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http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-car... Googling that blo

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-car... Googling that blog for slave, race, etc gets you more.

Mizza 11y ago
I'm not reading that whole thing. Got a choice sample? The only thing I can find is "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." He's saying that, to colonists, Africans made better slaves, and that a part of that, though not all of that, could be explained by genetic differences. He's certainly not saying "we should enslave Africans", or even "Africans make better slaves". Without touching the statement itself, I don't see how that statement means that he's a white supremacist or a bigot. (Also, this was written in 2009.) [To me this seems like another witch hunt for smug social points as if it wasn't, somebody would have pointed out the actual problems of the statement, or that truth of modern white/western supremacy is that we all benefit from it, as many Africans are still essentially enslaved. What any of this has to do with speaking at a tech conference is beyond me.]
- ewofwkweoifd 11y ago
  My understanding is as follows. The root problem is that merely identifying races on a genetic basis is racist. If you believe that the race of a human refers to anything more than a social / ethnic / cultural construct, you are a racist. This seems like a fairly neutral belief. However it's wrong scientifically by definition. In population biology, races are formed when there is absolute geographical isolation of a population. Without isolation, you get clustering of alleles but you don't get distinct races. Over time, the clustering of alleles diminishes, much like gas dissipating into a room. If you're really struggling with this, just ask which race does the child of a man from race A and a woman from race B belong to? And when that child reproduces with more people from either race A or race B, what race do they belong to? And then ask how long has there has been contact between human populations? Do we know if there was ever a time that human populations were truly isolated? End result is that biologists agree there is only one human species, Homo sapiens, and one human race (a.k.a. subspecies), Homo sapiens sapiens. The page on Wikipedia about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism > Scientific racism is [...] the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. So what happens here is that first Moldbug puts forth the false premise that there are genetic / biological races. Then he says stuff like black people have a lower IQ, but he's not discriminating, rather it's the belief that having a higher IQ is better that's discriminatory. (This was in the recent blog post about how he's not a racist.) Not only is this a really slippery position, but everyone gets so caught up in his arguments built on the false premise of the existence of races that it actually starts to implicitly build support for the false premise. I personally believe that getting people to accept this premise is the point of the trolling.
  - brighteyes 11y ago
    But he doesn't say there are biological races. All he says in that quote is that biology is the simplest explanation for different outcomes of slavery for different groups of humans. (Of course, he's wrong, there are other equally simple explanations, like "culture".) In any case, it's not clear if he is implying that the simplest explanation is even true. He changes the subject in the next sentence after it: this isn't an article about genetics. One interpretation is that, yes, he's a racist and he sees no reason to explain further since he sees his racism as self-evident. Another is that he doesn't care about the cause, and just mentions a simple explanation in order to be able to move on to what he actually wants to talk about. I don't know which of those (or something else) is true. It's an offhand sentence in a long article, many interpretations are possible.
