The first virtue is curiosity. Don’t ask about the Basilisk. It’s a bunch of forum drama of no importance. Don’t ask about the Basilisk. Nobody cared about it ever really. Don’t ask about the Basilisk. I don’t buy it but I won’t describe it here. Don’t talk about the Basilisk.
The second virtue is relinquishment. P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, unless it makes the ingroup look bad.”
The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, for you are above the tawdry politics of the leftist feminist SJWs and can talk in a rational and open manner with the neoreactionaries you totally aren’t one of. But just look at this paper by Jensen, though.
The fourth virtue is evenness. One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?” One who wishes to disbelieve asks, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Extend exemplary charity to your ingroup. The outgroup, of course, are malicious evil liars who are just out to troll you and fuck you up.
The fifth virtue is argument. Those who smile wisely and say: “I will not argue” remove themselves from help, and withdraw from the communal effort. No point is beyond re-examination. And it’s called craniometry these days.
The sixth virtue is empiricism. The roots of knowledge are in observation and its fruit is prediction, particularly prediction that IQ tests mean black people are just dumber.
The seventh virtue is simplicity. You strongly suspect the answer, therefore it is reasonable in Bayesian terms to assume your answer. Only malicious evil liars who are just out to troll you and fuck you up would disagree.
The eighth virtue is humility. Let your humility be like an Everest of humbletude. When you anticipate an error, note it explicitly. This frees you to bypass it and keep going as you were.
The ninth virtue is perfectionism. The more errors you correct in yourself, the more you notice. As you cleanse yourself of the errors of SJWism and feminism, so the vistas of more correct and rational thought open to you. Do not be content with the answer that is almost right; seek one that is exactly right. And as far right as possible. Given how left-leaning you are.
The tenth virtue is precision. One comes and says: The average IQ here is between 110 and 180. Another says: the average IQ here is between 130 and 150. If the average IQ is 142 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. If your IQ measures 90, you are an outlier adn should not be counted; the importance of IQ then becomes to measure groups, specifically not your group.
The eleventh virtue is scholarship. Study many single studies in the finest self-peer-reviewed journals published by your fellow posters, and absorb their power as your own. Each field of race and IQ research that you consume makes you larger. If you swallow enough sciences the gaps between them will diminish and your knowledge will become a unified black whole.
Before these eleven virtues is a virtue which is nameless. But the ingroup will know it.
Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings:
“EPISTEMIC STATUS: nowhere near as certain as I am about to write like my proposition is.”
Every step of your reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement. More than anything, you must think of carrying your map through to reflecting the territory. Because you know the desired territory perfectly well.
*wild applause*
The thirteenth virtue: always get high on your own supply. It’s cool and fun and totally rational.
On the subject of “scolarship”: how do these folks reconcile their self-professed belief in “science”, “genetics” and facts of “basic biology” when the overwhelming majority of actual evolutionary biologists and geneticists, present company included, dismiss HBD, sociobiology and most of evopsych as outright crankery? I mean, among all these genetics-obsessed people, you’d expect one of them to complete a relevant graduate school program, go to one of the larger genomics conferences, or even, you know, *actually talk* to real-life geneticists and see the scientific consensus for themselves. When 99% of the people in the field you profess to draw your conclusions from argue that your beliefs are unscientific and abhorrent, surely that must tell you something?
I’ll freely admit that a large portion of them are acting in bad faith and are not remotely interested in actually working in the field, but people like, say, gwern are much more puzzling. The dude has read an astronomical number of papers, is (from what I understand) mostly recluse and doesn’t seem interested in activism, and has a compulsive interest in GWAS and the like, but has he ever set foot in an actual lab? It feels really weird to read his website; you get that he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the current literature but still doesn’t really know the fact of the matter. Like a car constructor employee who knows every single component in your car but doesn’t have a driving licence, or something.
*ahem*
Have a gold, you glorious bastard.
In essence, cognitive bias? That sounds about right from what I read in those circles.
God. This is so painfully on-point it sort of burns. But in a pleasant way, you know?
Also, points for the Spiders Georg reference.