UPDATE: Greg Cochran says he's offered to make a Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich-style bet with Nicholas Kristof over whether the ideas offered in Richard Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It will prove true or not. Greg would take the "Not" side.
Since a lot of people are visiting from Nicholas D. Kristof's column in the New York Times, here's an excerpt from my new VDARE.com column that is now posted:
Much more in response to Kristof at VDARE.com.
And, if newcomers are interested in what I have to say about these controversies, in 2007 I put together Frequently Asked Question lists about IQ and race.
Since a lot of people are visiting from Nicholas D. Kristof's column in the New York Times, here's an excerpt from my new VDARE.com column that is now posted:
For example, Kristof punditized today in the Times:Rising Above I.Q.
In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us. … These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories.
Who actually advocates a "myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect"?
I don’t even say that!
Everybody knows that a strong work ethic matters.
The controversial questions are about whether you should be allowed to even mention the existing cognitive differences between groups when discussing, say, the Ricci case. And if you are allowed to bring up the racial gaps in intelligence, must we then all assume for purposes of public policy that they can somehow be made to quickly vanish? Or will we get kicked to the curb like Nobel laureate James D. Watson for assuming that they will be around for at least a fairly long time?
Of course, Kristof’s emphasis upon the importance of hard work would logically suggest that Non-Asian Minorities (NAMs) are achieving less on average in school and the workplace because they aren't working hard enough. But Kristof, who presumably likes his job at the NYT and wishes to keep it, won't say that, so he ends up repeating by rote irrelevant talking points about spending more on education:What’s the policy lesson from these three success stories?
It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children.
Exactly how do these conclusions about policy follow from Kristof’s premises about Asians, West Indians, and Jews?
Did the Czar send social workers around to encourage Jewish mothers to talk to their children?
Much more in response to Kristof at VDARE.com.
And, if newcomers are interested in what I have to say about these controversies, in 2007 I put together Frequently Asked Question lists about IQ and race.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
178 comments:
"Did the Czar send social workers around to encourage Jewish mothers to talk to their children?"
Steve, that was pretty funny. I'm going to remember that one.
1. Sandra Scarr, after conducting the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study:
"Within the range of 'humane environments,'variations in family socioeconomic characteristics and in child-rearing practices have little or no effect on IQ measured in adolescence." P. 476
"There is simply no good evidence that social environmental factors have a large effect on IQ, particularly in adolescence and beyond, except in cases of extreme environmental deprivation." P. 476
By adulthood, all of the IQ correlation between biologically related persons is genetic. P. 178 Phenotypic g closely reflects the genetic g, but bears hardly any resemblance to the (shared) environmental g. P. 187
2. From that study the black children adopted by white families matured to have IQs that are consistent with their biological peers; Asian children adopted by white families mature to have IQs that are consistent with their biological peers and which are higher than their adoptive parents.
The theory of different home environments is questionable. Consider the studies discussed here on Gene Expression.
"despite their lower performance, which is genuine, multiple lines of evidence point to African-Americans valuing academics nearly as much as white Americans, if not equally so (for instance spending just as much time on homework. A number of lines of evidence are discussed by Ludwig and Cook in The Black-White Test Score Gap, which you can read here). But an even more profound revelation that causes doubt about cultural explanations is that behavioral genetic experiments show us that home and parental environments don't seem to matter at all. As fantastic as it may be, at least three big studies now show us that unrelated children raised in the same household, as well as parents and their adoptive children, differ in IQ as much as any two strangers randomly picked from the general population. There are IQ similarities in biological families, but we find that once genes are accounted for, there is no residual left to explain.
So there are many good reasons to doubt cultural explanations a priori, but a more direct test is available. One possible way to control for distinct ethnic values is simply to raise the children of higher or lower scoring racial backgrounds in another ethnocultural environment of purportedly different values. If ethnic differences are caused by ethnically different parents, as asserted by gene-disparaging psychologists such as Richard Nisbett, then such a test should settle the issue. The transracial adoption data we have so far doesn't appear to support Nisbett.
One longitudinal study, the only one of its kind, of black children raised in white homes, showed that by highschool these adoptees scored no differently on IQ tests than African-Americans raised by their biological parents. Meanwhile three studies of Asians [1] raised in white families showed higher than average test scores. A problem with these latter three papers of Asian adoptees is that they didn't use control samples of white adoptees. Did the Asian children just score higher because adoptees in general score higher?
Contrary to "culture" theory, the ethnic academic gaps are almost identical for transracially adopted children, and to the extent they are different they go in the opposite direction predicted by culture theory. The gap between whites and Asians fluctuated from 19 to .09 in the NAEP data while the gap in the adoption data is from 1/3 to 3 times larger. This is consistent with the Sue and Okazaki paper above which showed that contrary to popular anecdotes, the values that lead to higher academic grades are actually found more often in white homes. In other words Asian-Americans perform highly despite their Asian home cultural environment not because of it. And though the sample is meager, I find it interesting that the gap between the black and white adopted children was virtually identical (within just 4-6 points) to the gap between whites and blacks in the general population, just like in the Scarr adoption study.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html
We already spend more on education than any other G8 country. I wish Kristof would tell us what the magic number is where the sky gets filled with rainbows.
The DC school district spends more money per pupil than any state in the US. It must be sending all its students straight to the Ivy League.
Steve-O, you know you should have written this column without including "West Indian Blacks."
You're going to have a bunch of guys here playing literary "twister." to argue with you,
(Hint: Affirmative Action, Affirmative Action...)
In Los Angeles, the government schools spend $15,000 per child, or $300,000 for a class of 20. Yet only 50% of students graduate high school.
How is wasting even more money going to change that?
It's amazing that he discounts higher Jewish IQ rates by arguing that it's not a representative sample but doesn't mention the fact that Asian immigration isn't representative either. If it were, nearly everybody in India would be a doctor or programmer.
And how does speaking more to your baby make him better at math?
Sometime last year Kristof wrote a candid article about the Middle East, and I admired him for it. I decided to follow his work, but since then he has not written a column that is not smarmy, sentimental crap.
It seems like for every personality trait, including intellgience, that's been rigorously studied, it all comes down to genes and unshared environment, not shared environemnt.
Shared environment are things that usually are in the home and make siblings more similar. Talking to them more, reading to them more, etc, would fall under that category.
Who actually advocates a "myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect"?
I don’t even say that!
I had an analogy all lined up about correlation between lungs and breathing, and how culture wins 'cuz we gotta expend effort to breathe.
Then I realized that, even though it was analogous, and every bit as stupid as Kristof's quote, I'd be the one looking like an ass because there's been no blank-lung propaganda campaign.
"Steve, that was pretty funny. I'm going to remember that one."
I agree. "My uncle came to this country with nothing but three cents in his pocket. We lived on welfare and flunked out of school for three generations until one day the government sent a nice lady who told us to take our vitamins and talk to the kids."
Truth said
"Steve-O, you know you should have written this column without including "West Indian Blacks."
You're going to have a bunch of guys here playing literary "twister." to argue with you,
(Hint: Affirmative Action, Affirmative Action...)"
Actually, Truth, if your reading comprehension was a little better you'd see he was quoting the New York Times writer. As a matter of fact, it's hard to see how you would make that mistake, since he was arguing against the point. Did you just see something about successful blacks and go off?
And just because you can predict our response, doesn't mean it's not true. The fact that a few blacks from somewhere in the world can take advantage of AA isn't all that impressive.
"Did the Czar send social workers around to encourage Jewish mothers to talk to their children?"
The Jewish kids had something other than Bibles and empty vodka bottles to talk to!
"Rising above IQ," up, up, up toward the numinous heights of paradise, and away from mean, dirty, nasty old reality.
Lol.
The problem with the anti-hereditarians is that they simply do not have a theory that would explain results such as those Josh and Chi tell about above. They can niggle about this or that detail of the hereditarian interpretation, and tout the dubious Eyferth study, but faced with the totality of evidence, they have to resort to what Steve has named Occam's butterknife, and come up with all kinds of ad hoc explanations, or simply ignore troubling evidence.
In contrast, the hereditarians can marshal thousands of data sets and studies in support of their position, next to which the very small number of contrasting studies seem very dubious.
Did the Czar send social workers around to encourage Jewish mothers to talk to their children?
Like the Good Book says, Can a fig tree bring forth dates? And if it can't, would it help if you got all the rabbis together in one place, and tried to teach it to?
Life is not just environment, Golde.
Presumably, Kristof wants to spend lots more money. Lots and lots more. Because as we all know spending lots of money will give us great results! Kristof is advocating the same failed policies and ideas that are well, proven failures. And he is expecting something different? That's the definition of insanity...But I guess Kristof now answers to a Higher Authority. According to the editor of Newsweek, Obama is "like a god." Presumably, miracles are on the way!
"Of course, Kristof’s emphasis upon the importance of hard work would logically suggest that Non-Asian Minorities (NAMs) are achieving less on average in school and the workplace because they aren't working hard enough."
Indeed. Of course, No Child Left Behind always blames the teachers and the schools when results are subpar but never the parents or the children themselves. Talk about a "white man's burden" mindset. It is enough to lead a horse to water. If the horse can't or won't drink, that's the horse's problem.
As a reader with an interest in the Nature-Nurture debate, I found Nicholals Kristof's column formulaic and predictable. Had Kristof omitted mentioning West Indian Blacks in the three groups that excel, I would accuse him of either sleep writing or simply aggregating threadbare Nature-Nurture debating points. His solution? Get an education and work harder! Eat bitterness! Strive!
