It's my impression that the "race realist", "hereditarian", neofash Right doesn't have nearly the traction within the Trump base that the Democratic Party opposition thinks. I know, Charlottesville...but Donald Trump didn't order that torchlight parade, and his remarks about "good people on both sides" were directed at both sides of the argument about the Confederate statues, not at the torchlight paraders. Trump also said there were "bad people on both sides", but the news media was too busy making him wrong to give him a fair hearing. I've never voted for Trump once, but I know railroading when I see it. I make up my mind about what incoming Presidents do when they do it., and not before.
I also have to note that my impression of the MAGA Trump base is that the majority of the ones commenting online are actually deeply insulted by the racist accusation, and also welcoming nonwhite support. Racism is an accusation that's been reflexively leveled against them as a group so often that it's treated as wolf-crying. The principal difference from Democrats is that the occasional racist comment or racist commenter tends to get more of a pass from a Trump-heavy comment section. I call out the clear examples of racism, when I find them. There aren't that many outright racist comments. They do show up. They're typically ignored by the majority, and rarely praised. That might sound insufficiently antiracist to some, but I view it as overall preferable to the call-out culture of the Democrats, where race can only be brought up to valorize--or patronize--black people, and indulge in performative excoriation of white people. (I don't even like color labels as applied to the topic; they're so noisy that it's hard to overlook the insult to ordinary common sense. But, convenient shorthand. Pathetic, but useful in ordinary conversation. Up to a point.)
Neither Nathas Cofnas or Emil Kirkegaard are Americans; Cofnas is in the UK, and Kirkegaard is in Denmark. I don't know how seriously either of them are taken in Europe, but they just don't have that much pull in the American scene. They're riding Trump's jock in hopes of drawing more recruits to share their obsessions. And, to be candid, I don't think they deserve any extra publicity on this side of the pond. The anti-Trump media have already acted as a force multiplier for ideas that need to be left to wither on the vine. Ever notice what happens when the blooms are pruned from a plant? A similar mistake is made with every call for preemptive censorship of some lunatic fringe idea. It just encourages it to grow back with even more vigor.
For every avowed white supremacist "influencer" on the Internet who has claimed support for Trump, I can find several nonwhite Trump boosters--and, crucially, the black and brown Trump supporters draw much bigger audiences. They're just plain better at the job; they're more well-spoken, more personable--and, agree or not, their arguments in favor of Trump policies are neither unreasonable or unpleasant, much less unhinged. Meanwhile, the most extreme white supremacists are lukewarm about Trump, at most. Too pro-Jewish, for one thing. (Trump seems more at ease with black people than a lot of American liberals, frankly. Culturally whitey all the way and doesn't even try to code-switch, but he's his own person. And he gets street respect for that.)
This is the first time I've heard the name Nathan Cofnas. Emil Kirkegaard comes off as a fixated , alienated, and not especially healthy personality. Steve Sailer is what passes for an American thought leader for the scientific racist cause: he's a mediocre cheap shot sniper who specializes in piling on every Woke misfire, and punching down at every opportunity. Moreover, he's just plain bad at statistical analysis. I once caught him out in a NY Times comment with a misinterpretation of statistics so blatant that anyone with competent 11th grade math skills could have caught it. (But NY Times readers don't do math, so it isn''t like I was deluged with upvotes. Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with defeating the pseudoscience of racists is that too many liberals are allergic to math. They'd rather hurl accusations of Racism! than do the work to convincingly refute a rotten claim, or even to take notice when someone has done it. That's at least as much of a problem as any ignorance at the MAGA end of things.)
Curtis Yarvin has a bad habit of reifying IQ as if it was some probative measure mainly influenced by heredity, but that's Yarvin at his least intelligent, clutching what's probably his weakest point. And I only bring up Yarvin because he's the only one I know of associated with that position who writes with any wit. The rest of the Racist Right just sounds like grim, paranoid, antisocial personalities. (I've certainly read my share of them, including on Substack. Who knows what Algorithm Almighty makes of me for doing that...)