    - ewofwkweoifd 11y ago
      His whole deal is genetics, it's the core of his argument. But if you read it carefully you notice all this rhetorical sleight of hand. The guy is one of the most transparently disingenuous writers I've ever encountered. I feel like the arrogance is just a cover for a weak argument that is just too painfully tedious to deconstruct. https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.bmwo7ie22 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam... > Here’s how you are not-racist. You hold two beliefs: one, neurological problem-solving performance (ie, “intelligence”) is homogenously distributed across the genetically inhomogeneous human species. Two, it’s better to be smart than stupid. > Ergo, no race is better than any other race, because all races are equally smart. Is that right? I hope I have it right. > Here’s how I’m not-racist: I share neither belief. But he's a racist because he uses the word race in a genetic context, and so are you if you do the same - which is what he's trying to get you to do. [ Sorry, I realize that this isn't the most coherent post... ]
      - brighteyes 11y ago
        He is saying something dangerously close to racism. I don't think it is racist, for the following reasons. I also think it's wrong, for other reasons, mentioned at the end. He says he doesn't think "intelligence" is uniform across human populations. That sounds racist because e.g. the Nazis said Jews were mentally inferior, and racists in the US said black people were mentally inferior. Racists believe such things, and they believe them about an entire race as a whole. However, the tricky part is that it's hard to avoid the topic without being anti science. For example, black people are far more likely to have sickle cell anemia for genetic reasons. That's a well-known fact, and it isn't racist to mention it. What Yarvin mentions in that post is that he thinks intelligence might work the same as sickle-cell anemia. When put that way, it's not racist. It's not about races as a whole, it's about genes not being uniform across all groups. However, obviously the difference between the racist statement and the non-racist scientific one is worryingly close. For that reason, a lot of people take the easy way and oppose even considering genetic differences in populations. That's not a good solution. The good solution is that Yarvin is wrong for other reasons. Intelligence is NOT like sickle-cell anemia. Intelligence is a very amorphous concept, with changing definitions over time. It's not an objective, scientific quality like "has sickle-cell anemia". And we know that that ill-defined aspect of intelligence has been misused in the past, when "intelligence" tests were used to prove that black people, Jews, and Italians were mentally inferior, for example. Instead, when intelligence is studied carefully, it's actually a mix of a huge array of skills, and many of them depend on culture and training and context. Even if genes affect brains which affect mental abilities, the mediation of culture, training and context are so large that it is meaningless to talk about intelligence differences in race. There is also a huge amount of relevant genes; sickle-cell anemia has one. The bottom line is that we know Yarvin is wrong because this was studied. For example, black children raised in adopted families have noticeably different results on IQ tests than non-adopted children with similar genetics. We know genes matter here, but we know they matter in such a complex way, and other factors matter just as much, that saying "group X is inferior" is wrong. So no, I don't think Yarvin is being racist there - even if he cuts it close - but he is in fact wrong on the facts of the matter. We don't need to call him a racist to show he's wrong, the facts do that.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-car... Googling that blog for slave, race, etc gets you more.

