and this is a good thing. Sometimes I disagree with who a group decides to exclude, and I might write about it in a blog, and this is a good thing too.
Entryism. I knew the concept, first time I've encountered the word. I'm a big sci-fi/fantasy (no, it's not "speculative fiction" you Chardonnay-sipping cheese-nibblers) fan and I watched the lesbians becoming the gatekeepers, as sub-editors at the publishing houses, starting in the early '80s. Political correctness and non-normative soft-core pornography are prerequisites for a book or story — one big publishing house says it in writing on its site. I voted with my feet and my wallet, not because I wanted to protest but because I didn't want to read that crap. I don't think it's intolerance, I think it's fastidiousness. I don't want the mental pollution. Is that some kind of violation of cultural freedom of speech? Because I don't watch Big Three prime time TV either, just so you know.
"one big publishing house says it in writing on its site"
Link, please.
I have just been reading a translation of some work published in 1487, as it happens; and I can tell you that Spain in 1492 was hardly stable. Many at the time deemed it an artificial concoction of often-hostile kingdoms, at least one of which – Granada – had just been conquered by force.
The work I'm referring to is, of course, the 'Confusion of the Mohammedan Sect' by Juan-Andres, lately converted from Islam. It was written in "Aragonese". Which isn't the same as "Spanish", meaning Castilian.
So your example sucks. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's a complete own-goal. Isabel and Ferdinand between them did NOT feel secure in their thrones. If the New World had been a bust, it's not hard to imagine the whole peninsula falling to the Moors again. Or the Frogs. Or both, or just into anarchy.
Obviously, I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically endorse the Clarkian orthodoxy here, but I do have questions for the dissenters.
Leaving aside the legal issues and focusing on the moral and cultural, would it be good or desirable for people to vote with their feet and refuse to patronize black, Jew, or Catholic owned businesses?
What's the end game for "no-platforming?" Because the way I see it, it there's a good chance ends in violence. Peace and tolerance go hand in hand.
^ The Spanish Monarchs were also quite reluctant to expel the jews. Doing it mostly after the constant behest of the Inquisition. I actually see this reinforcing Moldbugs point, seeing the inquisition was basically what moldbug would call an "institution whose job is telling others what to think."
But people actually do this, without consequence: legal, social, or otherwise. What does 'good or desirable' mean in this context?
"I have no sympathy for the guy whatsoever, and I have no clue why anyone is wasting their time on this crap."
It's not about him.
It's about the many other people who might want to speak at a tech conference, and may also hold some controversial opinions, or opinions that may become controversial.
Now if they're neoreactionism, I agree it may not be a great loss if such a person keeps his mouth shut. But maybe the political winds change.
Communism actually was bad. So was blacklisting.
@Not Claude Akins
That's a silly hypothetical, I feel, and not really a fair analogy. What acts of speech are these blacks/jews/catholics performing that makes them abhorrent to other people? I'm not as read up on Moldbug and his crisp axioms as Clark is, but popular reading (which might be wrong) is that (among many other claims) the man has written that maybe american slavery wasn't all that bad. For obvious reasons, this isn't something that goes over smoothly.
Last I checked, we weren't really setting the table for holocaust deniers either; would it be unreasonable for a jew in Skokie to refuse to patronize a neo-nazi-owned deli that had opened in the neighborhood?
What Clark seems to be complaining about is that speech he somewhat agrees with has consequences.
This is an interesting question, and goes to the notion that firms and organizations have a mission beyond attracting the most eyeballs.
Maybe banning all right-wing speakers, is, at this point, the optimal strategy for Strange Loop. They already have a reputation as a somewhat socially progressive conference, with diversity scholarships, etc., and now this.
I'm sure people would enjoy a tech conference more if it also flattered their political beliefs, just like how people consume news, comedy, etc. Why not tech? Every talk includes some digs at Republican politicians. All variable names are progressive heroes. Locally sourced, sustainably produced swag.
Then, across town, there can be a conference for the rest of the folks. This will include jabs at Obamacare, high taxes, and presentations of military algorithms.
I guess I'm not excited to see another sphere of life politicized, and hope we can still come together and talk about technical topics. But maybe not right now.
The heckler's veto is strong, when you are trying to put on a conference. It is, essentially riot politics – getting your way by throwing (or threatening to throw) a temper tantrum. Strangeloop was roasted by this, no doubt: News about the conference became either "ooh, scary presenter" or "ooh, free speech" the moment they invited him and his interesting ideas. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, and a damp squib if you gave in to the heckler's veto via self-censorship by not inviting him in the first place.
I think what may make this somewhat different is that the single Jew is not the gatekeeper to the deli business in the same way that the StrangeLoop organizers are gatekeepers to the technical conference.
It's why Augusta National banning women is more pernicious than a woman's only book club.
For sure, nobody is stopping them someone else from setting up their own conference open to all speakers. But there are a number of first mover advantages that Strange Loop has.
And one might answer that they have those advantages because they earned them, and they can use them as they wish. And I agree with that. Like Clark, I don't want anyone to try to force StrangeLoop to add any speaker.
I just disagree with this particular decision.
@JohnMcG
I feel that Clark's usage of the heckler's veto here implies that all ideas have the same value. This seems contrary to the notion of a marketplace of ideas. In Moldbug's case, I feel that some of this thoughts have failed so badly in the marketplace that (to strain a metaphor), he's in deep debt.
I suppose it's in open question how much debt in one venue should impact your life in another.
Of course we know that employers sometimes run credit checks on prospective hires. Someone who accumulates a lot of debt will also likely see his or her romantic possibilities decline.
Do we like this? Do we want to see it replicated? There's at least a semi-plausible link in the case of literal debt. But there's still limits on how much that should bleed into other aspects of their lives.
Clark,
Isn't this all a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not a conference like Strangeloop meets the same definition of "public accommodation" as, say, a bakery?
The argument about bakeries refusing wedding cakes to gay couples is that presumably such a business isn't supposed to discriminate; if you're a member of the public and want to buy what they are selling, they should sell it to you. What they are selling is "wedding cakes" and not "straight wedding cakes".
It may be valid to argue that Strangeloop and other similar events are not the same because they do discriminate, but that for a technical conference the criteria are not supposed to be political.
Then the question becomes, do you want government oversight for Strangeloop sticking to its stated criteria, as opposed to government oversight for ensuring that public accommodations do not discriminate against clients on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any other criteria?
Relevant discussion is not on whether the conference has a right to cancel his talk, they obviously do, but on the atmosphere taking over the field and wider society imposed by militant progressivism and it's institutions. To put it simply, the marketplace of ideas is rigged. It has been rigged by the monopoly of progressivism, and this is Moldbug's self proving point.
In relation to race, I have no expertise whatsoever to know if he is right. However, given current discussions around works such as Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance and recent advances in genetics and neuroscience I would think this matter is far from settled.
You will notice, if you have read his blog extensively, that the accusations being thrown at Yarvin both on twitter (which ended up justifying the cancellation of his talk) and in subsequent articles are for the most part completely ridiculous and hysterical. They amount to "he doesn't like democracy– therefore a Nazi" or "he believes there are differences in behavior between different races– therefore in support of slavery and it's reinstatement." I challenge anyone to provide excerpts were he openly endorses either the re-institution of slavery or the ideology of fascism. In fact the only time where moldbug advocates for any kind of system at all, it is as a collection of small corporate city states with free markets and free movement. You wouldn't have a vote in your local CEO-king, but you would be able to leave the country. I personally have my gripes with this, but it's hardly Nazi stuff.
The larger and most interesting bulk of his writing is in his historical revisionism and the tracing of progressivism or what he calls Universalism down to the puritans of Harvard and even further back, a topic Clark himself has covered here. I really recommend his writing for anybody remotely right wing or libertarian, it's long and verbose but also humorous and stimulating.
@Clark The future involves trying lots of things, most of them fail. But, eventually, the stuff that works, spread. For example, some degree of socialism and increased individual freedom (market regulation, corporate welfare, welfare, social security, health care, sexual freedom, divorce…) Honestly, the last Germans I talked to explained that, even if there's a ton of people on their dole, eliminating the people who don't want to work from the workforce costs a lot less than you'd expect. And, lemme see, I'll give it a shot. Although communism failed in the former Soviet Union, communism arguably paved the way for China's economic ascendance in the twenty-first century.
On the specifics of this particular person, I'd be inclined to let him speak. Albeit, he doesn't seem qualified to speak in a particularly prestigious room. My main conflict would be that, if I'd checked into his communication ability, I don't think he'd be speaking, but I'd be inclined to let him speak anyways once I heard the heckler's vote simply as an upraised middle finger.
if he's smart enough to fancy himself some kind of dark enlightenment demiurge, he surely should have been smart enough to keep his shit-stirring polemics anonymous. even if his code were solid gold, i wouldn't touch his business with a ten foot pole because he'd be such bad PR.
@JohnMcG
This just seems to come naturally if you believe that speech has consequences. Of course, Moldbug doesn't seem to believe this; Clark linked to a post in which he gripes about Ken's 'speech and consequences' post on Pax Dickinson. I mean, what other consequences could Moldbug suffer? As in the Ken post, you can argue about proportionality of the response; in this case, the consequences seem quite proportional. They uninvited him from a private conference.
@Clark
Jesus… I suppose it's at least cheaper than paying someone to whip you.
I'm giving his introduction and "Technology & The Brown Scare" a try, in an attempt to be charitable, and the man could have really used an editor with some massive pruning shears.
I look forward to MoldbugLoop, in which he can invite anyone he chooses, say anything he wants, and attract any sponsors he cares to.
No doubt it will be a huge success. He can even schedule it up against Strangeloop, and crush them like insects (OK, maybe not the best analog). It will be glorious.
.
Not nearly as glorious add the stores critics of Wal-Mart's labor policies opened with $20/hr wages and full benefits that drive Wal-Mart or if business.
This is besides the point. I think this decision makes Strange Loop a worse conference. Whether I our other critics could build a better one is ridiculous.
I admire what Alex has done. I disagree with this particular decision.
Strelok: As far as "A Troublesome Inheritance" goes, it isn't even discredited, it was never really credited in the first place. A Troublesome Inheritance and The Bell Curve and the ilk are generally written for journalists who think they understand science but are really on the same level as IFLScience/Dawkins fanboys. We don't really know nearly enough about the genetic mechanisms of intelligence to assert that it is a significant factor in comparative development. Until we have a real understanding of the mechanisms of intelligence all this race theorizing is just weak post hoc reasoning.
The relative wealth and development of nations changes much faster than any evolutionary pressure could account for, so unless we have some reason to believe that now, and not 50 or 100 or 500 or 3000 years ago is the time where development happens to reflect genetic differences, it's not very convincing.
Moldbug isn't a fascist, but he is a reactionary who likes absolute despotism and thinks that might makes right, so it's not exactly a stretch. Furthermore, I don't think a guy that thinks Ted Cruz is a progressive has a whole lot of room to be griping about slightly inaccurate political terminology
What it really comes down to, folks, is deciding whether scientific advancement or political conformity is more important to your field. Though I would note that the history or science, a substantial number of the most significant contributions to scientific knowledge came from people who were non-conformists in their society.
Conversely, we see multiple examples of nations and societies where making conformity to the prevailing political or religious party ruined or severely crippled scientific developments. There's Nazi Germany expelling leading Jewish scientists; the Soviet Union's elevation of Lysenko as well as the waves of purges that liquidated enemies to the shifting political in-group; the U.S. Red Scares and blacklistings. Or less extreme, the chilling of creative thinking and skepticism by the politics of grant-making.
I also remember not to long ago, in an era when gays were forbidden from certain professions because they were gay, that the appeal to tolerance was made to the society at large to disregard their sexual proclivities and practices and to instead look at the rest of their talents and skills in deciding their fitness for jobs like school teaching, etc. Today, we see the opposite spirit, where people are being reduced to their political opinions and the rest of their worth is being discarded if they fail the litmus test. And of course, the pH keeps changing at dizzying speed – today's virtue unpredictably becomes tomorrow's vice. And pendulums do have a nasty habit of reversing direction after reaching an apex. In such an environment, science does not prosper.
One of the things I really dislike about most of your posts on this topic, Clark, is the amount of blatant disinformation, amounting to outright lies, they contain particularly when it comes to how you portray the left and right wings. As just one example of many is your declaration of how the right and left "typically" respond to private action they don't like.
"I've noticed a fascinating phenomena: ask a stereotypical rightist about some private action he doesn't like, and he'll say "anyone who doesn't like it should take their money elsewhere". As in "if a baker won't make cakes for gay couples, gays should take their money elsewhere", or "if Starbucks doesn't allow open carry, gun owners should take their money elsewhere"."
This is interesting because, of course, this is nothing like how they respond. The last article I remember you writing here prior to this one was your review of Fury Road where you do make mention that several in the right wing community have declared the movie to be sneaky feminism and call for its boycott. Your "acquaintance" Vox Day behaved in a very similar manner regarding the Hugos. He certainly didn't just take his business elsewhere. From the Family Research Council to aggressive protests against Abortion Clinics to regular threats and attacks against businesses with any Islamic affiliation, boycotts and protests to shout down opposing views is very common in the right wing. Your characterization is inaccurate and its impossible that it's just blind ignorance on your part. You have effectively presented a lie.
You see the heckler's veto isn't something someone does or doesn't believe in, contrary to your rather smarmy implication, it's very real and everyone uses it, and everyone should. It's a realistic, acceptable and plausible response to all manner of public dialogue and expression. It sure as hell isn't a tool the right wing avoids as they call for boycott after boycott of various children's shows and movies for fear that they may be just too darned homosexual. The problem you suffer from is that you want everyone to be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want, but you don't want it to have any impact. If free speech brings about social change, it's done something wrong in your opinion. I notice, sadly, that this opinion is never more vocally expressed than when defending bigotry, you seem to be extremely opposed to any suggestion that cutting down on the amount of bigotry in the world might actually be a good idea. But trust me, part of the purpose of free speech is to promote social change, and what that sometimes means is that certain ideas stop getting expressed that often.
In the meantime, you could do yourself a huge favor by cutting down on your straw man misrepresentations of other political viewpoints. I know it's your right and freedom to slander people if you really want to, but just because you can say a thing doesn't automatically make it a good idea to.
Agreed with Author early on. Fell asleep after the second paragraph.
"If you can't say it in 25 words or less, you don't know what you're talking about."
That is a peculiar claim because the Spanish Inquisition was an instrument of the Spanish Monarch, not the Church.
There's a lot about the Spanish Inquisition that people think they know that just ain't so. Pro tip: Monty Python skits are parodies, not histories.
Good post, but you got Jonathan Haidt's research exactly backwards. Liberals use only two of the moral dimensions he identifies. Conservatives use all five. That's why conservatives generally understand where liberals are coming from but liberals have no grasp at all on conservative positions or arguments.
"That's why conservatives generally understand where liberals are coming from but liberals have no grasp at all on conservative positions or arguments."
Modern conservatism is fairly easy to understand. It takes the core principle of conservative philosophy, which is fear/mistrust/dislike of cultural change or distinction, a firm desire to maintain the perceived cultural status quo, and adds to that a pronounced dislike of complex information systems. This is why we still see such large conservative blocks actively arguing that evolution is a false doctrine that attacks religion, to list just one of many, many examples. The argument, or more accurately the position since nothing resembling a coherent argument is ever promoted to support the claim, is one of defending perceived status quo, which in this instance takes the form of the current dominant religion. A cultural change, the introduction of an idea that would conflict with some extreme interpretations of that religion (young earth creationism and the like) is then seen as an attack, an unwanted and dangerous change. And the systems that promote it, which is to say any form of scientific effort or higher learning are avoided, even demonized in the pursuit of this agenda.
No, conservative positions are very easy to grasp, they're just usually insanely ignorant.
"Let's get something straight. When these socialists, SJWs call someone a racist, it's code word for conservative or republican. They just don't have the cajones to say it….yet."
That may or may not be true but in this particular they aren't working from nothing. Allow me to quote Yarvin out of context:
"We thus observe slavery not as a perversion, but as a natural relationship, like gay marriage. (Gay marriage is unquestionably a natural relationship, although history – for whatever reason – seldom has a good outcome for societies in which large numbers of males are born gay. Whitman and Carlyle both have points to score on this issue.)
Of course, like gay marriage (or ordinary marriage), slavery is not without its abuses. When we think of the word "slavery," we think of these abuses. Thus, by defining the word as intrinsically abusive, like marriages in which one party beats the other, we can conveniently define away all the instances of slavery (or, for that matter, marriage) in which the relationship is functional."
Oh,all right, here's the context: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html?m=1 (In case the link get's eaten by a filter just Google "yarvin why carlyle matters" without the quotes.) Here's another nice quote:
"Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences."
