CartsBeforeHorses
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Posts posted by CartsBeforeHorses
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11 minutes ago, Craig24 said:
To follow up on this, if you don't think this is true, consider this incident:
While it is nice to see a Sanders-supporting socialist reduced to a blubbering mess, the reason for it was ludicrous. Mistaking "Hidden Figures" and "fences" and getting called a racist because both movies happen to have predominantly black casts? What a joke. People are trying so hard to find racism everywhere.
Also even though this is anecdotal, I would still submit this as yet more evidence that blacks are on average less intelligent than whites. People mistake movies all the time and white people never collectively freak out about it. Because we're a smarter group than to take offense to an honest mistake. When your average IQ is 90, though, then you care about petty crap like that.
It's okay to be smart. It's okay to be white.
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9 minutes ago, Craig24 said:
So it IS brave to counter that.
Imagine if you shouted "it's okay to be white!" in the middle of a BLM rally. You'd get beaten up, probably.
All lives matter, but some lives matter more than other lives.
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Just now, 2046 said:
Of course it's not okay. It's not okay because racism is not okay.
Sure racism is okay. Just like Christianity is okay. It's not "great" or "right," it's just "okay." Being a racist (or a Christian) doesn't hurt anybody by itself. It's incorrect, sure. And if somebody acts on their racism and initiates force, then that's not okay. But racism itself is fine.
And again, why shouldn't white people have their own nation? It would probably be the most prosperous nation in the world. And every white racist that you hate would move there and leave you alone. You've failed to tell me why White Nationalism is a bad thing. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Just now, 2046 said:You equivocate disapproval with literal coercion?
No, I equate disapproval with lack of acceptance. Part of Objectivism is accepting reality. All things are "okay" which are not prohibited by law. Doesn't make them right, or mean we shouldn't try to change people's mind if we have a chance and they're willing to listen.
Just now, 2046 said:Your sophistry is laughable, what a silly little monkey.
Luckily I have thicker skin than those college students, the word "monkey" might be misconstrued as racist.
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5 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:
Which valid concept is it trying to destroy?
The concept of "truth." Whether a statement is divisive or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is the truth, no matter how people feel about it. Emotions are not tools of cognition.
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2 minutes ago, Craig24 said:
"It's ok to be white" is not a package deal. It's a simple, straightforward, true statement.
One which an objectivist is having trouble seeing, because he's not being very objective.
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6 minutes ago, 2046 said:
"extremism"
Extremism is an anti-concept. "Whiteness" is not, and "okay" is not.
6 minutes ago, 2046 said:The question is whether you should join in a protest campaign created by white nationalists,
Why shouldn't you want white racists have their own nation? They'd all flock to it, and then there'd be less of them around to annoy you here in America--or wherever you live. Everyone wins.
6 minutes ago, 2046 said:"It's not okay to be white and racist
Sure it is. We have freedom of conscience in this country. Saying "okay" means that you accept reality as it is. It's not "yes" or "no," it's just "okay." Acceptance does not imply approval.
6 minutes ago, 2046 said:we see your through sloganeering as packaging opposition to anti-white bias with support for white nationalism."
And I open the package, take what I want, and disgard the rest because I'm selfish and I can do that.
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13 minutes ago, 2046 said:
Or maybe people are just smarter than taking the posters at face value.
People who require counseling over a poster are "smart?"
13 minutes ago, 2046 said:you honestly don't believe that one should never take into context the source and agenda of a slogan before adopting it?
Maybe not never, but in this case, no. I'll say whatever damn thing I want, including "it's okay to be white." I will also judge what I will say and what I won't say based on many factors, including who else is saying it.
In this case, a large, large, large number of non-racists are saying "it's okay to be white," including the Donald Trump subreddit, r/The_Donald. The meme has developed a life of its own apart from whoever started it.
13 minutes ago, 2046 said:You'd be singing from the rooftops that people participating in the ad campaign are serving the Evil Corp agenda.
"The soul exists." That is something that Objectivism believes... man is a being of self-made soul.
Is it not okay to say "the soul exists" just because Christians also believe that, too, and use it to try to scare peopple into joining their religion?
13 minutes ago, 2046 said:But your response here is not "yes it's obviously okay to be white, but it's not okay to be white and racist."
That is his response, and my response, and you're reading right past it because you want to for some reason. How many times do we have to say that we're not racist and racism isn't cool before you get it?
And before you bring up my point about IQ and race again, I'd kindly ask for even a single number which refutes what I've said. Some alternative data, maybe. Rather than labels like "pseudoscientific" which adds nothing to the discussion because you've failed to refute it. I can scream "anti-vaxxers are pseudoscientific" all day long if I'm debating with one, but that won't change his mind... maybe a figure on people who are vaccinated and don't contract deadly diseases might.
