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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

> assumptions which he brilliantly lays bare and then demolishes. He also questions the scientific significance of the research, even if it is true - a phrase he uses a lot.

Absolutely true. Even if it's true, the society should not give ammunition to closet racists with their attempts to stealthily legitimise racism.

Equally so, in the current immigration debacle, we need to call things their own names. What these people mean, but don't say out loud for the fear of instant character assassination by being called out for racism is that they don't want brown people in their countries.

New Yorker bought into this, unfortunately. The author does not want to "help" racial minorities, she wants to label them dumb, an needing compassion, which in reality will lead to even more strong ostracism, and stigmatisation. Nobody have to be "scientifically established to be dumb, and biologically inferior." That's right out of 3rd reich's playbook.

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Where there are differences among humans, I think they should be eligible and encouraged for scientific study. Science doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) care about feelings. I worry that we’ve created a society where “it’s taboo to study that” will blind us all on the path to true understanding.

If we discover facts that we internalize as uncomfortable along the way, it wasn’t the discovery that made those facts exist. Politics can take over after science reveals the facts, but (ideally) not before.

I find it extremely likely that, across all research, that we will find actionable information about what interventions are helpful (and which are not) and blinding ourselves to that in the interest of comfort is undesirable IMO. These could be nutritional, societal, economic, or other and these interventions could serve to lift billions of humans to a better condition.

>Even if it's true, the society should not give ammunition to closet racists with their attempts to stealthily legitimise racism.

So we shouldn't try to find out the truth, lest it be against our interests? That doesn't bode well at all.

The idea that racism is wrong because we all have equal capabilities is preposterous to begin with, why, you might as well justify sexism in that way.

> The idea that racism is wrong because we all have equal capabilities is preposterous to begin with, why, you might as well justify sexism in that way.

Nobody challenges that women are physically weaker then men. Trying to point to this, and scream out of loud as part of some fetish is preposterous, and trying to justify sexism.

Nobody denies that genetics exist. Waging a sneaky campaign to seep into scientific publications to legitimise racism, and attempting to "scientifically pronouncing somebody dumber than others" is preposterous, and is racism.

This vexation of finding scientific basis for somebody's inferiority is exactly what German, and American Nazis did in nineteen thirties, while hiding behind the fig leaf of "doing real science."

> Nobody challenges that women are physically weaker then men.

I have encountered multiple people in my personal life who are offended by the idea that women are physically weaker than men.

There is also plenty of evidence of this in the raging debate surrounding transgender (specifically male to female) individuals and their physical advantages competing against non-transgender women.

So yes, I would say there are many who challenge that notion.

> There is also plenty of evidence of this in the raging debate surrounding transgender (specifically male to female) individuals and their physical advantages competing against non-transgender women.

Yes, this is a huge issue in progressive ideology that is trying to take a local maxima of least-resistance arguments.

There are solid arguments why M2F individuals are not problematic in sports, but "there are no differences" is not one of them. Better ones include, the inherent differences are much smaller after hormonal changes most m2f people undergo, or that elite tier athletics are already self-selecting for the most genetically extreme people anyways, further reducing the difference.

I wonder how many people who throw accusations of "closet X" and "stealth Y" so easily are, in fact, themselves closet X and stealth Y and generalize about other people based on their own carefully hidden prejudices.

I'm always public about my convictions, sometime too public according to the moderators of HN.

Well, to be honest, claiming that people who say A do in fact mean B, is more of an attempt at mind reading of others than just another conviction.

This is frowned upon, because there is no bottom to this race downwards. Anyone can accuse anyone else of being a horrible, rotten human being who just puts up a tolerable facade.

> Anyone can accuse anyone else of being a horrible, rotten human being who just puts up a tolerable facade.

You say this as if human beings are entirely unfamiliar with the use of facades in everyday life (need I mention most women's familarity with "the nice guy"), more so in those domains where power and position are at stake.

No, I wanted to say that we should apply some threshold of evidence before making accusations like this, and we shouldn't apply them onto large groups of people.

Reminds me of Conflict vs Mistake theory. Mistake theorists worry about whether an idea is true. Conflict theorists worry about whether an idea is useful their enemies.

Shifting the argument to "bad faith", "closet X", "stealth Y" is exactly that: It says nothing about whether something true, only that "it helps the bad guys."

These assumptions of sinister motives are unwarranted.

There are a small minority of people who find distortions of the truth aesthetically displeasing and finding things out pleasing, these people often become scientists. (I'm not one of them really, I get off on feelings of smug superiority I get by disagreeing with the "ignorant masses")

"Even if it's true..." isn't a great start to build a policy basis on.

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