Ho Hum, much ado about increasing our population of nurturely intelligent and nurturely gifted , but no discussion of the naturally gifted we deal with every day.
A clever NY Times commentator shared her thoughts about her sons whose situations turns his argument upside down.
Sorry, but I think you are dead wrong, and have seriously missed the mark. Case in point. I have two sons who were nicknamed "Lazy" and "Lazier." They basically had no ambition for school, and their grades reflected this apathy. But, they were lucky in that they excelled in standardized testing. Because they routinely scored at the 99th percent level (in elementary and middle school), they were routinely placed in honors and/or AP classes, in high school. As you may know, high school grades are often weighted, depending on the level of one's class. In other words, an A in the average class results in less weighted points than a C in an AP class. So my sons ended their high school careers with GPAs of less than B, but graduated, nevertheless, in the top tenth of their respective graduating class. And because they scored fabulously high on the SATs, they were admitted to colleges that would never have accepted them, if grades were the only criteria. My younger son took the scenic route through college (the nine year plan) and decided he wanted to go on to Law School. Again, his LSAT score was in the top 2 percentile. He was admitted to a host of top notch law schools, some even offering significant merit based scholarships.
Based on our family's experience, you can hardly say that hard work was at the root of our sons' academic success. Quite to the contrary, it was innate brain power alone. Yes, they came from a home where both parents had graduate degrees and also expectations that their children would achieve academic success. And yes, they had very supportive parents.
I think most educated adults current view the Nature-Nurture Debate much like the Israeli-Arab Peace Process; an endless round of recriminations, attacks, and withdrawals by both sides, but no victory for either side. However, scientists, as Mr Kristof should know, are making genetic discoveries year after year that will eventually make his position untentable. Perhaps the year genetic therapies are offered that increase memory and raise I.Q. in those naturally disadvantaged.
You are a genius.
Nobody wants to talk seriously about racial differences in intelligence, particularly low levels of black intelligence, but they are very real and largely explain why Africa is well, Africa and why Japan is NOT like Jamaica.
So, you jetted to Turkey on Tuesday, saw some dogs and cars, and came back to write your regular column today?
In terms of talking to children, it is interesting that deaf children do as well on IQ tests:
"it has been noted that deaf children, a group with severe cultural deprivation due to lack of experience with language, do as well on performance IQ tests as normal hearing children without this deprivation. The implication is that cultural deprivation may not play the role currently being ascribed to it in the development of intelligence."
http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/10/3/225
"Who actually advocates a "myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect"?
I don’t even say that!"
At the top of every single HBD site, there should be a disclaimer:
"THIS SITE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA OF GENETIC DETERMINISM."
Do people like Nisbett and Kristof believe that psychometricians like Murray and Jensen advocate a 100/0 nature/nurture split?
I think the answer is probably yes. Remember how Stephen Metcalf wrote that anti-HBD article on Slate and admitted he'd never heard of Arthur Jensen.
Someone in the HBD community needs to do an in depth review of Nisbett's book, on which Kristof's column was more or less based. Razib had a few words on it, but that is all I have seen. Everything else on Google is a puff piece for the book. I'm half tempted to read the book myself, but I have a lot on my plate.
Kristof was careful to compare West Indian Black performance to African Americans. If race really didn't matter, he would be able to compare them favorably to Jews and Asians.
Nisbett is someone who sees what he wants to in differet studies, ignoring weaknesses or overemphasizing them depending on their conclusions.
If he is really worried about unrepresentative samples, the entire stereotype threat line of research should mean nothing to him, because test takers are never sampled from a well-defined population, but are instead usually picked out of an instructor's introductory psychology class.
Someone in the HBD community needs to do an in depth review of Nisbett's book
Way ahead of you. Is fifty pages in-depth enough?
Link.
"Truth", nice try. The test of course is how well these "West Indian Blacks" do when running their own country, i.e. not just leaching off a wealthy white host nation by manipulating liberal policies and playing out their group dynamics in an individualistic society (think nepotism). In that sense only the Jews come out OK, though it’s unclear how Israel would fare without the consistent and copious economic and military aid from the US, and the non-ending reparations from Germany.
"Did the Czar send social workers around to encourage Jewish mothers to talk to their children?"
That's pretty devastating. If Kristof doesn't read that (and he most probably won't), I hope enough people in or close to his social circle do, so that he gets wind of it and is forced to confront his disingenuous idiocy.
Anon,
As Sailer himself has noted, Barbados, a West Indian nation, does pretty well for itself. As for Israel, U.S. economic aid amounts to less than half of one percent of its GDP. I'm not aware of any continuing German reparations. Israel would certainly be a successful first world country without our economic aid. Without our military aid, it would probably buy fewer expensive weapons and build more of its own. Much of our military aid to Israel is really pork for American defense companies.
My favorite comment so far from the NYT site on the Kristoff article:
"Asian-Americans are renowned...constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College...
As for (Ashkenazi) Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans... West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher... (than other African Americans)"
Let me get this right. Mr. Kristof suggests that Asian Americans have demonstrated intellectual horsepower because they garner 20% of slots at Harvard. OK! Makes sense to me, although he could have strengthened his point if he had mentioned actual percent of Asian Americans in our population, which really makes their success at Harvard remarkable. Mr. Kristof also notes the considerable intellectual prowess of the Ashkenazi Jews by citing their success in garnering Nobel Prizes. Once again, no problem here, although noting the actual percent of Ashkenazi Jews in our universe would, again, better describe their almost unbelievable success. Mr Kristof then suggests that W I Blacks should be elevated into this lofty group because they perform 1/3 better than other African Americans in a couple of areas. Huh! I expect his next article to explain that Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Fred Geshuntz were equally talented hitters. (Fred hit .307 in the Texas League in 1973). Many worthwhile points in the article, but this psuedo comparison is a joke and undermines Kristofs objectivity with the first shot out of the barrel. Does the Times still employ any editors? The paper of record is sinking like a rock.
— hughglass, Shadyhill, SD<
I just reread the Kristof article and I am struck by its distillation of the intellectual breakdown of the modern American Left. It all boils down to this: The Left is nearing a point of complete intellectual bankruptcy. And when talking about the the Left we must include jackass Right-Liberals like George W. Bush.
In this article Kristof is babbling on about racial group performance much like David Duke or Adolph Hitler. The conclusions reached are not the same but there is the same obsession with group racial performance. RACE MATTERS AND IT MATTERS TO EVERYONE APPARENTLY.
There is little historical evidence that a stable prosperous society can form in a stew of multiculturalism. There is a gigantic body of historical evidence that points to the exact opposite conclusion. And so it goes for the left wing "intelligentsia": Ignore the evidence. WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY.
Wait. Perhaps the goal is, was, and never will be a "stable society". Maybe the goal is Trotskyite "permanent revolution" where certain talented alien minorities float to the top in all of the chaos. Maybe that is the real goal of America's new elites.
This article by Kristof is just another signpost on a road paved with supposed good intentions. I would argue that most of those supposed good intentions are actually ingroup-identity political machinations cloaked as universalist goodwill.
America obviously needs 10 million more Ashkenazi Jews, 100 million more Chinese, and a whole lot more West Indians in order to compete with the rest of the world. Otherwise we are doomed. DOOMED I TELL YOU.
From the article:
"...the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have."
I wonder what factors are included in "the firepower they have"?
Steve,
As you know I am Australian male. We dont go in for effusive compliments to our male friends, colleagues or peers. It smacks of crawling or effeminacy.
But your demolition of Nic Kristoff's amiable blathering in the Vdare column was a virtuoso display of intellectual mince-meat making. That poor guy will probably read it sometime soon and realise that he is just out of his league.
Really, maybe its time that you left the midgets at the NYT alone and picked on some one your own size. I was going to suggest Steve Rose.
But he has just come out in support of a ban on investigating race differences in IQ. Which is a smart move from the "Nurturist" perspective, when you think about it.
'There's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as you spell the name right' dept. iSteve is garnering publicity, mostly bad.
Now how to monetize, aye, that's the rub.
Steve,
Why not try to submit an op/ed on this to the NY Times? There is a chance that they would publish it.
Fred said:
"As Sailer himself has noted, Barbados, a West Indian nation, does pretty well for itself."
So Barbados, population roughly 400,000, is the only black-run nation that comes close to Western standards. I believe Steve himself mentioned the reasons for that. For one, Barbados is the most far eastern of the West Indies, so the colonists there got first pick among the slaves, which might explain why Bahans are more intelligent than other blacks. Also, there is a large mulatto elite that runs the country (of which Eric Holder comes from).
Steve - consider writing something about the recent election in the UK -
The BNP has a lot of negative baggage, but they made a compelling case against NAM immigration and they were resoundingly defeated.
The average voter in the UK got the chance to listen carefully to the BNP message and rejected it
I guess HBD doesn't resonate so much with the general public there
Wait. Perhaps the goal is, was, and never will be a "stable society". Maybe the goal is Trotskyite "permanent revolution" where certain talented alien minorities float to the top in all of the chaos.
Which minorities? Georgians?
If the Nurturists were serious, they'd fund a PR campaign to convince childless Chinese-American couples to adopt black babies.
"43% of blacks who enter law school never pass the bar exam."