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45 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:
You divided the human race by skin color
Nature did that, not me.
45 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:and then you assigned a moral assessment to only the one skin color.
If I say, "aquamarine is a pretty color," that doesn't by itself imply that I've assessed any of the other colors.
45 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:It's just as divisive as saying black lives matter.
"Divisive" is an anti-concept just like the word "polarizing."
Capitalism is divisive. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't advocate for it.
45 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:It's gonna take both blacks and whites working together to defeat the Jews this time.
No, all that will take is an end to Israel-worshiping. We can start with Yaron Brook and his "Israel-first" mentality.
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17 hours ago, softwareNerd said:16 hours ago, dream_weaver said:
I strongly suspect there is a blindness to the power of ideas at play. Where Dr. Binswanger says—
I thought, “Jesus! This is not just theory. It’s really true that philosophy rules history.
Alright, I'm going to riff this piece, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. The piece is enough of a joke, might as well joke about it.
QuoteNo one can speak for the dead.
Except for Odd Thomas, and the ARI.
QuoteBut as an expert on Ayn Rand’s philosophy,
lol
QuoteI’m often asked what Rand would have thought of President Trump, especially now, on the one-year anniversary of his election and in light of stories in the Washington Post and elsewhere trying to link Trump to Rand.
Well obviously, Trump loves Russia and Rand was from Russia. Makes total sense to the fake news mindset.
QuoteMy wager is that were Ayn Rand alive today, she would condemn the whole Trump phenomenon.
Whole, as in "all." Quite a wager considering that Trump agrees with Objectivism on quite a few key political goals... preserving the 2A, repealing regulations, repealing Obamacare, standing up to the Global Warming fraud, destroying radical Islam instead of making excuses for it, etc.
QuoteFar from seeing him or his administration’s actions as even partially influenced by her ideas, she would see Donald Trump as the kind of political figure whose rise she had foreseen and warned us against.
So what does our prophetess have to say exactly, Mr. Ghate?
QuoteTo appreciate why, we need to know something about her view of the country’s state. From the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957 to her death in 1982, a constant theme in her writings is that we as a nation were in a state of intellectual and cultural bankruptcy.
She obviously didn't foresee the rise of the Internet.
QuoteThe Democrats, liberals and political left had abandoned the intellect. Marx, although evil, was, Rand thought, the last intellectual voice worth confronting. When the Marxists entrenched in academia gave way or morphed into the likes of B. F. Skinner, John Rawls, Herbert Marcuse, and a sundry list of postmodernists preaching ethnic determinism, “back to nature,” the impossibility of objectivity and other anti-Enlightenment doctrines, their pretense to intellectuality was up.
This created an opening for the true heirs of the Enlightenment, the advocates of freedom and capitalism, to pick up the discarded banner of the intellect. They refused.
Except for Ron Paul, a far more intellectual and principled candidate than Trump, which the ARI opposed because... uh, why exactly?
QuoteA few months before her death, Rand told an audience of her fans, no doubt to the surprise of many, that she didn’t vote for Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter, whom she regarded as a small-town power luster. “There is a limit,” she told them, “to the notion of voting for the lesser of two evils.”
A limit which apparently led for her to vote for Nixon, a far worse candidate than Trump, over McGovern, a far better candidate than Hillary.
QuoteRand did welcome Reagan’s strong language toward Soviet Russia and his promises to cut spending and taxes. But she warned that his invitation of the so-called Moral Majority to the halls of power would be a long-range disaster. By tying the (supposed) advocacy of freedom and capitalism to, in Rand’s words, the anti-intellectuality of “militant mystics,” who proclaim that aborting an embryo is murder and creationism is science,
and who channel a dead woman... oh wait, that's the ARI.
QuoteReagan’s presidency would discredit the intellectual case for freedom and capitalism and embolden the anti-intellectual, authoritarian mentalities in the country.
Enter Donald Trump.
Yes, the first candidate in 30 years to not thank God in his acceptance speech, and who says that he has "nothing to be forgiven for" is a "mystic." He might as well be a closet atheist who pays lip-service to religion because politics and votes.
QuoteTrump’s salient characteristic as a political figure is anti-intellectuality. Because Rand saw this mentality as on the rise (she called it the anti-conceptual mentality), she had a lot to say about it, and it’s illuminating how much of it fits Trump.
No, what's illuminating is your attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole.
QuoteIn Rand’s terms, to be intellectual is to sustain through life the conviction that ideas matter. This means that knowledge, abstract principles, justice
You mean like government-sanctioned torture, or the Waco raid? That sort of justice?
Quoteand truth are of personal importance to you, embedded in everything you value and informing your every action. “To take ideas seriously,” Rand says, “means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.”
This is a demanding responsibility. To be intellectual requires real independence of judgment and enduring honesty and integrity.