@Michael Heaney
Wow, you really showed him! Before reading your comment, the assertion that "liberals have no grasp at all on conservative positions or arguments" seemed totally plausible to me, but you've now totally demolished it!
A large number of current and former speakers and attendees contacted me to say that they found Curtis's writings objectionable. I have not personally read them.
I am trying to create a conference where the focus is on the technology and the topics being presented.
HOW'S THAT WORKING OUT FOR YOU CHAMP?
I do not know how anybody can stand to read Moldbug long enough to realize they don't agree with him.
That's not a joke.
That being said, I think people on both sides here, and even Clark himself, are glossing over something crucially important:
Moldbug wasn't disinvited because of his political views.
Moldbug was disinvited because people don't like his political views.
Okay, so that's kind of a complicated distinction, but it's crucial. Miller admits he has not read Moldbug's writings (And really, who the hell could blame him), so he is not disinviting him because the Strangeloop people disagree with his politics. Alex Miller is clear that he has no idea what Moldbug's politics are.
No, he's disinviting Moldbug because a mob of people have asserted that Moldbug is objectionable. Importantly, this doesn't give Moldbug the chance to argue that he has been misunderstood or that his views are mainstream; indeed, his views and their consequences don't actually matter here, all that matters it that those views are unpopular.
And I can't see how that kind of buck-passing cowardice can ever be a good thing. If Strageloop wanted to say "Our conference aims to be apolitical, and we will not disinvite people on the basis of their political views" I would respect that.
And I could also respect them if they said, "On review, the writings and opinions of Mencius Moldbug are highly objectionable and don't mesh with the goals of the Strangeloop conference, so he has been disinvited."
What I absolutely can't respect is a decision made on the basis of ignorance.
Alex has ensured that every conference at which he and his co-organizers are slated to attend, will be inundated with demands that their attendance be prevented. With, if necessary, a good dose of the pearl-clutching sanctimonious fucktardery evidenced in the facile bullshit tweets Clark embedded in his post. Trigger warning: if you get butthurt by relatively innocuous political opinions, then your tech skills must also be suspect (because you're a fuckwit).
Obviously the type of feelz-conscious "safe space" marketing-speak bullshit-artist who tries to augment their income by organising conferences, is going to respond like a sophomore gender-studies major whenever the Twit-o-sphere gets its panties in a wad: the problem with that is that while all concerned feel righteous at the time, a whole bunch of people 30-40 IQ points above them just shake their heads and think "Fucking children… no wonder I've never heard of them."
"Give me six lines from the hand of the most honest man, and in them I will find something for which to have him hanged." said pederast Richelieu. That is something that these 'LOIDs really ought to consider when mounting their high moral horses and masturbating themselves silly with their gigantic dudgeon-dildoes. I mean FFS – some stuff that people like Cory Doctorow and Linus Torvalds have said and written would not pass the ideological filters of those calling for MM's exclusion.
And with that, the Beta (and lower) finds a way to obtain unearned psychic income – by pressing the buttons on a sanctimony-machine.
I hold no brief for Moldbug – some of his stuff is a'ight, but given that I despise anybody who seeks power it's not possible for me to subscribe to his 'might is right' quasi-defence of political life. (As an aside, he also seems to reject the idea of innate rights, which I disagree with vehemently – he seems to conflate the existence or otherwise of rights, with the existence or otherwise of mechanisms to prevent violations of those rights. The antelope has the right to go about its business undisturbed by lions… but has no consistently-effective mechanism to prevent its rights from being violated: to say that the rights therefore are effectively null, is lazy).
I think it was Max Planck who quipped that new truths do not gain acceptance as a result of proponents convincing doubters – but rather because the doubters die out. I like the paraphrase: "Science advances one funeral at a time".
And so it is (albeit more slowly) with other forms of fuckwittery – religion, nationalism, tribalism, political parasitism, and correct-line ideological nonsense.
Leaving aside this specific episode, your constant attempts to shoehorn wildly diverse, historically specific political ideologies into a made-up cultural battle stretching back centuries are really tiresome and ultimately incoherent to anyone who's actually studied history.
@Kevin [June 10, 2015 at 11:26 pm]
Michael's post contained both a thesis as well as an informal (albeit cogent) argument in support of that thesis. In your response to his post, you quoted his thesis, then indicated you find his argument to be flawed. Not just flawed, but apparently flawed enough to inspire you to reject it with acrimonious sarcasm.
Having read the same post myself, and having failed to see any major problems (logical fallacies, unsound logic, false premises, etc) in Michael's words, I was keenly interested to see exactly what problems you'd spotted that I might have overlooked. Basically, great opening – you had me hooked and eager to read on!
Sorry if this comes across as overly critical (I mean in the most constructive way)… but after reviewing the "take-down" part of your post (the part where you get to separate yourself from the ranks of clueless blowhards who lash out at conclusions they dislike with substance-less bravado while hoping that a "witty" belch of snark will distract from their demonstrated inability to formulate an actual rebuttal), I have to say I was utterly let down.
I observe a remarkable difference in coherence and clarity between this article, by Clark, and the preceding article, by Ken. Ken's article is well organized, easy to follow, and makes a clear point about government overreach. Clark's article is all over the map, discursive and ill-organized. While it's possible to discern a point to it, finding that point takes significantly more effort.
I read something once, don't remember where, about the way to distinguish wolf tracks from dog tracks. They look the same, so you can't tell by the shape of the paw. The difference is behavioral. The wolf is a wild animal: it's intent on efficiently moving from point A to point B in pursuit of its next meal. Wolf tracks run in a straight line. The dog is domesticated: it knows exactly where its next meal is coming from. Dog tracks go all over the place, curiously sniffing at a bush here, investigating a hydrant there. The wolf is working. The dog is playing.
Ken's article looks like wolf tracks. Clark's article looks like dog tracks. I know which one I'd rather try to read.
The Techie Left, which is to say a vast majority of techies, is a dangerous Marxist fifth column in America. Their slavish support of all things Leftist (and its inherent totalitarianism) will do much to undermine individual freedoms in the US. The total silence (i.e. not a single leak until Snowden) of the massive army of techies from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. who helped the Obama controlled NSA spy on every single American for the past several years is truly scary. If you think the techie omertà about the spying would have lasted 10 minutes under a Republican president, you're nuts. Techies are a modern day Stasi without the violence.
Are you fucking kidding? What year was the Patriot Act was passed? Who was President on Sept. 11th? Who signed off on the first warantless phone and e-mail spying programs on October 4, 2001? Who was President on November 1, 2001, when internet and telecom providers began the bulk transfer of data to the NSA? Who was President in 2003 when the NSA built a room in AT&Ts San Fransisco hub?
Which President did John Yoo work for when he wrote a memo outlining the argument for unlimited domestic surveillance on Presidential authority? Which President appointed Attorney General Ashcroft, who ordered the Justice Department to ignore memos arguing that the bulk collection programs were illegal, and signed off on repeated extensions of the program?
You're either a Poe or a total fucking moron.
@Mike A:
Agreed. Anyone who thinks that Team Coke has any more respect for individual rights than Team Pepsi is drunk, stupid, or asleep.
@Tualha
dis·cur·sive – adjective – digressing from subject to subject.
I find this allegation particularly hilarious given the time I spent organizing the article, the trouble I took to insert sub-headings into it, and – especially – the fact that you clearly consider yourself smarter and/or better organized than me, and yet still couldn't follow the cookie crumbs that I'd laid down in a straight line for you.
Let me give you the outline for the essay, to make it even more clear:
Please read this essay http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html and consider the possibility that when you think you're looking down at someone for being dumber than you, you're actually looking up the ladder and failing to understand a somewhat nuanced argument.
@Mike A:
Translation: "I can find nothing to nit pick with in this essay, so I'll libel you on other, more general grounds."
"constant" – noun – "once, a year ago"
Yes?
I studied history at a top university, and my beliefs strike me as neither tiresome nor incoherent.
Can you explain why you find them so?
Or, better yet, can you identify some assertions that I've made and disprove them with cites?
I'm always willing to reconsider my opinions.
@Christopher
As I said once before:
I find Moldbug equal parts witty, erudite, intelligent, and hilarious.
If you don't, so much the worse for you.
It's not complicated at all. It's not even subtle. In fact, it's almost tautological.
No one spits out food because of its taste; they spit it out because they don't like the taste.
No one gives a movie a bad review because of the movie; they give it a bad review because they don't like the movie.
Etc.
We can expand almost every sentence in the English language that is of the form "X did Y because of Z" to the more verbose "X did Y because of his reaction to Z".
This adds lots of extra verbiage but zero explanatory value.
The elision of "because they don't like" is merely part of a space-saving vernacular.
@David
Your objection seems to be that because Moldbug uses the word "natural" he is in favor of a thing, which seems to be a wild conflation to me.
I find theft, cholera, rape, and death all to be natural, and yet I oppose all of them.
Given that every society ever on Earth has had theft, would you consider theft to be natural – arising from the character of mankind?
Given that every society ever on Earth has had rape, would you consider rape to be natural – arising from the character of mankind?
Given that every society ever on Earth has had murder, would you consider murder to be natural – arising from the character of mankind?
I answer "yes" to all three.
If you answer "no" to any one, please explain.
@Clark This comment of yours leaves the impression that you majored in history there. You didn't. Would you mind clarifying how many history courses you took?
@David:
Actually, I did.
I have zero idea why you would state with confidence something that is both false and that (obviously) you have no data to support.
"And of course, the pH keeps changing at dizzying speed – today's virtue unpredictably becomes tomorrow's vice. And pendulums do have a nasty habit of reversing direction after reaching an apex. In such an environment, science does not prosper."
Absolutely agreed.
That said, It's hardly new for the losing side to bring up the turn of fortune's wheel.
If memory serves similar words were spoken by a Carthaginian general to the Romans just before Carthage was ground into dust.
Sometimes a loss is a loss forever.
Best not to get too comfortable on top though.
What a humiliating blunder!
@David:
I read this and at first thought it was about a different comment in the thread.
My mistake and apology. I had forgotten that you doubled.
The Wolf/Dog analogy is absurd here. Not every good argument has to be reducible to Powerpoint Bullets– and be presented to make that trait explicit. Whatever one thinks of Clark's argument, it's a banging of the sippy cup to complain that the argument meanders needlessly.
Ken argues like a lawyer, from overt premises to proper inferences. Clark argues in a more literary way, accumulating factors in a stack and then coming back round to them when he's ready to use them punchily to underscore contrast, unexpected analogy, or irony.
Thank you, David. It's the mark of a gentleman to correct a mistake with good grace; I hope I live up to your example when I next step in it (in the next 10 minutes, I'm sure, if past performance predicts future returns, which it surely does).
Cute. ;) I can only say that your actual practice of history did little to remind me. The commenter above is on the money when he says that you
That appears to be your very methodology. I have assumed that you know this, don't care, and do it anyhow because you enjoy dabbling in macro-structures, sort of like the folks who only enjoy doing philosophy when aiming for a comprehensive system. "Undergraduates" we used to call them.
Now, failing to understand the relationship between Republicans/righties and the Patriot Act while blustering about Democrats/lefties and the Patriot Act? That's a top-shelf humiliating blunder that should send the commenter back to his basement for remedial nombrilism!
Sigh. I had hoped that my bending over backwards to be gracious might be reciprocated.
Apparently not.
I think I'll go back to my multi-year policy of ignoring your insults, and more generally, you, David. It's worked well in the past. Good day.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Such a thin skin! But for the record, I was aiming for "descriptive", not for "insulting". The fact that you historify in broad sweeps doesn't, in my view, mean that you should stop doing it. Do what you enjoy. If you ever do take a crack at tightening up and drilling down historiographically, you'll probably be good at it.
Graciousness– I had assumed we were all being collegial toward one another in all cases. I'm not sure why you think otherwise.
@Grandy, Grasping the root causes of the Spanish Inquisition is the only way to understand post-colonial tensions among the drug cartels of 21st-century Honduras. A neo-Spartan originalist tax-protest site told me so!
@Clark My point was that his critics have something to work with. They aren't just slinging the racist epithet because he's conservative. I probably should have just used the second quote.
@David:
If by "something to work with" you mean "a lazy half-smart person engaging in motivated reasoning could read Moldbug and be confused by his point", then, yes, we are entirely agreed.
If you mean something else, please explain. Thanks.
@Clark:
Or, since we're replacing reasoning with insults, it's far more likely that anyone who can't notice the differences in these political organizations and spectrum are lazy, ignorant and self absorbed.
There are clear differences, as an example, between the writings of Bill Clinton explaining his reasons for supporting or vetoing any given bill and those of either Bush on either side of him. Whatever his faults, Al Franken is a decidedly more ethical human being with greater concern for rights than, Tom "The only thing wrong with GITMO is that more people aren't rotting in it without right to legal council or defense," Cotton. The refusal to investigate or promote distinction, and distinctions do exist, is a clear demonstration of how the typical middle of the road thinking among self proclaimed "moderates" has no relationship to reality, but rather is just your traditional smokescreen, a lie oft repeated to avoid having to really put work into learning and thinking.
I was incredibly confused by Clark's post. I mean, it sounded like he was trying to be serious, but how am I supposed to ignore such a clear indicator of satire as the following?:
@Michael:
Oops, sorry. That was intended to be light-hearted fun, but, yes, it didn't read that way. My apologies to all.
That said, I disagree with the rest of your comment. The proof is in the pudding. Democrats launch just as many illegal wars, and allow just as many unconstitutional surveillance systems to run as do Republicans. Trying to tease out little footnotes that make fascism from the "left" better than fascism from the "right" (e.g. "the writings of Bill Clinton explaining his reasons for supporting or vetoing any given bill") are useless and silly, and – most importantly – ignore the fact that every administration has been complicit in forging our chains.
By the way, I prefer to call him "Bill [ Clipper Chip ] Clinton". But perhaps you prefer "Bill [ Waco Massacre ] Clinton" ?
But, there wasn't any attempt by Yarvin to inject politics here. He's apparently previously given talks about his pet technology, Urbit, and stayed 100% on-topic for those presentations. (This is falsifiable; for example, if he had advertised a talk on Urbit and he started talking about Brahmins or South Africa or the need for a constant money supply.)
So the "controversial issues" here were 100% "being brought up" by Yarvin's critics. I was skeptical of Clark labeling this as a "heckler's veto" but your comment convinces me he was right. The critics started a controversy and then the organizer disinvites the guy to keep the peace.
it is philosophically dishonest to stick up for yarvin and not grant that he clearly and repeatedly makes racist arguments. it's fine if you want to go to bat for him, free country and free speech and all that, but you're gonna have racist stink all over you for it. calling him out isn't 'stifling free speech', it's merely indicating that to a great number of people his arguments are bad and he should feel bad.
@Clark I know the first quote is not racist in and of itself, but isn't the second one? In particular the last sentence. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like that to me. Genteel, maybe, but still racist.
The beneficiaries of many of our civil rights are the criminally accused, and in fact, criminals (e.g. Miranda was re-tried and convicted of rape with his confession thrown out).
Does this mean all those who support those rights have criminal stink all over us?
If you only defend a right when it applies to people you like, then you don't really support the right.
The current subject of conversation is him being disinvited from presenting at a technical conference where he had been previously accepted before his political writings were brought up.
"Call him out" all you want. Preventing him from giving a presentation on an unrelated topic is something else altogether.
If you take "entryism" and "Steve Klabnik" and add them together, you get "Mozilla Foundation", which is funding Klabnik. Viewed in this light, the purge of Eich wasn't really over some small infraction; it was a necessary move, and possibly a winning one.
JohnMcG, that position you're addressing is so banal here that most commenters don't even bother responding to it. It's called "Gertruding," coined by Scott Greenfield I think.
It's obvious that most people who need their speech defended aren't trying to talk about how cute kittens are.
'free speech' doesn't hand every crackpot a soapbox and a ticket to every private party, it simply keeps the police from taking the crackpot's public soapbox and hauling him off to the pokey. there's no constitutional right that guarantees all speech be taken seriously. as has been noted before, if he and his want their own tech conference they're welcome to hold one.
@ibaien
I think you're missing Clark's point. He's making a distinction between "Legal" and "Cultural" views of free speech. Unless I missed the part where he's proposing a law (hahahahaha!) to prevent disinvitations.
@ibaien:
Indeed.
It's almost as if there are two distinct things: the legal right of free speech, and the culture of free speech.
Someone should write a blog post about the distinction!
and that cultural right to free speech is 'if you choose to hold extremely heterodox positions, throw your own conference and let the free market of ideas decide who attends'. let crackpots crack pots on their own time.
Clark, what do you think fascism is?