Elsewhere you have written 53%.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/03/nyt-claims-study-offers-new-test-of.html
I was recalling with Greg Cochran that in the 1950s the educationist fad was posture. I remember in grade school and junior high that the school nurse came around periodically to lecture us about posture. She had dolls illustrating bad posture and good posture: they were as hideous as her two-foot high set of plastic teeth to teach us how to brush.
This seems bizarre today, but they must have picked it up from the military. It is no more bizarre than any of the other education and race nostrums the NYT has peddled ever since.
This fad BTW is the background of the famous Ivy League/Seven Sisters nude photo "scandal" that the NYT uncovered in the 1990s.
Richard Nisbett's book is indeed a shameless exercise in cherry picking bad data and ignoring evidence in order to advocate a viewpoint. On the other hand there is much to be said for it: he doesn't sling insults and call Phil Rushton and Art Jensen racists and he does say that real research, along the lines of clinical trials, has to be done.
Serious question:
why are jews so bent on pushing egalitarianism? is it because they feel safer in a multicultural environment?
Thanks, Jack Strocchi, for pointing out that Steve Rose article. It's strange to see Mr.Rose saying that some research is worthless even before knowing what the results will be ! Also, if they're so convinced that there's no link between ethnicity and IQ, why not au contraire press forward with reasearch, and shove the results down our racist throats ? Of course, they know full well that if the link was confirmed, the whole edifice of Mickey Mouse social work jobs and bogus programs that employ them would come crashing down.
According to the latest cencus "Profile of Foreign born population" the average income of immigrants from Barbados, Antigua and Barbud, bahamas, Bermuda, Netherlands Antilles, Dominicia, Haitiv and Dominican Republic was 10% less than non-Hispanic whites (and 3% less than all US natives)
According to what yardstick are we supposed to be impressed by this?
why are jews so bent on pushing egalitarianism? is it because they feel safer in a multicultural environment?
I've posited before that the answer is that they lack a certain type of intelligence, one which is not measured by IQ tests but which is essential to the formation and continuation of a sucessful society. This would explain their constant self-destructive behavior at levels above that of the individual.
There are those who believe that Jews do what they do as part of some master plan. I think this gives them far too much credit for intelligence. The consequences of their actions have always been, and must always be, destructive first to the society they live and then to themselves. But they never seem to understand this. I blame it on stupidy rather than malice.
"Also, there is a large mulatto elite that runs the country (of which Eric Holder comes from)."
"RRRRAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK!
Polly want a cracker, whe-hoo"
the 'success' of west indian blacks, colin powel, eric holder-- umm both these guys are blatant AA beneficeriaies. Powel was in fact NOT recommened for promotion by his superiors it was first Reagan than Bush who promoted him (and the media loved it).
But of course, that was a wise, sound investment by Republicans demonstrated by the large number of blacks who vote republican and of course, Powel's own party loyalty...ooops
I was recalling with Greg Cochran that in the 1950s the educationist fad was posture.
This seems bizarre today, but they must have picked it up from the military.
You must really hate the military, if you think that was the source of educratic inspiration!
It is no more bizarre than any of the other education and race nostrums the NYT has peddled ever since.
Quick-fix nostrums, that's the basis of edu-think. The publicly funded education "industry" is nothing more than a giant AA program for pseudo- intellectual dummies and power-tripping verbal sadists in need of victims.
Why not let the smart kids educate themselves with the help of parents, tutors, and private schools? And the dummies can always fend for themselves on the street; they're tough enough all right, and it worked in Dickens's time.
Think it's cruel and evil? Compare the youth suicide rates back then to modern ones. A future historian might look back at modern government schools as death camps for children, particularly gifted ones.
"Steve - consider writing something about the recent election in the UK -
The BNP has a lot of negative baggage, but they made a compelling case against NAM immigration and they were resoundingly defeated.
The average voter in the UK got the chance to listen carefully to the BNP message and rejected it
I guess HBD doesn't resonate so much with the general public there"
You do know that for teachers and other public employees being a member of the BNP gets you fired, right?
You have a very naive view of democracy if you think people "listen carefully" to anything. Considering the sheep people are, 7% of the vote while the entire establishment is united against you is pretty impressive. That's because the right swims with human nature while the left works against it. The latter needs non-stop brainwashing to get its way.
HBD Books
The last poster said:
"A future historian might look back at modern government schools as death camps for children, particularly gifted ones."
I just want to echo that and say how true it was for me. I was in a nice public school, but because I was gifted, it was non-stop torture. If you don't respect the biological fact of different rates of knowledge acquisition, you are genuinely torturing those who acquire knowledge faster.
Imagine someone reading a childrens book to you at 2 words per minute, every day for the rest of your life, and pausing to see if you understand what he is saying.
At first its hilariously easy. Then it gets boring - almost immediately. Then you have all the negative emotions arising in you - anger, frustration, eventually hatred of the teachers and establishment. But the droning voice keeps on reading its children's book.
It goes on for years with no apparent change.
You begin to feel despair.
Nothing you can do can make it stop. You stop giving your 60% effort and your grades drop proportionately. You stop caring, stop contributing, and only 'tune in' long enough to take the test each month. Negative emotions begin to accumulate surrounding anything to do with school - it gets so bad that, although you love learning, you can't even look at a textbook or bother to study for a test.
I've put myself through therapy to get over the negative emotional associations I had with school, because of course I did university and grad school, etc. etc. At some point, it really did get difficult. Roughly the second year of undergrad. At that point I realize I have no study skills whatsoever, huge emotional blocks relating to a "f*** you" attitude towards everthing scholastic, and a desire to pull the whole academic house down around myself like Samson. I even have limiting beliefs that I am stupid because I have been doing so poorly in school for so long, I was struggling to get a B. Because I decided at 14 out of principle to always get the lowest passing grade possible, to put in precisely enough effort to get that grade. At some point in that whole long mess, I began to believe I was actually stupid! In truth I couldn't focus on anything because of boredom and anger, and eventually because I came to believe that I was really stupid!
Got it sorted out with some self-help and now things are easy again. But the moral of my post is this: if you put a high IQ kid with normal kids, and cater to the lowest denominator, you aren't doing him any favors. In fact, if it werent for the internet where I learned to help myself, I would still be a nutcase for people to whisper about and mock. Thank you, school system, for inflicting me with a light form of mental illness and taking away 8 to 10 years so I could learn trig, Am Lit, and the periodic table. All I really care about is that the IQ 100 children were not overwhelmed or made to feel inferior. =/
Please forgive my embittered ranting, I know its unpleasant to read. Life's a cakewalk now, my negative tone applies only in retrospect.
Tino, if WI immigrants are doing so well, why are we giving them Affirmative Action?
Let them go to the back of the line like all the white people who immigrate here.
They come here to live off of white folks and take the AA out of the mouths of our domestic blacks who need it more.
Nothing I hate worse than hi-yallas whining about discrimination and figuring their "light, bright, almost-white" skin makes them all special-like, mooching off of white folks' AA like American white folks owe them something.
Thanks for proving me correct with your figures. WI folks need to stay home and help their own people instead of coming here and stealing jobs and college admissions from real American black folks whoneed the help. Y'all don't.
"Thanks, Jack Strocchi, for pointing out that Steve Rose article."
There is an excellent series of comments in the Nature discussion forum from a number of prominent researchers following Rose's comment. I would recommend reading them all.
James Flynn demolishes Rose's argument:
"Rose leaves me in doubt as to whether Arthur Jensen should have written his 1969 article, arguing that both genes and environment cause the black/white IQ gap, rather than environment alone (ref 1). In Rose’s original paper, he asserts that the trait in question (intelligence) leaves aside other desirable traits and argues that the groups in question can be divided into subgroups that are more biologically coherent. He concludes that the hypothesis is not subject to scientific treatment; and therefore, no useful social policy will emerge. In his response to Ceci and Williams, he says something very different, namely, that by about 1975, it had been definitively shown that genes had no place in explaining group differences. So from that date, Jensen and everybody else had no excuse to persist.
To assert both that a hypothesis is not scientifically testable and that it has been conclusively falsified is incoherent. The only way to reconcile them is to assume that Rose does not really mean Jensen had been refuted by 1975, but is saying that by that date, it should have been clear to everyone that the question was indeed unanswerable."
http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/3871?page=3
"A future historian might look back at modern government schools as death camps for children, particularly gifted ones. "
I'm sure that Henry and I were terribly traumatized. More seriously, what utter crap. The idea that public schools are somehow really dreadful, popular among libertarian types, is untrue. They're inefficient, not awful.
Not to be a gcochran sycophant but I agree with him. Attending non-elite classes with a headfull of madd IQz is not always a blast - but how is it worse than growing up doing farm work or whatever else?
The problem is not the impact on the individual per se - it's that we fail to educate in the way that would be optimal for advancing wealth, advancing energy research, coping with environmental and martial threats to civilization, etc... all matters where most impact will come from individuals of IQ 140+ and especially those packing 150+: people whose education is thus a lot more important to optimize than the education of everyone else, people in whose education a 1% difference might yield substantial results.
As for higher suicide rates in today's children - if that is in fact the case - there are a million possibilities for that, including biological ones. To begin with, consider the biological results of urbanization.
They're inefficient, not awful.
I never felt like I was disadvantaged by having attended what was, back in the '70s, a rather typical public high school. But in retrospect, I'm glad I went to a parochial primary school, as I seemed to get a better foundation there than many of my high school peers who went to public schools. I remember a certain air of discipline in parochial school, as well as a definite expectation that you would learn and achieve, things which I think are important for younger children. If I had kids I'd almost certainly send them to a parochial grade school.