None of which are evident in Trump's decades of honest business dealings, Mr. Ghate would assert. If he had been a Madoff-like crook, surely evidence for it would have arisen by now.
QuoteIt’s not just that Trump lacks these virtues; in comparison to, say, Jefferson, Washington or Madison, most of today’s politicians do. It’s that Trump projects disdain for these virtues.
Apparently calling out fake news represents "disdain for the truth."
QuoteOn cable news, it’s now a regular feature for reporters like CNN’s Anderson Cooper to catalog Trump’s latest lies.
Ah, Anderson Cooper, a bastion of journalistic integrity.
QuoteBut to call them lies misses the point.
A liar retains some respect for the truth: he tries to conceal his lies, weave a web of deception and make it difficult for his victims to discover the facts. Trump does none of this.
Because he's not a liar.
QuoteHe states, for instance, that his inauguration crowd was the largest ever — when photos of his and past inaugurations are easily accessible.
Apparently YouTube viewers don't count.
QuoteHe declares to a national audience that “nobody has more respect for women than I do, nobody” — when the Billy Bush tape of him boasting that he grabs women “by the pussy” is fresh in everyone’s mind.
Apparently respect for women involves denying one's own sexuality and the beauty of the female form.
QuoteIn defense of his Saturday Charlottesville statement, he says that unlike others he waits for the facts to come in before making judgments — when his Twitter outbursts are read by millions.
Ghate would have us equate spur-of-the-moment tweets with Trump's considered opinion.
QuoteTrump makes no distinction between truth and falsity, between statements backed by evidence and statements unsupported by any evidence. This is why you can’t catch him in a lie. He doesn’t care.
No, it's because none of the things you just mentioned were lies.
QuoteRand puts it like this: to an anti-intellectual mentality words are not instruments of knowledge but tools of manipulation. Trump’s description of how he came to use the phrase “Drain the swamp” captures this kind of attitude perfectly.
Actually it captures basic marketing principles. The defenders of capitalism sure don't know much about how business works.
QuoteThe phrase, of course, in this context is hollow. By his own admission, Trump was part of the swamp, a master at playing every side of a corrupt political system. To drain the swamp would be to get rid of people like him — not elect them to the presidency.
Says the ARI, an organization which hired Carl Barney, former Scientology church owner and current college swindler, and takes his dirty money. Obviously they would assert that they only hired him because people can change. Well then, we had objective evidence that Trump no longer desired to be part of the swamp and only had to be in order to run his business effectively.
QuoteBut somebody suggested to Trump that he use the phrase. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s so hokey. That is so terrible.’ I said, ‘All right, I’ll try it.’ So, like, a month ago I said, ‘Drain the swamp.’ The place went crazy. I said, ‘Whoa, watch this.’ Then I said [it] again. Then I started saying it like I meant it, right? And then I said it, I started loving it.”
Apparently concepts like slogans and the process for choosing them to reach mass appeal are alien to the ARI. No wonder there are so few objectivists.
QuoteClosely connected to this disdain for the truth is a complete amoralism. “The normal pattern of self-appraisal,” Rand observes, “requires reference to some abstract value or virtue,” such as “I am good because I am rational” or “I am good because I am honest.”
And apparently unless you constantly repeat those things, your own inherent goodness means nothing.
QuoteBut the entire realm of abstract principles and standards is unknown to an anti-intellectual mentality. The phenomenon of judging himself by such standards, therefore, is alien. Instead, Rand argues, the “implicit pattern of all his estimates is: ‘It’s good because I like it’ — ‘It’s right because I did it’ — ‘It’s true because I want it to be true.’”
"It's true because I want it to be true" actually perfectly captures the tone of this hit piece.
QuoteTrump’s co-author on The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, said that in the eighteen months he worked with Trump “the word ‘moral’ never came up . . . that was not part of his vocabulary.”
I'd rather have a man who acts moral but never talks about it, than a man who never acts moral but preaches how moral he is.
QuoteOther commentators have noted that, no matter how shameful his actions, like his whitewashing of the neo-Nazi demonstration in Charlottesville, which in Trump’s telling contained some “very fine people,” it’s impossible to shame Trump. This is the reason.
Fine people want to preserve their history for the sake of remembering, not tear it down for the sake of nothing. Not every person defending the confederate statue at that rally was a neo-Nazi.
QuoteThe self-centeredness that an amoralist exhibits, Rand holds, is centered on self-doubt; he therefore exhibits a constant and pathetic need to be loved, to be seen as a big shot and as the greatest ever. Observe Trump’s steady refrain that he’s accomplishing feats no other president has or could,
No other president actually stood up to North Korea and forced China to play nice. I'd call that quite an accomplishment. In addition to the hundreds of regulations that Trump has repealed. If Ghate and Brook had their way, Hillary would be president and these would still be on the books.