I'll be monitoring the situation, but it's important to bear in mind that just because a few fringe racists are bidding to jump on the Trump bandwagon, that doesn't mean that their opportunism is going to be rewarded.
“If you were to poll the members on a question like, “How important is genetics for arriving at a scientific understanding of alcohol abuse?” I would expect the average response to be “very important,” while my response would be, “not very important.” (With qualifications, but never mind.)”
This is the problem in a nutshell. This consensus around the “genetics” of alcohol abuse is not consistent with the evidence from genetic studies, which do not support this assumption. It is bolstered by the bias of the members, so in both cases the science doesn’t support it, but the shaky positive consensus for alcohol abuse taints the integrity of the negative race consensus.
Let's be clear on this up front: as a rule, pop-science news media reportage is just dreadful. Across the board. Thankfully, in the age of hyperlinks, the studies--or at least the abstracts--and the views of the researchers themselves are available. That's about the only thing most general audience news articles on medicine, nutrition, genetics, psychology, pharmacology, and other scientific research studies are good for. When you read the link references, the views expressed by the researchers are practically always more guarded, more nuanced, more detailed, and more modest and temperate in their observations than the pop-science headlines.
Researchers promote their research to the mainstream media and even when their conclusions are more nuanced, they sell them differently to get attention. Moreover, even others in the field read the abstract at best and jump into positive findings, despite a 30 year history of these findings not holding up. The field is powered by hope and belief, at this point.
The majority of pop media science stories can safely be considered a branch of the Infotainment industry. Especially those on topics like "intelligence" and "consciousness". I enjoy reading most of them, and they're often informative to some degree. But not authoritative.
I'm just a layperson with no special expertise. But when I find studies on that topics that most interest me, I prefer to not settle for the abstract. If the entire study is available, I read as far into it as I can follow. Which can arguably be viewed as a benefit of my layperson status; I don't feel compelled to read all that many studies, and I have more free time to do it.
I think most people aren't aware of the research that's called the validity of what is it that IQ tests measure into question in the most recent 20 years--in ways that have nothing to do with politicized apologism or "culture-bound" pleading.
I'm only an "educated layperson." But I'll put the reasoning and support for my views on that subject up against the unexamined assumptions of IQ fetishists like Emil Kirkegaard any day.
As for genomics, heritability, and the extent of its influence on complex abillities and skill sets associated with the term "intelligence": as the last linked post indicates, I've always been skeptical of the "hard determinist" position that assigns so much weight to heritable genetics (40%-70% is the usual range specified by those holding that view.) The research used to assert those conclusions (often quite confidently, as if the case were closed) is so preliminary that no causal pathways have been identified. Instead, the conclusions rely chiefly on data correlations that are markedly more soft than the findings of genomic studies, which are both more precise in their data findings and more circumspect about offering conclusions about the direct influence of gene pathways on complex characteristics. It certainly isn't as simple as "the human genome has been mapped, therefore the vast majority of the knowledge of genetic science is at hand."
But it wasn't until my Substack browsing led me to Harvard Medical School statistical geneticist Sasha Gusev that I got some inkling of just how little we can conclusively say about heritable genomic influence on that incompletely defined category labeled as "intelligence abilities." Gusev's concentration is not on the genetics of neuroscience and consciousness, which is a mostly speculative endeavor at this point; his wheelhouse is the genetics of cancer. A field that should be relatively more amenable to resolution (and the sooner the better) than the relationship of genes to intelligence, which is at this point an inquiry that's practically metaphysical, compared to studying tumorigenesis. But Gusev is capable of applying his formidable mastery of statistics to that question--if for no other purpose than to demonstrate how complicated and elusive genetic influences most often manifest, as indirect influences that combine and interact dynamically in ways that resist facile just-so stories. Although you shouldn't take my word for it: read his Substack for yourself, and see if you can follow his logic https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/posts-by-topic
If you can challenge his conclusions, be my guest. I've repeatedly invited Steve Sailer to match wits with Gusev, but I have yet to find any evidence that he's up for that level of intellectual combat.
