Quite a few people respond to pro-truth arguments with "what then?". This is a better disguised form of the appeal to consequences fallacy.

The answer is that it doesn't matter, you believe what's true 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦, not because it has some nice consequence. https://twitter.com/KBULTRA0/status/1308867224686538758

Of course there are some information hazards that are exceptions to this: true information which is harmful.

But we have to be careful here. Almost all true information is harmful to someone, there's someone out there who makes their utility by lying about that thing, or whose personal status is negatively correlated with that thing.

Society seems to have implicitly classified Human Biodiversity knowledge as an infohazard (though they wouldn't use that term) and responded by punishing people who talk about it. This means the information is "out there" but suppressed.

Most true facts are not neither perfectly neutral nor perfect, pure infohazards, they fall somewhere in between, perhaps call them "infoambiguities".

HBD is certainly in this category, because it makes certain forms of violence more likely so is harmful to some people.

And it's perhaps more severe on this scale than the average ambiguous truth. HBD knowledge causes violence and conflict for a systematic reason: it is evidence that different human beings have conflicting preferences.

It also strengthens the Schelling Point for tribal conflict; if people believe that they are different as well as looking different, then they are more likely to form tribes and fight, kill and perhaps even torture each other.

But the denial of HBD causes the very same problems, because once there is a big gap in your map, you start to make a mess.

The "mess" that exists in the USA today is people with hidden biological variables that make them more prone to various problems, encounter those problems more often in practice.

Because we have to pretend that those differences don't exist, we have to look for another cause for the problems.

And what cause do we fixate on?

Secret aggression by other groups, of course!

So the whole point of repressing HBD knowledge was to 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦 inter-group conflict, but now we have replaced a belief that 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 cause conflict if not carefully handled with a belief that is literally about how conflict is happening and how we need to fight back.

And because the differences in outcomes that are actually caused by hidden biological variables are 𝘯𝘰𝘵 caused by a sneaky attack from another group, you have a recipe for a 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙛𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙚𝙣𝙙.

If we believed in HBD we could at least in theory end the conflict and the problems. We could, for example, find was to change those hidden biological variables so that everyone had the same values. ( @Bioliberalism ?)

I don't really like this solution (it destroys human values for an instrumental reason).

I think that a better solution is to redesign society to 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 of competition. High-stakes completion between humans where if you lose you can become homeless but if you win you get a yacht is bad and heavily incentivizes conflict.

In general I think that the way to decrease conflict over the cosmic endowment is to reduce the stakes by guaranteeing that everyone will get a reasonably similar share and will be free to do their thing.

In the limit of infinite technology people will be allowed their own planet and the technology to make a crowd of fake-people who form a status hierarchy that they are at the top of.

Activities like "critical race theory" and "Black lives matter" that have victim narratives and a central zero-sum philosophy serve to unnecessarily increase the stakes of inter-group competition (making everything about race - culture, workplace, dating etc).

In summary, if we believed what was actually true we could start solving problems. But whilst deluded by pleasant falsehoods, we are blind to the unfolding disaster even as it unfolds around us.

Finally, in case the tweet I was replying to disappears: