Just a few2 tidbits from this USian (sorry, turned into a rant): If you look at all of the US constitutional amendments needed to ensure rights for all, you will conclude that we've always been a nation of assholes. And current law and practice goes against these wonderful amendments, primarily in southern states, enabled by the Supreme Joke of a Court. And at the federal level, the Constitution is ignored, because "what are you going to do about it to stop me." Sadly, the US Constitution has no answers regarding how to reign in an out of control Executive Branch defying not just the Constitution but also numerous laws passed by Congress which dictate what the Executive Branch must implement, by law. The courts have so far proven to not have the power to back up their rulings when they are ignored. And Congress is unwilling to act, can only impeach, and that would do no good as would only get rid of Trump (Vance would then take over).
This is an excellent essay that does a great job summarizing the view of modern left. However, what I (and many others) have found is that the reality of immigration and multiculturalism is often hidden by certain taboos. The worldview you espouse inadvertently creates taboos about thinking about or discussing the fundamental differences between human groups that might make the worldview untenable.
I guess that depends on what kind of differences. Are you talking about cultural differences or some kind of assumed biological differences.
Some of these taboos are problematic while others are warranted in my humble opinion. For instance I think that it should be possible to talk about negative aspects of certain cultures.
But having said that I think it is absolutely fair to make it taboo to imply that those cultural differences are rooted in some kind of biological reality. The world has a rather ugly history of such beliefs that we ought to put behind us.
But it is certainly a big challenge for us on the left to both try to embrace those who are different while also being honest about problems that exist within different minority groups. How do you have say an honest discussion about misogyny within Islam without the debate getting hijacked by right-wing populists or extremists who want to use that fact to foment hatred towards a minority.
I have seen e.g. how there are right-wing extremists who have been quite thrilled about the anger towards Israel over the bombing of Palestinians. The criticism against Israel is completely warranted. At the same time plenty of racists piggyback on that criticism to promote something far darker.
There has been a debate quietly unfolding regarding this exact question involving some very influential people on the right. Recommend reading https://ncofnas.com/p/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights. The question is, if there are biological differences, should we maintain the taboo? The problem that people like Cofnas point out is that good people are concerned about disparities between groups and demand that the issue be resolved, so if there are differences we simple cannot maintain the taboo if we want a stable society.
I think that the rise of the "wokism" on the left and populism on right are downstream from these issues - they are both reactions to the disparities.
The discourse on the issue by public intellectuals is generally terrible because they don't seem to even know the basics facts (due to to the taboo). No doubt there are bad people that take advantage of the vacuum to push their own beliefs.
It's a conundrum. Are the differences entirely because of history, or are they partly genetic. If they are genetic, should we tell people?
Something that quietly happened because of this debate (that wasn't really noticed by the press) was that NIH under Trump is lifting its previous restrictions on using genetics research to study group differences (https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there).
I think the best course of action is to fight for a stronger liberal democracy that is proud of its values regardless of what the causes for group differences are.
It shows have there is a straight thread from the Nazis to present day race realists. The various organizations that advanced Nazi ideology, simply change name and rhetoric. Researchers found ways of sugar coating their message to pass in a society that they knew had much less tolerance for their bigotry than the world in which they first came into existence.
And this whole thing is so toxic that even people who pursue this kind of research with the best intentions, frequently end up being useful tools for far-right ideologues.
In short I just don't see what he value is given how the results nearly always end up so bad. I have debate this kind of thing with a lot of people, and I frankly cannot say I have ever encountered anyone who didn't have a rather negative motive for advancing the idea that races are different.
Let me clarify: I do not rule out the possibility, but I have studied this enough to convince me that the differences whatever they might be are rather marginal. The effects are completely dwarfed by cultural, social and economic factors.
I cannot remember there ever being anyone I debated on this who advocated studying possible biological basis for racial differences who were not in some way wanting to advance parts of some white supremacist agenda. I have debate this over many years, and cannot from memory remember when anyone wanted to do race research to help marginalized people.
Quite the opposite, the motivation seems to be to deprive them of resources and opportunities. You can look at someone like Charles Murray. His interest in this is not from a perspective of wanting to improve help to say black people but to actually strip them of government assistance or help.
And he can say whatever he wants about not being a racist, or not being a Nazi or whatever, but when you have overlapping political motives with Nazis, I am just not giving people much benefit of the doubt. Like why should I?
And then the question is who do you actually aid. I never seen the world of Charles Murray actually aid any kind of positive movement. It is always the worst kind of people who quote him. So that would be my argument. If your work always ends up bolster white supremacists and their agenda, then what value exactly was your work? What positive did it contribute to society?
There is so much we can do to improve society, and this kind of research and focus seems to me that ought to have rather low priority. I cannot recall a single instance where it actually helped a minority. But we can keep listing cases where it hurt minorities all week.
Sometimes you got to deal with practical reality. Maybe a certain kind of work might have theoretical benefits. But if every time such type of work is presented it ends with something negative then how many times should we keep repeating this kind of work waiting for a positive result?
Sooner or later we have to accept that this stuff just doesn't work.
I've read that book actually. I tried to read every popular book on the subject, and I think I succeed (there weren't that many of them).
You do bring up a good point that people with strong opinions on hereditarianism usually have some kind of motivation. Like I said, there is a taboo against thinking about the subject, so people who pierced that taboo likely had a reason for doing so.
I think that Charles Murray now supports some form of UBI.
You question about practical reality is the most pertinent one, and that was the thinking behind the NIH blocking research on the topic. If I am being honestly, I don't know exactly how knowledge of group differences would play out, if it were proven. Would it help minorities? I'm not certain. I'd like to think that more knowledge is always better.
I don't think finding group differences would help minorities because the ones primarily pushing that type of research today are not actually seeking to help minorities. Quite the opposite.
I don't think one can really honestly pursue this type of research in the public interest and for the benefit of minorities until we have tackled our deeply rooted problems with racism.
Until that is done, racists will simply use any research on group differences as ammunition to marginalize others.
But also I am highly skeptical that this kind of research will find anything useful based on what we know about modern genetics and populations. First of all our perception of race does not match very well actual genetic population differences.
There was time one believed gene therapy would be this marvelous new frontier, but since then we have learned that so many traits involve so many genes in complex ways.
We struggle today with understanding machine intelligence. Something we built ourselves and can run controlled experiments on. So how exactly are we going to understand things such as human intelligence in a way that allows us to compare races. And then we haven't even tackled the issue race as a biological concept is poorly defined for humans. Most biologist will reject that there are human races.
Human populations have just mixed so much through history that there are so many gradual fading and overlapping between multiple populations. Depending on wha traits you study you can cluster humans into "races" in so many different ways.
Racial categories differ in different cultures. So if we are doing research on traits of different races... then according to the racial categorization of what culture? American? What makes American cultural perception universal?
And in many European countries such as my own there is no concept of "race." I can speak about it now, because I have learned how Americans talk about it. But initially I found it difficult to adapt to American racial thinking as it is not something we engage in.
Most American are very unaware of this because they are often eager to do things like statistical comparisons of racial groups in different countries. But they forget that racial categories would not match those in America elsewhere. And secondly they forget that racial categorization is not a thing in many cultures. There are no forms or registrations in Norway where you could check a box for race. Government research on minorities are not based on race, but more on country of origin.
E.g. in America you have crime statistics categorized on race. There is no such thing in Norway.
That also means anyone talking about percentage of blacks or other races are for the most part doing guess work because there is no registration of race.
As for Charles Murray supporting UBI. Well he wants to tear down the welfare state. So not exactly a surprise. UBI is just a typical libertarian way to get rid of welfare states. But I really do not think that will help minorities.
The devil is in the details. If UBI is a supplement to a welfare state system I think it can definitely be a positive thing. But if it is simply a way to run a welfare system on the cheap, it will likely just be something that will further grow inequality and segregation.
To work as well as current welfare systems, UBI payments have to be quite high, and that is just not financially feasible today. Perhaps in a future significantly richer society. I dunno.
I agree that people often have their own motivations when discussing this topic, but the problem with the "taboo" is that the current racial disparities in the US are moral emergency for many people (understandably), but the public is often completely unaware about the consistent gaps in tests of cognitive abilities. Whatever the cause of these gaps, people need to be aware that the disparities match with them.
It's true that "races" are a social construct, but ancestral populations are not, and they largely map onto our races folk taxonomy. You can determine ancestral populations from DNA tests.
Decades ago the idea was that there was more genetic difference in populations that between them, but with new DNA testing they found structure in the allele frequencies. So, the big question is what differences exist in the population structures.
For UBI, I think with the advances in AI, there is going to be some society wide changes to match the job losses. Possible that most of us will be on UBI soon.
Another great article, and I completely agree.
