1150 words

(Ir)RationalWiki (IW) is a Wikipedia-style website, where anyone can edit or create an article on whatever they’d like. They are a left-leaning website, so they, of course, don’t like what they consider to be “right-wingers.” Many “HBDers” have IW articles on them, notable hbdchick, JayMan (though it seems like his article was deleted), Emil Kirkegaard, Anatoly Karlin, and even a new one on the philosopher of biology Nathan Cofnas (see his response here). When I discovered my own article on IW, I laughed, since it grouped me in with “Frogs and Swastikas, AltRight.” Well, I think that the “Pepe the frog” meme is idiotic and childish, and I’m not a Nazi (National Socialist).

In any case, I recently looked at the page and discovered that they finally edited it to reflect my new views. My views changed around April/May 2017 due to two books: DNA is not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes (Heine, 2017) and Genes, Brains, and Human Potential: The Science and Ideology of Intelligence (Richardson, 2017). I would say that before reading these two books that I was a “genetic determinist.” However, Richardson’s work lead me to the work of Denis Noble, Jablonka and Lamb, Susan Oyama, and David Moore and the philosophy of developmental systems theory (DST). My deterministic views (and outdated views on genes and the physiological system) were then cured.

In any case, here is what the new edit says about me now:

RaceRealist started out as a supporter of hereditarianism racist theories about IQ and a fanboy of Richard Lynn and Arthur Jensen, but later to his credit rejected these views. Instead however of giving up all his racialist beliefs, he still defends racialism,[1] albeit minus the IQ pseudoscience. The latter has led to him to be criticised as still being a racist but using a deceptive motte and bailey strategy of trying to present himself as a more moderate non-hereditarian “race realist” when he still retains the old racist IQ beliefs about inferior black people in private. Furthermore, despite claiming to have changed his views on the latter – all his old pro-hereditarianism posts on his blog are still up alongside background photos of white supremacists.[2][3]

The first sentence is true; I did start out as supporter of hereditarianism. When I discovered the work of people like Rushton, Lynn, Kanazawa, and Jensen I thought “Wow, this all makes so much sense and explains why our societies are stratified the way they are.” Though, as mentioned above, I did change my views.

Yes, I do “still defend racialism”, but a softer, non-hereditarian view of human races (Spencer, 2014, Hardimon 2017). These types of arguments about race are non-hereditarian, non-hierarchical. I do agree that “IQ science” is psuedoscience, but the claim that “I still retain [my] old racist IQ beliefs about inferior black people in private” are completely unfounded. How does whoever wrote this know what views I hold in private? Further, they claimed that I “rejected [those] views” in reference to hereditarianism (Jensenism) but then they say that “I still retain [my] old racist IQ beliefs about inferior black people in private”? How does that make any sense?

Further, I have explicitly stated that the terms “superior” and “inferior” are strictly anatomic terms and, outside of that context, make no sense. The head is superior to the feet; the feet is inferior to the head. It seems that the author of this did not read my article Blumenbachian Partitions and Minimalist Races where I explicitly state:

Biological racial realism (the fact that race exists as a biological reality) is true, however, just like with Hardimon’s minimalist races, they do not denote “superiority”, “inferiority” for one race over another. Most importantly, Blumenbachian populations do not denote those terms because the genetic evidence that is used to support the Blumenbachian partition use noncoding DNA. (It should also be noted that the terms “superior” and “inferior” are nonsensical, when used outside of their anatomic contexts. The head is the most superior part of the human body, the feet are the most inferior part of the human body. This is the only time these terms make sense, thus, using the terms outside of this context makes no sense.)

Yes I have changed my “views on the latter [hereditarianism]”, and no, I will not remove my “old pro-hereditarianism posts” on my blog. I leave them up to show the evolution of my views over time. My blog is almost four years old, and half of the time I was a staunch hereditarian/genetic determinist and the other half I discarded those views and embraced the philosophy of DST.

In any case, the race debate is a philosophical, not biological, one; genetic variation exists between human populations which no one denies. The question “What is race?” is strictly a philosophical question and so, after that question is answered, it follows that the argument about the existence of race is then philosophical. Holding views on racial realism (the claim that our racial categories pick out real kinds in nature; Smith, 2015; 43). Therefore, the views that I hold on race are not scientific, but philosophical.

Re my views on immigration: yes I did write that non-western people are abnormal to our societies (fun fact: I wrote that as a paper for an Abnormal Psychology course, and I got an A). I do still hold that immigration should be restricted/completely halted, though it should not be based on IQ testing, as I once argued in the past. I agree that these views that I once held are idiotic. Looking back at what I wrote and used to believe in the past, I believed a lot of bullshit and pseudoscience. I openly admit that my former prejudices drove my old beliefs. However, as noted earlier (and in the past), I rejected those kinds of genetic determinist “racist” views after discovering the philosophy of DST and reading Richardson and Heine.

A final note on my politics: I support closed borders, I support capitalism and I am a nationalist. I don’t care about what people do in private, just don’t bring it out on the streets. I would say that I am somewhat of a libertarian, and while I do hold some “AltRight” views, I would not self-identify as an alt-righter.

In sum, (Ir)RationalWiki is a joke of a website with how they attack individuals who do use their real names. I’m just some anon guy with a blog and Twitter account. They libel people with mined quotes and don’t reflect their views correctly. In any case, yes my views have changed, and no, it’s not some “cover” for my old views. I do not still hold those same beliefs “in private” (how would whoever wrote this know what views I hold in private? It’s idiotic). I’m not “AltRight”, nor have I ever been.