Talk:Human Varieties

Open Psych pseudo-journal

I questioned this journal about their pre-publication peer-review/referee process, it turns out there is virtually none. Yet they promote this stuff as "peer reviewed". It's a total fraud-

Due to the political animosity, getting reviewers is difficult. This of course allows critics to claim that things were not reviewed properly afterwards. A silly argument based on self-censorship and political pressure.

It is the same tactic used with the Pioneer Fund. First make it impossible to obtain funding for important research due to political animosity, then after people get money from the PF, say research is unreliable because funded by 'racists'.

Fuerst wrote earlier who was approached for the role of reviewer:

http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...26#pid3226 http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...46#pid3246 http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...84#pid3284 http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...95#pid3295

But apparently very difficult to get anyone to review this. So John settled for:

Kevin MacDonald's review http://openpsych.net/forum/showthread.ph...81#pid3381

So the only referee or academic that peer-reviewed for John Fuerst's book on race was Kevin MacDonald - a biased racist anti-Semite who shares the same political views as John, who's background is not even in biology or genetics. He's not even a scientist, but a retired psychologist who currently is the leader of a neo-Nazi party (American Third Position). Krom (talk) 11:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Wow, nice sleuthing. Please incorporate. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 13:29, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Rewrite needed

This article makes some unfounded allegations and includes material that is irrelevant to the topic. It needs to be rewritten.

(Claim 1) "Human Varieties (HV) is an HBD website that hosts pseudoscientific and racist blog-posts."

a. I would like to see a justification for the claim that HV host "pseudoscientific" posts given the Rationalwiki's definition of this. If you can point them out I will delete them.

In some of the posts, I do discuss a minimalist race concept; however similar concepts are advanced by respectable academics such as M. Hardimon in "Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism (2017)". If you are going to claim that HV in "pseudoscientific" on this account, then you have to allow me to create pages for every one else that advanced minimalist race concepts.

b. I would like to see a justification for the claim that HV is "racist" given the Rationalwiki's definition of this. Racism is defined as: "the belief that humans can be meaningfully defined into biological ethnic categories in order to seperate supposed superior from inferior races and/or generally showing discrimination or hostility against a person(s) on the basis of their race.[2][3]"

We do not propose race concepts for the purpose of separating "supposed superior from inferior races". We do talk about, at times, race differences in specific traits -- and conjecture or suggest that these could have some genetic bases -- however we make no claim of intrinsic or overall superiority or inferiority. If you are going to claim that HV in "racist" for discussing phenotypic differences and for conjecturing about genetic ones, then you have to allow me to create pages for everyone else who posits some genetic differences. For example, one of my interlocutors, Stanford Fellow Chanda Chisala, has argued, over at UNZ Review, that Africans have a genetic advantage over Europeans. If this is how we are going to define racism, I should be able to then make a page claiming he is "racist". Note, I do not treat IQ as a mark of superiority -- if only for self-interested reasons -- so when I discuss differences in IQ, I do not imply superiority or inferiority in some value sense, but rather different distribution.

The section on medipedia is out of place – it is only used to smear my colleagues at HV.

The section on John Fuerst should be moved to the John Fuerst page -- it should not be used to impugn by collegues reputation. As for that:

I don’t recall stating that it was “peer reviewed”. Please provide a citation. Please justify the claim that Occientalist was "racist" and therefore "far-right". I submit that that blog itself was not racist given rationalwiki's definition. The issue, I guess, comes down to what is meant by:

“in order to seperate supposed superior from inferior races”

I don't propose minimalist concepts of race “in order to” – I apply this same concept to strawberry-lineages, which I don’t necessarily consider to be “superior” to one another.

And I only note trait differences. And I don't consider these traits to be markers of general “superiority”. (Obviously, I don’t think that anyone who has a higher IQ than me is “superior” to me – I am too vain for that! The same logic applies on the population level.) The only sense in which I think that some groups are “superior” to another is in the sense of “better at” or “different from” in specific traits. For example: “on average, men are better at mixed martial arts than women”. If you want to consider claims about trait distributions to be “racist” or “sexist” or “elitist” let me know, so I can start creating pages for everyone that recognizes and discussed these.^{— Unsigned, by: "Chuck" / talk / contribs}

Response:

• Yes this article needs a re-write, but your edits are totally unacceptable. You're deceptively trying to present yourself as a moderate, when you're an anti-Semite, hard-core racist with white nationalist political views.
• Your race theory is pseudo-science; you define race so it cannot be falsified. No two populations are genetically identical and since you argue against any quantitative threshold of genetic differentiation, race to you = genes. How can someone falsify the existence of genes? This nonsense is already covered on racialism: "There are undoubtedly no two genetically identical populations in the world; this has nothing to do directly with the validity of race" (Hiernaux, 1963).
• Your key argument is "I'm not prejudiced, but..." that you take to its Reductio ad absurdum. No one is fooled by it.
• You're affiliated with an institution founded by Richard Lynn (currently its president) who argues "Negroids" are inferior: "Who can doubt that the Caucasoids and the Mongoloids are the only two races that have made any significant contributions to civilization?", so the argument you use that you aren't a supremacist is foolish. The argument you use has been used by white supremacists before with the Mankind Quarterly (that your institute currently publishes) e.g. Template:Wp1. Garrett wrote "the history of Black Africa over the past 5,000 years is largely a blank", and that blacks innately have significantly lower IQ's than whites, but denied he was a white supremacist because he acknowledged blacks had some music talent. That's your argument. No one takes it serious.Welliver (talk) 01:00, 20 August 2017 (UTC)