QuoteWashington, Madison and Lincoln included.
Don't forget about Jesus and Buddha while you're making your fake list of people who Trump never said that he's better than.
QuoteOne suspects that the fake Time magazine with him on the cover hanging in Mar-a-Lago was as much to assuage Trump’s anxieties as to impress the gullible and sycophantic among his guests.
Or, you know, it was a joke.
QuoteThe place that loyalty to abstract standards occupies in a moral person’s mind, Rand argues, is typically replaced in an anti-intellectual mentality by “loyalty to the group.” Observe Trump’s special focus on this.
Yes, how dare he be loyal to America first instead of globalists.
QuoteLoyalty is desirable — if it has been earned.
I guess that Trump's business achievements count for nothing.
QuoteBut Trump demands [loyalty] up-front.
As opposed to the objective thing to do, which would be to hire men who would betray him.
QuoteAs former FBI Director James Comey and others have remarked, a pledge of loyalty was among the first things Trump asked of them.
As it should be, given Comey's lack of fidelity to justice in the case of Clinton.
QuoteThe wider phenomenon this demand for loyalty represents is a profound tribalism, a world divided into the loyal and the disloyal, insiders and outsiders, us versus them. To get a flavor, listen to any Trump rally.
What you're hearing is patriotism towards America, not tribalism. I know, it's hard to recognize for a member of an organization like the ARI that puts Israel above America.
QuoteRand argued that in a period of intellectual and cultural bankruptcy, if the anti-intellectual mentality is on the rise, tribalism will be ascending culturally and, politically, a country will drift toward authoritarianism and ultimately dictatorship.
And Hillary apparently would've played no part in this drift.
QuotePolitical authoritarians rely on scapegoats, who are said to be responsible for all the country’s troubles.
Political hucksters rely on strawmen, such as saying that Trump blamed "all" the country's problems on any particular group.
QuoteThe Communists demonized the bourgeoisie, the Nazis demonized the Jews, and the Socialists demonized the owners of private property. Hand us the reins of power, they said, and we’ll get rid of these undesirables.
By this logic we should never elect a county sheriff who pledges to crack down on criminals. That would be tribalism, apparently.
QuoteOne of the most disturbing elements of the 2016 presidential campaign was the vitriol directed by the candidates not at their political opponents, which we expect, but at large segments of the public.
You mean like Hillary calling half the country "deplorables?"
QuoteSanders and Trump, the two candidates with the most enthusiastic followings, excelled at this. Sanders demonized financiers, drug companies, bankers, Wall Street and the so-called one percent.
Oh look, a nugget of truth!
QuoteTrump demonized Hispanics, immigrants, journalists, free traders and elites.
You're forgetting some qualifying adjectives. Illegal immigrants, dishonest journalists, globalist "free" traders, and corrupt elites. Trump opposed none of those things intrinsically.
QuoteDuring the 2007–8 financial crisis, sales of Atlas Shrugged soared, in part because people wondered how Rand could have foreseen America’s economic collapse. Sales should be soaring again — because the book is not primarily about economic collapse, but about cultural and intellectual bankruptcy.
Sales should be soaring, but the ARI fails at marketing so they're not.
QuoteAt the novel’s start, we witness a crumbling world, with posturing intellectuals who have long ago abandoned the intellect
With funny names like Floyd Ferris, Wesely Mouch, and Onkar Ghate.
Quotebut who continue to preach irrational, shopworn ideas, which everyone mouths but no one fully believes — or dares challenge. Part of the point of the story is that these pseudo-intellectuals will eventually be replaced by their progeny: people who more openly dispense with the intellect and who are more explicitly boorish, brutish and tribal, i.e., by anti-intellectual mentalities.
You mean like how Leonard Peikoff squandered Ayn Rand's intellectual heritage? That sort of progeny?
QuoteThis is best symbolized by the appearance on the political scene, late in the novel, of Cuffy Meigs. Although I suspect we are only at the beginnings of a similar political descent, the parallels, unfortunately, exist. Meigs is a short-range amoralist uninterested in arguments or reasons or facts, who carries a gun in one pocket and a rabbit’s foot in the other. President Trump carries the nuclear codes in one pocket and Infowars in the other.
I'd trust a snake oil salesman like Alex Jones before I'd trust Anderson Cooper or wherever Mr. Ghate gets his "news."
QuoteThe only way to prevent this kind of political and cultural disintegration, Rand thought, was to challenge the irrationalism, tribalism, determinism and identity politics at the heart of our intellectual life, propagated by the so-called left and right and by too many others as well.
And by letting in the entire Third World into America all at once. She also advocated that, apparently.
