Social Constructs

Razib Khan recently wrote a good post about how retarded the whole tirade on "social constructs" can be. Gender is a social construct! Sports should be integrated! Come on. As a scientist it's natural he gets pissed at the whole thing.

I commented there a while ago about how, you know, leftists are actually right. Race is a social construct. Gender is a social construct. They got that exactly right. It's a rather profound point, and I've been thinking on exposing my argument a bit better. It's a linguistic argument, but that's what I do.

Let's put it more precisely. Race is, obviously, not a social construct. But "race" is a social construct. As "gender" is a social construct. The same way "car", or "moon", or "democratic republic" is a social construct. Words are social constructs. That's how language works. Word meanings are social conventions. There's nothing else to it. If you raise a child in a community where the word "car" is used to refer to a certain subset of vehicles, then that's what a "car" is. If you raise a child in a community where "fascists" is used to mean a certain subset of low-status people, that's "fascists" are.

Of course there's a lot of details about how children adopt the usage of words. Sure, language, as so much else, is a social convention. Most human behavior, indeed the behavior of most social animals is conventional. People from different places walk in different ways. Samurais pre-1860s famously had to be trained by French officers to run properly, as samurai practice was to lower your back and run in small steps like a 6 year old kid after shoplifting. Language works the same way. A sensitive person can tell accents and little quirks of speech at the village, even the family level.

But why would people adopt those conventions? That's the real question. Why do people in villages adopt every tiny little intonation quirk? Part of it is just human instinct: people are mimetic creatures, as the late René Girard liked to say. But instinct evolved for a reason. To put it simple, adopting conventions is useful. It helps you get by. It gets you more status than you would get by not adopting the convention. Humans adopt behavior which is useful to them. Humans are pragmatic.

And so language use depends on its pragmatic nature. Race is, certainly, not a clear cut category. Humans can mix. There are continuums of genetic clusters. But humans, at least since the modern era, have classified humans in different races; often according to very crude markers such as skin color. Andaman Islanders aren't at all African; no genetic test will cluster them with Nigerians. But if you found one at your local grocery store you would most likely call him black. Why? Because it's useful. If Andaman Islanders were all incredible geniuses who gave you 10 bucks every time you met them, soon enough people would find a way of telling them apart from other dark skinned, kinda African-looking people who don't give 10 dollar bills at first sight. But in real life, dark skinned, kinda African-looking people tend to behave in similar ways; so there's no particular necessity to notice their little differences and tell them apart. Nigerians, Jamaicans, Kenyans and Somalis are interchangeable for most purposes. The same way people don't care to tell apart Irish from Italians from Swedes in America. They do in Europe! Because it's useful to do so. Not in the US: so they're all white.

Wittgenstein made himself famous by basically destroying the whole academy of philosophy by pointing out the, on hindsight, obvious point that Philosophy is based in a misunderstanding of how language works. How people use language in daily life. Words don't have definitions, they don't have essences. Writing books about single words is completely pointless. Words are things we use in particular contexts; the use changes all the time. It's all convention, and conventions are dynamic, pragmatic affairs.

Everything is a social construct; because society is very important for human life. Many people, in particular the sort of person who would read this blog, often can't understand why most people believe common progressive ideas. Surely humans aren't all equal! Surely open borders doesn't make sense! Surely spending millions on transexual toilet rights is pointless! Why does anyone take all this seriously? Well, because it's useful. Because not doing so brings very concrete social consequences.

If you put your finger in a fire, it burns. It hurts a lot. If somebody comes later and tells that you that fire doesn't burn, to put your finger in the fire; you are likely to protest. Of course it burns. It hurts like crazy. But most things in life aren't like that. Nobody has ever got burnt due to global warming. Most ideas don't have immediate consequences. If somebody tells you that "Muslims belong in Germany", unless you have been stabbed by a Muslim recently, the proposition doesn't have real consequences for you. It's just a set of words. Your reaction to that proposition doesn't depend on your memory of getting your finger burnt. The only real consequences to that conversation is the opinion that your peers will have about you. So if your memory about talking on Muslims belonging in Germany is that any contrary opinion gets your peers mad, and results in you having lower status; well your reaction will be "sure, Muslims belong in Germany. Merkel is awesome".

The vast majority of ideas don't have physical consequences; all they have is social consequences. They are status markers. Whether Muslims belong in Germany or not won't get your finger burnt immediately. It may over the long term, but human brains don't work like that. You learn behaviors to avoid danger and earn pleasure. And social disapproval by uttering non-progressive opinions are as harsh and immediate as a burnt finger in a fire.

