Notes, Sept 4
Also, not even race scientists believe in their own BS
While reading Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents
Every time I read a post about how horrendous and meaningless life is under bourgeois liberalism I wish I could write the author and say, “But happiness is actually possible…”
People seem to take it for granted that life in prior times was more emotionally satisfying and meaningful. Is there any objective basis for that belief, though? Life is just doing stuff until you die, and that’s all it’s ever been. These intellectuals make happiness seem so impossible, so unachievable, but if you have three squares, a place to sleep, and personal autonomy, then what else do you need? Were folks in the middle ages really have that stuff to a greater degree than we do now???
Like…in prior eras you were almost guaranteed to have multiple of your kids die before they grew up. That’s one of the most shattering experiences imaginable. There is absolutely no evidence that people in prior eras mourned their kids less. There are actually a number of medieval and Renaissance poems about it (my favorite is “The Pearl”). Doesn’t the absence of that experience alone render modern life infinitely superior on an emotional level?
While reading a Ted Gioia post
Even a month on substack has made me allergic to cultural declinism. It's one thing to note a phenomenon, another to make claims about the frequency of that phenomenon. The latter requires statistical evidence of a sort that, in most cultural realms, is simply impossible. But even if you make the case that the phenomenon is increasing, your work has only begun. To tie that trend to an underlying alteration in the national character means doing the work all over again, you must document that the national character has truly changed and that there is a real linkage between the national character and the taste for that cultural product.
For instance, it is a real trend that fewer of our box office smashes are love stories. Many more are about war and combat of various sorts.
And it is a real trend that more Americans are single and are having less sex.
But can these two trends really be connected? Let's look at other media: in YA, love stories have unprecedented popularity. Love and relationship songs are just as popular as ever. So what had changed in the movie business?
The obvious answer is that Hollywood movies now make most of their gross abroad, and most of the world has very different romantic mores from the US. Big budget spectacle plays better in China. And because the number of movie slots is limited, American theaters are filled with movies meant to appeal to the foreign market as well.
That alone is sufficient to explain the trend. In general, when searching for an explanation for a phenomenon, we ought to stick as close to the incentives of the actual decision makers as possible. What do the people who greenlight movies want? What metrics do they use? To posit a direct relationship between the national character and the media we produce is to claim much too close a relationship between supply and demand.
While reading a respectful review of an innovative book that makes unwarranted and unsound claims about race and genetics
Wish “heterodox” thinkers could apply a quarter of the skepticism to race science that they do to everything else. Was disappointed to see Justin Murphy so credulous of Gregory Clark's book. His methodologies are innovative, but the conclusions he draws go way beyond the data. They assume a level of endogeneity (like marrying like) that goes way beyond what's observed in the world, and he's been heavily criticized for leaping to a less likely conclusion (genetics results in the persistence of high social status) and not considering the more likely conclusion (social status is socially constituted and is persistent due to discrimination and privilege).
I've come to realize that there is a certain kind of person who WANTS to believe other races are inherently inferior, and their skeptical side shuts off whenever they encounter any kind of race science. But given the potential social implications of race science, shouldn't they be more, rather than less, skeptical of these findings?
PS Justin Murphy’s is the largest account I've found that's dedicated to the Great Books. And… here it is giving a generous hearing to racist ideas
My most controversial opinion: Social media is fun. It's a good way of learning about the world and other people. I don't want to return to a time before the socials.
Liberalism isn't a political program. It's just what happens when people with opposing views decide not to kill each other. You can't be post-liberal or illiberal, you can only be anti-violence or pro-violence. If you're anti-violence, you're a liberal.
Anyone who identifies as post-liberal is, I assume, pro-violence, and anyone who is pro-violence is post-liberal. The two are inextricable.
On this review by Joseph Carter of a really good book
I really loved this book. I am addicted to books that show heroes and idealists--there are surprisingly few out there where the moral situation feels real. It's interesting how ashamed the narrator is of his ideals--it's a bit like Huck Finn being ashamed of seeing Jim as a person. But he holds to them nonetheless. Sometimes you just know what you know--it's astonishing how few books are willing to admit that fact, perhaps because it seems so silly and arbitrary. Another book in a similar vein, written around a similar time, that I really liked is Udon Von Horvath's Youth Without God, about a teacher in 1930s Hungary whose students slowly succumb to fascism.
It's nice though how Krleza's book is not a political allegory. It applies to all people, all societies, all places. Definitely is up there with "Bartleby the Scrivener" in the literature of refusal.
Getting a bit tired of the genre of criticism that’s like, actually this postmodern / queer theorist would’ve agreed that being trans is illegitimate (and ergo should be subject to state control). The argument is rarely particularly coherent or well-grounded in their actual corpus of thought—it’s just pandering to a conservative gender-critical audience that wants to be titillated by the thought that, wow, even Michel Foucault would’ve agreed with me!
I don’t object on moral grounds, merely those of taste. The people who are capable of making this argument ought to hold themselves to a higher standard for argumentation, and they ought to either clearly draw the linkage between the given theorist and the matter implicitly under discussion (state-sanctioned repression of sexual minorities) or make clear that the linkage doesn’t exist, because to pretend that is not the matter truly under discussion is willfully playing dumb.