QuoteWe need to realize that whether the appeal is to ethnicity or gender or faith or family or genes as the shaper of one’s soul and whether the demand is to sacrifice the rich to the poor, the poor to the rich, the able to the needy,
America to Israel, America to globalists... just kidding, he doesn't say that.
Quotewhites to blacks, blacks to whites, individuals to the nation or sinners to God, all of it is corrupt. We are rational beings, who are capable of choosing a logical course in life and who should be pursing our own individual happiness.
So this is what makes you happy? Writing baseless schlock about the president?
QuoteUnless we are ready to radically rethink our culture’s fundamental ideas, with the same intensity of thought our Founding Fathers exerted in rethinking government, our long-term trajectory is set and will play out. But the choice is ours — this is the message of Atlas Shrugged.
What about the Convention of States? Oh wait, the ARI hates states' rights.
QuoteThus I think Rand would have said that a President Trump is a predictable outcome, but not an inevitable one.
I mean, I think that she would have said that too, but not in the way that you mean. After all that bloviating, this is the best you could come up with that Rand might have said?
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If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flight? X-ray vision? Super speed? Super intelligence? Time travel? Something else?
Would you choose a superpower that allows you to make money? Change the world? Just have fun?
Would you keep your superpower secret? Or would you openly use it and hope that others accept you and don't label you as some sort of freak, X-Men style?
My personal pick is probably teleportation. It would be so convenient. No more driving places. Visit the world in the blink of an eye. Visit other worlds in the blink of an eye... presuming that you know about them I suppose. I would definitely keep it secret, though. I don't really desire fame for fame's sake.
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The genre and CGI just screams "early 2000's ska." The quirkiness screams "Aussie."
The Cat Empire - "One Four Five"
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9 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:
Now it requires a university context.
It doesn't "require" a university context. A university context is where the message was posted up, and where people reacted to it with the same level of revulsion as if somebody had posted "god hates fags."
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8 hours ago, softwareNerd said:
It is not me, but you, downplaying the personal responsibility that "black" people must take. You do this by making the same argument that the leftists make: i.e. that "black" people are inherently less capable for no fault of their own.
That by itself does not downplay personal responsibility. Nothing that I have said applies to the individual. An individual should always strive to better his circumstances, regardless of his race, regardless of his inherent capabilities. I have an outright disability and I've still succeeded in life, because I believed that I could and I set my mind to it. Blackness is not a disability or any sort of handicap, and even if it were, it would not be a barrier to success.
QuoteI know you say you didn't mention a cause. This is pretense; you clearly are. Not only that, with your false analogy with dog breeds, you are arguing for a specific biological and biologically-inherited cause.
Dog breeds have arisen since humans have been around. In an even larger number of generations, we are to expect that no significant differences between groups of humans have arisen?
Of course they have. Skin color, sickle cell anemia, and hair texture are just some of these heritable characteristics. Intelligence is another such heritable characteristic, and on this science does largely agree. Applying it to race is just as trivial as applying it to families. The failure of "scientific consensus" to reach the racial conclusion is a byproduct of political correctness... the same with other "scientific consensuses" about things like secondhand smoke or global warming. Look at where the $$$ for much of science comes from... government. That inherently biases the results that government-funded scientists reach. We're in a scientific environment that is more toxic than the environment in which Galileo asserted, against the church, that the earth revolved around the sun.
QuoteWhat distinguishes you from the leftist is that you don't think this warrants "white-guilt" or redistribution of wealth.
Of course not. That is the only item which matters in the context of Objectivism. Objectivism is silent as to the differences between groups of men. In fact Ayn Rand even commented on the white man vs. Indians more harshly than anything that I've said...
Quote"Indians had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages .... Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights – they didn't have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal 'cultures' – they didn't have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using."
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44 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:
NAZIS CREATING DIVISION.
How does merely saying "it's okay to be white" create any sort of division? If they are saying that it creates division, then they are in fact the ones creating division by saying so. IOTBW should be as non-controversial a statement as "A is A."
41 minutes ago, Grames said:Every university administration that over reacted to this with witch hunts and counseling sessions is broadcasting to the world that is not okay to be white.
I'm re-quoting this because I think it got lost in all of the noise. This is all the evidence that we need that there is an anti-white bias which needs to be addressed. A counseling session over encountering a poster with a true statement on it? Are white people that scary?
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5 hours ago, 2046 said:
Cart, you're the kinda dude that would go to a neo-Nazi rally and shout "blood and soil! Blood and soil!" and the be all, what I'm not a Nazi, I'm just supporting cardiovascular health and botany!
And you're the kinda dude that passively trolls people and gets away with it because of the toxic environment that people like you have created... and perpetuate. You respond to legitimate arguments not with legitimate arguments, but with genetic fallacy assaults on things' alleged origin. And then you fail to consistently apply your fallacy...