So the reaction of most people to any abstract proposition like that will rely on their calculation of the social consequences of their particular reaction to that proposition. As it happens, being a good progressive gets you status and approval; not being a good progressive gets you low status and disapproval. So of course most people will do whatever gets them status and approval. The few contrarians like us who disagree, do so because of different experiences, because they don't see the point in earning that sort of status, or, in many cases, because they are like the philosophers who Wittgenstein made fun of, and are just not getting the point. Taking stuff literally when you're not supposed to. That's not how language works.

You could make a meta point about "social construct". It of course means that definitions are social conventions, which is a completely accurate point. But how is the string "social construct" used in actual language usage? A mere frequency analysis would tell you that "social construct" is a string that leftists use in order to crack down on bad people. You could perfectly define "social construct" as "a word whose definition is set by the Cathedral, and which denying it would get you in real trouble so shut up already". When people come out of their way to state that "race is a social construct", that's not a scientific point. All they mean is "race is what I and my friends say it is and shut up you fascist".

Note that they don't really need to be aware of the difference. Surely some people understand that "social construct" is supposed to mean a concept deriving its meaning from social convention. But plenty of people just have picked up "social construct" being used in leftist agitation, got what's used for, and imitated that usage themselves. You don't need to be aware of the origin of words; only how they're used. That's the etymological fallacy at the micro level.

I've had hour long conversations about how to define "racist". But "racist" in common usage means "bad person who I can easily accuse of disliking black people in order to ostracize him". That's how the language game is played. You can contest that kind of usage, and word usage indeed changes a lot all the time. But changing social conventions requires power. Political power. Because, of course, everything is politics. That's a point the left understood a very long time ago. Even if they won't say so.

[…] Social Constructs […]

Everything's fuzzy around the edges. When does the tree become lumber? People who can't fathom this ultimate truth - the unity of all things and the subjectivity of distinction - are intellectual writeoffs: be they left, right or upside-down. The rightist who thinks that it's nonsense is as stupid as the leftist who thinks that it somehow justifies moral permissiveness. Both are trapped in Maya, forever doomed to overcommitting to things and suffering the blowback. Can't do much about them, unfortunately. Just smile, nod, and move on.

[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]

Very good post, like all your posts on social status. Of course, what this means is that if we want to capture political power, and we do (even if we don't want to rule ourselves), what we need to do is shift social constructs to work in our favor. Or rather, the reverse, since democracy sucks.

It works for "social construct", which is a self-denying social construct itself. When most progressives say, "X is a social construct," they aren't talking about conventions or local dialects and accents, and they don't mean to support subjectivism or relativism or that nothing can be true of false, or continue the sentence, "just like every other idea, which are also just social constructs." They obviously mean, "X is an idea promulgated socially as if it were a scientifically verified, valid and objective truth, but it isn't - it's false. It's not a correct reflection of the real state of affairs or objective reality. Instead, anti-X, or other-than-X is the real deal, the thing which is not a social construct and instead is objectively true and proven by Science! - the thing all smart and cool and popular people understand to be really true - and so you should should believe and repeat that instead." If X happens to be true - e.g. HBD - then the statement "X is a social construct" is itself a social construct in exactly the sense meant by the false assertion.

The social construct stuff is associated with the left but it actually goes back to Heidegger and phenomenology. Heidegger and his thought are generally associated with the right. For Heidegger, science and all claims to objective reality are metaphysics, and involve thinking that presence is somehow prior and fundamental to presencing. This includes Aristotle's logic and his principle of non-contradiction, which for Heidegger involves privileging that which is present or constantly present. According to Heidegger, an essential feature of being itself is absencing or passing away, and metaphysics - logic, science, etc., - is unable to understand how contraries like these belong together in the same time and place. Ignoring this is actually the very inception or basis of logic and science. In presence, things are at once present and absent, in their becoming or presencing.

What is anti-race or anti-gender? It seems to me that progressives deny that race and gender are anything but social-constructs, and they exhort us to accept the social conventions about it. You could say anti-race and anti-gender is "we are all but individuals", but they hardly make a hard case about individuals being unique because that is Science. The vibe I get is that O'Brien said 2 2=5 didn't you get that memo?!

"According to Heidegger, an essential feature of being itself is absencing" Not getting it. Not sure there's anything to get.

