6 ms·

The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess.

The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And once you start acknowledging differences, you have to acknowledge that those differences are going to give rise to advantages and disadvantages to things so random that they might not ever matter. But sometimes they do. Are these differences, this genetic diversity, the root cause of global inequality? Based on my understanding of economics, I don't believe so. But that doesn't mean the conversation should be off the table.

moldbug 15y ago
The 20th-century scientist probably most influential in bringing about this change of perspective: Franz Boas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas You can evaluate Boas' logic yourself, by reading his The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) - free online: http://archive.org/stream/mindofprimitivem031738mbp#page/n10/mode/1up http://archive.org/stream/mindofprimitivem031738mbp#page/n10... Fascinatingly, in the introduction to the 1938 edition (copyright police missed this one), Boas writes: "Still worse is the subjection of science to ignorant prejudices in countries controlled by dictators. Such control has extended particularly to books dealing with the subject matter of race and culture. Since nothing is permitted to be printed that runs counter to the ignorant whims and prejudices of the governing clique, there can be no trustworthy science. When a publisher whose pride used to be the number and value of his scientific books announces in his calendar a book trying to show that race mixture is not harmful, withdraws the same book after a dictator comes into power, when great encyclopedias are rewritten according to prescribed tenets, when scientists either do not dare or are not allowed to publish results contradicting the prescribed doctrines, when others, in order to advance their own material interests, or blinded by uncontrolled emotion, follow blindly the prescribed road, no confidence can be placed in their statements. The suppression of intellectual freedom rings the death knell of science." Indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson
barrkel 15y ago
Keeping the conversation off the table removes oxygen in which racists with less noble goals thrive. Human nature being what it is, they make judgements based on first appearances. When people are highly invested in having opinions on people based on things that come from first appearances, they are very likely to mistreat people on an individual basis - i.e. prejudge them, literally, and unfairly, because individual variance is far greater than group variance. So in the overall scale of things, I think it's better not to have those discussions. The costs are too high, and frankly, history has shown that the public can't be trusted with authoritative opinions that can give cover to heinous acts. The conversation should be off the table.
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  >The conversation should be off the table. Your reasoning is sound and supported by a cursory look at human history. That said, I just can't buy into that conclusion. It can't be either/or.
- nkurz 15y ago
  Thanks for your explanation. I disagree with your conclusion, but now better understand your reasoning. I'm more of the theory that rather than avoiding this conversation, we should confront it head-on: so long as it's accurate, prejudice can be beneficial, but should never trump individual reality. Instead of arguing against all bias because bias is bad, we should argue against false bias because it's false and misleading. If you're in the mood for an excellent book on these topics, with what I think is good representation of both arguments, you should check out http://www.amazon.com/Defenders-Truth-The-Sociobiology-Debate/dp/0192862154 http://www.amazon.com/Defenders-Truth-The-Sociobiology-Debat.... It's one of the best books I've ever read.
  - entangld 15y ago
    I don't think he's saying all bias is bad. But bias finds support too easily, even when it's not accurate (prejudice, nationalism, etc). And that reasoning is easily repeated by uninformed people which just adds more noise to an already complex discussion. When you're trying to have a rational discussion about which factors contribute to certain effects, it's better to exhaust all possible theories before attempting to prove that "some people are just better than others."
ktizo 15y ago
The best answer to this question I have ever found is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development. [edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.
- moldbug 15y ago
  Complexity is one invariant in Occam's butterknife. From the butterknife's point of view, the razor is always too simple to be true...
  - ktizo 15y ago
    Well done. Now here's a biscuit. And do please stop waving around the razor and the butterknife, you'll only do yourself another mischief.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  An even better answer specific to the "Why Nations Fail" question is in Jared Diamond's Collapse. Which specifically explores the manifold reasons nations and cultures fail. Highly recommended.
  - ktizo 15y ago
    Will look into it. There is also the elephant in the room with this subject, which is when you look which cultures might be at risk from collapse in the future. Or perhaps I have just read Snowcrash too many times.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      That's specifically the question Diamond is looking for an answer to. We're staring down several of his modes of failure.