If I invite a fellow to a conference I'm running and find out from my client base that I'll lose a good 60-70% of the attendees if he comes/speaks, then I have two choices.
1) I can keep the invitation to the fellow and accept the financial loss that comes with losing the attendees. Very principled, I guess. However, I also have no right to complain when it ends up going the way of the second International Conference of Men's Issues.
2) I can rescind the invitation and remain in business.
Since I am a capitalist and I believe in making a success of my ventures, I choose option 2. You don't become successful pissing off a majority of your business clientele.
I've read him too. Intelligent? Yes. Also, turgid and makes Lovecraft look terse. A perfect example is when Moldbug responded to Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" by writing a seven-part sequence of posts in September 2007, totalling somewhere around 38,000 words, in which he conclusively proved, step by step, thread by thread, detail by detail, that Dawkins was, for all his protestations of atheism, in fact, a cultural Christian. Dawkins, of course, stated the same thing in December 2007 in four and a half words: "I'm a cultural Christian". Moldbug should take notes.
=====
@Dan Weber:
No, not to keep the peace, but to maintain clientele. Again, you don't become successful pissing off a majority of your business clientele. If having Moldbug means the majority of your clientele ain't coming, you do what's going to get you the most attendees/money.
@castaigne:
Hahahaha.
There were a handful of tweets by hardline Marxists and others, most of them not even planning on attending the conference.
@Alex:
Unfortunately, Clark's whole post requires you to accept that there is such a thing as a "cultural view" of free speech. I do not accept that. The legal view IS the cultural view, if you insist on having one.
Of course, I disagree with Clark on the whole I spout asshole ideas and receive the social consequences of spouting them. thing too. I don't have a problem with doxxing; I do not believe anonymity to be a right. I don't have a problem with Moldbug's "scientific racial realism" ideas resulting in people getting him kicked from a conference. To me it's no different than telling a Hammerskin "I don't let Hammerskins on my property." and after they leave, going on the sidewalk and pointing at them shouting "HE'S A HAMMERSKIN! HE HATES THE JEWS!" To me, that's honesty and full disclosure. A resulting mob…well, not my problem. Own what you say and say what you own.
I'm reminded of the old Aesop's fable about the Stag and the Vine:
"A stag being hard pursued by the hunters, hid himself under the broad leaves of a shady, spreading Vine. When the hunters had gone by, and given him over for lost, he thought himself quite secure, and began eat the leaves of the Vine. The rustling of the branches drew the eyes of the hunters that way, and they shot their arrows there at a venture, and killed the stag. In dying, the stag admitted that he deserved his fate, for his ingratitude in destroying the friend who had so kindly sheltered him in time of danger."
Great post Clark.
When you question in the slightest any modern progressive tribal shibboleth, ostracism comes like the sauce on the fettucine. A conference organizer has the absolute right to disinvite speakers, for any reason or no reason, but when he yields to a heckler's veto, we in turn can draw inferences about his spinal fortitude.
I read the Yarvin blogpost. There's some eye-popping shit. I have to yield to technologists on whether Urbit is a viable language worthy of discussion, but the way you control a speaker like that at a conference is with the power button for his mic, and if he starts going on about Harper's Ferry, you cut the mic, go onstage and thank him profusely as you escort him off.
Sometime during my life, timidity became a virtue.
@Clark:
"A large number of current and former speakers and attendees contacted me to say that they found Curtis's writings objectionable. I have not personally read them.
I am trying to create a conference where the focus is on the technology and the topics being presented. Ultimately, I decided that if Curtis was part of the program, his mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk and become the focus. This would not serve the conference, the other speakers, the attendees, or even Curtis."
This is per Alex Miller. So, he says they were current/former speakers and attendees. You say they were a handful of hardline Marxists on Twitter. So you are saying that Miller is deliberately lying, that he did NOT receive communication from a large number of attendees, but instead from a handful of Twits? What is your speculation on the reason for that deliberate lie?
Calling this guy right-wing is somewhat misleading. I realize his politics might technically be on the right side of the spectrum, but they don't resemble American Conservatism, which is what we're typically referring to when we say "right wing".
Saying he's being rejected for his right-wing views makes it sounds like he's being rejected because he voted for Mitt Romney. The most hardline, far-right tough-guy American Conservative politician you can think of has more in common with Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders than they do with Moldbug.
The support I have for a culture of free speech has a limit. There are certainly views which are repugnant enough that I can't ignore them. I'm not inviting David Duke to speak at my tech conference, regardless of his technical knowledge. I'm not completely convinced Moldbug falls in that category for me, but he's at least close to it.
This is a no-win situation for the conference organizers. The fact that his name is connected to the conference at all was always going to make him the story, whether he ended up speaking or not.
@Castaign:
This is inane.
Clark: "I see three primary colors: red, green, and blue."
Castaigne: "You're a fool. There are only two primary colors: redgreen, and blue."
Clark: "No, red and green are actually distin-"
Castaigne: "I do not accept that. Red IS green, if you insist on even talking about it."
OK then.
@Castaigne
Then where did the original impetus for formalizing free speech in the First Amendment come from. Surely not from some guy coming down a mountain with stone tablets?
Law follows culture (also explained in the post, and I thank Clark for putting this in writing, as it aligns with my views in many ways), in particular when the new majority cultural view takes over the old one (think slavery) or as the old view defends against an upcoming threat (think gay marriage bans). Views that come naturally don't need laws to be enforced; that is the reason there are no laws making English the official language of the U.S., it is assumed from the environment – although that may be changing these days.
If you approve of Free Speech (and I assume you do as you're commenting here) taking the "Legal" view only is short-sighted. By the time there's enough support to repeal the First Amendment (or chip it down to an unrecognizable mess) it will be too late to do anything. There must be a culture that supports free speech or it's bound to disappear. Like any decent chess player will say, we need to think more than a couple of moves ahead.
(edit: typos)
In general I agree that a tech conference should be about technology, and not politics – unless the conference is specifically about the politics of technology. However, in 2013 Clark wrote the following about Urbit:
If this characterization is accurate (since Clark keeps assuring us what a crisp thinker and all round smart guy he is, I'll take his word for it), it seems that it is Mr. Yavin who insisted on putting his politics into the technology.
albert June 10, 2015 at 2:39 pm
Strawberry – real fruit. Plus it is difficult to convince anyone of my superior taste. So I get to eat it all myself. And I must say – that is superior.
Try to guess where these guys are coming from by checking out this page:
http://protonboron.com/portal/#donate
And for the sake of completeness: http://protonboron.com/portal/power-grid-frequency-meter/
@ibaien
A culture of free speech and a cultural right to free speech are rather different things. You keep trying to make this a legal rights issue, which Clark already rather pointedly and repeatedly noted it is not. This is criticism of a legal choice as a culturally bad one, a choice that is inconsistent with the chooser's professed values, etc.
Your apparent assumption that the only solution is to throw your own conference is equally flawed.
Ditto for Mr. Miller.
@Clark
It seems some stereotypical rightists didn't get the memo. TL;DR version – a Maryland gun dealer received death threats because he wanted to (also) sell so-called "smart guns" (i.e. guns that attempt to identify who is holding them and only allow an authorized user to fire them). So did a dealer in California.
What you are describing would be a stereotypical libertarian.
@Clark:
It's only inane if you try to treat the concept of free speech as a right as an objective item, not a subjective opinion. Red, green, blue – these things can be measured, labeled, codified in the lab. Freedom of speech is just a subjective idea. Freedom of speech cannot be found in nature or mathematics; it does not live in the Mandelbrot Set nor can it be located in the hives of insects or the actions of animals.
I am not one of those people who believe in "natural rights". Rights are provided by law. Nature provides no rights, just bloody tooth and claw. Culture provides no rights; only custom, which can be overthrown at will.
If I were pressed, a more precise statement would be "The cultural view of free speech in the culture of the United States of America (depending on the state in question for applicability) is that free speech might be okay, when it is convenient."
You, of course, do not hold these premises, therefore you come to a different conclusion.
=====
@Alex:
Short version: Bunch of Enlightenment fans (collectively referred to as "The Founders") who believed in the concept of freedom of speech and expression as a human right and who formalized their subjective opinion into law. There you have it.
Law follows culture
I disagree with that premise. Law influences culture and culture influences law, but the two are distinct items. Law need not acknowledge culture to be effective.
Views that come naturally don't need laws to be enforced; that is the reason there are no laws making English the official language of the U.S., it is assumed from the environment
I do not acknowledge any "views that come naturally". Your cultural views are formed by the customs of your culture; they seem natural to you because you've always lived in that culture. If the culture changes, the customs change. Or, if you have willpower, custom is meaningless. For instance, I have never found custom to be an effective barrier in anything I do. Law and the fear of punishment for breaking it, though…
I approve of the 1st Amendment, because the 1st Amendment is the law. Look to Han Fei for my motivations.
A statement of fact, surely. But I question whether free speech is necessary for a technological, industrialized civilization. I do not say it isn't necessary; just that I question the utility thereof for the goals I support. But that's a long philosophical conversation that I rarely have the patience to engage in anymore.
This point probably could have been expressed better — "stereotypical" often refers to the worst representative of a grout in its adversairies' eyes. In this case, those issuing death threats will serve as stereotypical members, regardess of their number or prominence.
Do you think those making death threats are as representative of the fun rights group as those demanding the disinvitation are of the left?
@Castaigne
As thoroughly documented by Clark, there was a period of less than 4 hours between Moldbug's presence first being noticed, and his invitation being withdrawn. In that period, there were only just the few people documented in the OP who were even participating in discussion of the matter on Twitter (yes, I checked – back at the time, before the story went viral and people started deleting tweets and locking accounts).
Is it possible that "a significantly large number of attendees" did in fact contact him during that 4 hour period, but did so exclusively via e-mail, phone, or smoke signals, rather than via the medium overwhelmingly used for such things by the tech-conference-attending demographic in 2015?
Well suuuuurre, I suppose it's possible… for certain values of "possible".
You're asking what his motivation might have been for pretending that his decision was in response to a spontaneous mass protest by mainstream members of the tech community, rather than an engineered purge by a tiny cabal of non-attendee death-cultists?
Is that a serious question?
@Castaigne
That's not exactly my meaning. My point is that (in Western cultures, yadda yadda other caveats…) laws are a codification of cultural norms recognized by a substantial portion of the population. Kings had power because populace recognized their Divine Right. The Revolution succeeded because there was some level of popular support. Lack of this support is the reason the Mexican Independence War had two false starts. So I stand by my point that Law by itself will not take a stance opposite to culture and remain unchanged.
"Naturally" was a bad word choice on my part, otherwise we mostly agree… except on the point that willpower let's you challenge or ignore culture. I'm sure willpower will not prevent those with actual power from cutting of your hands or beheading you if you challenge their preferred customs, unless there is some law protecting you like – maybe – the First Amendment.
On that front, Law is a mechanism for Culture to perpetuate itself.
Taking that to its logical conclusion you would have approved of slavery (prohibition, sodomy laws, etc.) because it was the law. Are you willing to bite that bullet?
I wasn't familiar with Moldbug before I came across this post, so I read his column "Divine rights monarchy for the modern secular intellectual" to see what sort of thought crime he's guilty of. He winds up by writing:.
He could have spared his audience by just sticking with the last sentence. Hitler's other hand, for one, was busy doing a lot more than killing just the Jews of Europe. But, to me, what's even more irritating is his final paragraph, because Germany did not in fact elect an Austrian corporal. They elected (in 1932, actually, while I'm being pedantic) a Prussian Field Marshall. If you're going to make sweeping generalizations based on one specific moment in history, you owe it to yourself and your audience to at least get the basic facts right.
I know I marveled at Machtergreifung and the Night of the Long Knives, no doubt crowning achievements of the early years of the Third Reich.
I am a tech-conference attending professional, and I work amongst other tech-conference attending professionals. I know of no one — not one single other person I work with — who uses Twitter for professional purposes/contacts. It is, of course, far too public for professional discourse in any field that does not require a public face: journalism, marketing, blogviating etc.
@JohnMcG
I think "stereotypical" fits perfectly here (and it was originally Clark's choice of word, so credit where credit is due). What could be more stereotypical rightist than making death threats over a perceived conspiracy to take away their guns ?
Please tell me that typo was intentional 8^). As to your question – taken on their own, no. But this is just one example. Take all the rightists who attempt to ban gay marriage – if Clark's thesis where true, they would simply decline to marry a same-sex partner. Take all the rightists who insist on criminalizing (certain) drug use – if Clark's thesis where true, they would simply decline to use the drugs they disapprove of. Both leftists and rightists use whatever means they have at their disposal to make their views the dominant ones, ideological consistency be damned.
Castaigne June 11, 2015 at 12:02 pm
"But I question whether free speech is necessary for a technological, industrialized civilization. "
Without it how do you tell management, "The design that you spent so much time and money on? The design that is just about to go into production? It is not going to work"
They: "But the prototypes work fine"
Me: "You were just lucky"
They: "We shall see."
============================
Well they were lucky. 99% field failure rate.
@MattW Can I ask what field you're in? "Tech" was perhaps too broad a term – I'm talking specifically about the computing/IT/infosec/hacker-sphere. I know of no one in that field who doesn't use Twitter, essentially exclusively, for this kind of thing – which I wouldn't call "professional purposes/contacts", but rather gossiping about latest developments in the field, especially things like upcoming conferences. DOUBLE-especially for things like rallying of outrage mobs over perceived injustices.
@DRed
You need to remember that it's all about your axioms and crisp thinking. As long as your conclusions are logical, it doesn't matter if your facts are wrong. Please get with the program.
@Kevin I work at a pure physics research facility; I'm an electrical engineer, and work with other engineers and scientists. I could see Twitter being more central to the culture of some fields, particularly where web-technologies proliferate or where designers work closely with marketing. But nuts-and-bolts engineering? Not so much. As I mentioned before, it's too public; the risk of infringing NDAs or just tarnishing my resume is too great. Even if Twitter were my professional bread-and-butter, I wouldn't, in a million years, use it to register my displeasure about a potential conference speaker.
Also, gravity. Until we figure that mechanism out, we'll never be able to fly.
You are evil.
28 words
I suppose, in a sort of "you see that thing? That's what we don't want to be doing" sense
Anyone want to bet this guy could pass an ideological Turing test? Bueller?
I love you, man. :)
I can never tell on this site when someone is deliberately trolling. I'm not sure whether you're implying that we don't know how gravity works or that flight requires anti-gravity. (Many birds fly, and I'm willing to bet they don't know the inverse-square law.) Regardless, your analogy is in almost no way applicable to the question of genetics and intelligence.
Well, to wax all philosophical. You can't have any kind of order (other than spontaneous) where there is a knowledge problem (Hayek). Carlyle didn't get that from his study of history. But we now have better math. Even if our historians still suffer from their own knowledge problem (innumeracy and a lack of mathematical training),
So MM is in some sense ignorant of the big picture. Which in no way deters him from contributing to a particular narrow domain.
The end of all this though is that I wouldn't care to be served (except in a dire emergency) by some one who didn't care to serve me. The service will be poor (generally).
Kevin wrote:
(insert obligatory InfoSec Taylor Swift / @SwiftOnSecurity reference…)
Well the answer to the egalitarian intelligence question is undeniable and irrefutable. Ashkenazi.
I'm a STEM academic and I would have joined the boycott if StrangeLoop were in my area. Here's why. A substantial part of what makes STEM conferences worthwhile is the networking – discussing ideas and finding future collaborators with people you'd otherwise never get to talk to in person. Moldbug is a famous and controversial enough figure that if he is speaking, many of the other people there will be sympathetic to his views. That means networking with a high density of people who believe that I, as a gay man, should be imprisoned. Statistically, most of them will not be as civil about it as Moldbug. I don't want to deal with that shit, so I would stay away. I suspect many women (who neoreactionaries believe should not have careers) and ethnic minorities (who neoreactionaries believe are intrinsically less intelligent) would feel the same way.
In other words, it's not about hating his political views. I'll stand by the heckler's veto, just as I do when the right wing uses it, but that's not what's going on here. I hate his views on economics and government even more than I hate his views on women and minorities, but if he was only well-known as a supporter of corporate despotism then I'd be against banning him. It's about not wanting to touch a hot stove. (Or I guess not wanting your colleagues to have to touch hot stoves to advance their careers, for the people who aren't directly affected.)
The bottom line is that if your presence at a conference has significant potential to make life worse for a lot of other attendees, through no fault of their own and every fault of your own, then the organisers are right to ban you unless your contribution would outweigh the contributions of every single person your presence would turn away.
And what do we call it when a bunch of people share a subjective opinion about something? Defining culture away doesn't make it stop existing, it makes you look ridiculous.
