I’ve seen some posts on this forum discussing HBD as an is/ought issue—something like: HBD is an “is”, racial inegalitarianism is an “ought”, and you can’t derive an ought from an is.
I used to find this argument really compelling, and I still think it’s powerful and underrated. But recently I’ve become more skeptical of it.
I think the is/ought boundary is not actually that firm. For example, consider the statement: “Most communities would be better off if adulterers received severe social sanction.”
You could argue this is an “ought” claim. A person who says “adultery is deeply immoral” is essentially saying we should apply severe social sanction to adulturers.
You could argue this is an “is” claim which is empirically testable. Define a welfare metric, identify some communities, randomly assign half to a “shame adulterers” condition, see how the welfare metric is affected.
In the same vein, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, there’s a good chance you don’t decouple as much as you think. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry even though people claim ads don’t affect them. Humans are vulnerable to biases like the affect heuristic. We aren’t perfect logical reasoners, especially when tribal politics are involved. The “pipeline” you describe may go to show that lots of “high decoupler” types are low-decoupling in practice.
And, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, you have to acknowledge that the world is full of “low decouplers”. I strongly agree with the arguments Coleman Hughes makes in this discussion with Charles Murray, re: negative societal effects of widespread HBD discussion.
I think a reasonable takeaway from the recent SBF tragedy is that on the margin, we should defer more to mainstream elite opinion (in SBF’s case, crypto skepticism). And mainstream elite opinion says you don’t talk about race & IQ. Maybe that’s an adaptive response to an information hazard. Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind.
What follows from a belief about differences depends on a persons moral framework. Most people have reasonable moral frameworks and so nothing heinous follows. And most people without henous beliefs do not want to be lumped in with people with heinous beliefs (as is extremely common). So they just do not talk about this stuff, further skewing the public impression of your average believer in differences.
What I think happens is that some people think that since it would be unjust for genetic disparities to exist, then genetic disparities do not exist. That’s mixing up is and ought. We have no strong reason to think that the world is just. In tons of other domains, the world is incredibly unjust.
The current taboos are not really chesterton’s fense. People used to say all sorts of wildly offensive things not that long ago. Think of how rapidly our culture has come to accept transgenderism and how recently it was acceptable to mock cross-dressing.
Thanks for writing this!
I’ve seen some posts on this forum discussing HBD as an is/ought issue—something like: HBD is an “is”, racial inegalitarianism is an “ought”, and you can’t derive an ought from an is.
I used to find this argument really compelling, and I still think it’s powerful and underrated. But recently I’ve become more skeptical of it.
I think the is/ought boundary is not actually that firm. For example, consider the statement: “Most communities would be better off if adulterers received severe social sanction.”
You could argue this is an “ought” claim. A person who says “adultery is deeply immoral” is essentially saying we should apply severe social sanction to adulturers.
You could argue this is an “is” claim which is empirically testable. Define a welfare metric, identify some communities, randomly assign half to a “shame adulterers” condition, see how the welfare metric is affected.
In the same vein, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, there’s a good chance you don’t decouple as much as you think. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry even though people claim ads don’t affect them. Humans are vulnerable to biases like the affect heuristic. We aren’t perfect logical reasoners, especially when tribal politics are involved. The “pipeline” you describe may go to show that lots of “high decoupler” types are low-decoupling in practice.
And, even if you believe you’re a “high decoupler”, you have to acknowledge that the world is full of “low decouplers”. I strongly agree with the arguments Coleman Hughes makes in this discussion with Charles Murray, re: negative societal effects of widespread HBD discussion.
I think a reasonable takeaway from the recent SBF tragedy is that on the margin, we should defer more to mainstream elite opinion (in SBF’s case, crypto skepticism). And mainstream elite opinion says you don’t talk about race & IQ. Maybe that’s an adaptive response to an information hazard. Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind.
What follows from a belief about differences depends on a persons moral framework. Most people have reasonable moral frameworks and so nothing heinous follows. And most people without henous beliefs do not want to be lumped in with people with heinous beliefs (as is extremely common). So they just do not talk about this stuff, further skewing the public impression of your average believer in differences.
What I think happens is that some people think that since it would be unjust for genetic disparities to exist, then genetic disparities do not exist. That’s mixing up is and ought. We have no strong reason to think that the world is just. In tons of other domains, the world is incredibly unjust.
The current taboos are not really chesterton’s fense. People used to say all sorts of wildly offensive things not that long ago. Think of how rapidly our culture has come to accept transgenderism and how recently it was acceptable to mock cross-dressing.