HOWEVER, it's not that simple. Truth is presented for its usefulness.
- What's the tradeoff between Motivation and Talent? Aretae the teacher says: Motivation wins. It's only in cases where motivation is equal that Talent takes over. Of course, that matters on average, and it matters at the TOP of any skill-set, but it doesn't much matter on an individual basis.
- What's the tradeoff between crushing hopes (To the second coming of Larry Bird: "You're white, you probably can't play NBA ball"), and supporting realism in career choices (To the second coming of Billy Crystal: "You're white, you probably can't play NBA ball")? As a teacher, I tend to be far more concerned about the first, even though academia is insane in its avoidance of the first.
- How much of a difference does the statistical issue make at an individual level? For 99.9999% of all white folks, there are some black folks smarter than them. For 99.9999% of Chinese, there are some white folks smarter than them, and some black folks smarter than them.
- How valuable is it to treat folks as individuals? Does an aggressive HBD position convince folks to take folks primarily as representatives of their race/gender, rather than as human beings? There's FAR more variance between people of a single race than between racial groups. Could you prevent such an injustice even when we're talking about real human with monkeybrains, not fictional humans?
- Isn't the primary evil in race issues the refusal to see that an individual is an individual, rather than a statistic?
I'm personally more interested in truth than most of the above issues. However, anyone who was above the bottom 5th %ile in social awareness might well conclude that the truth of the matter is irrelevant in the face of real impacts of pushing the truth. I trust none of the HBD-sphere has that handicap.
UPDATE: My wife contributed substantially to my thinking on this, and is due recognition, with point 2 being almost entirely hers among other contributions.
UPDATE: My wife contributed substantially to my thinking on this, and is due recognition, with point 2 being almost entirely hers among other contributions.
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5 comments:
AC broken, too hot, mind not working well, and I may not have figured it out even if everything were optimal.
What does HBD stand for?
Freedom,
Summer in Phoenix with no AC? Gaaaah! Having said that, I edited my post with a link to the term. HBD stands for Human Bio-Diversity. People are different in (genetic) capability, and the statistical average (and/or variance) is noticeably different across races and genders
re: us bottom 5% by natural inclination...
I love that "spergy" is gaining currency. Chateau Roissy this week, e.g.
Seems like the main use of HBD facts is to shoot down the misleading statistics propagated by group-ist grievance-mongers.
After all, even if it turns out to be true that "black people are on average less intelligent than white people", the fact still remains that my cousin, even whiter than I am, is way stupider than any black person I've ever known.
The only real use for talking about averages is to burst the bubbles of people who want to guilt us by talking about averages misleadingly. "Normal" is a statistical phenomenon, which does not occur in individuals. And individuals are what we deal with in our lives, not populations.
This is of course not to say that I'm against the truth. Truth is a good thing for its own sake. It's just that this particular truth is of rather less practical significance than a lot of folks seem to think it has.
Matt,
Welcome to Casa Aretae. My sister-in-law's ex-husband matches your cousin pretty well.
Otherwise, well said. And thanks for dropping by.
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