@MattW: we don't know how gravity works. We know its contours. And yet, we can use the things we know about its epiphenomena to fly, among other things.
Perhaps you meant that progressives look to the future with utter trepidation? Their first instinct with every innovation is to either ban it outright or regulate it into stasis. For example: Uber, AirBnb, 3d printing, Bitcoin. And that's not even getting started on Chuck Schumer's list. And then there's the censorious nature of college campuses.
Careless June 11, 2015 at 2:45 pm
The problem of formalizing all of culture into law (the reflexive position) is to make culture rigid. To rigid and you get destruction. So where can we tolerate change? And where should we be rigid? It is rather obvious that we are at this point suffering from excess rigidity. That is just as unstable (maybe more) than insufficient rigidity.
MSimon, I wrote literally nothing at all about law or formalizing culture.
At a tech conference. With him speaking about a programming language (or something, I admit I didn't pay that much attention to the details of how this began). you think there would be lots of programmers popping up who want to see homosexuals imprisoned.
Well, we're all Bayesians, but we don't all have to be good at it.
Still think this post is an experiment.
Hypothesis: The presence of an irrelevant yet controversial element in intellectual discourse will not detract from that discourse due to lack of relevancy.
Method:
a) Introduce a topic for discourse – Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech.
b) Introduce irrelevant yet controversial distraction – Lefties, Rightists, Progs, Cons, Hitler, Ayn Rand, Culture Waariooors come out to plaayeeyaaaay,
c) Observe quality of discourse.
Conclusion:
I find what I've read of Moldbug's ideas repugnant. Politically, I *am* a marxist – the kind who wouldn't wish the red scare on my worst enemy.
Moldbug's ideas are bad. I'm confident they can fail to gain traction on their own – and they have, the man's influential in a small movement of internet crackpots, he's not about to be elected president unless we find a way to silence him at any cost for goodness sake.
Censorship – public or private – is a tool of fear and a tool which typically backfires. I'm not afraid of anything Moldbug could say, because history's rejected his nonsense and I'm confident it lacks the appeal needed to grasp political power. I'm confident my ideas are right, his are wrong, and declining to intimidate him into silence will not turn the Neoreactionary movement into a major political force capable of rolling back history 250 years.
And I wish the people writing Strangeloop had that same confidence in their convictions. I don't fear debate, even with crackpots, and I certainly don't fear computer code from them.
Clark, you stated "…centering on our willingness to tolerate the presence and the words of those we disagree with…" Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this could be better stated as "The negatives of allowing someone to say something you disagree with are outweighed by the negatives of not letting them say it."
The rest of the article could be paraphrased as many, many people don't think freedom of speech is important, and that is bad. Very bad.
Careless
June 11, 2015 at 3:35 pm
MSimon, I wrote literally nothing at all about law or formalizing culture.
===========
Well there was this:
Careless
June 11, 2015 at 2:45 pm
who formalized their subjective opinion into law.
And what do we call it when a bunch of people share a subjective opinion about something? Defining culture away doesn't make it stop existing, it makes you look ridiculous.
The phenomena I've noticed is that people treat politics like team sports. Just as fans think the other team gets away with lots of fouls while their own team never commits any, some people on the left frequently argue that there's a set of bad acts unique to the right, and there's a complementary set of people on the right who frequently argue that there's a set of bad acts unique to the left.
And so Clark is wrong in two ways here. First, it's not only the left that tries to change business practices. At least two commenters here have already commented on that, and I'll add a few other examples. Back in the early '80s, there were efforts by the right to get 7/11 to stop selling porn mags, and to get Holiday Inn to stop offering in-room porn movies. In the '90s there were efforts to get, iirc, Disneyland, to not be gay-friendly to their employees. More recently, conservatives have been angry about Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis who refuse to accept passengers who are carrying alcohol. In none of these cases were the folks on the right content to simply take their business elsewhere–they wanted to change the practices of those businesses and cab drivers.
The second way in which Clark is wrong is to draw a bright line between exit and voice, as though people are necessarily exercising just one or the other. It's true that people can do so, but the two are not necessarily always separate acts. This is particularly true of boycotts, which are a favored tool of the right, or at least the religious right, and which are part exit and part voice. .
In pure exit, the person is not trying to change the organization's/business's practices, but just going elsewhere. E.g., there is a locally owned store I no longer patronize because I don't like the way the owners treat me. I didn't bother to say anything to them, didn't write letters to the editor, or stand in front of their business with a sign criticizing them–I just went elsewhere. I'm not trying to send them a message to change. I'm certain they haven't even noticed my lack of business, and that's fine with me. I don't care if they change or not.
In pure voice, the person stays and tries to change the business's/organization's practices. E.g., when my mom's church went south, she wasn't going to just walk away from her church of over half a century (although others did), but stayed and voiced her concerns, trying to bring it back to what it once was. If it did not change, she cared deeply.
Boycotts–of Disney, Holiday Inn, 7/11, or Target (for supporting same-sex marraige)–involve exit, because the boycotters refrain from patronizing the business, but it also involves voice because the boycott is intended to send a message, and they make conscious efforts to make the intended effect of the boycott known to the target. They do care about making the organization/business change. If they didn't, they wouldn't call it a boycott; they just wouldn't go and wouldn't make a big deal about it.
This is made explicit in the book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.
So Clark not only inaccurately claims conservatives are satisfied to just go elsewhere, rather than try to change an organization/business, but he misunderstands the theory he applies in making his argument.
This is all something of a sideline to his main argument. I'm generally agreement with him on the main issue. I don't respect those who object to a speaker on topic X because they dislike his views on topic Y. I am rather more sympathetic to the conference organizer, though, because whatever he ought to do out of nobility, in facing the threat of boycott it's not unreasonable to make what he thinks is the sound business decision.
But the silly "Team Them always does this thing, Team Us don't go that low" business that I hear from left, right and wherever we libertarians land on the spectrum are my current bugaboo. As is people who misapply valuable theories in trying to make their case.
Is this whole piece not basically an exercise in earnestly advocating the doctrine of the preferred first speaker?
James Hanley June 11, 2015 at 7:41 pm
You left out Prohibition. Supported these days mainly by the right. The history of Prohibitions is interesting. From inception to end is about 50 years. My theory is that the police state they engender creates a cohort opposed to the police state. It takes about 50 years (if the substance is initially not very popular) for that cohort to grow to a sufficient size to over rule the law.
What does that have to do with free speech? In the death throes of these things the ancien regime fights as hard as it can to hold on to the old culture. The attack on Reason Magazine is evidence of "settled" culture in fear of the "new" culture.
It is very difficult for people to go through "Everything that gave my life meaning is now meaningless. Worse the meanings are reversed. Bad is good – good is bad."
The attack on MM is evidence of that sort of thing. Why attack if his ideas have no merit? The attack is evidence of, "What if we are wrong and he is right?"
Nailed it. Ken on Firstspeakerism
Christopher wrote
Clark replied
Actually, there is a radical difference between the two statements: Y was disinvited because of his political views vs. Y was disinvited because people don't like his political views. Indeed, the failure to distinguish between these two statement types represents an epistemological fog into which postmodernism has led the 21st century postmodern West.
C.S. Lewis addressed this issue in his essay "Men without Chests" in The Abolition of Man
Christopher above affirms the first proposition while Clark affirms the second, but both propositions are wrong. This is demonstrated by the fact that there indeed was a controversy that led to the writing of this post.
After all, if the problem were simply people "not liking" Moldbug's views, that's simply a statement of these people's subjective preference, just like the example Clark mentioned above, choosing between chocolate ice cream and French Vanilla ice cream. In particular, would a reasonable person who liked chocolate ice cream want to ban association with a fan of French Vanilla on that basis alone, especially when the topic of discussion was quantum mechanics, for instance? Wouldn't that seem rather silly.
But indeed, that was not the case, rather Moldbug's view evoked a value judgment, a sense by the protestors that Moldbug's political opinions have crossed some objective boundary that places him beyond the pale, that there is something so bad about his views, so objectionable that he has to be shunned from proper society. I'm hearing a moral indignation here that goes beyond mere dislike in the minds of the protesters but rather an assertion that Moldbug's views are wrong, that his views have been weighed against some objective standard and found lacking.
Thus the behaviors around this convention indicate that when the rubber hits the road, that when the butcher's knife threatens their sacred cow, people really do make a distinction between values and personal likes/dislikes.
civil truth
June 12, 2015 at 12:04 am
Thus the behaviors around this convention indicate that when the rubber hits the road, that when the butcher's knife threatens their sacred cow, people really do make a distinction between values and personal likes/dislikes.
====================
That reenforces a point I made earlier. It is not just that his views are objectionable. "What if some other people find them attractive?" Beliefs that are a threat are attacked more strongly than those that are merely disliked.
And we see that all over with regard to libertarian thought. Attacked by the right and the left. Often with more vituperation than they use against each other. Because "Socially liberal" might attract to "fiscal conservatism". And "fiscal conservatism" might attract to "social liberalism". And together they paint a picture of "too much government".
And that is a very old trope in America
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
You're kind of making my point for me, Clark. You cited a 4,000-word essay, in which the reader must wade through 2,500 of those words to reach the point you wanted to make. That is very easy for you, the writer, but it's a lot of work for the reader.
In the general case, you have one writer writing something that will be read by hundreds or thousands of readers. A good writer expends a great deal of effort making things easy for those readers. A good writer rereads and rewrites and makes sure that he's making his argument as clear as possible. A good writer does not distract the reader with half a dozen excursions into semi-relevant anecdotes, or engage in rhetorical gymnastics, two sins you commit in this article. A good writer sticks to the point and uses language that does not obscure that point. A good writer does not force the reader to think about the language or rhetorical tricks he's using; he leaves the reader free to focus on the argument.
David Byron, in his comment above, excuses this as arguing "in a more literary way". I suppose there is some merit in this view, if one has the time and inclination to unravel that sort of style. Personally, I can't be arsed. Ken, his habits no doubt informed by years of writing briefs for busy courts, takes the time to make his argument simple and clear. You do not. You may call it literary or nuanced if you like; I call it lazy. You may find your own style easy to read, but I doubt many others do.
Why do rightists and libertarians take "tolerance" to mean being 100% okay with everyone no matter what they say or do? When liberals say to be more tolerant, they mean "don't be a bigot." And by that definition, it's not hypocritical at all to be intolerant toward racists, sexists, homophobes, etc.
@Clark
Having not heard of Moldbug before, I have no opinion on the man or his writings. I will read his writings and form an opinion when I can. I think you missed out in your response to David's quoting him, though:
One of the axioms of the above is that slavery is not "intrinsically abusive." Moldbug writes that it's a definition issue, that slavery is defined as intrinsically abusive but can and has existed otherwise. I am skeptical of the premise, and would need to be shown rock-solid evidence to be convinced.
@Tualha:
OMG. Reading! READING!!!?!?
I didn't mean to trigger you like that.
My apologies.
It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools for his own limitations.
At least for the libertarian position, because libertarianism can essentially be summed up as "leave me the hell alone". If a bunch of people want to get together and start a bunch of businesses and refuse to serve left handed italians with non-traditional italian names, that's their business and it's no one elses. One does not (and should not) have a right to the services of any other being for any reason. This doesn't mean you believe they are correct, good or people with whom you should associate, but ultimately, it's not yours to police their behavior any more than it's theirs to police your behavior. It's essentially the golden rule write large. Yes, the bigots are violating that rule, but you can't control others, only yourself. Which leads to the question, were the roles reversed and society thought you were wrong (remember, it wasn't that long ago that standing up for the civil rights of certain groups was a faux pas, how would you want to be treated? Would we want technical speakers kicked out of conferences in the early 90's because they spoke positively of gay rights? I'm sure I could dig up some rather odd and off political ramblings of RMS, should we not allow him at conferences until he shapes up and conforms? As Clark said, they have an absolute legal right to do what they did. And corporations have an absolute legal right to pay all of their workers minimum wage, and keep them all at 25 hours per week with odd and ever changing schedules that make holding a second job difficult if not impossible. Something being legal doesn't make it right, or something that would be good if it was the primary form of operation for society.
Haven't read the full item in question but (and not to be snide about it) it does largely depend on how you define slavery. Is it simply ownership of another person? That would make most forms of child rearing slavery. Is it work without monetary compensation? There's a number of live in apprenticeships over the years that might fit that, as would some non-traditional live in care taker arrangements (nevermind how close it comes to including volunteer work). So to answer the question, of whether "slavery" can be non-abusive, you must first define be able to "slavery" in a way that doesn't include abuse. Maybe that isn't possible, but it's worth noting that we can describe activities that but for the lack of abuse would be considered slavery, and likewise non-abusive situations as slavery (as in wage-slave). It's an interesting thought exercise at the least.
merzbot
June 12, 2015 at 5:21 am
Libertarians are way more tolerant than liberals. They are not intolerant of racists homophobes or what have you. What they care about is that the law not enforce such opinions. Liberals are quite into using the law to enforce opinions. As are conservatives on their issues.
Libertarians do not want a police state. The other factions are not so absolutist about the matter. .
What is slavery? Well let us suppose Jewish rules applied (look up Jewish laws on slavery if the topic interests you). It is saying, "You can manage my life better than I can."
What does government tell us these days? "We can manage your life better than you can."
I really wish the anti-slavers applied that proposition to all realms. Well hope does spring eternal. But it is unwise for me to run my life on it. I have a police state to contend with. A not extremely severe one (yet) to be sure. But still.
Most ideas which could solve difficult modern problems lie outside the Overton window. The left particularly in this country is so fierce about shouting down ideas that are uncomfortable that it has become extremely anti-intellectual.
For example, if someone acknowledges the important truth that different populations have different average characteristics, many (including despicable people on this blog) would eagerly work to brand the person a racist and ruin that person's life, to the extent that they can. And yet it is a terribly crucial fact. When Bush charged into Iraq with the foolish assumption that our system would work with that population, he did so in denial of this important reality. Now they have slave markets where girls sell for a pack of cigarettes and civilization has been entirely lost. Here they come as refugees. One can blame Bush, but then one must realize that Obama made the same blunder in Libya, which has also now lost civilization itself and floods the world with refugees. Those who deserve ultimate blame are those who successfully banished the truth that different populations are actually different, genetically, culturally and in other ways. What leaders once knew, leaders no longer know. It may seem like a rude thought that different groups have essential differences, but leaders from both parties have shattered parts of the world over an unwillingness to have this rude thought. Interestingly, Saddam's Iraq and Qaddhafi's Libya were both essentially Moldbuggian monarchies that were shattered by the US.
One of Yarvin's biggest themes as Moldbug is that modern institutions and their enforcers ("the Cathedral") are like the medieval Catholic Church in suppressing uncomfortable ideas by any means necessary. And the suppressors prove Moldbug's point using Yarvin. Kinda cool in a sick way.
I think Moldbug is wrong on many things, but he is also has good ideas. That's the nature of intellectualism. A creative intellectual will have many good and bad ideas both. The modern reality is actually that no creative intellectual is to be permitted because any such person is bound to step in it from time to time. And then comes the mob. Which is making open threats in this very thread.
Classy.
And corporations have an absolute legal right to pay all of their workers minimum wage
lol
If you don't know what "bigotry" is, I suppose. Which is a common problem for these same liberals.
Jordan said:
Hey, some of us progressives are engineers, scientists, and others who think that these things are great ideas that should be promulgated and incorporated into standard practice (not so sure about Uber/Lyft, though-"surge pricing" smacks of extortion, IMHO).
Legally the left is A-OK purging dissidents from leftwing tech conferences. Caveats:
1. they aren't OK with rightists purging leftists from their cake businesses, scout movements, etc. which violates their own principle of equality in rights
2. many may have regarded this as a tech conference rather than a leftwing tech conference, and now they know better
Culturally the left is A-OK purging dissidents because they are culturally dominant. Caveats:
1. the left may be leaving actually good ideas on the table, e.g. what if Moldbug and, like, science are right that blacks are less intelligent than whites, and so leftists' solutions based on shifting money around never work? still gonna be blaming the Montgomery bus company in 2250? good luck with that
2. alternatively left-monoculture deathspiral into totalitarianism may eventually result in the revolution devouring its children; see: French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cambodian Revolution; likelihood in the US may be doubted
"not so sure about Uber/Lyft, though-"surge pricing" smacks of extortion, IMHO" @JoshM says.
You mean extortion, the crime? Really? Couldn't you get through a single sentence without proving Jordan's point? Lovely business of the future you've got there… be a pity if…
@James Hanley @7:41pm
Said cab drivers benefiting from a government imposed licensing system that limits who can provide cab services at the venue (airport.) And for whatever reason has become a supply that is disproportionately supplied by Muslims. So, by government edict, supply is limited. You can't just walk up a grab any cab. You get the cab that has advanced to the head of the taxi queue.