It's my impression that the "race realist", "hereditarian", neofash Right doesn't have nearly the traction within the Trump base that the Democratic Party opposition thinks. I know, Charlottesville...but Donald Trump didn't order that torchlight parade, and his remarks about "good people on both sides" were directed at both sides of the argument about the Confederate statues, not at the torchlight paraders. Trump also said there were "bad people on both sides", but the news media was too busy making him wrong to give him a fair hearing. I've never voted for Trump once, but I know railroading when I see it. I make up my mind about what incoming Presidents do when they do it., and not before.
I also have to note that my impression of the MAGA Trump base is that the majority of the ones commenting online are actually deeply insulted by the racist accusation, and also welcoming nonwhite support. Racism is an accusation that's been reflexively leveled against them as a group so often that it's treated as wolf-crying. The principal difference from Democrats is that the occasional racist comment or racist commenter tends to get more of a pass from a Trump-heavy comment section. I call out the clear examples of racism, when I find them. There aren't that many outright racist comments. They do show up. They're typically ignored by the majority, and rarely praised. That might sound insufficiently antiracist to some, but I view it as overall preferable to the call-out culture of the Democrats, where race can only be brought up to valorize--or patronize--black people, and indulge in performative excoriation of white people. (I don't even like color labels as applied to the topic; they're so noisy that it's hard to overlook the insult to ordinary common sense. But, convenient shorthand. Pathetic, but useful in ordinary conversation. Up to a point.)
Neither Nathas Cofnas or Emil Kirkegaard are Americans; Cofnas is in the UK, and Kirkegaard is in Denmark. I don't know how seriously either of them are taken in Europe, but they just don't have that much pull in the American scene. They're riding Trump's jock in hopes of drawing more recruits to share their obsessions. And, to be candid, I don't think they deserve any extra publicity on this side of the pond. The anti-Trump media have already acted as a force multiplier for ideas that need to be left to wither on the vine. Ever notice what happens when the blooms are pruned from a plant? A similar mistake is made with every call for preemptive censorship of some lunatic fringe idea. It just encourages it to grow back with even more vigor.
For every avowed white supremacist "influencer" on the Internet who has claimed support for Trump, I can find several nonwhite Trump boosters--and, crucially, the black and brown Trump supporters draw much bigger audiences. They're just plain better at the job; they're more well-spoken, more personable--and, agree or not, their arguments in favor of Trump policies are neither unreasonable or unpleasant, much less unhinged. Meanwhile, the most extreme white supremacists are lukewarm about Trump, at most. Too pro-Jewish, for one thing. (Trump seems more at ease with black people than a lot of American liberals, frankly. Culturally whitey all the way and doesn't even try to code-switch, but he's his own person. And he gets street respect for that.)
This is the first time I've heard the name Nathan Cofnas. Emil Kirkegaard comes off as a fixated , alienated, and not especially healthy personality. Steve Sailer is what passes for an American thought leader for the scientific racist cause: he's a mediocre cheap shot sniper who specializes in piling on every Woke misfire, and punching down at every opportunity. Moreover, he's just plain bad at statistical analysis. I once caught him out in a NY Times comment with a misinterpretation of statistics so blatant that anyone with competent 11th grade math skills could have caught it. (But NY Times readers don't do math, so it isn''t like I was deluged with upvotes. Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with defeating the pseudoscience of racists is that too many liberals are allergic to math. They'd rather hurl accusations of Racism! than do the work to convincingly refute a rotten claim, or even to take notice when someone has done it. That's at least as much of a problem as any ignorance at the MAGA end of things.)
Curtis Yarvin has a bad habit of reifying IQ as if it was some probative measure mainly influenced by heredity, but that's Yarvin at his least intelligent, clutching what's probably his weakest point. And I only bring up Yarvin because he's the only one I know of associated with that position who writes with any wit. The rest of the Racist Right just sounds like grim, paranoid, antisocial personalities. (I've certainly read my share of them, including on Substack. Who knows what Algorithm Almighty makes of me for doing that...)
I'll be monitoring the situation, but it's important to bear in mind that just because a few fringe racists are bidding to jump on the Trump bandwagon, that doesn't mean that their opportunism is going to be rewarded.