Of course in many areas the ethnic composition of the student body is quite a bit different now than it was back then.
"The idea that public schools are somehow really dreadful, popular among libertarian types, is untrue. They're inefficient, not awful."
Nice to see old reliably abrasive Cochran, all blustery and whatnot, storming in and making some insane blanket assertion.
Some public schools are inefficient. Some are awful. Just because he wasn't getting the smackdown poor whites get at some of these places doesn't mean they're not miserable for certain people.
If only these three high-IQ types got their own countries, I'm sure they'd turn them into some type of paradise. The ecological policies of China, the architecture of Israel, the efficient transportation system of the West Indies - we can but dream.
I'm curious - is there any developed country where blacks currently reside in significant numbers (say, >5% of the population) where they're not disproportionately represented among the underclass? And, is there any country with a substantial jewish population where they're not disproportionately among the elites?
If not, then that might raise further questions about the environmentalist thesis.
The BNP has a lot of negative baggage, but they made a compelling case against NAM immigration and they were resoundingly defeated.
The average voter in the UK got the chance to listen carefully to the BNP message and rejected it
I guess HBD doesn't resonate so much with the general public there.
Are you serious? The average voter definitely did not get the chance to listen carefully to the BNP message. The media and political elite waged a brutal campaign against the BNP, and despite that, they gained two seats. I probably wouldn't vote for them, but it's silly to suggest that their message got through to the average voter.
The problem is not the impact on the individual per se - it's that we fail to educate in the way that would be optimal for advancing wealth, advancing energy research, coping with environmental and martial threats to civilization, etc... all matters where most impact will come from individuals of IQ 140+ and especially those packing 150+
This claim is fallacious. People with IQs "packing 150" are at the forefront of those creating those problems in the areas of "threats to civilization", and also at the forefront of those acting to retard the creation of wealth.
You really ought to spend a little time reading some free market theory. It places none of the emphasis on high IQ individuals which you deem to be so vital.
No wonder the country is in a shambles, when even the people on the right have forgotten the basic pribciples our society was founded on.
gcochran has probably just not through the consequences of a system that rewards students for lying for thirteen years, starting when they are four or five. There is a reason people think it is cool to fail. Adolescence is a somewhat natural, somewhat artificial condition, but the worship of failure and dishonesty is entirely artificial, and entirely the product of Prussian education.
I'm friends with a Jewish guy who had the misfortune to attend NYC public schools in the sixties. He's shown me the knife scars in his back. Scars, plural.
I don't need to tell anybody the race of the perps.
why are jews so bent on pushing egalitarianism? is it because they feel safer in a multicultural environment?
I've posited before that the answer is that they lack a certain type of intelligence, one which is not measured by IQ tests but which is essential to the formation and continuation of a sucessful society.
How do you define success?
The Jews are one of the oldest living ethnic groups. They must have done something right to have survived all this long.
This would explain their constant self-destructive behavior at levels above that of the individual.
The Jews had 4000 years of opportunities to destroy themselves, and failed to do so, pulling through crisis after crisis. Only in the last 30 years have they had a serious demographic setback. It's clear that Jewish "self-destructive behavior" applies only to the modern era.
Re Barbados.
I used to go out with a Jamaican girl and she had been married to a guy from Barbados.
It seemed common knowledge amongst West Indians that people from Barbados were generally lighter (whiter) than those from Jamaica.
"A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive"
Immigrants are DRIVEN. So obviously we need MORE of them! More! More! More!
how is it worse than growing up doing farm work or whatever else?
Ummm, regularly getting beaten up by idiots isn't fun.
Comments open on Kristof's piece.
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/your-comments-on-sundays-column/?apage=4#comments
This is off-topic, but since Cochran and Harpending have posted on this thread, I wanted to ask them two questions that popped into my head on reading their recent book, The 10,000 Year explosion:
1) When I was a child visiting my grandparents on Saturday mornings, I would often thumb through my grandmother’s and Aunt’s old anthropology books (the former was an Anthropology major at UPenn in the 1930s, the latter a postgrad in Anthropology at UVA in the 70s) and noticed that physical anthropologists seemed to pay a great deal of attention to cephalic index, which at the time I thought was rather silly. (see e.g., the works of C. Coon) Coon noted that from the Neolithic and antiquity, through the medieval and early modern periods, European and Asian populations seem to have become increasingly brachycephalic. In your book, you note that breeding experiments selecting mammals, such as foxes, for tameness caused rounder skulls. Elsewhere in the book you mention elites in large, hierarchical agricultural societies were probably ‘breeding’ peasants for decreased interpersonal violence, or in effect ‘tameness.’ Do you think this trend in Eurasia from dolicephaly towards brachycephalization over historical times is a reflection of increased ‘tameness’/docility?
2) This question you may not want to answer because of its controversial nature - it is related to your theses on the development of Ashkenazi intelligence: Gregory Clarke has proposed (and you mention his work in your book) that populations in countries such as England (and presumably other parts of Europe) were selected over the course of the middle ages and early modern period for traits associated with economic success such as low time preference, ‘middle-class values,’ and, presumably, intelligence. My question - Is it possible/likely that the presence of the Ashkenazim (and perhaps other middleman/managerial minorities like Baltic Germans) in financial, mercantile and managerial professional niches impeded the development of intelligence and other traits Clarke associated with economic success in the gentile populations of the ‘Pale of Settlement’ (i.e., much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Bessarabia, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia) in relation to their development in the populations of W., C. and N. Europe where the Ashkenazim had been expelled in the middle ages and consequently, such professions were largely filled by native gentiles. I ask this because I noticed that, according to data presented by R. Lynn (IQ tests), H. Rindermann (calculated from scholastic achievement tests), and V. Weiss (calculated on PISA math scores), apart from the Balkans and a few other countries on the fringes of Europe (such as Ireland), which may have experienced the selective pressures discussed by Clarke to a lesser degree, most European populations achieve similar scores on g-loaded psychometric tests. The area of the Pale seems to be an exception to this based on the limited data available. (e.g., g/IQ scores per the above authors):
Lithuania – 90 (CPM), 92 (WISC-3), both Lynn
Poland – 92 (SPM) Lynn , 94 (Weiss); 98 (Rindermann)
Bessarabia (now Romania and Moldavia) – 94 (CPM for Romania) Lynn;
Russia (whole country, not just former Pale) – 96 (CF), 97 (SPM) Lynn; 93 (Weiss), 98 (Rindermann)
The one exception to this pattern of g scores up to about .5 S.D. below W. European norms seems to be Buj’s Polish study which showed an average IQ on Cattel’s Culture Fair test of 106 for Warsaw (and a capital city of a nation is probably not representative of a nation as a whole). I realize the data are spotty and incomplete for all parts of the Pale and more research would have to be done, but is it plausible that the presence of middleman minorities dominating high-IQ occupations in these regions negatively influenced the development of g, low time preference, etc. in the gentile population there?
"Serious question:
why are jews so bent on pushing egalitarianism? is it because they feel safer in a multicultural environment?"
They are hopeless fantasy romantics.
Anonymous: The Jews had 4000 years of opportunities to destroy themselves, and failed to do so, pulling through crisis after crisis. Only in the last 30 years have they had a serious demographic setback. It's clear that Jewish "self-destructive behavior" applies only to the modern era.
My first reply to this thread appears not to have made it through Komment Kontrol, and this reply probably won't either, but we've got a long & detailed historical record of Jewish "self-destructiveness" [or plain old destructiveness or whatever you wanna call it] going back to pretty much Day One of the Emancipation.
I once asked Spengler if there were any known instances [in the historical record] of Jewish opposition to this destructiveness, and first he told me that I was an anti-semite for simply raising the question, but then he offered Heine's Atta Troll as a riposte to Marx.
--I'm sure that Henry and I were terribly traumatized. More seriously, what utter crap. The idea that public schools are somehow really dreadful, popular among libertarian types, is untrue. They're inefficient, not awful.--
Greg, please define "awful."
I also invite you to teach as a substitute in the public schools in Ft. Pierce, Fl (http://www.greatschools.net/search/search.page?c=school&lc=e&q=fort+pierce&search_type=0&state=FL). Teach for a day at an elementary like the vaunted Garden City Academy. Then spend a day or two at a middle school. Just a few days will do. My bet is that like most people you will hit the bottle after the first day and wonder what just happened.
You will have seen:
Administration that does not qualify as inefficient, but rather criminally negligent.
You will find that smart kids, and there are smart kids in these schools, are tossed into classes with people best described as animals.
You will be surrounded by bright white ladies who went to work in these schools out of a duty to right "past wrongs." You will find that many of them, with a drink or two in their system, are now serious thinkers on race.
Your experiences will drive you to change your position to one more nuanced. You will conclude that many public schools are likely hell holes for teachers and students; but are acceptable to overpaid administrators. You will have encountered a system that serves no student, and serves but a limited selection of staff. This is the brutal reality in the St. Lucie County School District. You will find a reality that is as profound and obvious as racial differences.
My bet is that, like a newbie to HBD, you won't quite believe your lying eyes. So you will then move from the pure ghetto area to the greater school district. There, in the extended zones where many parents have nice homes and expensive cars, you will find the true horror; and horror you shall know it. You will find gifted classes dumbed-down by more than 1 S.D. by students from immigrants. You will find that every classroom is deliberately stocked with children from across the bell curve resulting in an unworkable mishmash where some students have IQs of 85 and others IQs of 130 or more. When you witness the dysfunction and the Orwellian nature of double-speak, and when you witness what happens to those who speak-up for a results-driven approach, your opinion will change.
