For Whom the Bell Curves

[Dark Jaguar]

Thanks for posting. I started watching, but will have to do so in bursts, as it's hard to find time.

I was actually just dating a girl who was all into the Intellectual Dark Web, big Sam Harris fan, and insisted that in spite of the outcome, it's okay and even necessary to Just Ask Questions, lest we embrace ignorance. I told her that making these kinds of distinctions reminds me of people who go out of their way to insist "it's not pedophilia, it's ephebophilia." They're not wrong, but I'll give them the side eye and wonder what their motivations are. Though in this case, it sounds like Murray really is wrong.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure she was all about this book, so I wish I could send this video to her. But she was a terrible and abusive person, so I cut her off completely.

‌There's two things I'd bring up with the "I'm just asking questions" types that tie directly into what you said.

Firstly, there's the fact the questions have already been answered.  Yes, all scientific knowledge is contingent on future evidence, but when they phrase it like this they're acting as though we don't yet have enough evidence to base our behavior on, which is very much not the case.  Go ahead, "ask the question" in the form of conducting a survey, but if you're trying to tell the average person on the street they need to "ask the question", you're not helping, you're hurting.

The second of course is the context of their questions.  It's just like the ephebophilia people.  The question to always ask yourself is "Why are they bringing this up in THIS conversatoin?".  The people who bring up the Bell Curve and want to "ask questions" about links between intelligence and the genes for what we as a society consider "racial markers" always seem to bring it up when when we're talking about racial inequality.  Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it gives the game away.  These people aren't proposing a study in an acedemic setting, they're offering it in the middle of a discussion about how to resolve societal issues.  The pedo/ephebo stuff is the same way.  They're not getting involved in an intellectual discussion about specific definitions as listed in the DSM-V, they're just reflexively shouting it out in online threads where people are- say- criticising "appealing to pedophiles" in a lot of Japanese media.  Things that make you go "hmmm".