Just a few2 tidbits from this USian (sorry, turned into a rant): If you look at all of the US constitutional amendments needed to ensure rights for all, you will conclude that we've always been a nation of assholes. And current law and practice goes against these wonderful amendments, primarily in southern states, enabled by the Supreme Joke of a Court. And at the federal level, the Constitution is ignored, because "what are you going to do about it to stop me." Sadly, the US Constitution has no answers regarding how to reign in an out of control Executive Branch defying not just the Constitution but also numerous laws passed by Congress which dictate what the Executive Branch must implement, by law. The courts have so far proven to not have the power to back up their rulings when they are ignored. And Congress is unwilling to act, can only impeach, and that would do no good as would only get rid of Trump (Vance would then take over).
Good arguments.
This is an excellent essay that does a great job summarizing the view of modern left. However, what I (and many others) have found is that the reality of immigration and multiculturalism is often hidden by certain taboos. The worldview you espouse inadvertently creates taboos about thinking about or discussing the fundamental differences between human groups that might make the worldview untenable.
I guess that depends on what kind of differences. Are you talking about cultural differences or some kind of assumed biological differences.
Some of these taboos are problematic while others are warranted in my humble opinion. For instance I think that it should be possible to talk about negative aspects of certain cultures.
But having said that I think it is absolutely fair to make it taboo to imply that those cultural differences are rooted in some kind of biological reality. The world has a rather ugly history of such beliefs that we ought to put behind us.
But it is certainly a big challenge for us on the left to both try to embrace those who are different while also being honest about problems that exist within different minority groups. How do you have say an honest discussion about misogyny within Islam without the debate getting hijacked by right-wing populists or extremists who want to use that fact to foment hatred towards a minority.
I have seen e.g. how there are right-wing extremists who have been quite thrilled about the anger towards Israel over the bombing of Palestinians. The criticism against Israel is completely warranted. At the same time plenty of racists piggyback on that criticism to promote something far darker.
There has been a debate quietly unfolding regarding this exact question involving some very influential people on the right. Recommend reading https://ncofnas.com/p/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights. The question is, if there are biological differences, should we maintain the taboo? The problem that people like Cofnas point out is that good people are concerned about disparities between groups and demand that the issue be resolved, so if there are differences we simple cannot maintain the taboo if we want a stable society.
I think that the rise of the "wokism" on the left and populism on right are downstream from these issues - they are both reactions to the disparities.
The discourse on the issue by public intellectuals is generally terrible because they don't seem to even know the basics facts (due to to the taboo). No doubt there are bad people that take advantage of the vacuum to push their own beliefs.
It's a conundrum. Are the differences entirely because of history, or are they partly genetic. If they are genetic, should we tell people?
Something that quietly happened because of this debate (that wasn't really noticed by the press) was that NIH under Trump is lifting its previous restrictions on using genetics research to study group differences (https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there).
I think the best course of action is to fight for a stronger liberal democracy that is proud of its values regardless of what the causes for group differences are.
I do actually think it is good to retain the taboo, because the whole history of race science is so profoundly ugly right up to the present.
I recommend reading Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/27/superior-the-return-of-race-science-by-angela-saini-book-review
It shows have there is a straight thread from the Nazis to present day race realists. The various organizations that advanced Nazi ideology, simply change name and rhetoric. Researchers found ways of sugar coating their message to pass in a society that they knew had much less tolerance for their bigotry than the world in which they first came into existence.
And this whole thing is so toxic that even people who pursue this kind of research with the best intentions, frequently end up being useful tools for far-right ideologues.
In short I just don't see what he value is given how the results nearly always end up so bad. I have debate this kind of thing with a lot of people, and I frankly cannot say I have ever encountered anyone who didn't have a rather negative motive for advancing the idea that races are different.
Let me clarify: I do not rule out the possibility, but I have studied this enough to convince me that the differences whatever they might be are rather marginal. The effects are completely dwarfed by cultural, social and economic factors.
I cannot remember there ever being anyone I debated on this who advocated studying possible biological basis for racial differences who were not in some way wanting to advance parts of some white supremacist agenda. I have debate this over many years, and cannot from memory remember when anyone wanted to do race research to help marginalized people.
Quite the opposite, the motivation seems to be to deprive them of resources and opportunities. You can look at someone like Charles Murray. His interest in this is not from a perspective of wanting to improve help to say black people but to actually strip them of government assistance or help.
And he can say whatever he wants about not being a racist, or not being a Nazi or whatever, but when you have overlapping political motives with Nazis, I am just not giving people much benefit of the doubt. Like why should I?
And then the question is who do you actually aid. I never seen the world of Charles Murray actually aid any kind of positive movement. It is always the worst kind of people who quote him. So that would be my argument. If your work always ends up bolster white supremacists and their agenda, then what value exactly was your work? What positive did it contribute to society?