After you properly consider what you just experienced and juxtapose that experience with the undeniable fact that government schools are a racket, you will know that your statement was wrong. You will be a different person. You will admit to yourself, that for whatever gifts you have, you may also suffer from some measure of over-thinking, of over rationalization, of some measure of over compensation of tempering thoughts. For you will realize that your simple analysis missed the mark by a country mile. I know because I was once like you. I was once a man who judged without experiencing first hand. Maybe you have taken the challenge elsewhere. Whatever the case, I challenge you to take it in St. Lucie County. I promise an experience that will change you for the better.
How do you define success?
It's clear that Jewish "self-destructive behavior" applies only to the modern era.
I define by success by an ability to live with people in peace without them wanting to kill you. Jews seem to be notably unpopular wherever they go, something that has been true across long spans of time. Perhaps they need a copy of "How to win friends and influence people"?
More immediately, I was referring to their current obsession with destroying America as a white Christian country. This is of recent origin and it is interesting to observe the reasoning behiand it. Prior to WWII American Jews were fairly assimilated. You might think that Americas war against Nazi Germany would have cemented Jewish affection for this country. Instead it destroyed it.
If you pay attention to what Jews themselves say, they see the Holocaust as a white Christian thing. (As I say, they are none too bright in some respects.) And they are busy trying to undermine and bring down the one and only philo-Jewish counnty as a consequence. They are eager to populate America even with their historic enemies, the Arabs. Perhaps you can find some intelligence in all this. To me, it seems plain as day they Jews are behaving like complete morons. And not for the first tme.
The Jews are one of the oldest living ethnic groups.
Stop kidding yourself. Their Arab friends are every bit as old. I can name numerous other ethnic groups just as old, the Chinese, for instance. They even share the Jews delusions of ethnic supremacy over all the other people on earth.
Wait, Lou Diamond Phillips is Filipino? Yet another case of "I'm not a Mexican, but I play one on TV."
The West indians case produces the greatest problems for believers in racial differentiation since clearly there is no significant racial difference between them & US blacks (there is considerable white admisture in both groups bugt no necessary reason which should be higher).
It also produces the greatest problems for those who say black's problems are because of white racism since it is obvious the Klan aren't going to tell them apart.
All we really know on for sure is that we don't know enough.
"Stop kidding yourself. Their Arab friends are every bit as old."
Arab culture basically goes back to Mohammed (i.e., the Middle Ages). Although the Arabs certainly descended from predecessor tribal groups, they have no continuity qua Arabs any further than that. Arabs didn't exist as a coherent ethno-cultural group in ancient times.
"Jews seem to be notably unpopular wherever they go, something that has been true across long spans of time. Perhaps they need a copy of "How to win friends and influence people"?"
There's something of a paradox here, in that being successful as a minority group often leads to being unpopular. This has been true of overseas Chinese and other high-achieving minority groups and isn't something inherent to Jews. This is true in most cases, but not in all cases though. Jews have lived as successful minorities free of persecution not just in the U.S. but also in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Scandinavia, India, South Africa and China.
They are eager to populate America even with their historic enemies, the Arabs.
two points:
First, Jews were pushing multi-culti and open immigration BEFORE WWII - they viciously opposed the 1924 immigration restriction act. This is well documented by Kevin McDonald
Secondly arabs are NOT their historic enemies - White Christians are, and not because Christians chose them as their enemeies but rather Jews chose Christians as their enemies Google The forward (jewsih magazine) "do jews have a jesus problem" the first major public piece in which they admit the talmud condems Christ as a heretic. (and the virgin mary as a harlot - not wise things to do in say, 15th century spain, which was one of many reasons that led to their expulsion)
Kristof can be very good when he writes about humanitarian issues in the Third World, but he's trapped in liberal nostrums half the time. A decent man, but a prisoner of conventional wisdom.
Zylonet said,
"Greg, please define "awful."
Zylonet is right. Come spend a few days in almost any elementary school, middle school, high school in any number of districts in the Bay Area of CA or in the Central Valley. What exists today is the educational equivalent of the once elegant, proud, and glorious Beirut--rubble, chaos.
There are enclaves of top-notch and not-so-bad public schools in the area, but they are confined to the towns that are home to the very affluent.
The old expression that we always "sink to lowest common denominator" is true when applied to public institutions.
Here in California, we are inundated by a host of problems, most caused by and perpetuated by the state and federal governments' fostering of helplessness. There is a reason people flock to our state--welfare. That gets you a whole lotta lowest common denominators and breeds a whole lot more.
>People with IQs "packing 150" are at the forefront of those creating those problems in the areas of "threats to civilization", and also at the forefront of those acting to retard the creation of wealth.
You really ought to spend a little time reading some free market theory.<
And you need to spend a little time studying NASA's coverup of the Face on Mars. I have some literature.
they see the Holocaust as a white Christian thing.
they HAVE to. it is part of their national 'myth' -
Anonymous said "You must really hate the military, if you think that was the source of educratic inspiration!" in response to my suggestion that the posture fad came from the military. I am sure his remark is at least partly tongue in cheek.
But if not, no, I don't hate the military and I think there is some nugget of value in the posture fad. Put yourself back in the 1950s, a proud moment in our history. The military had taken hundreds of thousands of country kids, taught them boy scout virtues, and won WWII. Then it put them into universities with the GI Bill. We were doing something right, but like a dog with a bone we just couldn't let it go. The result was all the nude posture photos of teenagers and my school nurse's silly posture dolls. OTOH this spirit lives on in the camps that take bad acting kids and make them hike around the woods and sleep on the ground with faith that this will straighten them up.
Analogously the civil rights movement was another proud time for this country. Nisbett's convergence of B and W standardized test scores all happened at once in the early 1970s after this movement, but then it stopped. Again, the dog couldn't quit chewing on the same bone. From the grandeur of MLK's oratory we have derived affirmative action and the doctrine of diversity.
My suggestion is that the scientist in the white coat staring at thousands of nude teenagers is much like the university vice-president for diversity, silly debris from a good thing taken way too far.
http://www.forward.com/articles/105242/
here is the forward article
"
"A future historian might look back at modern government schools as death camps for children, particularly gifted ones."
I just want to echo that and say how true it was for me. I was in a nice public school, but because I was gifted, it was non-stop torture. If you don't respect the biological fact of different rates of knowledge acquisition, you are genuinely torturing those who acquire knowledge faster."
Anon,
So many people need to hear this because it is the real experience of so many people.
I commented on this fact at the onestdv blog:
As a former public school teacher, I know there are so many smart kids in schools who are bored to the point of bad behavior. The curriculum (even "gifted" curriculum) is so painfully dumbed down that kids don't really have adequate opportunities to excel. Middle school is the worst. Massive stagnation in teaching, trying to give the slow the chance to catch up to the normal and bright. What is the difference between 5th grade math and 8th grade math? Not much. Certainly not enough. Nowhere near as much difference as 1st and 5th. The professional curriculum developers don't want a rigorous curriculum because the evidence of the differences in abilities would be amplified much sooner. Such a waste. It really broke my heart to see what some schools do to hold back the bright kids.
People of all different worldviews are taking their kids out of schools and homeschooling because they remember what happened to them and they don't want their kids to go through the same crap.
"Attending non-elite classes with a headfull of madd IQz is not always a blast - but how is it worse than growing up doing farm work or whatever else"
I am sure you meant no disrespect however,
farm work is not for idiots. Look at Zimbabwe. It is also useful work, where bright minds have found ways to innovate for efficiency and productivity. It is not artificially constraining where you are locked into meaningless pointless tasks like public school and overseen by nagging annoying school marms. You work your own hours and are your own master. Any farmer is pleased to have a resourceful and adept son helping him. It is very rewarding. You get to use cool tools and build stuff. It is real.
"All we really know on for sure is that we don't know enough."
Keep telling yourself that.
There's something of a paradox here, in that being successful as a minority group often leads to being unpopular. This has been true of overseas Chinese and other high-achieving minority groups and isn't something inherent to Jews.
The same could be said about smart and/or "autistic" kids in government schools and even society in general. It's even worse, because none of these neuro-minorities have the protection of a tribe.
---All we really know on for sure is that we don't know enough.---
Yes, we do:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/013380.html
People with IQs "packing 150" are at the forefront of those creating those problems in the areas of "threats to civilization", and also at the forefront of those acting to retard the creation of wealth.
I see what you mean.
But high-IQ persons are also at the forefront of those creating wealth and freedom.
Betrayal breeds betrayal. If you were continually betrayed by your own society (schools, churches, even parents), you wouldn't be so gung-ho to defend it. The "threats to civilization" are indeed threats, possibly treasonous, but try to understand why.
There's something of a paradox here, in that being successful as a minority group often leads to being unpopular.
"successful' doesn't mean nice, or good. The oligarchs have been 'successful' but could you see why the average Russian and even Putin might not like them?
The same sort of unethical behavior is evident here - just look at whom the 'oligarchs' were aided by.
from harpend:
Anonymous said "You must really hate the military, if you think that was the source of educratic inspiration!" in response to my suggestion that the posture fad came from the military. I am sure his remark is at least partly tongue in cheek.
I am the "anonymous" who replied to your first post. And yes I was partly tongue in cheek, but partly dead serious.
But if not, no, I don't hate the military
Neither do I hate the military. I do hate the government-school gulag for children. One is built upon adult volunteers; the other, on draftees.