“If you were to poll the members on a question like, “How important is genetics for arriving at a scientific understanding of alcohol abuse?” I would expect the average response to be “very important,” while my response would be, “not very important.” (With qualifications, but never mind.)”
This is the problem in a nutshell. This consensus around the “genetics” of alcohol abuse is not consistent with the evidence from genetic studies, which do not support this assumption. It is bolstered by the bias of the members, so in both cases the science doesn’t support it, but the shaky positive consensus for alcohol abuse taints the integrity of the negative race consensus.
Let's be clear on this up front: as a rule, pop-science news media reportage is just dreadful. Across the board. Thankfully, in the age of hyperlinks, the studies--or at least the abstracts--and the views of the researchers themselves are available. That's about the only thing most general audience news articles on medicine, nutrition, genetics, psychology, pharmacology, and other scientific research studies are good for. When you read the link references, the views expressed by the researchers are practically always more guarded, more nuanced, more detailed, and more modest and temperate in their observations than the pop-science headlines.
Researchers promote their research to the mainstream media and even when their conclusions are more nuanced, they sell them differently to get attention. Moreover, even others in the field read the abstract at best and jump into positive findings, despite a 30 year history of these findings not holding up. The field is powered by hope and belief, at this point.
The majority of pop media science stories can safely be considered a branch of the Infotainment industry. Especially those on topics like "intelligence" and "consciousness". I enjoy reading most of them, and they're often informative to some degree. But not authoritative.
I'm just a layperson with no special expertise. But when I find studies on that topics that most interest me, I prefer to not settle for the abstract. If the entire study is available, I read as far into it as I can follow. Which can arguably be viewed as a benefit of my layperson status; I don't feel compelled to read all that many studies, and I have more free time to do it.
You really don't think many more people - (definitely not a majority but more than will speak up) - consider the race-hereditarian position plausible?
I think most people aren't aware of the research that's called the validity of what is it that IQ tests measure into question in the most recent 20 years--in ways that have nothing to do with politicized apologism or "culture-bound" pleading.
I'm only an "educated layperson." But I'll put the reasoning and support for my views on that subject up against the unexamined assumptions of IQ fetishists like Emil Kirkegaard any day.
https://adwjeditor.substack.com/p/the-intelligence-of-nations
https://adwjeditor.substack.com/p/intelligence-heredity-culture-and
As for genomics, heritability, and the extent of its influence on complex abillities and skill sets associated with the term "intelligence": as the last linked post indicates, I've always been skeptical of the "hard determinist" position that assigns so much weight to heritable genetics (40%-70% is the usual range specified by those holding that view.) The research used to assert those conclusions (often quite confidently, as if the case were closed) is so preliminary that no causal pathways have been identified. Instead, the conclusions rely chiefly on data correlations that are markedly more soft than the findings of genomic studies, which are both more precise in their data findings and more circumspect about offering conclusions about the direct influence of gene pathways on complex characteristics. It certainly isn't as simple as "the human genome has been mapped, therefore the vast majority of the knowledge of genetic science is at hand."
But it wasn't until my Substack browsing led me to Harvard Medical School statistical geneticist Sasha Gusev that I got some inkling of just how little we can conclusively say about heritable genomic influence on that incompletely defined category labeled as "intelligence abilities." Gusev's concentration is not on the genetics of neuroscience and consciousness, which is a mostly speculative endeavor at this point; his wheelhouse is the genetics of cancer. A field that should be relatively more amenable to resolution (and the sooner the better) than the relationship of genes to intelligence, which is at this point an inquiry that's practically metaphysical, compared to studying tumorigenesis. But Gusev is capable of applying his formidable mastery of statistics to that question--if for no other purpose than to demonstrate how complicated and elusive genetic influences most often manifest, as indirect influences that combine and interact dynamically in ways that resist facile just-so stories. Although you shouldn't take my word for it: read his Substack for yourself, and see if you can follow his logic https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/posts-by-topic
If you can challenge his conclusions, be my guest. I've repeatedly invited Steve Sailer to match wits with Gusev, but I have yet to find any evidence that he's up for that level of intellectual combat.