A beginner's guide to the Redpill Right

I see it as like a Jedi/Sith thing where the outcome depends on which side recruits them first, except instead of having magic powers they have the power to whine about not getting what they thought was coming to them.

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I think scientism is a perfectly fine term for people who like to use the trappings of science (citing papers, appealing to scientific authorities) without regard for the substance of science (whether the findings of the papers they cite are supported by a larger body of evidence, whether the “scientific authorities” are people who actually know what they’re talking about and can provide evidence to support their positions). For a good definition of scientism for people who value actual science, see here.

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Funnily enough, all those “Dark Enlightenment” dorks often refer to themselves as Sith.

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I guess that hurt, reading a post that hits so close to home?

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Again, I think you’re being a little short-sighted there.
The “I must be better than everyone else” mindset is prevalent in places like India with the caste system, in the Middle-East with the Shia/Sunni divide, in North Korea and any other place where there are divisions. Sometimes it’s racial, sometimes religious, sometimes political.
I fully get what you’re saying about assholes, but singling out one group tends to be a little disingenuous.
We all do it though, as we tend to become wrapped up in our particular locales.

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I’m not sure about the label HBD, and you may be right that it is used mainly by people who are politically motivated. Studying differences between ‘races’ (or whatever you want to call groups of people with common ancestry) is not anti-science of politically motivated in itself though. Specifically, I think that the leftist notion that “racial categories are genetically meaningless” is false. But I don’t want to have that whole discussion again.

Well played.

Your eloquence nicely matches your brilliance.

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So when you are interacting with people in your daily life and want to know what gender they are, which do you check? Their DNA or their genitals?

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Right, and I’m not trying to discount that, but in America (and Britain and Australia and Canada) it’s white men with the privilege, and this discussion is about politics among internet users in English-speaking first world countries, is it not? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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God created humanity with fifteen genders, but for a joke told us that there were only two.

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Yeah. Few people willingly enter a discussion debate that they’re sure to lose.

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You’re probably correct there.
I’m just plantin’ seeds.
:smile:

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I’m happy to argue with you, but I think we should do it via PM, since last time it derailed the thread. If you think you have an argument that refutes my claim, I’m happy to hear it. I encourage you to read through the debate I linked in the “race and genetics” thread I linked above, so I don’t have to repeat myself.

One of the best takedowns of Objectivism was in Bioshock:

These sad saps. They come to Rapture thinking they’re gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody’s gotta scrub the toilets.

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I generally agree with you, but there are genetic factors affecting race, such as Sickle-Cell Anemia.

Studying such a subject matter is an inherently political endeavor considering the long political history of racial categorization, almost all of which is now known to have been based on the flimsiest of science. Science, particularly science that deals with human subjects, cannot sit outside the wider political context in which it is conducted in. Being aware of this is good scientific practice because it helps keep political biases from creeping into the conclusions.

However I’ll stick with “racial categories are genetically meaningless” (more accurately racial categories have no predictive power with regards to social functioning), because the opposite notion undergirded a hell of a lot of discrimination, exploitation and murder. Yes, lets not get into a long debate on this, but HBD is not an actual scientific field, and is mostly concerned with justifying existing social inequality than discovering why some ethnic groups are more susceptible to a particular hereditary disease.

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Sigh. May this be the end of what could, yes, become derailment:

First of all, we need to say that being of a certain race is not what causes somebody to have the gene variant for Tay-Sachs, or the gene variant for sickle cell. It’s having ancestors who were in a geographic region where those things either occurred by chance or were selected for, as in the sickle cell case. Although many people in the U.S. think sickle cell is a disease of black people, that’s not necessarily true. Sickle cell is found in people in Greece, the island of Orchomenos, in particular, has very high carrier rates for sickle cell. There are also high carrier rates among people on the Arabian peninsula and people in India. There are parts of India where sickle cell carrier rate is as high as it is anywhere in Africa.

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-01-10.htm

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Understanding sickle cell disease is actually quite interesting, and leads to unexpected insights.
Chromosomes come in pairs, so an individual can have zero, one, or two genes for sickle cell disease. With two genes an individual has the disease. With one gene, he or she is a carrier (and has a 50-50 chance of passing the gene on to the next generation) but does not have the disease. (The person will have some sickle cells, but will receive an adequate supply of oxygen. Since sickle cell disease is very serious, one might ask why so may people have it. Why didn’t carriers of the gene die off long ago? It turns out that people who have only one gene are protected against malaria. That is, in malaria-infested areas, they will either not get the disease or will have it in a milder form.

In other words, in historically malaria-infested areas, people without the gene were likely to die of malaria, while those with two copies of the gene were likely to die of sickle cell disease. Over time, an equilibrium was reached, so that an optimal percentage of the population carried the gene—any more or less and a greater percentage of people would die from one or the other disease West Africa, the main historical source of American slaves, had a lot of malaria, and the sickle cell gene was and still is widespread there. However, the gene can also be found in other areas of the world, including Southern Europe (Corsica, Greece, Portugal, Sardinia, Southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain). In addition, the gene is absent in much of southern and eastern Africa In other words, the gene is not associated with a biological race,but rather with a biological disease, malaria. It was an historical accident that caused a correlation of the disease with a social race in the United States.

Edit: to make it clearer this is a quote from the article and not my writing…

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No derailment.
I promise.
Great article.

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