I'm certainly no expert on his philosophy or the best expositor of it. You can appreciate the difference between being and beings, or things that are, right? Sort of like between flying and flyers, or things that fly. Except being is something much more fundamental than flying is. It's the most fundamental thing. But it's not a thing, that is A being. Like flying is not the same thing as a flying thing. Metaphysics ignores being itself and substitutes beingness, or that which is constantly present, for being. Philosophy and science are an endless series of positing some form of beingness or presence as fundamental. Physics says matter or atoms, biologists say survival of the fittest or DNA, economics says economic self-interest, etc. Physical objects may change but matter or atoms persist or are constantly present. Organisms die but natural selection or DNA persists or is constantly present. Societies and peoples may differ, but economic self-interest persists and is constantly present. Etc. They all "privilege" some type of presence. The notion of "social constructs" is based on this view.

"Except being is something much more fundamental than flying is" Not sure what "fundamental" means here. "Metaphysics ignores being itself and substitutes beingness, or that which is constantly present, for being." Totally not getting this. What's the difference between existing ("being" is a really confusing verb) and presence? And what's wrong about positing permanent things like atoms or DNA or economic laws? Surely they are useful in order to understand stuff. And we can actually observe atoms and DNA. Also "privilege" as a verb should be annihilated.

"When people come out of their way to state that “race is a social construct”, that’s not a scientific point. All they mean is “race is what I and my friends say it is and shut up you fascist”." I don't think that's true for most progressives. I think they actually believe that "race" has almost no scientific foundations, and that most racial stereotypes are almost entirely due to society rather than to biology. They may be wrong in this, but I believe this is their honest opinion.

One of the troubles we have around these parts is that we all seem to have somewhat different exposures and experiences to a diverse set of individuals that we over-aggregate into a class we simply call 'progressives', which obscures important distinctions between classes and places in the hierarchy of trickle-down ideological fashions. (How's that for, "Progressive is a social construct.") What the low level foot-soldier SJW's are parroting, what their ideological framework of 'thoughts' behind these recitations of cant look like, and what their real motivations would be, are, I would argue, distinct from what goes on at the elite, ideological entrepreneur level with - yes their unctuous and jesuitical manipulations of sophistry - but nevertheless reflective of a complex, consistent and coherent worldview, albeit a totally inaccurate and delusional one. My exposures are mostly not of the type of which a low-level progressive is merely insisting I adopt one social convention over another. That is, like insisting that I drive on the right side of the road, while recognizing that, yes, perhaps the options are all 'arbitrary' and without any justification to make any particular choice except that it's best if some choice is made and everybody does that thing, and for historically contingent reasons, this is way things are done here, and if you don't you'll really screw things up for everybody and we have ample reason to deter you or, failing deterrence, punish you. Instead, I get a lot of appeal to Science!, academic authorities, and Auster's 'studies show'. With regard to HBD, I get confident assertion of the delusion that Derb calls 'proposition R'.

Proposition R: Every human race has precisely the same statistical distribution as every other on all human traits of behavior, intelligence, and personality.

When upper class progressives say "race is a social construct", what they mean is "Proposition R is objectively true, and not-R - which lots of people used to believe for reasons of pure social propagation based in ignorance and/or systems of false consciousness, oppression, and exploitation - is objectively false. It's been proven and "The Science! Is Settled"™. "Good people trust 'the Science!' and believe Proposition R, while anyone who denies the Science! and believes in not-R is a bad, uncool, evil bigoted hater and/or a stupid loser moron who probably doesn't even have a degree!" So, I even read constant specific appeals to thoroughly refuted concepts such as Lewontin's fallacy, and this reflects at least a somewhat 'objectivist' epistemological worldview in which (1) there is such a thing as objective reality, (2) it is knowable - at least in a tentative manner to certain limits of precision - to us through application of the scientific method, and so (3) Science! is the highest status and supreme arbiter of claims about social reality, and so (4) What we progressives are insisting upon is true while contrary statements are false. "That is, my statement in favor of Proposition R is as true as the Plate Tectonic Model of the lithosphere - the truth of which people have come around to only relatively recently - while your statement of HBD is as false as Young Earth Creationism. Again, when one descends socially 'downrange' of these elites able and eager to carry around the framework of a whole worldview around in their heads, certainly one is going to observe a lot of half-minded broken records who merely instinctively recognize the usefulness of these assertions in signalling holiness and for use in weaponized form as bullying and witch-hunting tactics for the typically petty reasons of status-degradation of enemies and participation as loyal clients and troops in a coalition aiming at total social and political domination, hoping for recognition or reward by their superiors when victory is achieved.