There is so much we can do to improve society, and this kind of research and focus seems to me that ought to have rather low priority. I cannot recall a single instance where it actually helped a minority. But we can keep listing cases where it hurt minorities all week.
Sometimes you got to deal with practical reality. Maybe a certain kind of work might have theoretical benefits. But if every time such type of work is presented it ends with something negative then how many times should we keep repeating this kind of work waiting for a positive result?
Sooner or later we have to accept that this stuff just doesn't work.
I've read that book actually. I tried to read every popular book on the subject, and I think I succeed (there weren't that many of them).
You do bring up a good point that people with strong opinions on hereditarianism usually have some kind of motivation. Like I said, there is a taboo against thinking about the subject, so people who pierced that taboo likely had a reason for doing so.
I think that Charles Murray now supports some form of UBI.
You question about practical reality is the most pertinent one, and that was the thinking behind the NIH blocking research on the topic. If I am being honestly, I don't know exactly how knowledge of group differences would play out, if it were proven. Would it help minorities? I'm not certain. I'd like to think that more knowledge is always better.
I don't think finding group differences would help minorities because the ones primarily pushing that type of research today are not actually seeking to help minorities. Quite the opposite.
I don't think one can really honestly pursue this type of research in the public interest and for the benefit of minorities until we have tackled our deeply rooted problems with racism.
Until that is done, racists will simply use any research on group differences as ammunition to marginalize others.
But also I am highly skeptical that this kind of research will find anything useful based on what we know about modern genetics and populations. First of all our perception of race does not match very well actual genetic population differences.
There was time one believed gene therapy would be this marvelous new frontier, but since then we have learned that so many traits involve so many genes in complex ways.
We struggle today with understanding machine intelligence. Something we built ourselves and can run controlled experiments on. So how exactly are we going to understand things such as human intelligence in a way that allows us to compare races. And then we haven't even tackled the issue race as a biological concept is poorly defined for humans. Most biologist will reject that there are human races.
Human populations have just mixed so much through history that there are so many gradual fading and overlapping between multiple populations. Depending on wha traits you study you can cluster humans into "races" in so many different ways.
Racial categories differ in different cultures. So if we are doing research on traits of different races... then according to the racial categorization of what culture? American? What makes American cultural perception universal?
And in many European countries such as my own there is no concept of "race." I can speak about it now, because I have learned how Americans talk about it. But initially I found it difficult to adapt to American racial thinking as it is not something we engage in.
Most American are very unaware of this because they are often eager to do things like statistical comparisons of racial groups in different countries. But they forget that racial categories would not match those in America elsewhere. And secondly they forget that racial categorization is not a thing in many cultures. There are no forms or registrations in Norway where you could check a box for race. Government research on minorities are not based on race, but more on country of origin.
E.g. in America you have crime statistics categorized on race. There is no such thing in Norway.
That also means anyone talking about percentage of blacks or other races are for the most part doing guess work because there is no registration of race.
As for Charles Murray supporting UBI. Well he wants to tear down the welfare state. So not exactly a surprise. UBI is just a typical libertarian way to get rid of welfare states. But I really do not think that will help minorities.
The devil is in the details. If UBI is a supplement to a welfare state system I think it can definitely be a positive thing. But if it is simply a way to run a welfare system on the cheap, it will likely just be something that will further grow inequality and segregation.
To work as well as current welfare systems, UBI payments have to be quite high, and that is just not financially feasible today. Perhaps in a future significantly richer society. I dunno.
I agree that people often have their own motivations when discussing this topic, but the problem with the "taboo" is that the current racial disparities in the US are moral emergency for many people (understandably), but the public is often completely unaware about the consistent gaps in tests of cognitive abilities. Whatever the cause of these gaps, people need to be aware that the disparities match with them.
It's true that "races" are a social construct, but ancestral populations are not, and they largely map onto our races folk taxonomy. You can determine ancestral populations from DNA tests.
Decades ago the idea was that there was more genetic difference in populations that between them, but with new DNA testing they found structure in the allele frequencies. So, the big question is what differences exist in the population structures.
If you are interested, here is some new DNA evidence on human origins: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02117-1
For UBI, I think with the advances in AI, there is going to be some society wide changes to match the job losses. Possible that most of us will be on UBI soon.
Spot on.
I’ve often wondered if my viking heritage is why I’m the way I am. Accepting of others, mostly.
I know it’s why I have a 5’6” 9yo (I was taller than my grandma at 7 🤣)