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Comment by kevinpet | Hacker News Reader

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word "overt", to me, still has meaning.

So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of.

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I suspect that the author is using the term "racist" differently than you use it. The Bell Curve explicitly argues that some racial groups are inherently, biologically less intelligent than others. In the author's view, that in itself is overtly racist (because it argues that one racial group is genetically inferior to another racial group), no matter how much intellectual argument is presented or how gently it is stated. Perhaps you use the word differently, and believe that something is only racist if the author hates people on the basis of race.

It could be argued that they use it precisely because of the ambiguity. The word retains an aura of taboo and evil and one of the worst things a person can be. Then you redefine it to use it against a broader set of people but continue to harvest the power of the previous connotation. A variant of the euphemism treadmill. Instead of dropping a tarnished word and transitioning to a clean fresh one to describe the same thing, you keep using the tarnished word but for a different thing.

Closely related is the "motte and bailey" tactic: depending on the situation you sometimes use the word in an milder sense (new meaning of racist, "we are all a little bit racist", it's just unconscious biases or beliefs about any difference between races), but when people aren't looking you switch definitions (old definition, worst possible thing, "some races must be subjugated and kept away from our social circles as they are subhuman and incapable of participation by their nature and will poison our bloodline").

Indeed many critics of the new social justice movements would have this as the main argument: that SJ uses equivocation in this way as the rule, not the exception.

This seems to all hinge on an overly specific definition of 'overt'.... while it's definition is something done openly with no attempt to hide, sometimes it is used for effect, to say something unintended is actually so apparent that it almost seems like it must have been done intentionally.

You might want words to be narrowly defined and used, but that isn't how language works.

It's redefining words to retain "the punch", while being able to use it widely.

This is how Google now ended up being called "white supremacist" for firing a black AI ethicist (it was retweeted by a director of AI at Nvidia).

You can say (with a straight face?) that's just how language evolves, but I would find that deeply cynical.

> So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of.

What the gp describes only works if you are tolerant of other people's errors to some extent. You can't let a few things like you describe derail you. Remember your own beliefs, it may be the case that you are right and the inaccuracy you discovered is a linchpin in their incorrect system of ideas. Or it might be some little piece of information that is accepted as a truism in their bubble so people throw it around when it seems appropriate, but its not an essential part of their argument.

The main thing is that you want to understand the author's perspective. why did they consider the bell curve to be overtly racist? perhaps they are defining racism differently than you (this is almost certainly the case [0]).

It does you no good to read books by people you disagree with in order to understand them better if you're gonna get derailed when they say something that seems obviously false to you.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/

The more I read such works and try to abstract away from their exaggetared use of words, the more I find it to be like those inflatable air "houses" or potemkin villages. Once you take away the punch, the urgency and the strength of the words themselves, there's little left.

The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagree with.

You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.

> The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagree with.

I agree with this. However you have then arrived at the basic truth that underlies the distorted version you were originally exposed to. So then you can discuss the issue with the person using a set of shared assumptions and perhaps bring them around to the steel manned version. Now you have changed their mind. If they then say "what about this <more preferred, less supportable version> that I started out with" they are more open to your summarized dismissal "that doesn't work because of w, x, y, and z"

> The more I read such works

You're not justified in labeling a work as this kind of work until the process here has been done. You may have been exposed to a weaker version and dismissed that because of fallacies, while a stronger version exists. You can't dismiss the stronger version without examination merely because it reaches the same conclusions as the weaker version you were exposed to.

> You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.

I think my independent study of scientology was fruitful for my understanding of how someone becomes possessed by ideology. Studying scientology under the supervision of scientologists is dangerous because they prevent you from critically examining the ideas.

The Bell Curve is filled to the brim with shoddy pseudoscience and clearly supports racist ideas that have been thoroughly debunked as summarized here https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo. If you want to nitpick on how “overt” it was, fine, but that’s not a charitable way to read an argument you disagree with at all. It honestly sounds like you just found one detail that you disagreed with to call the book tripe.

Isn't the core conceit of The Bell Curve that Black people have lower IQs than white people?

That’s not racist according to HN though :/

This is true in every representative sample of iq test scores (or proxies for iq) in the USA. The debate is over what causes this difference.

It's not the core conceit. Black/white IQ differences were discussed in one chapter. The core conceit is that IQ is real, and it really matters for life outcomes.

I know very little to nothing of the works you cite, so my ideas are to be taken with a grain of salt, but...

I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be? Why isn't that persuasive to you? What sort of person does it persuade and why? Are there other arguments that could persuade you of the same thing? Or of something similar?

Intellectual exchange requires constructing the steel man argument of your counterpart, as impossible as it may seem at times. Underneath, we're all humans, longing for food, shelter, companionship, and stability.

> I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be?

Very often the answer is mundane; 'It's what my parents taught me.' Particularly in the most contentious cases, like religion and politics. It seems like 'born thinking it' vs 'was persuaded' is a false dichotomy, unless you count being steeped in a culture as a child to be a form of persuasion.

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