Also interesting how you think it is bad of conservatives to object to being forced to accommodate the seller's religious belief when most non-conservatives think that a seller or service provider's religious belief should have no impact on provision of service.
Josh M. June 12, 2015 at 8:14 am
Well if surge pricing smacks of extortion then I assume you are against electrical utilities using time of day pricing.
You are obviously not a systems engineer. Pricing is one mechanism that can be used to even out loading.
The laws against raising local prices after a disaster actually retards the arrival of resources. Out of schedule deliveries cost extra. Deliveries with reduced infrastructure cost extra.
We are fortunate to live in a country with so many people so much smarter than reality. We have conservatives who believe Prohibition works and Liberals who believe profit is evil. Both pretend that you can deny the forces of supply and demand.
@Dan
Is that me? I don't want to ruin anyone's life. I was originally trying to refute this statement,
and went hunting for some of MM's quotes I'd seen elsewhere because they had left me with the impression that it wasn't outlandish to think him a racist. At some point I decided they maybe he really is racist but now, as of this moment, I feel like I would need to read a lot more of his stuff to say that.
In general, though, you don't need genetics to explain differences in populations. Cultural, economic, and institutional differences are so plentiful that there's plenty to explain whatever variation you might come across. I think someone of a fairly literal frame of mind might not be satisfied that but unless they've found a way of controlling for those many, many varying factors, I'm not much interested in their conclusions (in this particular area).
The control is the twin study.
Sure you don't NEED it. Who needs gravity when epicycles work just fine? But why reject a simple, clear, and experimentally supported explanation, without any evidence that it is untrue? Because it is unpopular?
The real problem for the left here is not that there exists another possible interpretation of the evidence, or even that they might fail to suppress their enemies' interpretation of the evidence. The problem is that their enemies' interpretation of the evidence might actually be true, leading the left to spend decades advocating solutions that will fail. The USSR spent almost a century denying that classical and then neo-classsical economics was a basically accurate model of the world, but in the end the observed difference in living standards became impossible to deny or explain away. What's going to happen to the Anglo left then? What happened to the USSR wasn't pretty.
You might notice that the US civil rights movement is getting pretty long in the tooth. In twenty or thirty years it will start leaving living memory. Are you really going to argue that blacks brought up with 2000s living standards are less intelligent than 1900s Englishmen because they have less stuff? (and if they think it's 1900 England's superior culture, why does the left want to accelerate rather than reverse apparently damaging liberal cultural changes?)
I don't know how it's going to end, but the obvious nightmare scenarioes are:
1. The left becomes so discredited, and has nailed its colours so hard to the mast, that the reaction throws the baby out with the bathwater and is the Nazi revival they so clearly fear. A bad set of ideas is replaced by an even worse set of ideas. Every Brezhnev must have a Yeltsin!
2. The white and asian population of the West has become so small by this point that it has lost all political power, making reaction impossible. The social status of whites and asians becomes akin to that of a 1930s German Jew: aliens in their own land increasingly excluded from the rights of citizenship, this time justified by blood libels their own grandparents invented. Upper class cosmopolitan whites and asians won't be spared. The revolution devours its children.
Oliver Cromwell:
DAAAAMN, boy, you wrote exactly my rejoinder, but better than I was going to. Well done.
In 1933 less than 1% of the German population was Jewish. Try again.
@DRed
Is the tipping point 99-1%? Whites and asians already suffer significant legal disabilities in the US, falling short of full citizenship. The most obvious are in their reduced access to public university education and to state employment. Why is this happening? Because the social consensus in the US is that the aptitude distribution of each race is the same, so that any difference in the outcome distributions must be due to oppression. This seems to have been scientifically falsified (David only disputed the cause, not the reality of unequal aptitude), yet it's still almost universally believed, so it's reasonable to suggest it's believed due to social convenience and social pressure, and is not strongly subject to evidence or reason.
If the US becomes minority non-Hispanic white in my lifetime – which the official statistics predict it will – why would this social consensus ever disappear? The only group interested to dispute it is whites, and even as a solid voting bloc they would no longer be strong enough to force through any change on their own. Their only hope at that stage is that Hispanics and blacks show mercy and vote altruistically to re-admit whites and asians to equal citizenship, as the whites themselves did for blacks.
That doesn't seem likely to me, because white leftists have conclusively "proved" that those legal disabilities are necessary to correct real injustices and that whites are to blame for those injustices. Why give your oppressor a helping hand when he hasn't even stopped oppressing you? In fact, he says he will use your helping hand to oppress you more!
If anything, the necessity of destroying whites is only likely to increase as blacks and Hispanics still fail to converge with whites even as they take control of the government and institute more and more policies favouring themselves at the expense of whites. Those differences are due to white oppression, remember, so the whites are somehow oppressing us from beyond the grave! Look up a serious anti-semitic website sometime: you'll see the exact same hysteria in these mean 100 IQ whites eternally baffled at why a tiny population of mean 115 IQ Jews "somehow" is always "mysteriously" overrepresented in important and powerful positions. Magic! Witchcraft! Institutional racism!
The left-deathspiral apocalypse scenario sees the US passing through a Brazil stage, then a South Africa stage, finally arriving at the Zimbabwe stage. Except, of course, there's nowhere to run, so perhaps a Rwanda stage would be more accurate. Rwanda is a fascinating example of a socialist-racist genocide of a high IQ "oppressor race", by the way, and since it's an intra-black genocide it's not really susceptible to the regular godwinning. This really is universal human behaviour.
Now myself I am an incorrigible optimist, and that doesn't mean American Nazis. If the left took their lift-high-the-underdog-and-damn-the-consequences logic seriously and opposed abortion, we might really be screwed. But that logic hole will probably result in cheap and legal pre-birth eugenics within at least our grandchildrens' lifetime, reversing the deathspiral and permitting the rainbow society to live in peace. The left, on the other hand… well, the cheap and legal pre-birth eugenics will necessarily be an admission that IQ and probably much of personality is genetic, and thus that the left were a bunch of evil lying liars all along. They will probably be too dead to care, but expect your descendants to piss on your grave just as you now piss on Washington, Columbus, and all the other dead white guys.
@David —
Actually I wasn't referring to you specifically, I was referring to Gerry Spencer, who threatened on this very thread to go after a company for unsufficient enthusiasm in attacking Yarvin. What a peach that guy is.
I am not enamored with your Moldbug quote on slavery but I would emphasize actual slavery has just re-entered the world in 2014 and 2015 after a long hiatus, and it should be noted slavery was reborn where Moldbug-style strong governments were bombed out of power by the USG. Leftists and equalists deserve blame for the actual rebirth of actual slavery, by teaching the West the falsehood that everyone in all parts of the world are quite interchangeable. So successful were they in propagating this lie that politicians on both sides of the aisle seemed to believe that after a couple of elections and Constitutional symposia, Lake Wobegon would emerge on the Tigris, and they would rebuild easily from our destruction, possibly with Minnesota accents.
I get that you do not want to face the blindingly obvious fact (which everyone except some in the too-clever West recognizes) that different people and groups are genetically different in important ways. It is uncomfortable. But when grownups, not out of hate but in acknowledgement of reality face this or other empirical truths, it is not helpful to rush in and cry racism at the drop of the hat. No good policies or productive solutions are ever possible if the contours of reality are not acknowledged. But instead we will continue to lie to ourselves. Next we will help topple Assad. And again we will wonder why Lake Wobegon does not blossom there in his absence.
If you are claiming that the white and Asian populations in 'the west' are in such dire demographic peril that they will soon have no political power and will be akin to the German Jewish population in the 1930s, then you are implying that they will be a tiny minority. And since you fear this will happen in the time of our grandchildren the stupidity of your argument should be so apparent that you'd think I wouldn't have to point that out. But here we are.
Oliver Cromwell, do cheer up, and buckle up.
I live in dark blue Montgomery County, Maryland. It is possible to make quite a decent life as a conservative in the throbbing heart of blue-state America. Mongomery County has not had any Republican in any leadership position in my memory and will not have any Republican in any future I can imagine. Ethnic block voting by minorities is too powerful.
Yet, it is quite possible to build fairly large communities of similar and like-minded people in areas ranging from your neighborhood to churches to a swim club. But not only that, it is possible for a conservative to actually get some political representation in my county too.
Once one despairs of ever having an open conservative representing you, you can focus on specific quality of life issues and actively engage local politicians just as a resident. Few of those hordes of low information voters brought to the polls to make the Dems crush out are going to testify on any topic at any city or county council meeting. Therefore, if one's communitygroup is engaged on crime or planning or other things, one find ways to make one's environs quite livable. No Democrat politician is going to disqualify your opinion on the local park or local police beat or school because you didn't vote for them. They won't even know! And if you are among the only ones who show up in the political off-season, you can matter a lot.
Oliver Cromwell June 12, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Well I always like this one as a refutation of the "racism/discrimination is the only possible reason" for the disparity in results. It is a one word answer.
Ashkenazi.
@Dan
I would emphasize actual slavery has just re-entered the world in 2014 and 2015 after a long hiatus
Please tell me you aren't so naive as to think slavery is only just "returning".
Any particular one in mind? And how do you control for the expectations and attitudes of the various adults and educators who interacted with the children while they were growing up? I have seen some good studies that show that IQ is a heritable trait in general, which isn't surprising. I haven't seen anything yet that really isolates differences between races. It's very difficult to do. I admit I'm not very widely read on the subject and am interested in any such study that someone wants to share.
So why reject it? Because it's so politically problematic and can be used as cover some of the worst tendencies of our society and because, as I've noted above, I'm not familiar with any good experimental support.
I wasn't aware that the they were in the first place. I'm not going to be the 'citation needed' guy because I'm not providing any of my own but this isn't something I think is true.
I don't know exactly how widespread it was, but recently there was a bit of a post-racial (if that's the right term) movement among millennials that supported doing away with most forms of affirmative action. It seems to have disappeared or gone underground with Ferguson. Whatever genetics may say, we have very major problems with racism in this country. I hope that doesn't sound like "think of the children!" but it's hard to avoid in this context. The problems with race are so bad that tend to trump other considerations. If things were smoother in that regard, I think the post-racialists would be back and I think your nightmare scenarios would be averted (assuming that they were imminent in the first place).
@Dan I fully agree that different parts of the world are not interchangeable and I never doubted that the Iraq war would end badly. I refuse to be lumped in with the Bush administration on that regard so your argument doesn't cary much weight with me personally. Politicians get into wars for all kinds of reasons, nearly all bad. The main reasons they sometimes believe that things will end well are sycophancy, groupthink, and falling under the sway of their own arguments.
Let me be blunt. If you think that there are important racial differences and that the mainstream or establishment cannot see that then you are likely to lay all sorts of things at the door of this perceived ignorance. The more attached you are to the idea, the more that will be the case. You can turn that one back on me, if you want. Someone who refuses to admit a fact can hardly include it in their solutions. But if we want to look at things as objectively as we can we have to retain a sense of proportion. It's really hard to credit the idea that our foreign misadventures are due to a lack of realism concerning genetic differences. I mean, look at how extremely different the Middle East is from the West, culturally. Do you really need to reach for race there? Let's flip it around. If you could magically transplant white genes into every Arab born in the Middle East, do you think that you'd get Lake Wobegon when they grew up? I don't know how you can convince me that the problems in that part of the world are because Arabs can't handle democracy by genetic predisposition.
(Note: I'm using 'Arab' here indiscriminately out of laziness. I know they aren't all Arabs.)
David June 12, 2015 at 10:20 pm
Your rational ignorance is really not helpful. There are lots of things that can be explained by group differences in the kind of intelligence measured in IQ tests. The Field (or is it Fields?) Medal in math. No women for one. And there looks to be racial differences as well.
Nobel prizes in Physics.
Airline pilots. Engineering.
The places were standards are upheld show definite racial disparities. And you see it in sports. Blacks are dominant in some categories. If race matters in sport why not in IQ – which is also heritable.
Is it fair? Well I was never going to win a sprint. Is that fair?
If we don't face reality we will never deal honestly with it. And what else happens? When you have "affirmative action" hires – even the qualified get lumped in.
It also happens in college – the extra points given to some categories means that a higher proportion of that category don't graduate.
The dropping of standards has all kinds of pernicious effects.
The same is true of colleges that give preference to "legacy".
Let every one compete. But let us get our dam n thumbs off the scale.
We poor whites, so oppressed that our over-representation in Congress is marginally less than it once was.
@David —
"If you think that …. the mainstream or establishment cannot see"
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. The effort to "close the gap" shows no sign of slowing, even though it is fifty years long in the tooth and billions upon endless billions are poured forth toward this hopeless cause. The hard-working and devoted School Superintendent in Montgomery County Maryland (a county of something like a million people that is where much of our government goes home to sleep at night) was sacked for failing to Close The Gap. Despite the fact that nobody anywhere in the world ever has.
We precipitated a global economic crisis with our housing mess that stemmed from subprime lending tied to our merrily optimistic notion of credit equality.
We now have piled on many trillions in new debt for coming generations only to now discover that the newly diverse younger generation is economically falling far short of the generation before it in all-important metrics like homeownership, net worth, income, household formation and more despite more schooling. Had we piled on less national debt in acknowledgement that future demographics would be different than past demographics we would be rather better-positioned than we now are.
We imagine that incoming floods of uneducated Amerindians will carry the heavy burden of paying into the system enough to support it after our baby boomers retire, saving everybody. That is not fair to either group.
We try to educate millions beyond the level of their ability and (a) set them up for failure, and (b) waste resources that could have been invested in the competent. All because of 'equality.'
Our elites cannot distinguish between mean-spirited racism and simple tellers of truth (even banishing James Watson, the greatest living biologist and discover of DNA), because they do not know what is true.
Many incompetents are placed in positions of incredible responsibility and leadership to promote diversity and businesses and society suffer.
I truly believe that many, many of them simply cannot see. The ones who can see can never say, because the blind will destroy them if they do say.
Clark's defense of verbosity is unpersuasive. Writing tightly and clearly forces the writer to think more carefully about their argument, and helps ensure they really understand it.
Verbosity readily hides the weaknesses in an argument, from the author as well as readers. The argument can be so padded with secondary threads and rhetorical fluorishes that attention is drawn away from the logical structure of the primary argument, and subtle shifts in the meaning of key terms may pass unnoticed. It's like the magician's sleight of hand that draws your eye one direction while the trick is occurring elsewherr. This is a favored technique of post-modernists (which of course makes them easy to fool in turn).
Clark's insinuation that maybe others aren't capable of reading lengthy essays misses the point. As likely is that others are capable of recognizing when the length serves to try to paper over logical weaknesses, rather than being the building blocks of logical arguments.
That, of course, is what makes the smug condescension of Clark's insinuation amusing. Its hard to escape the suspicion that he's condescendingly defending Moldbug's writing style against people who, by virtue of seeing through it, might actually be demonstrating their intellectual advantage over Clark.
Dan June 13, 2015 at 1:25 pm
Very nice. And very true. Beliefs that do not match reality are very expensive.
The debts we have racked up in order to atone for slavery and Jim Crow have enslaved us all. And they are enslaving those not even remotely guilty of the offense. And to date our Federal Government has done nothing significant about the New Jim Crow.
"Modern Prohibition/War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow – Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge
Citizens Opposing Prohibition
And BTW it was intentional.
"Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn't resist it." – John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the rationale of the War on Drugs.
And not even our Black President has done anything about it. He especially is not saying a word. He leaves that to Corey Booker and Rand Paul. It is a disgrace. Why every American isn't screaming about it is a wonder to me.
There is real vicious racism in the system and people just whistle past it because "drugs are bad m'kay"
“If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.” – Thomas Pynchon.
And BTW the previous thread was inspired by the Federal Government punishing those who expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the prosecution of the War On Drugs.
=====================
We are going to owe a new round of reparations when this Drug War is over. Deservedly so. Because the guilty are still alive.
James, I tried to understand what you were getting at, but at five paragraphs it was really an impossible slog. A better writer would be able to condense it greatly.
Clark June 13, 2015 at 4:31 pm
You are really lucky here. I can translate. You use too many words to get your ideas across. And you link to pieces that are TL;DR.
And I must say that Moldbug piece you linked was interminable.
@Oliver Cromwell
Boy, I just cannot disagree with this statement more. You've cited affirmative action below as one way that we experience less than "full citizenship". Personally, I don't feel this is an area in which I've been denied by rights as a citizen, but I'm willing to concede the point for the sake of argument. Would you care to enumerate the other ways in which I'm being denied full citizenship?
You claim that this has been scientifically falsified. Would you care to share your sources for what science has determined to be the aptitude distribution of each ethnicity?