5 hours ago, 2046 said:At least BLM has a legitimate set of grievances in opposing police brutality
I agree that BLM has a legitimate set of grievances, but the movement has been infiltrated by cop-killing terrorists. It also originated based on the "hands up, don't shoot" lie of Michael Brown who attacked a cop and witnesses report did not have his hands up at all... and officer Wilson was exonerated.
If you oppose saying "its okay to be white" because of a few bad apples, then you should also oppose "black lives matter" under the same circumstances. At least I am consistent in saying that both phrases, and both groups, have legitimate grievances apart from the few crazies in the movement.
And IOTBW doesn't have a legitimate set of grievances? There isn't an anti-white bias in our culture? When movies and shows like Dear White People exist? When white people are blamed for every mass shooting carried out by a white person? When affirmative action exists?
5 hours ago, 2046 said:and didn't peddle racial IQ junk science.
Still waiting on you or anybody else to give me a single number which disproves anything that I've said.
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8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:
I haven't yet listened to the interview you've provided and I don't know when or if I will be able to, but just to mention, I don't consider support for affirmative action and racism to be mutually exclusive; rather, I consider affirmative action itself to be racist.
I would consider it to be racist, too... but his opponents wouldn't have.
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:But these sorts of measures are equally as susceptible to the sorts of environmental factors we've discussed as any IQ test.
Objectivism holds that individuals have the capacity for free will... to think or not to think. That is a form of causation itself which is dependent on the individual, not on his environment.
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:If the problem (or part of it) we find in rates of patent application, for instance, is attributable to literacy rates, or diet, or the general state of education (or disease, or warfare, or etc., etc.), then we're agreed that these are problems;
I'll grant you disease, but the general state of education and warfare are human-caused events. Why is it a problem that persists among many African countries and almost no European ones? MisterSwig says it's the Enlightenment. But Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea never had an Enlightenment, and at one point all of them were just as war-torn and uneducated as Africa. Nowadays they're doing very well for themselves. Why is Africa lagging behind?
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:but it isn't the same as the claim you've also made, which is that blacks are genetically intellectually inferior -- and I wish that you would stop running from this claim by trying to conflate it with other variables. Illiteracy can be a problem for blacks or whites, but that isn't what we're discussing. It seems instead to be the motte for your bailey.
I apologize for using that tactic... as you can see, even saying "it's okay to be white" is controversial. If I actually said, "blacks are genetically intellectually inferior to whites" then how do you think that would go over around here? Not very well.
Plus it is an incomplete explanation of my views. I do agree with you that a good portion of the difference in IQ is environmental. I disagree that all of it is environmental. It might not be that much, maybe only 10% genetic. But to say that it's all environmental ignores that the difference persists across vastly different environments, such as Africa and the United States.
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:Close. I'm saying that if environmental factors can account for the differences we observe (in IQ tests, etc.) -- and I think that they can -- then we do not need to suppose unproven genetic factors (especially contra the work of evolutionary biologists like Gould). If sunlight and water suffice to explain the blooming flower, we do not need to invoke fairies.
But if fairies had been scientifically demonstrated to pollinate other flowers, we would have to ask ourselves if fairies had pollinated the flowers we were looking at.
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:The potential environmental factors at work are myriad, are legion, and I don't know how we would correct "for every known environmental factor" even if we could look at human populations in laboratory conditions, which we cannot. Suppose for a moment that blacks are generally treated differently than whites in the US, and that (broadly) this has an effect on self-esteem; don't you think that's the sort of thing which might show up in statistic measures of success down the line, including high school dropout rates and etc.?
Except they're treated better than whites. They're given welfare handouts at a huge rate, and are given preferential treatment in college applications and many private sector jobs through affirmative action. Racial discrimination has been illegal in the US for 50 years. "Black is beautiful" is an acceptable thing to say.
Now you could argue that these things are actually deleterious to blacks... and I would agree... but to say that it would negatively affect their self-esteem? And negatively affect it to an extent that they couldn't succeed at high school, or IQ tests? That's quite a claim to make. I was bullied relentlessly throughout high school and I suffered from a disability, and I had low self-esteem, I still graduated not only high school, but college as well... with exemplary grades.
Additionally, what about the other side? Our society piles a lot of guilt on white people. Why shouldn't that negatively affect white IQ scores in the same way? Why are only blacks affected by this environmental factor of being "treated differently" and having "low self-esteem?"
Also, why does this self-esteem issue not show up for blacks in suicide rates? Blacks are actually three times less likely to commit suicide than whites in the United States. You'd think if they were treated so badly, they'd be more likely to kill themselves.
8 minutes ago, DonAthos said:We should note that this does not take into account any individual's efforts to rise above his circumstances, but if we're looking at populations with significant discrepancies in their initial context, I would not be surprised to find those patterns hold with respect to statistical measures of the general population over time.