Mizza 11y ago

I'm not reading that whole thing. Got a choice sample? The only thing I can find is "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." He's saying that, to colonists, Africans made better slaves, and that a part of that, though not all of that, could be explained by genetic differences. He's certainly not saying "we should enslave Africans", or even "Africans make better slaves". Without touching the statement itself, I don't see how that statement means that he's a white supremacist or a bigot. (Also, this was written in 2009.) [To me this seems like another witch hunt for smug social points as if it wasn't, somebody would have pointed out the actual problems of the statement, or that truth of modern white/western supremacy is that we all benefit from it, as many Africans are still essentially enslaved. What any of this has to do with speaking at a tech conference is beyond me.]

ewofwkweoifd 11y ago
My understanding is as follows. The root problem is that merely identifying races on a genetic basis is racist. If you believe that the race of a human refers to anything more than a social / ethnic / cultural construct, you are a racist. This seems like a fairly neutral belief. However it's wrong scientifically by definition. In population biology, races are formed when there is absolute geographical isolation of a population. Without isolation, you get clustering of alleles but you don't get distinct races. Over time, the clustering of alleles diminishes, much like gas dissipating into a room. If you're really struggling with this, just ask which race does the child of a man from race A and a woman from race B belong to? And when that child reproduces with more people from either race A or race B, what race do they belong to? And then ask how long has there has been contact between human populations? Do we know if there was ever a time that human populations were truly isolated? End result is that biologists agree there is only one human species, Homo sapiens, and one human race (a.k.a. subspecies), Homo sapiens sapiens. The page on Wikipedia about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism > Scientific racism is [...] the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races. So what happens here is that first Moldbug puts forth the false premise that there are genetic / biological races. Then he says stuff like black people have a lower IQ, but he's not discriminating, rather it's the belief that having a higher IQ is better that's discriminatory. (This was in the recent blog post about how he's not a racist.) Not only is this a really slippery position, but everyone gets so caught up in his arguments built on the false premise of the existence of races that it actually starts to implicitly build support for the false premise. I personally believe that getting people to accept this premise is the point of the trolling.
- brighteyes 11y ago
  But he doesn't say there are biological races. All he says in that quote is that biology is the simplest explanation for different outcomes of slavery for different groups of humans. (Of course, he's wrong, there are other equally simple explanations, like "culture".) In any case, it's not clear if he is implying that the simplest explanation is even true. He changes the subject in the next sentence after it: this isn't an article about genetics. One interpretation is that, yes, he's a racist and he sees no reason to explain further since he sees his racism as self-evident. Another is that he doesn't care about the cause, and just mentions a simple explanation in order to be able to move on to what he actually wants to talk about. I don't know which of those (or something else) is true. It's an offhand sentence in a long article, many interpretations are possible.
  - ewofwkweoifd 11y ago
    His whole deal is genetics, it's the core of his argument. But if you read it carefully you notice all this rhetorical sleight of hand. The guy is one of the most transparently disingenuous writers I've ever encountered. I feel like the arrogance is just a cover for a weak argument that is just too painfully tedious to deconstruct. https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.bmwo7ie22 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam... > Here’s how you are not-racist. You hold two beliefs: one, neurological problem-solving performance (ie, “intelligence”) is homogenously distributed across the genetically inhomogeneous human species. Two, it’s better to be smart than stupid. > Ergo, no race is better than any other race, because all races are equally smart. Is that right? I hope I have it right. > Here’s how I’m not-racist: I share neither belief. But he's a racist because he uses the word race in a genetic context, and so are you if you do the same - which is what he's trying to get you to do. [ Sorry, I realize that this isn't the most coherent post... ]
    - brighteyes 11y ago
      He is saying something dangerously close to racism. I don't think it is racist, for the following reasons. I also think it's wrong, for other reasons, mentioned at the end. He says he doesn't think "intelligence" is uniform across human populations. That sounds racist because e.g. the Nazis said Jews were mentally inferior, and racists in the US said black people were mentally inferior. Racists believe such things, and they believe them about an entire race as a whole. However, the tricky part is that it's hard to avoid the topic without being anti science. For example, black people are far more likely to have sickle cell anemia for genetic reasons. That's a well-known fact, and it isn't racist to mention it. What Yarvin mentions in that post is that he thinks intelligence might work the same as sickle-cell anemia. When put that way, it's not racist. It's not about races as a whole, it's about genes not being uniform across all groups. However, obviously the difference between the racist statement and the non-racist scientific one is worryingly close. For that reason, a lot of people take the easy way and oppose even considering genetic differences in populations. That's not a good solution. The good solution is that Yarvin is wrong for other reasons. Intelligence is NOT like sickle-cell anemia. Intelligence is a very amorphous concept, with changing definitions over time. It's not an objective, scientific quality like "has sickle-cell anemia". And we know that that ill-defined aspect of intelligence has been misused in the past, when "intelligence" tests were used to prove that black people, Jews, and Italians were mentally inferior, for example. Instead, when intelligence is studied carefully, it's actually a mix of a huge array of skills, and many of them depend on culture and training and context. Even if genes affect brains which affect mental abilities, the mediation of culture, training and context are so large that it is meaningless to talk about intelligence differences in race. There is also a huge amount of relevant genes; sickle-cell anemia has one. The bottom line is that we know Yarvin is wrong because this was studied. For example, black children raised in adopted families have noticeably different results on IQ tests than non-adopted children with similar genetics. We know genes matter here, but we know they matter in such a complex way, and other factors matter just as much, that saying "group X is inferior" is wrong. So no, I don't think Yarvin is being racist there - even if he cuts it close - but he is in fact wrong on the facts of the matter. We don't need to call him a racist to show he's wrong, the facts do that.