trader_jane

Do you have examples of this? I know teens on 4Chan and video games were ironically/ignorantly spamming racial slurs a decade ago, but the rise of legitimate, serious neo-fascism and Nazi beliefs feels like a recent development around the last election. The activist left agitation has been going on far longer. When I was in college circa early 2000s, we were indoctrinated that only whites can be racist (privilege + power), hooking up after a couple beers is date rape, etc.

FWIW, I've really enjoyed discussing this with you. Most people who disagree with me are very aggressive and resort to insult rather than an honest two-way conversation. The thing you said about eliminating prejudice is especially important. Even though I believe people in America enjoy some of the least biased treatment in all of human history, there are still problems like corporations shielding executives from serious sexual harassment claims and police brutality against unarmed minorities. We can, and should, do better.

Anyway I still have a hard time buying that tech is a prejudiced place run by privileged, straight, white, Christian men: Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella are Indian, with tan skin and a totally foreign culture to most Americans, yet they run Google and Microsoft. Larry and Sergey are descendants of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Sandberg is a Jewish woman in a high-level, power position at Facebook. Tim Cook is openly gay. These people are in the highest level positions running some of the most valuable companies in the entire world.

Technically, supreme would imply the highest, but even if he believed that, why is it a problem (aside from being inaccurate)?

Certain groups of black men are taller and stronger, on average, than any other sub-population of humans. When I watch the NBA, which selects for the far-far-right tail of the distribution in height and strength, it's not surprising that an astonishingly large majority of players are drawn from those groups. I'm not surprised to see zero women. I'm not surprised to see very few white men, and even fewer Asian men able to compete at that level.

Does that make me a black supremacist or something?

Sure, no test is perfect, just like a handful of high BMI people are really body builders. But the correlation between IQ scores, other standardized test scores, career/education achievement, and general life outcomes is very strong. Many IQ tests are culture-free where the subject manipulates abstract shapes. If the tests were developed by biased racists, why do Chinese kids who hardly speak a word of English perform better than white Americans?

I think the recent rise in online fascism and racism is because activists force normal people to deny the reality they see and live every day. Otherwise they're shouted down as racist, white supremacist, misogynist, have their jobs threatened by online mobs, and so on. Like Captain Picard defiantly insisting there are four lights, they seek places where they can speak their truth.

When everyone who speaks against blank slateism, cultural relativism, and white privilege gets shouted down, these places only exist underground, in unmoderated spaces. They're quite seductive and even reasonable at first: Men and women are a little different; Unlimited unskilled immigration can hurt a country; Cultures that engage in female genital mutilation are bad; Nuclear families produce better outcomes for children; Being overweight is unhealthy and unattractive; It's not a problem if Google has a lot of Asian men working there.

"Wow, I've finally found a place where people aren't lying to my face all day" they think. But since they're unmoderated, things quickly take a more sinister turn: [Race or religion] is responsible for all our problems; Gays are degenerate; All women are whores; Build the wall; Naziism gives your life meaning; Violence is the answer.

I think if we let up a bit on the over-moderation, online mobbing, calling people racists thing, most sane people would never seek those spaces to begin with.

I completely disagree with those folks on policy, but are they wrong on the facts?

Activists target an organization for not having a proportional representation of Group X, and claim this must be solely due to racism, misogyny, white supremacy, and so on. The most effective argument against this claim is that the skill distribution of Group X is different. Activists claim this argument is itself racist or white supremacist, so the only people making it publicly are fringe racists.

There is plenty of peer-reviewed research suggesting IQ differences between racial or ethnic groups. Cultures are different too. Groups of people differ, on average, in every other aspect, why would intelligence be any different?

Does this mean we should deport all immigrants, refuse to interview certain races, judge people collectively rather than as individuals, speak hatefully about them, or bar them from our neighborhoods? Of course not.

Does this mean only high IQ people are valuable and deserving of respect? No way. Every human deserves dignity and equal treatment.

Does this mean I'm a white supremacist or misogynist? I'm a woman from a WASP family. I used to work as a quant, a perfectly meritocratic job: Either your ideas made money or they didn't. The market doesn't know or care what color your skin is, which gender you prefer dating, or what's between your legs.

My best colleagues weren't the country club elite. They were disproportionately Eastern European Jewish, Chinese, and Indian immigrants. And when you look at the data, those are the groups that perform best on standardized tests, on average. People from my background are pretty average in that regard, nothing to get supremacist about.