It's absolutely acknowledged that there is genetic variation among individuals that impact intelligence. However, I have found nothing that indicates that these factors have different distributions in different ethnic groups. Further, "race" is not a particularly useful concept as it applies to genetic variations in populations. See the publication Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns by the American Psychological Association (section 5 is the most relevant to this discussion but the whole paper is good), the American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race" and Intelligence, Race, and Genetics by Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kidd (2005). In the excerpts below, all bold is mine.
From Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns
From the American Anthropological Association:
From Intelligence, Race, and Genetics:
————-
I don't think many are denying that generic-factors are a component of intelligence and personality. I'm taking two specific assertions:
* Culture, socioeconomic status, and other postnatal development factors *also* are a component of intelligence and personality.
* Show me *evidence* that there is significant genetic variance between populations that impacts intelligence and personality.
For the second point I even acknowledge that there is genetic variance among populations. Lactose intolerance is an example of a genetic trait that varies among populations. The reason for this performance variation is well understood and scientists can cite the specific genes and mutations involved. If you're citing genetic variations among populations I want something with this example level of detail:
Give me a gene, its specific mutations, the effects of those mutations, and show how those mutations are unevenly distributed among ethnicities. If modern science cannot provide that level of detail, please explain in detail how science has conclusively proven that the genetic-factors that contribute to intelligence have different statistical distributions for different ethnicities.
I always knew you were a francophile Clark
@MSimon
First: Prizes — especially those awarded infrequently such as the Fields Medal and Nobel Prize — are an increadibly poor measure of the mean performance of a population. The sample size is tiny compared to the population (64 Fields Medals have been awarded); it only measures the absolute top percentile of participates; it's subject to racial, cultural, and political biases; and you don't have your facts correct. In 2014 the Fields Medal was awarded to Maryam Mirzakhani who is a woman.
Second: Almost nobody is arguing that there differences in the performance of various groups. The crux of the issue is "are these performance variations caused by differences in genetic variations between ethnic populations." Showing that there is a difference doesn't do much to show that the difference is caused by genetic factors as opposed to environmental factors.
The heritability of a genetic trait is a necessary, but not sufficient factor for genetic differences between various groups. Simply because a trait is heritable does not mean that there will be genetic differences between various population groups. This is addressed briefly in the Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns paper I linked in a previous comment. A relevant excerpt:
That was so predictable that I can't even give you the humor points I normally would. And if you'd wanted to do that kind of response well, you really should have tweaked me about my much longer comment on exit and voice.
So many missed opportunities in life.
@MSimon : "The debts we have racked up in order to atone for slavery and Jim Crow have enslaved us all."
Albeit in a weird self-victimized way, you've at least recognized that there has long existed a legit reason for blacks to feel both socially and legally ostracized. That you're unconcerned is obvious.
Thing is, your "superior race" ideals and consequent limp arguments are generally impotent. No matter who is POTUS.
"And not even our Black President has done anything about it. He especially is not saying a word. He leaves that to Corey Booker and Rand Paul."
A predictably cheap shot. As if a black POTUS must, by default of his blackness, be expected to shelve all other responsibilities to the country. ffs.
One thing I can count on in Clark's threads is a shit ton of mental masturbation. None of it remotely matters.
OK. One out of 64. That still says that there is a very wide disparity in the tails. And we know that for a fact. The distribution of female IQ is narrower than male. What does that tell us – if we are statistically minded? That there are going to be fewer females with IQ of 130 and above (engineering and hard science capable) than males. If we keep standards that will remain true.
And just to dispel the idea that I'm prejudiced. My daughter graduated in the top of her class from a top school with a degree in ChemE. She knows her thermo (one of the hardest subjects in the discipline) – I have tested her.
I'm all for opening things up to those that are capable. I am against giving extra points because of some assumed cultural disability. That is in fact a waste of talent. I'm against waste.
ktward June 13, 2015 at 6:30 pm
Ah so you ignore the racism practiced by our government (and it is intentional) because we have a Black President.
How racist can you get?
And so far no one has refuted "Ashkenazi". Letting that pass in fact refutes your theory that there are no group differences in mental ability.
And just to get the racism further out of the way. I have a Black guy living with me, He writes operating systems for boards I design. In other words I do hardware and operational software and he does system software. Here is a project we have worked on together:
http://protonboron.com/portal/power-grid-frequency-meter/ – You might want to donate. It will help support him and me. And our project. Proton-Boron Fusion.
Now how many of you anti-racists have taken in a Black guy?
Given the way those things go my guess is dam n few. But the racist epithets will swirl anyway. Because talk (especially on the 'net) is cheap.
MSimon, none of your arguments matter. Bottom line, it's harder for racists like you to take a foothold in public consciousness.
Am I wrong?
The distribution of female IQ is narrower than male.
Hope you're happy, Clark. You've got a helluva following.
@MSimon
I've actually already responded to this point, but perhaps it wasn't read. I'll quote myself:
I never said you were. I suggested you ascribed to genetic variance things that we cannot conclusively assign to genetic variance. There are so many environmental factors that need to be controlled for to make these kinds of determination. I haven't seen any compelling evidence that there is significant genetic variance between genders and/or ethnic populations that lead to differences in intelligence. Please, show me the evidence.
There are a million things in this thread that I haven't addressed. I joined the conversation late, and don't have time to refute everything I disagree with. I also disagree with the assertion that "Uber's surge pricing is extortionist", but I didn't refute that.
If we're being intellectually honest, we can't assume that we "win" every point that goes unresponded to.
By way of response, I'm going to ask you the same thing I asked Oliver Cromwell: Please provide citations or evidence of some kind to back up the assertion that Ashkenazi jews are more intelligent that other populations due to genetic differences?
I've found Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, which makes the case that you do. There's many strong critiques of that paper, such as the 2006 response from Steven Pinker The Lessons of the Ashkenazim. Groups and Genes and a 2008 critique How Jews Became Smart: Anti-"Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence". These are not a comprehensive list of critiques of the paper and many more can be readily found.
From The Lessons of the Ashkenazim
Pinker is obviously very much in the camp that further study is warranted on the issue of genetic variations among ethnicities. He shares the ideals that we should judge individuals and not groups (and, I gather, would be opposed to affirmative action). You'll note that I personally haven't supported affirmative action as a part of this debate, and I don't intend to. I'm simply pointing out — as does Pinker — that the scientific evidence to conclude that IQ differences are due to genetic variation between ethnicities are not conclusive.
From How Jews Became Smart
I haven't found compelling evidence that Ashkenazi IQ differences are due to the genetic variations of that population. But I've only been reading the various material for the last 45 minutes.
Would you be willing to provide some evidence to support these claims, or are you going to stick to only giving me a single word to work from?
@MSimon
As noted above, I haven't called you sexist or racist. You can calm down with these pre-emptive defenses, as I'm not going to call you racist or sexist.
Noah, MSimon is obviously both racist and sexist. Why bother tiptoeing around him? It's not like he's tiptoeing.
@Clark
There's a lot in the post, some of which I disagree with, and some of which I agree with. The one that I have the hardest time grappling with is the accusation of hypocrisy as it comes to requiring a baker to sell a cake, but not having a problem with Curtis rescinding this particular invitation:
I'm going to fall-back from the baker refusing to serve a homosexual wedding, and discuss instead a cafe refusing service to a black patron in the civil rights movement. The main reason is that I haven't fully formed my thoughts on the baker, while I have firm beliefs about the civil rights movements. For me, it's clear that there is some amount of service for public establishments that must be compelled. Where the line the demarcates reasonable requirements from unreasonable ones is much blurrier for me.
For me resolving the hypocrisy comes down to two factors:
* Denial of service based on previous political speech
* Availability of service in the community at large
Political Speech vs Inherent Traits
I see a difference-in-kind between refusing service to someone for political speech as opposed to refusing service for a trait that is inherent to that person. As an example of this, I am more okay with a cafe refusing service to Martin Luther King, Jr than I am with them refusing service to a non-public individual.
I would also extend this to opinions privately held. I wouldn't be okay with someone refusing service because they held anarcho-captailist ideals. I would be more okay with someone refusing service to someone who has very publicly advocated for those particular ideas. For example, I think it would be inappropriate if a store asked patrons to sign an affidavit that they held no anarcho-captailist ideals before providing their service. I think it would be more acceptable for them to refuse service to Murray Rothbard (I'll admit to using Wikipedia for that reference).
Availability of Service in the Community
The way we've setup our society many of our necessities (food, clothing, shelter) are provided by private enterprise — as they should be. Given this, it's less acceptable for all providers of a necessity to refuse service to a particular group.
If one store in a large city refuses service to a particular group, there's less of a need to compel service. However, if the only grocery store in a small town refuses to provide service for that group, there's a much bigger interest in compelling service.
——————-
All of this is a long-winded way of saying: I think there are content-neutral, logically and morally consistent viewpoints that would lead us to supporting service to be compelled in some, but not all, instances.
Are you, Clark, always opposed to compelled service? How do you feel about a hypothetical 100 member society where 99 members conspire to refuse any food services and conspire to not sell any of their land to the last member of society?
@ktward
Regardless of any personal thoughts I have on the matter, ad hominem attacks on someone will simply never be an effective way of changing their mind on any particular topic.
I personally disagree with MSimon and Oliver Cromwell. I consider the extreme application of these ideas (moreso Oliver Cromwell's ideas) to be bad for society.
Thus, my goals in engaging in this debate are not to show that I'm right or that I'm superior. My goal is to change their minds, and influence them away from some of these ideas. And insulting someone is a very effective way to get them to stop listening to me.
I want influence, thus I will not insult.
@Noah Callaway
We are concerned with two hypotheses: that blacks [and hispanics] have lower measured aptitude than whites, and that that lower measured aptitude has a genetic origin. Actually, it is not important if the origin is genetic or not; what is important is that 1. it is heritable and 2. it cannot be eliminated by any known cost effective environmental intervention. But we can consider that later.
Are blacks less capable than whites? The first of your proposed sources says, "Yes":
The other two, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics, and American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race" do not address the question.
I submit a fourth source, Mainstream Science on Intelligence:
At this point what I have said has been justified. We have each provided one mainstream source that explicitly affirms my belief that blacks [and hispanics] have lower measured aptitude than whites. You have presented a further two sources that do not contradict that observation. If you believe that these differences can be reversed by environmental interventions – especially by environmental interventions that would be palatable to US leftists – then the burden now rests upon you to prove this possibility.
Are racial IQ differences genetic?
Although I don't think I have to address this question to justify any of the predictions I made about the future direction of society, I find the amount of deliberate disinformation surrounding it aggravating.
Twin studies have robustly demonstrated that adult IQ correlates strongly with biological parental IQ and little with adoptive parental IQ, see for instance here. Does this strictly prove that the mechanism is genetic? No. But it does very strongly suggest it. Maybe we can construct some convoluted justification why environmental effects dominate yet are almost completely invisible when tested. But why? What is Occam's Razor telling you here?
Leftist science is creating its own "God of the gaps": aptitude is equal except for environmental modification everywhere it can't be measured. The left can't demonstrate any environmental intervention that works, even in controlled experiments with enormously greater per capita budgets than any realistic programme, but that doesn't mean that the status quo approach based on environmental interventions is bust. Probably it would work just fine if taxes were raised another 5% or 10%. Right…?
Show me the mutations! Well, show Kent Hovind the complete fossil record of human developed from archaea. If you 1. can't do that and 2. won't stop believing in evolution then you are not holding your own beliefs to the same standard as you are holding mine. And you shouldn't hold your beliefs to that standard, because it's ridiculous. You shouldn't hold mine to it either.
As for the lame pean of the Yale and Anthropologist papers to disregard the question because races are arbitrary, so what? I don't know if that is biologically true, but what bearing does it have on my argument? Even if races are a totally arbitrary collection of families that have no genetic cross-relation at all, they can still have mean group properties, and if we are going to arbitrarily assign sinecure jobs and scholarships on the basis of these arbitrary groups, it matters a great deal what those properties are.
If these people were critiquing a status quo in which no one grouped humans socially, and all outcome was based on individual merit, the discussion wouldn't even be worth having. The reality is that America is becoming a racial caste society in which people care a great deal about these things, perhaps more than they care about any single other political or social issue. These same people reject an individualist meritocracy because they believe that blacks and hispanics would underperform whites in it and, far from being indifferent to the fate of these arbitrary, socially constructed groups, think that would be a horrifying outcome. Why don't they care, then, about what science is telling us about why those groups perform differently? Do they really not care, or do they just not want to know, because it threatens their priors and their values? I hate to repeat the allusion to creationism, so I'll just say it: this is leftwing creationism.
Many of you are under the mistaken impression that a technical conference is some sort of open mic night, with some sort of an expectation of access. Actually, speakers are industry experts, and being invited to speak is a reward generally given to those important in the field who are also charismatic. This clown is neither, and conferences aren't open mic night.
Oliver Cromwell
June 14, 2015 at 12:33 am
Why don't they care, then, about what science is telling us about why those groups perform differently?
================
That is one small error in an otherwise excellent exposition.
So far the science does not tell us why. It only measures the difference.
BTW it is possible at least some of the difference is cultural. In Jewish families early childhood education starts at age zero. It may be that this enriching has an effect.
But how do you change a culture? How do you encourage classical music (which seems to have an effect) with people who have no taste for it?
How do you get past a disdain for "white" culture?
BTW it is well known that an affinity for music correlates well with computer programming ability. I always ask potential hires – do you play a musical instrument?
What kind of music do you like?
Head Start was done out of idealism. And in fact it has a positive effect until the onset of puberty. By age 18 or 20 all the positive effect for the group disappears.
Noah Callaway June 13, 2015 at 8:35 pm
Well. You can discount racism. I have a Black guy living with me. And you can discount sexism. I have a daughter with a degree in ChemE.
So what is left? I'm an engineer. My mind can be changed. Show me the evidence.
If there is one thing yet left undone it is changing Black culture into White culture. I'd love to see your plan for that. Well no I wouldn't. I'm rather a firm believer in smaller government. We already have too many minders.
None the less if you have persuasive evidence I'd like to see it. So far the best we have is hints.
I'm all for encouraging people to rise to the level of their ability. None the less encouraging IQ 70 people to become airline pilots is a fools errand. If we maintain standards.
@MSimon
The last two paragraphs of my post probably deserved a new sub-heading, because they weren't really about the genetic or other origin of observed aptitude differences. They were more general comment on why so many people seem to go out of their way to avoid seeing the obvious on this topic. I agree that a genetic origin has not been proved at the micro level, that it would be nice to have that proof, and that we will probably find out whether or not that proof exists some time in the future. If the theory of genetically mediated persistent aptitude differences between races is to be falsified, it will probably happen here. But the evidence so far is not telling us, "This is a total unknown." let alone "The question isn't even worth asking.", it's telling us there is an overwhelming probability that blacks, hispanics, aborigines, and probably southern Indians really are inferior, at least at those tasks important for living in a modern technical society, to whites and east asians, and that we will find the direct genetic evidence that this is the case.
But as I have pointed out, for practical purposes it doesn't matter. If environment is to blame and none of the known environmental interventions work (including just placing children in surrogate families, which would seem to replace the entire environment with one we now works) then we're in an even worse position than if the origin is genetic, since a genetic origin can at least be manipulated by family planning and eventually by embryo selection. Clearly if the environment can be manipulated enough to make a dent on this problem, it needs to be manipulated a hell of a lot more than it is being manipulated now. Is that possible without totalitarian government? How does that fit into the US leftwing world view?
I'm sorry to bring the Efficient Market Hypothesis into this, but the bottom line is that if there were a cheap environmental fix we would know about it by now and it would have been taken up without the need for any government pressure or interventions. And if countries like South Korea and Taiwan – which were part of the third world within living memory – actually outscore the US in IQ, exactly how expensive can it be?
Lefties ascribe base motives to people who follow the evidence in place where that evidence challenges belief. And the Right is no different when it comes to their beliefs.
This can be explained biologically. The output of the endocannabinoid system peaks in the 15 to 25 year age range. After that the brain loses its plasticity and beliefs become fixed. The the old saw (from the 60s), "Never trust anyone over 30." Max Planck noticed the same thing.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." – Max Planck
I am in the fortunate condition of still having a plastic mind at age 70. But it comes from the constant practice of changing my mind according to the evidence. You can't be a good engineer without such an ability. And that is why most good engineering ends at age 30 or so and by age 50 those without supple minds are out of the field.
It is also why as a general rule engineering companies don't hire OFs. OFs tend to be stuck 30 years behind the times.
Oliver Cromwell June 14, 2015 at 5:22 am
Thank you for the further exposition. And I agree.
And I might add the problem with totalitarian intervention is that it may work. But what if the head guy chooses incorrectly? Which is almost a certainty given Hayek's Nobel Lecture on the knowledge problem.