I see no good reason why Africa can't lift itself out of poverty just like the Asian Tigers did.
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2 minutes ago, 2046 said:
You're neither needed or wanted for any of those things to happen.
I never said that I was.
2 minutes ago, 2046 said:Okay good, then since no one in here is challenging your whiteness, then you are cleared to shut up about it. Kay? Go elsewhere.
It's okay to be white. And it's okay for me to say so.
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5 minutes ago, 2046 said:
So you can quote oodles of "race realist" pseudoscience about average IQs and the non sequiturs derived thereof,
Attacking me won't make it so that more Africans can read and write. Attacking me won't make Nigeria become a patent powerhouse. Attacking me won't make more Africans or black inner-city kids graduate from school. Attacking me won't make IQ scores go up. Calling these numbers "pseudoscience" doesn't make them go away.
Tell me, do you have a single number that you can point to which says that I'm wrong?
Quotebut you can't quote a single person in here who said it's not okay to be white?
I never made the assertion that anybody in here had said "it's not okay to be white."
However, you said that it is NOT okay for me to say "it's okay to be white." Because a few other people also said it who are racists.
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2 minutes ago, 2046 said:
May wanna recheck your fallacies, brah.
'Twas a joke, brah.
2 minutes ago, 2046 said:Where one should enthusiastically agree with and spread the message of any triviality, such as "being white" or "I like to breathe air" or "food is good for you,"
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things is under attack by the Left in this country. The others are not. That makes it non-trivial.
4 minutes ago, 2046 said:even if Hitler were in fact correct about these things, it is just dumb to support him.
Where am I supporting Hitler, or neo-Nazis?
6 minutes ago, 2046 said:Also, who said it's not okay to be white? White privileged? Who in this thread? Where? In the OP? Point them out. Who says "it's not okay to be white"?
Do you have a problem with me saying "it's okay to be white?"
Then you're part of the problem.
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34 minutes ago, DonAthos said:
the consensus is that there is, as yet, no consensus.
Because the science is being influenced by politics. This would not be the first time that scientists have been afraid to speak out in fear of being ostracized politically. The science is certainly present, and you don't need to be a scientist to observe a correlation between race and IQ.
This interview that Sam Harris conducted with the author of the 1994 book The Bell Curve should give you an indication of the state of science today. This man supports affirmative action and was still called racist for his book's findings.
34 minutes ago, DonAthos said:I am not convinced that these tests measure intelligence, as such (and/or further that there is no relationship between one's environment, or learning, and success at these tests).
That is why I have also used other metrics, such as the patent application rate, the educational attainment rate, and high school dropout rate. I have presented a plethora of numbers to back up my case... my opponents in this thread have presented zero numbers.
34 minutes ago, DonAthos said:If those environmental factors are sufficient to account for our results (and I believe that they are), then I see no call to introduce additional, unsubstantiated (genetic) factors.
The assertion you are making here is that 100% of the difference between race and intelligence can be attributed to environmental factors. This is quite an extraordinary claim since genetics are already known to influence IQ quite heavily. What environmental factors would you propose that are so strong that they can account for the difference? Also bearing in mind that even correcting for every known environmental factor still results in a racial IQ gap in the United States.
34 minutes ago, DonAthos said:"many Africans simply are unable to grasp concepts like capitalism," which suggests to me not alone some discrepancy in education or diet, but nearly a sub-human categorization.
I would not characterize it as a sub-human categorization, nearly or otherwise. A human is still a human regardless of his intellectual capacity. However a basic level of education is required in order to grasp capitalism and why it is a superior--and necessary--economic system. Many Africans are illiterate. How can you grasp these concepts if you cannot even read about it? Perhaps if more of them learned to read, more of them would be able to grasp concepts like capitalism. Africa is not forever doomed to failure. -
2 minutes ago, Grames said:
Set us straight here. Do you believe in blood guilt and/or original sin? Because invoking those crimes of the past is same thought process.
Also he forgets to mention affirmative action and racially-imbalanced welfare transfers. Apparently the sins of the father are only the sins of the son if you're white.
2 minutes ago, Grames said:I am not guilty, and I am okay with being white.
No, how dare you say that! Hitler said the same thing! That means that you're literally Hitler!
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13 minutes ago, 2046 said:
If it's a belief you never espoused, it's pretty difficult to rule out, since you are entirely tone deaf to your own pronouncements.
Where exactly have I demonstrated such tone deafness?
QuoteHitler: it's okay to be white!
Normal people: oh hey, that's irrelevant in the context of everything you stand for.
You: Ah, well guys, I mean uh, technically he's right, let's all spread the message!