Compare the suicide rates (at least pre-Iraq-War).
and I think there is some nugget of value in the posture fad.
Sure it was a good thing taken to extremes. The same could be said for nutrition, cleanliness, sexual modesty, and financial responsibility. Anything good can be taken to extremes.
Put yourself back in the 1950s, a proud moment in our history. The military had taken hundreds of thousands of country kids, taught them boy scout virtues, and won WWII. Then it put them into universities with the GI Bill.
The problem with boy scout virtues is that they are essentially low-IQ virtues that work well for the masses, but not for smart people. Smart people need to know why, rather than blindly following moral taboos (no matter how well-intentioned).
Christianity and Islam are both "boy scout" religions taken to murderous extremes.
We were doing something right, but like a dog with a bone we just couldn't let it go.
Agreed.
The result was all the nude posture photos of teenagers and my school nurse's silly posture dolls. OTOH this spirit lives on in the camps that take bad acting kids and make them hike around the woods and sleep on the ground with faith that this will straighten them up.
Also the idea (spawned from Christian mythology), that physical pain/discomfort by itself leads to moral reform, or can even prevent moral corruption. To paraphrase Heinlein, trying to housebreak a dog by smacking it every hour will just drive it crazy.
Analogously the civil rights movement was another proud time for this country.
It was also something that looked much better on paper than on reality. The part about black people having free access to buses and washrooms made sense. But to expect an entire nation of people with a different history/culture and outlook to the white majority to behave the same way, is pure fantasy.
I say it again: the idea that public schools are hellholes - more than private schools, say - is nonsense. Certainly their educational effect is indistinguishable. As for all the bored geniuses neglected by those schools - they could go read a book. Reminds of a friend who went to Stuyvesant: he once expressed envy that I, in my utterly ordinary public school, had enough spare time time to do almost anything I wanted to, ranging from bottle-rockets to learning how to do triple integrals.
In fact. I believed this strongly enough to send my daughter to the neighborhood local majority-minority, academically unexciting public school. She did ok: she still managed to tie for the top ACT score in the state.
I grew up with my ~150 IQ, in a fairly small, and very white, Northern city, and had the misfortune to attend government schools there around 30 years ago. It was as hellish as those of many of the other commenters. There were no gifted programs, on the grounds of them being "unfair" and "elitist".
The schools were full of creatures best called eviltards. Big, hulking, vicious, and bestial - dumb as a brick but with a strange sort of hive mind that made them act as one. Most of them were also hypocritical Satan-bashing Bible thumping establishment drones. Calling them animals would only be a disgrace to real animals, most of which are far more noble.
The teachers loved the eviltards, because they kept order, and never threatened the teachers, or even inconvenienced them in the least. Having poor grades is not the same heresy as asking an embarassing question.
Please note that these specimens were all white - and this all happened during the supposed "golden age" before PC, AA, and multiculturalism.
Speaking of the white race, its greatest strength is its neurodiversity. Therefore shouldn't white people who love their race also cherish its neuroatypical (high IQ, ADHD, autistic) members?
Neil Craig said:
"The West indians case produces the greatest problems for believers in racial differentiation since clearly there is no significant racial difference between them & US blacks (there is considerable white admisture in both groups bugt no necessary reason which should be higher)."
Not really Neal. All that race realists believe is that different biogeographical ancestral gene pools have somewhat differing frequencies of genes that influence g. This does not mean that a selected SUBSET of a biogeographical ancestral cluster that is less well endowed as a whole for genes causing greater intelligence vis-a-vis another cluster would necessarily also be less well endowed with those genes. Why would you assume that the W I blacks who decided to immigrate to the the US are a representative sample of W I blacks? Do you think that the African's who immigrate to the US are representative of all Africans? They certainly hold university degrees at a much higher rate than Africans as a whole. Do you think that the East Indians who immigrate to the US are representative of the population of India? If they were, does India really have that many doctors and programmers per capita? If we sent 2 million Americans to a foreign country and all of them were college graduates, do you think they would have the same achievement profile as Americans as a whole? A few moments of thought should show you what spurious logic you are using. Group differences are, after all, aggregated individual differences. It's not race qua race that makes people smarter or dumber. It is just that different races seem to have different proportions of individuals at various levels of cognitive functioning. Subsets can certainly differ in average from the whole.
Thats a good point anon. However I can counter by saying that the Indians & Africans you are thinking of (eg Obama Snr) got in as students & thus were selected for brains - in Britain our corner shops are run by asians & they don't average brighter than the rest of us. Colin Powell didn't. I can counter by saying that all US whites came from European immigrants & yet don't show a clear intellectual superiority to those who stayed. It is certainly part of the American frontier self image that as immigrants they are more enerprising but if so either it is cultural or there is, through recessive genes or whatever, considerable regression to the mean.
Such regression also appears in aristocracies otherwise they would never be overthrown.
No result seems to fit anybody's position fully which is a sign we need more research & possibly that the difficulties of doing research are political rather than technical.
In response to Anonymous responding to Neil Craig:
excellent post.
Nisbett completely misses this point in his discussion of IQ in mixed groups. He seems to assume that there is something essential about Black or White and doesn't consider the sampling processes that went into the parental populations.
Thanks for the compliment Henry. I'm also the anonymous that wondered about the connection between increasing brachycephalization in Eurasia and decreased levels of interpersonal violence/increased tameness. Any thoughts on this?
Neil Craig said:
"Thats a good point anon. However I can counter by saying that the Indians & Africans ... got in as students & thus were selected for brains - in Britain our corner shops are run by asians & they don't average brighter than the rest of us. I can counter by saying that all US whites came from European immigrants & yet don't show a clear intellectual superiority to those who stayed..."
First of all, buried in 300+ comments to the times article, Tino presents data showing that W I acheivements in the US aren't actually that impressive. Kristoff goes on about how they earn more than African Americans. This is a pretty low bar. They earn about 10% less than white Americans and they are disproportionately concentrated in big, Eastern cities with high wages and high costs of living, whereas many whites live in 'flyover country' where wages and prices are lower. Hence, their nominal wages, which are in any case lower than whites, give a false, overstated impression of their relative real incomes. Also, re educational attainment, they do better than US blacks (including disproportionately benefiting from affirmative action programs orginally intended to help the descendents of American slaves), probably at least partly because they are more likely to have intact families, but do not really come close to whites on academic achievement/proficiency (as opposed to credentialization). However, as also pointed out in the times comments sections, this better than average performance fades out somewhate by the 3rd generation (again, no one thinks the poor performance of US blacks is solely genetic - I think there is good evidence they have undergone a lot of cultural degeneration due to their interaction with the welfare state - see, e.g., the works of C. Murray or T. Sowell).
Re white Americans and Europeans, it is not really clear that the descendents of European immigrants in the US aren't slightly smarter than Europeans as a whole. For instance, R. Lynn's 2006 meta-analysis finds that N. American whites average slightly higher IQs (100) than whites from N, C, E, Europe (99), the Iberian peninsula (97), and SE Europe (92) (with average brain size in the same ordering). Also, non-Hispanic white Americans, as opposed to Americans as a whole, do better than most European countries on international math, reading and science achievement tests (including all of the European G-7 nations).
See:
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=gse_pubs
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
The problem with boy scout virtues is that they are essentially low-IQ virtues that work well for the masses, but not for smart people.
Virtues, by deinition, work for the entire society. Especially the "smart people", none of who you seem to have ever encountered.
Smart people need to know why, rather than blindly following moral taboos (no matter how well-intentioned).
Then they are not nearly as "smart" as they think they are. In fact they are actually fairly dim.
Christianity and Islam are both "boy scout" religions taken to murderous extremes.
I'm sure you base this on the multitude of people you saw being murdered by those evil Christian neighbors of yours.
Why is it that whenever somebody appears on this site claiming to be part of the intellectual elite, they promptly demonstrate themselves to be idiots?
The same rule that apples to good looks applies to intelligence - other people can remark that you are smart, but you yourself cannot say that. And people who vehemently insist on their own exalted brain-power are always wrong.
It's worth noting that genuinely intelligent peple tend to attribute their success to hard work, and not to being smarter than everyone else.
But high-IQ persons are also at the forefront of those creating wealth and freedom.
Nonsense. For one thing we don't have IQ data for most individuals, so we can only speculate on their IQs.
But we can assume fairly safely based on intellectual accomplishment, and what we find quite consistently is that the "universtity class" is overwhelmingly socialist/communist/in favor of government control. Which means in practice, in favor of their own control, since they are the ones who make up the management in the managed state. Heck, Einstein was a socialist.
The notion that high IQ people are pro-freedom and anti-government is one of Rands most notable flaws. In the real world John Galt turns out to be Angelo Mozilo.
I say this because its pretty clear that you are basing your theories on her and not on any of the actual free market economists, from Smith to Friedman, none of whom subscribed to the value of high IQ.
Rand was poor novelist, but she was a better novelist than an economist.
Indeed, Holder’s father, a Barbadian immigrant, and his mother, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants, strove to cocoon him away from African-American culture while he was growing up.
---------
AND IT WORKED!
They ketpt himout of trouble and education...all to be an un-qualified race pimp!
Congrats.
"No result seems to fit anybody's position fully which is a sign we need more research & possibly that the difficulties of doing research are political rather than technical."
I can't imagine what those political difficulties would be.
example, Kristof punditized Saturday in the NYT (Rising Above I.Q. June 6, 2009):
---------
LOVE that title! Only a liberal could come up with THAT! .....