If we leave people alone eventually they will find their own way and the 100th monkey will insure proliferation. Especially now that we have the 'net.
I agree with those observations.
I do not however understand the historicism of this question, and I think the debate could benefit from a thorough investigation. As I understand it, it was once the (scientifically unsupported) conventional wisdom that whites were cleverer than blacks. There is an interesting letter by Galton to The Times of London in which he expresses the view that the Chinese are more intelligent than the Africans, the Indians, and the Arabs, and that the Africans are more intelligent than aborigines. This seems roughly in line with what modern science tells us, though Galton probably also thought that the British were more intelligent than the Chinese. There followed a time in which eugenics was fashionable; indeed it seems to have been a leftwing fashion, at that time.
Then came the war, which surely had a profound effect, even if it is not widely recognised that the principal genocide was of a high IQ people (Ashkenazi) by a low IQ people (gentile Germans). Less remarked but possibly as or more important, the power and influence of the Soviet Union also exploded in this time, and the Soviet Union was an officially Lysenkoist state ("In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued.").
In 1950, UNESCO asked anthropologists to prepare a statement on race, which robustly asserted there were no important mental differences:
The following year the most they could get biologists to endorse was:
So it seems that there was already some evidence in this respect. UNESCO's various statements on race can be found here.
So who are we waiting for to die? It doesn't seem that these conclusions are new; they were probably known to and accepted by most intelligent people in 1910 and in 1935, but perhaps not 1950 or 1970.
Obviously there have been changes since the 1970s, yielding new evidence, almost all of which supports biological determinism. There are now a number of north east asian countries that are both first world and third world, and they don't seem to be much different in terms of IQ. What's more, north east asians don't seem to lag whites in IQ despite lagging them in cumulative historical wealth. Blacks in the US have not done much better since the civil rights movement; as recently as 1990 it was probably reasonable to argue that legacy effects were still dominant. Meanwhile, more east asians have immigrated to the US and seem surprisingly immune to the depressive effects of America's apparently racist society. Immigrants into Europe – both black and asian – seem to follow the same social trajectories as their co-racialists in the US, which rules out attempts to blame the problems on the US's left socialistic policies.
So, it is becoming harder and harder to sustain the thesis of literal biological equality, which may explain why critique is breaking into the mainstream. But it's not like the case was ever the one supported by the bulk of evidence and reason.
First of all, I'm going to assume that nobody read the Steven Pinker article that I linked. Due to a minor error of the object between my keyboard and my chair, I seem to have pasted the URL to this thread instead of to the article itself. While it can be found easily through Googling, I'll leave the link here for anyone that wants to read it, but is too lazy to Google it. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2006_06_17_thenewrepublic.html
@Oliver Cromwell
I object to this phrasing, mostly because it is ambiguous about whether it is talking about a population or an individual. From context I think we can all agree that we're actually asking is: "Is the median peformance of black populations on IQ tests lower than the median performance of white populations on IQ tests?". I'm going to address specifically the second phrasing.
(As an aside, I mentioned earlier that I think these ideas can be bad for society. This kind of ambiguity of phrasing is exactly why I think these ideas have the potential to cause massive harm. While MSimon, yourself, and I understand the context of the question there are many people who take such concepts and generalize to the conclusion that "blacks are less capable than whites". Large sections of the population will not realize that this statement applies to populations and not individuals. People will make prejudicial decisions — consciously or unconsciously — based on justifications like these.)
You assert that there is a difference in the median performance on IQ tests between groups. I assert the same thing. I never denied that there were differences in performance between the groups. In fact, I even mentioned this earlier: "Almost nobody is arguing that there differences in the performance of various groups. The crux of the issue is 'are these performance variations caused by differences in genetic variations between ethnic populations.'"
We disgaree on the justification of the cause.
First: I agree that there is a some amount of heritability to intelligence. It's been shown that the heritability in young children starts out lower and tends to increase with age (even continuing to increase into old age).
Second: This study doesn't control for socioeconomic status.
Much of the African American population lives outside "affluent Western socities" and a significant segment of it lives within "the most deprived segment of Western socities".
Is it relevant that they failed to control for socioeconomic status? The literature that I've found indicates that yes, it is a necessary important element to control for in order to generalize to these debates.
A 2010 study titled Emergence of a Gene-by-Socioeconomic Status Interaction on Infant Mental Ability from 10 Months to 2 Years found relevant results to this consideration. It's a strong study and — like all documents I've linked — I recommend reading it in it's entirety. Here are a couple more relevant excerpts:
Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D'Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. (2003) produce Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children
In his 2010 book Human Intelligence Hunt makes a similar case:
(As another aside I am still immature enough that I cannot stop myself from giggling everytime I read the names Woodcock-Johnson)
These are not convoluted justifications of why environmental effects dominate. The environmental effects were not invisible when tested. They were very much present — albeit only in lower socioeconomic households. These studies show very specific testing and measurements of environmental factors.
Boy, wouldn't that be an interesting result? That would be really strong evidence that genetic variation isn't the thing that leads to the mean group properties.
I haven't defended affirmative-action. I've simply critiqued your argument that the genetic-factors leading to group mean and median differences on IQ tests are not due to ethnic differences.
I'm not asking for every fossil. I'm asking for one fossil. The modern fossil record is very compelling evidence for evolution, and if you could quote me a specific gene and specific mutations that lead to specific results that would be very compelling evidence for your position. I also didn't say that was the only way that you could convince me. I specifically left the door open for you to use other avenues:
Instead of ranting about how unreasonable the first demand was, is there a reason you didn't address this second point. Since you believe that modern science currently has not been able to demonstrate a specific gene and specific mutations, I'll ask the second part again: please explain in detail how science has conclusively proven that the genetic-factors that contribute to intelligence have different statistical distributions for different ethnicities.
You made the claim earlier that this was scientifically proven. I'm asking for evidence and I've gotten little of it.
This is the argumentative equivalent of saying: "Scientists can't demonstrate any Nuclear Fusion program that is net energy positive, even in controlled experiments with reactors enormously more expensive than would be feasible in a real world setting". Should we stop researching Nuclear Fusion because we haven't solved it yet? This general line of thinking indicates that all R&D spending is wasted, which is obviously not true.
@MSimon
For the third time, I have not said you were racist or sexist. I am not going to say that you are. If the problem is that I haven't been explicit enough: I do not think you a a racist or a sexist. I think the ideas that Oliver Cromwell holds regarding genetic-factors leading to IQ differences in various ethnicities to be one that is not scientifically proven. My feelings are closely mirrored by a quote in Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.
There is absolutely room for scientific inquiry and study here. Further study is absolutely warranted. I would very much appreciate any study that generates the scientific proof that Oliver Cromwell claims already exists. However, there's an added level of scrutiny that should be applied to some of these claims, due to the way that these claims have been abused in the past. Claiming that these concepts are "scientifically proven", when they are not, seems disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst.
Sure. You've provided a single word of evidence ("ashkenazi"), and I've provided one paper that supports that position, one paper that strongly critiques it, and another that addresses my main point that the debate is absolutely not conclusive.
Would you mind reviewing the various papers I've linked and describe how that evidence falls short. I can totally accept that there are flaws in the arguments of the papers, but I can't address any of them if you don't engage with the material that's been provided and give me feedback.
I have shown you some evidence, and you have yet to respond to any of it. Please provide a response.
At no point have I argued for this, and I explicitly said that I wasn't supporting affirmative action in this debate.
In my response to Oliver Cromwell, I cited some evidence that showed that there is more than just cultural challenges. Socioeconomic status also matters significantly. I wouldn't advocate for changing culture either.
This response is still awaiting moderation. Sorry if that caused any confusion
Noah,
Well I don't have to worry about discrimination personally. I take individuals individually.
And to say the race/IQ relationship is scientifically unproven is true. Nothing is EVER scientifically proven. However, 100 years of evidence confirms the relationship. So far.
For instance – I'm a Naval Nuke. As I think back I can't recall any Blacks in the program. Not one.
But we do have a program by the various Governments (Federal, State, Local) that is run on the basis of race. Prohibition enforcement. I'm against it.
I'm also in favor of ending affirmative action. But that will be going down because of the lady in Seattle who passed as Black. We need to take individuals as individuals. We need to get rid of the common phrase, "(S)he is an affirmative action hire" – people notice when the incapable are promoted beyond their level of competence.
One of the things we know from study of the Ashkenazi is that the genes (there seem to be multiple) for high IQ also confer genetic disabilities. Tay-Sachs is one. There are others that do not come to mind immediately. And those debilities only come when the offspring get two or more of the genes. Telomeres may also come into play.
But to say we don't know any of this is to feign willful ignorance. And it does not help.
OTOH promoting people beyond their level of competence is not unknown even before affirmative action. Some family businesses have been noted for that sort of thing. But I'm against government doing it. The experiment has been tried. It has failed.
You can not make people smarter at the point of a gun. In fact there are more than a few things that cannot be accomplished by force. And Liberals AND Conservatives need to get over it.
I saw this discussion first break out during the Duke/Lacrosse case. Over at K.C Johnson's old blog.
It would be very nice if we reached the place in society where government was race neutral and the content of a man's character and his ability were the only things that mattered.
Because we decided to not allow IQ tests for hiring decisions (except in the military) we have substituted college degrees for that test. The cost has been at least $1 trillion dollars and the kids are not starting families because of debt. You can't do just one thing.
Not only that. Men are being under represented in college due to government meddling. You can't just do one thing.
It would be really nice if we got over the idea of government guns as tools of social policy.
And to say the race/IQ relationship is scientifically unproven is true. Nothing is EVER scientifically proven. However, 100 years of evidence confirms the relationship. So far.
For instance – I'm a Naval Nuke. As I think back I can't recall any Blacks in the program. Not one.
Comedy gold, I tell you. Gold!
I agree that nothing is scientifically proven. I'm taking Oliver Cromwell's statement as shorthand that the evidence that currently exist overwhelmingly favors that theory. And you note that 100 years of evidence confirms the relationship. That's great. Please provide the data. Link me to your sources that back up that evidence. Since there is 100 years of evidence this should be a simple task to do.
This is incredibly anecdotal.
I continue to not be debating that point. I'm not supporting or opposing affirmative action here. I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
I'll help you out on this one. Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick type A, and mucolipidosis type IV tend to be genetic disorders that arise more frequently in Ashkenazi jews. I've even already cited the 2005 paper that proposed this as a hypothesis. The general idea is that selective pressure rewarded intelligence so strongly that it outweighed the negative effects of these serious genetic disabilities.
And I think Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population provides a strong rebuttal to this idea. The study concludes (after an in depth look at the data) that these many of these genetic disabilities arose more as a result genetic drift.
While the 2005 Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence proposed the natural selective pressures for intelligence as a hypothesis for leading to Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, and other genetic disabilities, there hasn't been a study that I've seen that shows this to be the case. Please (please please) link me to studies that do show this. You're making assertions and promising to look at the evidence. I implore you to read and respond to the articles that I've provided. What about them is incorrect, and what's the data or theory to back up the errors those articles make.
You said this earlier, but have continued to ignore every journal article that I've linked. Please, live up to this statement. Review the evidence I've provided and provide any criticisms that you have of that evidence. Provide evidence to me, rather than vague assertions.
James Hanley June 14, 2015 at 2:35 pm
If you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to see i. Casting aspersions is not evidence. And you demean yourself by doing it.
Well, at least we have a new contender for the most absurd thing posted on this forum.
Well here is a thought experiment for you that I like to present when the discussion of IQ comes up.
You have a choice of flying on a large commercial aircraft. Two different flights. Both flights leave and arrive within your time window. One flight crew has members all IQ 70. The other flight crew has members all IQ of 130. Which would you prefer?
Now perhaps it is true that the tests don't measure intelligence. But they do measure something important. And in the real world what ever it measures is important.
One way it is important is in the tails. The IQ 85 group is going to have a lower % at 130 and above than the IQ 100 group. And the difference will be even greater when matched with the IQ 115 group.
And we see that play out in real life.
==============
What else do we see play out where the measurement is real and ongoing? Sports. Tall Black guys do better at basketball than tall White guys. On average.
If sports why not brains? Are brains special?
As to science – it is never objective in the short term. Short term it is very possible that social effects can prevail. And those social effects are good for 50 years on average.
We can see this with the former consensus on the utility of cannabis. For quite some time it was thought the utility was negative. The people with that idea firmly implanted are dying off and the new research is taking hold. One of the things that has helped is that PTSD is accepted as a real condition. Back in the 70s that was not so true.
Noah – I have looked at the papers you linked and none of them is persuasive given the experience of real life. The tests measure something and that something has real life value. For individuals – small differences probably don't matter. But the group averages are a fairly good indicator of group performance.
========
And since we are passing links – http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/cochran/overclocking.html
@MSimon
I can totally accept that there are problems with the linked papers. However, instead of providing any commentary with of any value — instead of providing any actual critique as to the methodologies, hypothesis, or logical foundations of the arguments — your response is vague and short on evidence.
This kind of response doesn't fly in any engineering discipline that I've ever been involved in. Why aren't they persuasive?
By "the experience of real life" are you referring to the anecdotal claims you've made earlier? If so, are you rejecting the academic papers based on the tiny handful of anecdotal data points you've provided so far? Does this kind of reasoning actually lead to useful results in any discipline? How often do you prefer anecdotal evidence to data when solving engineering problems?
I have stated — repeatedly — that there are differences in the averages of group performance on various tests. I cannot be more clear: WE AGREE ON THIS POINT. We disagree as to the causal reason for this. We specifically disagree on whether there is conclusive evidence that the genetic-variations between races is the cause of the performance disparity on tests.
I'm reading this article and I'll respond to it shortly.
Suppose there is an environment that favors high IQ. Suppose you give a group – arbitrarily – a 10 point advantage. What happens evolutionarily? Well you have reduced selection pressure.
Now suppose you do the same experiment and arbitrarily give the group a 10 point disadvantage. What happens evolutionarily? You have increased selection pressure.
Both experiments are being done ( the -10 folks used to be Jews, now they are Asians). And we all know who the +10 groups are and to save some people's delicate sensibilities I will refrain from mentioning the obvious.
Nature – as long as it is operating will thwart your best intentions.
The only way we know of at this point to improve things is to let the failures fail. The next generation will be better. And the only way to get that outcome is to get the thumb of government off the scale. And I'm not opposed to government lifting – some – but it ought to get out of adjusting the measurements.
@MSimon
The author of the article you linked is actually an author of the article that I cited earlier (Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence). Since the Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence was written 3 years after Overclocking, and it incorporates and formalizes many of the same theories, I'm going to stand by my previous rebuttals of that paper. I think the same critiques apply to Overclocking, which is an earlier piece with less formalized ideas.
Is there anything in particular in Overclocking that you don't think was incorporated into Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence that I should specifically pay attention to?
@MSimon
You continue to debate with no one about the merits of affirmative action. There's literally not anybody advocating for it in between each of your posts.
Noah,
If the variations are not genetic what do you propose as a remedy that hasn't been tried yet?
So far – nothing that has been tried seems to work. We have affirmative action admittances at higher ed schools. All that does in disciplines that maintain standards is to increase the failure rate.
Nutrition? We have food stamps and food for expectant mothers, and food for school kids. We aren't seeing an effect.
We have Head Start. And that is effective until puberty. And then the effect disappears.
======
I'm open to ideas. I'd like to see the nation smarter on average. So what do you think can be done? The "overclocking" link points out to one thing and it is not immediate. Increased selective pressure. And it is heart breaking. But that does not in anyway dismiss the fact that it works. There is evidence.
Well Noah – you have an evidence problem – I don't constrain myself to papers.
And natural selection is a good explanation of why some African tribes are the fastest sprinters on the planet. To think this doesn't also work in the realm of IQ is absurd. The culture is "we wish this wasn't so" – a lack of papers proves nothing. Maybe no one wanted to pay for the expected finding.
That used to happen all the time with cannabis science. Donald Tashkin – a noted prohibitionist at the time – found that smoking cannabis reduced the incidence of lung cancer. His study was not large enough to prove statistical significance. To date no larger study has been done.
So lack of studies pro or con proves nothing about the subject. But in fact it may prove that there are folks in charge who don't want to know. The dog that didn't bark.
Let us take my own personal case of selective pressure. My LTR was choosing between 3 men (we were friends) all the same body type. Her final choice was based on "smarts". I had the best rank in that attribute. And from what I can see personally it has bred true.
===================
This is interesting: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/05/how-the-race-intelligence-and-genetics-question-will-semi-resolve-within-the-next-10-years/#.VX4T_kalfog
I have corresponded with Ta-Nehisi Coates. He did an exquisite analysis of prohibition based on classical economics. I asked him why he didn't look at the rest of the world using those tools Silence.
