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Vladimir Vilimaitis's avatar

My gut feeling says that HBD-style discussions were less socially acceptable in 2015 than what they are in 2024.

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Argos's avatar

Yes, but that is a phenomenon among the (centrist to right-wing) intellectual elite. So you probably won't see it in data.

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Henry Rodger Beck's avatar

Five-to-ten percent of Americans being hereditarians, with the odds favoring it being on the lower side, is exceptionally believable, and any pretense to otherwise is a rightoid cope.

It's why I'm such a strong proponent of the Cofnas Solution. We are where we are because the continuous propaganda campaign since the Civil Rights Movement to bring us here was a success. Ideas don't approach lizardman-constant popularity numbers merely solely because of fear. The popular rerejection of hereditarianism has been genuine for genenerations now. Only an equally strong countercampaign can break the shell.

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Compsci's avatar

Odd, I remember as a small child the saying my father had often mused, “The apple never falls far from the tree.” Was he an hereditarian? ;-)

My second thought is, does the general population quite know the implication/meaning of the term? I find it hard to believe, say 95% of the people don’t recognize such differences. Just what do they believe is the cause then?

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Henry Rodger Beck's avatar

The majority of people are far from intellectually consistent. Fuzziness and mishmash are hardly uncommon to human thought patterns. True, even today, most people aren't blank slatist enough to literally believe nurture is the only thing that matters. But following through on the idea to its logical conclusion, that races are just very large families, and the average group differences between such are significant, numerous, and mostly not things we can do much about, is at lizardman-constant popularity. It's spoken frankly about only in high-Q rightoid safespaces, among geneticists, certain chudholes, and nowhere else. And these are hardly major spaces.

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Compsci's avatar

Agreed. I see your point. In case of remaining confusion, I agree wholeheartedly with you. A hereditarian myself, I only speak from experience with those who have never consider such in depth. I often wonder whether they speak from ignorance or fear. For me, the discovery/conclusion was a profound and freeing experience, for others I can believe such conclusion is devastating to their world view.

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

What on earth could “lizardman-constant popularity” mean?

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Henry Rodger Beck's avatar

The Lizardman Constant: no matter how absurd the options of a poll question, you will always find a percentage of people who support it on a survey:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/

i.e., "four percent of Americans surveyed by Public Policy Polling in 2013 reported believing the Earth was cobtrolled by lizards."

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

Thanks. I had forgotten about that piece.

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