Arab culture basically goes back to Mohammed (i.e., the Middle Ages). Although the Arabs certainly descended from predecessor tribal groups, they have no continuity qua Arabs any further than that. Arabs didn't exist as a coherent ethno-cultural group in ancient times.
No, Arab's Islamic religion goes back to Mohammed. The Arab peoples go back to the dawn of recorded history, and even the Jewish bible makes note of that.
Jews have not "existed as a coherent ethno-cultural group" for the majority of their existence, so this is a curious criticism for you to level.
I'm unimpressed by your Spengler-like Jewish supremacism, and I suggest it has more to do with Jewish unpopularity than your "successfuly minority" explanation.
Greg Cochran is right. Those of you claiming that public school was hell for you because you are such geniuses sound overly sensitive. In the real world, no one elevates you solely because you have a better than average IQ; the world is full of "over-educated" people filling lower-level jobs, because they lack the complementary attributes (diligence, toughness, street-smarts, whatever) to be higher-achievers.
It's not a surprise that this thread would attract some handful of self-described geniuses feeling sorry for themselves. Such sad geniuses seem to be attracted to HBD, perhaps out of some unconscious hope that if HBD were accepted by society, these delicate geniuses would then be asked to take their rightful place in leadership roles.
For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children. "
-------------
Just who is "at-risk"??
Poor minorities or Fire Lt's, like Ricci, that want to test up to Captain?
Rand was poor novelist, but she was a better novelist than an economist.
...and she wasn't much of a novelist...so I would hate to think of what sort of economist she would be :)
Actually, most libertarians - of the 'reason' persuasion - don't get it, they don't realize that 'freedom' and respect for individual liberty comes from CULTURE,:: "Avarice, ambition," warned John Adams, "would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
I grew up with my ~150 IQ, in a fairly small, and very white, Northern city, and had the misfortune to attend government schools there around 30 years ago. It was as hellish as those of many of the other commenters. There were no gifted programs, on the grounds of them being "unfair" and "elitist".
The schools were full of creatures best called eviltards. Big, hulking, vicious, and bestial - dumb as a brick but with a strange sort of hive mind that made them act as one. Most of them were also hypocritical Satan-bashing Bible thumping establishment drones. Calling them animals would only be a disgrace to real animals, most of which are far more noble.
The teachers loved the eviltards, because they kept order, and never threatened the teachers, or even inconvenienced them in the least. Having poor grades is not the same heresy as asking an embarassing question.
Reminds me a bit of The Catcher in the Rye.
Whoa, you guys are dumb.
The reason Mr. Cochran and his daughter did ok in cruddy schools is that their daddies love them, and the reason you all didn't is your daddies don't.
"Such sad geniuses seem to be attracted to HBD, perhaps out of some unconscious hope that if HBD were accepted by society, these delicate geniuses would then be asked to take their rightful place in leadership roles."
Now where have I heard that argument before? You need new material...
Most of the arguments used against group differences could apply equally well to individual differences in intelligence. So why don't any of the anti-race realists consistently argue that everybody (excepting the developmentally disabled) is born with exactly the same intelligence potential?
Nothing like a 'jews' and "IQ" thread to push the comments over 100.
It seems like all you well-adjusted normal folks out there would rise to the top in Ceausescu's Romania or Pol Pot's Kampuchea.
"It seems like all you well-adjusted normal folks out there would rise to the top in Ceausescu's Romania or Pol Pot's Kampuchea."
Don't you mean Nazi Germany? Scathing!
Don't you mean Nazi Germany?
Too bloody obvious. Everyone knows about the Nazis.
Nothing like a 'jews' and "IQ" thread to push the comments over 100.
In fairness, most of the passion and comments seem to be about the schools and the relative value they should place on "gifted" pupils. Since fifty percent of threads here are about IQ you can't make any conclusions based on its presence on this particular thread.
Jack Parsons: Smart people need to know why, rather than blindly following moral taboos (no matter how well-intentioned). Christianity and Islam are both "boy scout" religions taken to murderous extremes.
That's just rank nonsense.
I'm getting sick & tired of you LGF/GNXP Darwinian nihilists coming on here and dissing Christianity when you don't have any earthly idea what you're talking about.
Christianity is the antithesis of "boy scout" legalism - the entire purpose of Christianity is the "Why".
It seems like all you well-adjusted normal folks out there would rise to the top in Ceausescu's Romania or Pol Pot's Kampuchea.
From which I conclude that you imaginary geniuses regard Pol Pot and Ceausescu as normal and well adjusted. Remind me again why I should reagard you as intelligent.
"Greg Cochran is right. Those of you claiming that public school was hell for you because you are such geniuses sound overly sensitive. "
Actually, I said I was a teacher and felt sorry for the kids who are bored and not challenged. I also said I was disgusted at the way schools waste kids time when the kids could achieve so much more.
Personally, I went to nice suburban schools and was glad I could make honor without having to put out hardly any effort. I had a cool car and lots of friends and time for sports etc.
Anonymous said "I'm also the anonymous that wondered about the connection between increasing brachycephalization in Eurasia and decreased levels of interpersonal violence/increased tameness. Any thoughts on this?"
Someone told me once that the brachycephalization phenomenon had to do with changing brain size but I can't recall who said it. Otherwise I have no clue at all.
You also asked about whether the concentration of Ashkenazi in white collar jobs had anything to do with the slightly lower IQ test scores in the former Pale. Again I don't have a good answer. Is it not as likely that the demand for Jews by rulers there reflected a local shortage?
Greg Clark's book is stunning IMHO, and our pundit class still doesn't realize how inflammatory it is. My understanding is that for his mechanism to work the big requirement is a stable government that does not take everything. If you put $50 dollars in the bank you will benefit if it is still there 25 years down the road, with interest, otherwise not. Perhaps in eastern Europe you were more likely to lose it. You certainly were more likely to lose it in Islamic countries else, under his model, we would have a flood of science and mathematics from the Nile Valley.
Fred:
Greg Cochran is right. Those of you claiming that public school was hell for you because you are such geniuses sound overly sensitive.
Smart people usually are sensitive. It's a fact of life. Just like it's a fact that legless people need wheelchairs to get around. Do you suggest that in the name of fairness, that such "weaklings" not be allowed to use wheelchairs and just helplessly crawl around? If so, consider yourself a true edu-sadist.
In the real world, no one elevates you solely because you have a better than average IQ;
First of all, in the real world, you're free to quit your job without you or your parents being branded as criminals. Not so much with the institutionalized slavery known as government school.
Second of all, the "socialization" (or more accurately, social rape) that occurs in most government schools would result in a lengthy prison term for assault or even attempted murder.
the world is full of "over-educated" people filling lower-level jobs,
So what? As long as they are happy where they are. Not everyone wants or needs the stress of corporate yuppiedom.
And it's a hell of a lot better than suicide!
because they lack the complementary attributes (diligence, toughness, street-smarts, whatever) to be higher-achievers.
Ruthlessness? Duplicity? Hypocrisy? All the evils that your elders preach against, but practice just the same?
And you need to spend a little time studying NASA's coverup of the Face on Mars. I have some literature. ...
Why don't you please share some of that interesting literature with us?
---Don't you mean Nazi Germany?
Too bloody obvious. Everyone knows about the Nazis.---
Well, yeah..but the Left gets never too worked up about commie regimes that murder for kicks. Anyway, I couldn't help myself. Anyone who doesn't agree with Lefty wisdom du jour must be be plannning for the 4th Reich.
"No, Arab's Islamic religion goes back to Mohammed. The Arab peoples go back to the dawn of recorded history, and even the Jewish bible makes note of that."
Everyone has origins that go back to the dawn of recorded history (and earlier). Arabs qua Arabs don't go back that far though. Since Arabs are overwhelmingly Muslim, and Islam discourages investigation of pre-Islamic history, Arab culture effectively dates from the time of Mohammed. Arabs are the descendants of predecessor tribal peoples mentioned in the Bible (e.g., the Moabites, etc.).
"I'm unimpressed by your Spengler-like Jewish supremacism"
Can you provide an example of this Jewish supremacism of which you accuse me?
"Now where have I heard that argument before? You need new material..."
I don't remember making that point before. Feel free to post a link to prove me wrong though.
Isn't Cochran supposed to be some type of scientist? So his daughter went to a public school in Utah and he extrapolates her experience to EVERY PUBLIC SCHOOL IN AMERICA. What if you'd taught at Columbia, pal - would you have plopped her down into Harlem?
Honestly, is it so difficult to admit that the daily routine varies at different public schools, based on demographics and the like? I doubt your daughter would've done so fantastically if angry black chicks were trying to pull out her hair in the hallway between AP classes.
"First of all, in the real world, you're free to quit your job without you or your parents being branded as criminals."
I was referring to the working world there, but your parents are free to home school you if they like. Or to send you to a private or parochial school. Remember, before mandatory education, childhood and adolescence wasn't exactly a idyll: it was physical labor, for most, with little hope of advancement.
"Second of all, the "socialization" (or more accurately, social rape) that occurs in most government schools would result in a lengthy prison term for assault or even attempted murder."
"Social rape"? "Attempted murder"?
"Smart people usually are sensitive. It's a fact of life."
Some are, but life is hard. And if children are coddled too much they won't develop the toughness to deal with adversity and overcome it.
"So what? As long as they are happy where they are."