A good book I just read, which exhaustively debunks race science
Summary of its arguments:
IQ scores are very malleable, subject to change due to a number of interventions. If they weren’t, why would IQ scores be rising over time? A 100 IQ fifty years ago would be an 80 today. A 100 today would be like a 115 a hundred years ago. The average test-taker today is a standard deviation above the average from a year ago. Our genes haven’t changed—and the race scientists claim that America’s genes are actually worsening, because the country has become more non-white—so what’s changed? How can America be getting more Black and Latino, and the population of IQ test-takers be getting more Black and Latino, but scores keep going up, such that the test continually needs to be recalibrated to maintain the 100 point average benchmark.
Although variation in IQ scores within a population is partially due to biology (as shown by twin studies), this does not mean variation of IQ scores between populations is due to biology. Genetic variation within populations is much greater than genetic variation between populations.
Twin studies overstate the influence of genetics on IQ differences, because when identical twins are adopted out to different families, both families tend to be of similar income / class status. Families that adopt also tend to be upper middle class. When identical twins are adopted out to families with differing class statuses, variations in IQ tend to be much higher. Which is to say, there are actually not just two sources of IQ variation (biology and environment), there are at least three (biology, environment, and material deprivation). The influence of material deprivation on IQ is not something studied in twin studies. Nor is the influence of prejudice or discrimination.
There is no gene associated with higher IQ
There is no overarching genetic or biological difference between the races sufficient to explain differentials on IQ tests
The African continent has much higher genetic variation than exists between the races. Which is to say, if ‘geniuses’ are the product of exceptional genes, then Africa contains more exceptional genes than any other continent—the logical implication is that, if all else were equal, Africa would produce more geniuses
In short, there is no strong evidence, whatsoever, for any biological difference between the races that might account for differential scores on IQ tests. All that race scientists really have is the fact of those differentials, but they completely lack any reason to believe biology might be the cause of those differentials. Nor is biology the easiest or most logical explanation. Indeed, the change we have observed even over the 100 years of IQ testing more than gives the lie to the idea of any fixed cap on a race’s genetic potential. For instance, when IQ testing began in the early 20th century, Ashkenazi Jewish people routinely were amongst the lowest-scorers. Now, a hundred years later, they score the highest, and all of the race scientists claim that Ashkenazi Jewish people are more intelligent because of some medieval selection for intelligence. But that is not what their own data shows.
What is more likely is that scores on the IQ test measure a peoples’ acculturation to the IQ testing regime. As Ashkenazi Jewish people became more acculturated to America and learned what they needed to do to succeed, they started to score higher on the tests.
Race science fails on every possible level. We have numbers, but we don’t know what they really measure. Meanwhile, on the other side, we have an utter lack of observable neurological or genetic differences. We have strong evidence that cognitive development in homo sapiens halted 100,000 years ago. We have strong evidence that genetic variation in human beings is not caused by selection pressure, but by genetic drift and population bottlenecks. One can just go on and on and on.
The thing about race science is, not even race scientists really believe in it. Race scientists claim to believe those who are on top are on top because they’re superior, and that’s why there shouldn’t be economic redistribution programs, but isn’t the lesson exactly the opposite? If the world will always sort itself out so the superior win out, then why not start everyone on a level playing field and prove it? If white people are destined to win, then what’s the problem—just let them win.
Not even race scientists believe that a person raised in a materially deprived home, without books, with access to only poor schools, has the same chance of succeeding as someone who doesn’t. This isn’t about the modern day at all. What it’s about is the fact that white people conquered the rest of the world, and because of that, white people are on top.
Race scientists want to believe that white people conquered because they were genetically superior. Thus, while they know, in their hearts, that on a proximate level other people are on the bottom because of the legacy of past violence, they believe that the winners and losers of that violence correlated with whomever was the most intelligent. Thus, poor people aren’t necessarily poor because they are stupid (they are poor because their ancestors were the losers in a conflict with rich people), but race scientists want to think the poor also happen to be stupid.
And that’s why race science persists. Because it’s not about 2023, it’s about 1492 and whether one people are entitled to keep the spoils of 1492.
Personally, I don’t believe in blaming anyone for 1492, but I definitely don’t think society is just a case of finders-keepers. It’s precisely because I think 1492 was so random that I think wealth and privilege should be reallocated in a more equitable fashion in 2023.
As far as the first point, I often tend to lean toward thinking this is a condition of intellectuals, and specifically a certain kind of intellectual who likes the idea of living in a world completely enclosed by some sort of totalizing idea where every element from top to bottom is explained and contained in unity – which is, of course, not the world we live in anymore! I think that’s the appeal of both traditional Catholicism and orthodox Marxism, at least for intellectuals.
Thank you for featuring my review in your notes! Your notes are some of my favorite on Substack. And I agree there's some similarities between Bartleby and On the Edge of Reason, though On the Edge of Reason, despite all its bitterness and rage, is more of an affirmation in the face of the absurd, whereas Bartleby is almost pure nihilism.