moldbug 15y ago

The 20th-century scientist probably most influential in bringing about this change of perspective: Franz Boas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas You can evaluate Boas' logic yourself, by reading his The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) - free online: http://archive.org/stream/mindofprimitivem031738mbp#page/n10/mode/1up http://archive.org/stream/mindofprimitivem031738mbp#page/n10... Fascinatingly, in the introduction to the 1938 edition (copyright police missed this one), Boas writes: "Still worse is the subjection of science to ignorant prejudices in countries controlled by dictators. Such control has extended particularly to books dealing with the subject matter of race and culture. Since nothing is permitted to be printed that runs counter to the ignorant whims and prejudices of the governing clique, there can be no trustworthy science. When a publisher whose pride used to be the number and value of his scientific books announces in his calendar a book trying to show that race mixture is not harmful, withdraws the same book after a dictator comes into power, when great encyclopedias are rewritten according to prescribed tenets, when scientists either do not dare or are not allowed to publish results contradicting the prescribed doctrines, when others, in order to advance their own material interests, or blinded by uncontrolled emotion, follow blindly the prescribed road, no confidence can be placed in their statements. The suppression of intellectual freedom rings the death knell of science." Indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Watson

barrkel 15y ago

Keeping the conversation off the table removes oxygen in which racists with less noble goals thrive. Human nature being what it is, they make judgements based on first appearances. When people are highly invested in having opinions on people based on things that come from first appearances, they are very likely to mistreat people on an individual basis - i.e. prejudge them, literally, and unfairly, because individual variance is far greater than group variance. So in the overall scale of things, I think it's better not to have those discussions. The costs are too high, and frankly, history has shown that the public can't be trusted with authoritative opinions that can give cover to heinous acts. The conversation should be off the table.

tatsuke95 15y ago
>The conversation should be off the table. Your reasoning is sound and supported by a cursory look at human history. That said, I just can't buy into that conclusion. It can't be either/or.
nkurz 15y ago
Thanks for your explanation. I disagree with your conclusion, but now better understand your reasoning. I'm more of the theory that rather than avoiding this conversation, we should confront it head-on: so long as it's accurate, prejudice can be beneficial, but should never trump individual reality. Instead of arguing against all bias because bias is bad, we should argue against false bias because it's false and misleading. If you're in the mood for an excellent book on these topics, with what I think is good representation of both arguments, you should check out http://www.amazon.com/Defenders-Truth-The-Sociobiology-Debate/dp/0192862154 http://www.amazon.com/Defenders-Truth-The-Sociobiology-Debat.... It's one of the best books I've ever read.
- entangld 15y ago
  I don't think he's saying all bias is bad. But bias finds support too easily, even when it's not accurate (prejudice, nationalism, etc). And that reasoning is easily repeated by uninformed people which just adds more noise to an already complex discussion. When you're trying to have a rational discussion about which factors contribute to certain effects, it's better to exhaust all possible theories before attempting to prove that "some people are just better than others."

ktizo 15y ago

The best answer to this question I have ever found is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development. [edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.

moldbug 15y ago
Complexity is one invariant in Occam's butterknife. From the butterknife's point of view, the razor is always too simple to be true...
- ktizo 15y ago
  Well done. Now here's a biscuit. And do please stop waving around the razor and the butterknife, you'll only do yourself another mischief.
dredmorbius 15y ago
An even better answer specific to the "Why Nations Fail" question is in Jared Diamond's Collapse. Which specifically explores the manifold reasons nations and cultures fail. Highly recommended.
- ktizo 15y ago
  Will look into it. There is also the elephant in the room with this subject, which is when you look which cultures might be at risk from collapse in the future. Or perhaps I have just read Snowcrash too many times.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    That's specifically the question Diamond is looking for an answer to. We're staring down several of his modes of failure.