The week in FITs

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In a summary, I write,

my vote for the most impressive item this week is the podcast with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. Both of them demonstrated steelmanning twice (each one separately steelmans Kmele Foster at the end), with McWhorter also scoring two caveat points and one Open to changing his mind point.

Do you agree that this podcast showed two intellectuals at the top of their game?

11 thoughts on “The week in FITs”

  1. I listened to the podcast and think it is a real plus that two black intellectuals of high standing utterly disavow the victimization grift and fault the the blacks and whites who support it. However, they are obviously of the opinion that average race differences in school performance and otherwise are purely cultural, yet it is clearly established that there is substantial genetic component as well. So I can’t say that Loury and McWhorter are “at the top of their game,” while they ignore the elephant in the room. Why should this be such a problem exclusively with respect to blacks? Nobody seems to be upset over higher average performance of Asians over whites.

    • They know (like personally, both of them know), but it asks too much.

      It’s enough for whites to stop responding to these disparate impact attacks. Blacks don’t necessarily need to openly acknowledge The Bell Curve, whites just need to stop responding to agitation based on its denial. That may require them to acknowledge it, but asking someone to accept their own peoples inferiority is a lot.

      • >—“The Bell Curve, whites just need to stop responding to agitation based on its denial.”

        And yet somehow no one responds to it more ceaselessly than you do.

        Loury and McWhorter understand the Bell Curve a lot better than you do, probably because they have much higher IQ’s than you do as evidenced by their many achievements in fields totally unrelated to race politics.

        They understand that the performance of various ethnic groups on IQ tests has changed many times in the past and at a speed that could not be accounted for by genetic change.

        I agree that this podcast shows two intellectuals at the top of their game even as this comment section shows commenters at the bottom of their game.

  2. Steelmaking of Kmele Foster in this case is a bit too easy. They both say they themselves actually agree with him fundamentally but disagree only at a more worldly level. So the “steelman” here is just the simple version of their own beliefs.

    The podcast is tips. Two men of totally different temperaments each bringing his temperament fruitfully to the issues of the day.

  4. I have a question that I am afraid to learn the answer to, but this seems like the best and only place to ask it online:

    When you posted the first FIT player lists, I ran down the list and thought:

    “this is great, I already follow 80% of these people in some way or another, this will be fun”.

    I assumed it was because you, Arnold, were part of these few small online tribes. An “in-group” game, if you will.

    Now I am worried the players were chosen because they are the only ones?

    To over-generalize, call it:
    – The greater LW / SSC community
    – The greater IDW community
    – The greater GMU community
    – The new substack-erati

    Are these literally the ONLY people and groups in the english speaking online world that traffic in high quality, honest, discourse on important issues?

    I had always assumed there must be more people, thinkers, and groups like these elsewhere that I was not plugged in to – Now I am terrified these are the only ones.

    If so, I have little hope for humanity.

    • +1 I’ve thought about this quite a bit and came to a similar conclusion. Yes, it’s f*cking depressing. The only sanity is in the red states. That’s right, I said it – things are much more reasonable in red land vs. blue land. In addition, the people are much friendlier. Yes, it’s much more religious in red land, but I’ve never ever had to endure indoctrination sessions like those in blue land. Think on that.

    • You are seeing this because this game is looking in the world of politics. Politics, not fear, is the mind killer.

      If we were looking at the world of public intellectuals in the fields of athletic performance, infosec, RKBA, miniature wargaming, or almost anything else I’m into, we would see much, much better public intelectualizing, both at the top and the bottom (except the bottom of the RKBA community, that’s a sewer).

      • @Terry+Holmund,

        I agree: There are smart, well-meaning, intellectually honest people in each of the domains you listed, and I’m sure many hundreds more.

        But none of those individually is in the business of shaping society, and none of them (except maybe infosec or RKBA) will affect my life.

        The decisions made in the political arena certainly will.

        So I guess that was an unmentioned assumption in my original comment. People working on the public discourse of / about / for society as a whole.

    • I don’t think any of the members on my team (Team HA) are in those 4 “communities”
      Noah Rothman
      Bob Wright
      Amanda Ripley
      Peter Dutton (the Naval War College scholar, not the Aussie pol)
      Andrew Erickson

      • Excellent point.

        Looking at the board, your team seems to be doing quite well!

        I am not on a team, so I cannot see the details of each point that has been scored, but it’s great to see none the less.

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