Point being that they most likely don't understand what "no scientific basis" means in practice. Effectively speaking they're just repeating a set of slogans without much further thought. And they can do that because that's how the game is played.

No, I really think very many people believe that almost all racial differences (apart from obviously visible ones) are purely due to society, and that this would be proved if researched properly. This specific meaning of the word "social construct" is very different from the broad meaning you assign to it in this post. I mean, they may ALSO say silly things like that "race is OBVIOUSLY a social construct", or "gender is BY DEFINITION a social construct", because they have not reflected as much on the word's meaning as you have. And many people will fall back on this argument when shown evidence of racial or gender differences. But I still think they genuinely believe that racial differences are almost purely due to society, as opposed to biology.

Even if evolution stops at the neck; the obviously visible racial differences are obviously visible. That black people would have ashkenazi IQs if we could only solve racism is orthogonal to whether race is a social construct or not. The argument about race or whatever being a social construct is indeed a solid linguistic argument; but that doesn't stop at race, or at anything really. "House" is a social construct. Using that argument to argue for human neurological uniformity is intimidating people instead of making an accurate point.

As I said below; Races could exist, but be "skin deep", indeed one hears that argument a lot. "Race is a social construct" is a different argument, basically a deny-all trump card. And indeed Lewontin's fallacy basically denies any category at all; and it can do that by fundamentally confusing how categories work. Of course the "race is a social construct" argument came to being because "race is skin deep" basically dares people to actually measure it, and once they realized that they don't really want people to go measure racial differences, they had to come up with the deny-all trump card.

Frankly, I think you're overcomplicating. As far as I can tell, when progressives say "X is a social construct," they're making a perfectly clear and intelligible (if often false) proposition: (1) There is some observable trait (or group of traits) Y that differs between individuals and/or groups of people. (2) Trait Y, while observable, has absolutely no practical relevance by itself. If everyone simply ignored it, people with and without trait Y would not demonstrate any differences in their character, behavior, and abilities on average. Nothing of practical interest could be predicted, not even statistically, just from the fact that someone is Y or non-Y. (3) However, out of some mix of ignorance, malice, and historical accident, people do have an irrational obsession with Y, leading to a perverse self-fulfilling prophecy. People with trait Y are treated very differently, creating an artificial correlation between Y and actually relevant traits. This in turn creates a vicious cycle, as these differences further motivate different treatment and leave a false impression of being inherently correlated with Y. (4) All the aspects of this phenomenon -- i.e., Y, the irrational obsession with it, and its consequent correlates that people erroneously take for granted -- have become conflated under some concept X, which is therefore inherently pernicious and problematic. Therefore, it's reasonable to describe X as a "social construct," and it's also reasonable to emphasize this whenever X is discussed in a way that fails to recognize all of the above. Obviously, in most cases, the progressives' claim is factually false, because Y does actually have relevant and inescapable implications regardless of what anyone thinks or does. But still, the claim is perfectly cogent if one accepts their factual premises. ("Racist" is of course another thing. That term really has no coherent definition aside from its use as a rhetorical weapon and a call for unleashing moral outrage.)

"That black people would have ashkenazi IQs if we could only solve racism is orthogonal to whether race is a social construct or not." Not if "race is a social construct" is shorthand for "all racial stereotypes apart from the obviously biological ones, are created by society", which I think it is most of the time. When people say "race is a social construct", I think that part of their belief is what they usually want to point out. The argument can, and is, also used as a motte-and-bailey argument, which is bad.

"The few contrarians like us who disagree, do so because of different experiences, because they don’t see the point in earning that sort of status, or, in many cases, because they are like the philosophers who Wittgenstein made fun of, and are just not getting the point. Taking stuff literally when you’re not supposed to. " Or we do it to counter signal our intellectual superiority to those beneath us. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/ "But changing social conventions requires power. Political power. Because, of course, everything is politics. That’s a point the left understood a very long time ago. Even if they won’t say so." They do say so, read anything by Foucault or Marcuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-knowledge According to Foucault's understanding of power,power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its anonymous intentions. Power (re-) creates its own fields of exercise through knowledge. Or put simply, knowledge is downstream of politics. http://thefutureprimaeval.net/politics-is-upstream-of-science/

This is why we have (had and still have, in there) castes.