============
http://www.wiringthebrain.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupidity.html
Interesting post that looks at some interesting things.
@MSimon
I don't require that the evidence people provide come in the form of papers. Evidence and reasoning in other forms is totally valid. However, when someone makes the assertion that there is "100 years of evidence that confirms a relationship" I expect that they be able to provide some amount of data with statistical rigor and reasoning that has been thoroughly tested. My claim is that the science on this is not settled. Oliver Cromwell and you have claimed that the matter is fairly well concluded by science (to the extent that science concludes anything).
Again, I'll accept arguments and evidence from various sources. I'm still going to judge the quality of that evidence for myself. Not all papers are created equally, and not all blog post comments are created equally. When someone presents anecdotal evidence in regards to large and diverse populations I will almost always throw out that evidence as useless.
I remind you that I'm the one defending the claim that nothing has been proved about the subject. If you've come around to the point where you think there is nothing proved about the matter, I'm pretty happy to agree with you.
Sadly, I'm not in charge of their actions. I think further study is warranted.
Would you care to share the evidence with me?
Well, I mentioned before that increasing socioeconomic status leads to a much higher heritability trait for intelligence. That is, the heritability of intelligence is much higher for high income families and is lower for low income families. The paper I've linked to and excerpted is in a comment that remains waiting moderation, so I'll reproduce a little of it below. Moderators, when and if my previous comment passes the moderation filter, you can feel free to delete the duplicated content below.
Socioeconomic Status Modified Heritability of IQ in Young Children
Based on this I think the most important thing we can do to increase intelligence in general is to raise the socioeconomic status of low income families. I think we should consider income inequality as the main issue that we should be addressing if our goal is to raise the mean (and especially the median) intelligence in this country. There are many potential ways that we can attempt to tackle income inequality, but it's a long discussion. In addition to various economic changes, I'd advocate for immediately ending the war on drugs. Legalize and tax drugs, and stop imprisoning a huge number of the poor population and making it virtually impossible for them to ever break the cycle of poverty. Treating drug addiction as a health problem instead of a crime would go a long way.
@MSimon
How the race, intelligence, and genetics question will semi-resolve within the next 10 years
The title of the first blog post is you linked is instructive. In the blog post the author argues — not surprisingly — that the race, intelligence, and genetics question will semi-resolve within the next 10 years. That would strongly imply that the author thinks the race, intelligence, and genetics question is not resolved now. Funny enough, that's my exact position.
Thanks for linking that for me!
Genetics of Stupidity
This article also supports my position (and is an interesting way of looking at the issue).
In the top comment, Neuroskeptic writes:
The article's author Ken Mitchell responds:
That's great. I appreciate you providing all this evidence that backs up my claims!
Your Own Personal Evidence of Selective Pressure
This is entirely anecdotal and useless in a debate about selective pressure for an entire population. It's a lovely story, and I am honestly very happy for you that you've found someone that means a lot to you.
Noah Callaway June 14, 2015 at 5:30 pm
Is the science settled scientifically? Well no. There is still a LOT of cultural bias. Is it settled practically? Yes. The military still uses those kinds of tests to help determine where to assign people.
Our courts in their infinite wisdom do not allow such tests for assigning people in the commercial world. And from what I understand universities, to make up for "bias" in intake tests, have weighted the scales. To insure "diversity" rather than "ability".
What this does where standards are upheld is to increase the drop out rate of the "advantaged". It also is a waste of resources. Some one more capable was dropped for consideration for some one less capable.
I told the story because of the IQ guy (whose name I can't presently remember) who wrote a book about what that kind of mating was likely to do to the gene pool. He predicted a bifurcation. I don't think he considered selection pressures other than mating.
Well just call me an early adopter. I'm mildly schizophrenic and see patterns where others do not. Very handy. There is also the danger that I'll see a pattern where there is none. So I check. My checking says – strong genetic influence.
Genetics sets the upper limit. Some one unmotivated will not reach that limit. Which is why genetics is not totally predictive.
@MSimon
I'm not arguing that IQ tests are effective. I have never been arguing that. I've been arguing that the there is not conclusive evidence that the genetic-factors that contribute to intelligence vary by race.
At no point have I argued for affirmative action. Between the last time you posted arguments in favor of affirmative action, literally no one has advocated with affirmative action.
I have trouble even parsing what you mean by this. It sounds like you and I are in alignment on this. The science is not settled on whether the genetic factors that contribute to intelligence vary by race.
@MSimon
Yes, genetics effects intelligence. Nobody is arguing against that. Genetics is somewhat heritable. Nobody is arguing against that, either. What are we debating? That the science is settled on whether the genetic factors that contribute to intelligence vary by race.
Genetics sets the upper limit, and socioeconomic class largely determines if someone is likely to reach that limit.
Gotcha.
BTW "the science is unsettled" article noted the cultural bias.
That the science is settled on whether the genetic factors that contribute to intelligence vary by race.
No one objects when they affect running ability by race.
@MSimon
Well, I don't object because the science there is more settled (I would form one mild objection and say we should say "running ability by ethnicity" instead of "running ability by race" to be more precise). We have found some genes and mutations that have known impacts on running performance (see Genetic influence on athletic performance and the wikipedia page on ACTN3).
This specific gene has been shown to vary by ethnicity. Certain West African populations have the lowest distribution of this gene in the world.
The fact that genes can vary by ethnicity is not evidence that all genes do. Especially for qualities as complicated as intelligence.
I'm done with this debate though. It was a good weekend diversion, but I've finished my raid on the alien compound in X-COM. I'd be willing to continue the debate further if you were willing to provide evidence for your various assertions, but you haven't done so to date and I can't imagine that you would start now.
If this was an extended troll, it was well done. I learned a lot about genetics and intelligence, though, so I consider it worth it.
So we have all kinds of things in human body function that are genetic and that vary by race. But in the thing (intelligence) that probably matters most politically the matter is unsettled.
There is no need to wait ten years. The question isn't scientific. It is political science. And you know what is required.
“Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. Thus, Science advances one funeral at a time” Max Planck
Well this link – already provided
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/05/how-the-race-intelligence-and-genetics-question-will-semi-resolve-within-the-next-10-years/#.VX4T_kalfog
discusses why the question is so hard to answer – it is especially discussed in the comments. Politics. If it is genetic as the author of the article seems to think given his comments (0.8 genetic is his estimate – with the estimate going down with economic/social status – 0.4 at lower SES) then we have wasted an awful lot of money. As several commenters note.
BTW the factor called environmental could be anything from not enough to eat in childhood to what the gestating mother had for breakfast on a given day. Or child rearing practices. Or mate selection. Or just tests that are not good enough. There was an IQ test I read about once that was just flashing lights. Africans had better motor skills on that test and lower "IQ".
The other evidence we have is Ashkenazi where genetics is a known factor based on the genetic diseases that afflict that group almost exclusively.
You are correct that we haven't teased out all the details. But the broad picture is obvious.
Yes it has been fun. And everything you have pointed to is either confusion (a mass of hypothesis) to confirming my view. You are not convinced. Fine. I'm in no hurry. Reality can't be denied indefinitely. It will get its revenge eventually. We already see that in the high drop out rate of promoted minorities at top tier universities. That alone tells us that the tests measure something useful. Either SAT or IQ tests.
BTW the article that predicted resolution in 10 years was written about 3 years ago. Seven more to go.
And what else tells us it is genetic? Everything tried so far. Food stamps. School breakfasts and lunches. Head Start. Hasn't worked. Anything else you think should be tried?
Head Start is especially interesting. It seems to move the needle until puberty. By age 18 nothing has changed.The average is back to the group average. So even improving early education doesn't work. And given the results extending it earlier is probably not going to work long term either.
@Noah Callaway
In aptitude unequally distributed?
At the beginning of your first reply to me you said this:
I did not read all of your replies to MSimon and did not respond to any of them; I responded to the arguments you have put to me. It seems that you have substantially conceded to my position. I do not believe that this, as you are now claiming, was always your position. However, if we are agreeing I do not intend to keep arguing with you for the sake of it, on this or any other point.
However, please bear in mind the consequences of what you are now saying you believe. If the aptitude distribution is not equal between races then any difference in outcome – income, crime, poverty, unemployment, imprisonment – cannot be assumed to be due to discrimination. Indeed, some amount, possible large, should be expected even in a perfectly fair and just meritocracy. Please consider that people like ktward probably believe that you are a racist if you accept these conclusions.
Is it important that no known environmental intervention can bridge the gap?
Yes because it establishes a strong Bayesian prior that these differences do not originate from environmental differences and therefore probably originate from genetic differences.
But let us leave that aside for now and assume that the differences are all environmental, we just don't know how to manipulate the environment to fix them. You don't respond to my argument that this is all that is sufficient to justify my social predictions, but this is a major omission, because it actually doesn't matter if environmental factors are to blame if they can't be fixed in a cost effective way. If blacks and hispanics have lower aptitude than whites and pass this on to their children, and we can't stop that, then the black-hispanic underclass is permanent. If its birth and immigration rate is much higher than that of whites, it will continue to grow and eventually become the seat of political power. If it remains an underclass, has all power, and continues to believe that it is an underclass because of white oppression, rather than its low aptitude, then whites are going to have a bad time in the US, and there won't be anything they can do to stop it.
Are IQ differences of genetic origin?
I don't intend to respond point by point, first because it is tedious and second because it is unnecessary. You present results of some studies showing strong environmental effects in small children. As you yourself point out this is not an unexpected result because IQ is known to be less heritable in children than in adults. The review article I myself neatly presents this in a table (did you read it? I strongly advise reading it, because it is good). It does not matter if one can manipulate child IQs more with environmental interventions if they revert to the heritable expectation in adulthood. As far as I am aware, there is no study anywhere that shows a one or even half standard deviation improvement in adult IQ, by any means. This seems improbably if environmental effects are strong.
You say I should correct for socioeconomic status. Correcting for socioeconomic status between families is a mistake because IQ affects socioeconomic status. Saying that rich blacks have similar IQs to similarly rich whites does not address the question if there are simply fewer rich blacks because fewer blacks have sufficiently high IQs. Correcting for socioeconomic status within families is useful and has been done, i.e. low SES children have been adopted by high SES families. The racial IQ differences remain.
Further comment can be found in this post of mine. You consider African-Americans to be not part of the developed West, even though African-America has a higher GDP per capita ($23,000) than eight European Union countries. How about the Chinese under Mao?
I have not claimed that. This is what I have said:
Mainstream media/man on the street position: All races have the same aptitude distribution and differences are prima facie impossible. The question should not even be asked because
we might find something we don't want to find, ahem, we have more important things to talk about. Like video games and scifi book prizes.Your position: Races have different aptitude distributions, and it is not yet conclusively proven that these are due to genetic factors, so I will assume that it is due to environmental factors.
My position: Races have different aptitude distributions, and it is very likely but not yet proven that these are due to genetic factors, because IQ differences do not correlate well with income differences.
If you can come over to my position, I don't demand you accept the strawman of absolute certainty.
You might have confused me with MSimon, who seems to work for a fusion startup. I think fusion is highly speculative research and that there is a high chance that it will fail. If you place the political mainstream (left and right)'s views on race and intelligence in the same box as belief in cheap, clean, unlimited powe any day now then I am not sure we are disagreeing at all. Again, what you've conceded here in this debate is already highly heretical. I am not sure you fully realise the implications of it.
Now, I actually think we should investigate both nuclear fusion and environmental fixes to intelligence gaps, because even if the chance of success is small, the potential payoff is so large that it is probably worth it. I just don't think we should base all policy not just on the possibility of such a jackpot at an unknown future date, but its current certain availability. Let alone on the assumption that all problems relating to energy and climate change have been made up by evil people we should probably just spend our time punishing instead.
"Anyone who thinks that Team Coke has any more respect for individual rights than Team Pepsi is drunk, stupid, or asleep."
This is the thing that really has me baffled. I was no supporter of Barack Obama. But when he was elected, I consoled myself that at least the abusive use of the State secrets doctrine to hide evidence of government malfeasance and the "nuanced" arguments about how torture was sometimes okay would end. I had similar hopes for actions on drone strikes and mass surveillance Not only had Obama had said he had opposed these things, but there seemed to be no reason to think that he was being dishonest or deceptive. Even his detractors were basically arguing that he was secretly more Liberal than he let on. And yet, here we are.
I don't buy the crazy conspiracy theories about how secret masters pull the strings on both sides. Nor do I buy the theory that once he was elected President he was let on in secrets that demonstrated that these tactics were absolutely necessary for the security of our country. But what does that leave exactly?
And what else tells us it is genetic? Everything tried so far. Food stamps. School breakfasts and lunches. Head Start. Hasn't worked. Anything else you think should be tried?
Ooh ooh. Call on me. I know how this argument goes:
Oliver Cromwell – June 15, 2015 at 1:03 pm
It was quite enjoyable getting Noah to do a 180. And getting his end position to be, "not proved to my satisfaction." BTW if you enjoy science fiction the short story "The Marching Morons" is a speculative look at a dystopia created by the lack of selection pressure on the low IQ segment of the population.
==
We don't at this time say that our fusion project is anything other than speculative. What we do say is that we can get a yes/no answer for 1/100th the cost of ITER.
We do have some side projects/spin offs that are not so speculative – but we are not ready to announce them yet.
For those who may have just joined us. A link to the project:
http://protonboron.com/portal/power-grid-frequency-meter/
Matt W June 16, 2015 at 5:25 pm
I don't eat people. I won't eat people. Eating People is wrong.
I also notice you presented no serious proposal for closing the gap.
Oliver Cromwell,
Yes climate change is a problem. PLANT FOOD is not the cause. A natural rise in temperature was imputed to PLANT FOOD. With the coming cooling part of the natural cycle that will be more and more difficult to justify.
The real climate worry is two miles of ice over Chicago. And no one is seriously looking into how to deal with that.
Oliver Cromwell,
We do know one place where discrimination is pervasive and intentional. The enforcement of Prohibition. You would think our Democrat friends would make this their #1 issue and end it. Unfortunately they only work towards that end in order to tweak Republicans. When they had the power (Both Houses, the Presidency) they decided to do something else.
Of the current lot of Presidential candidates only one has elevated that problem to the top of his agenda and is not a late comer to the issue. His name ends with Paul. He is a friend of Corey Booker and they both work the issue.
I'm going to come down on Strageloop's side with this one. Clark's key distinction is that Moldbug's public statements re politics are entirely separate from his performance as a conference speaker. But there's not much reason to trust him on this. He's got a well earned reputation as a rabble-rouser and fight starter. This seems pretty relevant to the question of whether to hand him a microphone at your conference. If this were a technical journal where the product was seen in advance, that'd be different. But it's perfectly valid to say, "I think you're going to start a bunch of shit at my conference, and I don't want to enable that."
– Citation needed
Seriously though, I've been a fan of Moldbug for a long, long time and have never seen any evidence of that type of behavior from him; look at his debate with Robin Hanson. regardless, if that is such a concern, his mic could be turned off at any time by the event organizers. this is nothing but a heckler's veto and it truly shames those who advocate it.
Problem with Clark's Overton window is that it only ever seems to look out the right. There are plenty of extremists that he could see out of the left hand window. Out of the left-hand window he could see people as obnoxious as Vox Day. Clark could then prove that he doesn't actually agree with Vox Day by finding a way of justifying these lefties beyond the pale of public opinion. How about Clark shifting his defence of Moldbug to the poor embattled Requires Hate? Requires Hate also isn't invited to conferences any more. All because of her vile behaviour and despicable views. I expect Clark to extend the scope of discourse by sticking up for her.
Obviously, she is a disgusting and extremist excuse for a human fighting for the other side of the culture war to Vox and Mencius. But Clark isn't actually fighting for their team, just asking to have open minds. To look beyond the Overton window. So in the interest of balance the next extremist hate monger he encourages to take seriously will be from the commies. I'm sure.
Either that or he is a warrior for the extreme right only. I would have said his refusal to back his friend Ken against the bigotry of Vox was enough to prove this. However, Clark persists in a tattered fig-leaf of 'objectivity'. He needs to extend his 'open-mind' to the left or go naked into the Puppy/Gamer Gate/MRA camp.
>How about Clark shifting his defence of Moldbug to the poor embattled Requires Hate?
Moldbug writes long and incomprehensible blogposts, Requires Hate used their position of power within a community to harm members of said community. A more apt target for comparision to RH would be Vox Day, and I'd say it would be a lot more justified to exclude a guy who has a long history of being an asshole.
>He needs to extend his 'open-mind' to the left or go naked into the Puppy/Gamer Gate/MRA camp.
These groups are ridiculously dissimilar from each other.