2046, meet the Genetic Fallacy. Genetic Fallacy, meet 2046.
Of course I'm going to spread the message because it's in my rational self-interest to do so. It's okay to be white. It's okay to be black, too... it's okay to be a member of any race. There are those who say that it's not okay to be white because of white privilege. I'm refuting those people.
QuoteOh yes that fake "evil racist plot" of generations of actual slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional legal discrimination, I'm glad I have your objectivity to set me straight, bro.
None of which have existed in this country for half a century. We've also had affirmative action and massive redistribution of wealth in the form of the welfare state.
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Just now, softwareNerd said:
Maybe you should read your own posts.
I never said "black skin causes a lower IQ" or anything even remotely similar. I'd challenge you to find a quote of mine where I said that.
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Quote
Causation
How is it that people end up arguing in unison against something that I never said, or a belief that I never espoused? Is there some secret strawman playbook that you're all reading from?
Yesterday I was accused of arguing for race realism; today I'm accused of arguing for racial causation of intelligence. I suppose that I'll get accused of supporting eugenics next. People really need to start reading my posts not for the argument that they hope that I'm making because it's easier to attack, but for the actual position that I am defending.
41 minutes ago, softwareNerd said:You should get some papers that explain how various variants of twin-studies are designed.
If you're trying to determine: which breed of dog is faster on average, a chihuahua or a greyhound, you don't take two greyhounds and compare them to each other. You take a group of greyhounds and a group of chihuahuas and race them on a track, then you compare the results between the two groups and correct for confounding variables. Maybe the track was colder on the day that the greyhounds raced. Maybe the chihuahuas were fed different dog food. But scientists can design studies to correct for confounding variables. That's how IQ studies are designed. They compare across variables.
Also, dogs are the same species yet they can have vastly different levels of speed, size, intelligence, etc. depending on their breed.
Same thing with cats, horses, elephants, and many other animal species. Why is the same thing not true of human beings? It would be a form of special pleading to argue that we are different from all other animals when it comes to variation within our species, which all other species have, that we don't have. It would also be special pleading to say that, okay, maybe those differences do exist with respect to certain heritable traits (incidence of lactose intolerance among Asians, or sickle cell anemia among blacks) but not other heritable traits (intelligence). Especially in the face of overwhelming evidence such as high school dropout rates, educational attainment, IQ scores, and number of patents per capita. Every indicator but the kitchen sink. Are you telling me that they're all 100% environmental?40 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:Are you primarily concerned with evidence of corelation, or evidence of causal efficacy?
As I said, nothing I have posted is about causal efficacy. I do not know the cause of lowered IQ among black people, but it's not their skin color and I never said that it was. The cause of darker skin color is the sun and genetic adaptation in response to the sun. The cause of lowered average IQ is unknown and requires further research.
However, we can still say that the two are correlated. A correlation is all that we need to defeat the notion that black people haven't succeeded in America as well as whites because of some evil racist plot to keep them down. They haven't succeeded because they are less intelligent on average. I am still waiting for somebody to present me evidence that, in fact, black people on average are just as capable as whites are intellectually.
41 minutes ago, softwareNerd said:No, it would not. It may give some rationalizers fodder, but they hardly need it.
But as you claim, they do need it because no correlation can be shown to exist.
You say that derisively. Do you believe that it is improper to blame a man for his own failures? That it is improper to blame a group of men for their own failures? That is what Objectivism is all about, personal responsibility. There is no room in Objectivism for white guilt--or white pride. There is merely room to say that it's okay to be white, because there is nothing "wrong" with being a member of any race.
21 minutes ago, softwareNerd said:One would end up proving that white privilege is more than real: that it is going to endure and that there's nothing anyone can do to change it! Won't that be tragically ironic?
It indeed would be ironic, but that wouldn't change reality. Lots of things are ironic and also true.
It's ironic that transgenderism is increasingly a thing in an age where gender roles matter less and less and we would expect more people to be happy with whatever gender they are.
It's ironic that the death penalty is being abolished in many countries around the world just as DNA evidence is coming about that makes a guilty conviction more of a sure thing than it was when we hung men left and right without any such evidence.
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And making such a bold claim about your opponent is yet another example of why I regard you as a troll.
Let me break down "privilege" for you. Individuals are responsible for themselves. Privilege is irrelevant to individual success. Education and reason are relevant. Nothing is keeping black people from succeeding in America, or in Africa, except themselves... not their environment. Not racism from 50 years ago which not only no longer exists, but has actually been reversed. Nor the remnants of colonialism, AKA most of Africa's infrastructure that white people built for them. Next.
And Craig, Professor 2046 forgot to mention that this should be at least six pages long, and is due by Friday.
Hey man, you have no idea how many bottles of Mountain Dew died to give me the high energy to respond to all of your posts.