I have no problem with that. My point was that being smart, by itself, doesn't entitle you to anything in life, and to expect otherwise is to invite disappointment.
"Ruthlessness? Duplicity? Hypocrisy? All the evils that your elders preach against, but practice just the same?"
The time honored excuse of under-achievers: those who have achieved more have only done so because they are less moral than you.
"What does that even mean? You seem to think that Arabs were not Arabs until they adapted [sic] Islam. You are wrong."
It means that the various tribes that collectively included the ancestors of today's Arabs didn't have a conception of themselves as being one ethno-cultural group in ancient times. They thought of themselves as Canaanites, Moabites, etc., not as Arabs.
Would you mind reminding me again what this has to do with the topic of this thread? You seem to have gotten far afield.
"Such sad geniuses seem to be attracted to HBD, perhaps out of some unconscious hope that if HBD were accepted by society, these delicate geniuses would then be asked to take their rightful place in leadership roles."
Now where have I heard that argument before? You need new material...
When you scream "freedom," the tyrant hears "war!"
~ Svigor
It means that the various tribes that collectively included the ancestors of today's Arabs didn't have a conception of themselves as being one ethno-cultural group in ancient times.
Records on what ancient Arabs thought are scanty. This is an assumption on your part. The ancient Jews were also notorious for forming factions and engaging in bloody warfare with each other. They were no more unified than the Arabs.
Would you mind reminding me again what this has to do with the topic of this thread? You seem to have gotten far afield.
You seem pretty eager to discuss it, Mr Thread Monitor & Spell Checker. But as usually happens, one commenter brought it up and others, including you, chimed in on it.
Greg Cochran is at least consistent. He makes an assertion with very little proof, In this case, his own experience in public school was not so bad. Then he calls everyone who disagrees with him names and only acknowledges others' experiences to the contrary with more insults.
He may be a smart guy, but his intelligence is severely hindered by his stubbornness. It makes me question his other more controversial views - is he arguing because he's right, or merely because he's stubborn?
>Why don't you please share some of that interesting literature with us?<
Glad to. It’s right here.
It's worth noting that genuinely intelligent peple tend to attribute their success to hard work, and not to being smarter than everyone else.
Nonsense. "Genuinely intelligent people" know their intelligence comes from genes. But of course you aren't qualified to judge.
"First, Jews were pushing multi-culti and open immigration BEFORE WWII - they viciously opposed the 1924 immigration restriction act. This is well documented by Kevin McDonald"
That is a goddam lie. Kevin McDonald has proven no such thing. He merely rants and raves without proof, and you Jew-hating assholes who can't even make up an imaginative nickname believe him.
Fact:
"Gompers, like most labor leaders of his era, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because it lowered wages, and opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and represented (to him) an alien culture that could not be easily assimilated. He and the AFL strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned the immigration of Chinese.[8] The AFL was instrumental in passing immigration restriction laws from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924, and seeing that they were strictly enforced."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Gompers
Now go shut up and crawl into a ditch. Liar.
Most of the arguments used against group differences could apply equally well to individual differences in intelligence.
Of course.
So why don't any of the anti-race realists consistently argue that everybody (excepting the developmentally disabled) is born with exactly the same intelligence potential?
There is no room for principle in Leftist thought. Principle interferes with the Left's particularism.
"That is a goddam lie. Kevin McDonald has proven no such thing. He merely rants and raves without proof, and you Jew-hating assholes who can't even make up an imaginative nickname believe him."
It's not just Kevin MacDonald. I recently read and reviewed Madison Grant's biography. It was written by a liberal Jew and tells the same story. Like today, Jews were disproportionately represented on both sides but MUCH more on the left.
HBD Books
That is a goddam lie. Kevin McDonald has proven no such thing. He merely rants and raves without proof, and you Jew-hating assholes who can't even make up an imaginative nickname believe him.
So you're saying that Samuel Gompers was the only Jew in the US at the time? Good luck defending that thesis!
Yeah sure, Concerned, Gompers = Jews. That's not too large a generalization. GOMPERS VIEWS = JEWISH VIEWS.
Yes, let it be understood for all time that Samuel Gompers political positions were representative of Jews as a whole in the twentieth century United States.
It follows that the organized Jewish community, who lobbied tirelessly for decades against the immigration timeout (culminating in Hart-Celler 1965 Immigration Act), were people out of step with the Jews as a whole.
Yes, the historical record is clear. Jews as a whole have always been Gompersesque i.e. AGAINST mass immigration into America! Only a few radical Jewish leaders have gone against the Gompers Doctrine and lobbied for mass immigration.
Yes, I think we are all very familiar with grassroots Jewish community calls for closing our borders to mass immigration. Obviously without Jewish activism the immigration flood would be ten times larger that it is.
"Genuinely intelligent people" know their intelligence comes from genes. But of course you aren't qualified to judge.
I defer on such matters to the well known genius and all round intelligent person, ben tillman.
Glad to. It’s right here.
So, you think that free market theory is a crackpot conspiracy theory?
IQ doesn't test imagination or creativity. I work in a very, very multicultural enviornment that is high pressure and highly technical. Anytime management requests that they need something that requires innovativeness or creativity both the Asians and Blacks in my department have their hands firmly entrenched in their pockets. It's ALWAYS left up to the white guy to do the initial creative or innovative parts of the project. Then once that's done the Asians come in and take over because their higher IQ allows them to be experts at mimicry and copying. But, considering that Innovativeness and Creativity are not part of the IQ test this tells me that the true Intelligent Gap is probably even wider than Steve Sailer, et al. suggest and that there is also a gap between Asians and Whites in true intelligence considering that whites are more creative and that is extremely important. Bob Dylan once said "You don't need a weather man to tell you which way the wind is blowing." Hopefully, I don't get an faux-PC whines about mentioning that Asians are less creative then whites when anyone with 2 eyes, 2 ears, and a pulse knows it's true.
>So, you think that free market theory is a crackpot conspiracy theory?<
So, you think that if Pygmies adopt free market theory that they will develop an advanced technological society?
Funny contrasting "concerned" with Alexander Solschenizyn’s historically-based book “200 years together” (a great read btw, I’m reading it in German), and how free-flowing the immigration between Russia and the US was. Many of the Jewish communist activists in Russia used the US as a safe haven during the run-up to the October revolution, going back and forth, as their personal security situation w.r.t. the Russian secret police demanded. It’s so well documented that “Concerned” is making an ass of himself.
Fair enough Anon - I had heard that WI's were earning more than the white average, which would be possibly explicable by work ethic & benefiting from diversity hiring programmes, even with, probably, lower educational levels. If they are underperforming then that does change things.
"So why don't any of the anti-race realists consistently argue that everybody (excepting the developmentally disabled) is born with exactly the same intelligence potential?"
Exactly and I've had discussion where people actually concede this point in order to deny racial HBD. I've had someone tell me the average doctor is no more intelligent than the average janitor. Someone else stated intelligence has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to with heredity. Another person argued that if given enough time, anyone could master string theory. The amount of delusion amongst these people is astounding.
In the liberal creationist world, everyone is equal. It's only institutional racism and depressive culture that hinder success.
Honestly, is it so difficult to admit that the daily routine varies at different public schools, based on demographics and the like? I doubt your daughter would've done so fantastically if angry black chicks were trying to pull out her hair in the hallway between AP classes.
Why angry black chicks? They could just as easily be angry white chicks pulling out her hair and beating her up with their crosses. Of course, someone like Fred would say this is all part of normal life and it builds character.
Bob Dylan once said "You don't need a weather man [to know which way the wind blows]." Hopefully, I don't get an faux-PC whines about mentioning that Asians are less creative then whites when anyone with 2 eyes, 2 ears, and a pulse knows it's true.
Keep in mind that many or most Americans have not had sufficient experience with Asians to draw such a conclusion.
Yeah, smart schoolchildren never get tortured. Oh, what's this? A story in today's NY Times on this very topic?
In recent years, pediatricians and researchers in this country have been giving bullies and their victims the attention they have long deserved — and have long received in Europe. We’ve gotten past the “kids will be kids” notion that bullying is a normal part of childhood or the prelude to a successful life strategy. Research has described long-term risks — not just to victims, who may be more likely than their peers to experience depression and suicidal thoughts, but to the bullies themselves, who are less likely to finish school or hold down a job.
link
Is Cochran really this clueless?
following the reasoning above, I may infer that jews are disproportionately paleocons in the US today. Actually, jews may be unanimously paleocons, and followers of Pat Buchanan.
Because Paul Gottfried is a paleocon and a buchananite. Ergo all the jews are paleos
Concerned.
Yeah you're right its just anti-semitism. Jewish Americans and the jewish elite in particular had nothing to do with pushing for more immigration. They have nothing to do with or any undo influence on, Middle east policy as well. That too, is an 'anti semitic canard'.
"It's worth noting that genuinely intelligent peple tend to attribute their success to hard work, and not to being smarter than everyone else."
Precisely the opposite of the truth. Only braggarts and blowhards puff themselves up and assume a high-handed moralistic posture regarding their superior and elite character: "I did it all myself, based on my hard work." Genuinely intelligent people understand that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all".
The acceptance of the importance of genetic heritage is akin to the acceptance of that of providence and fortune: a humbling and realistic perspective, vs. the Ayn Rand Superman theory that "I did it all."
Why angry black chicks? They could just as easily be angry white chicks pulling out her hair and beating her up with their crosses.
The evidence on race and behavior suggests this is not true. So do Social Identity Theory and my own experience.
~ Svigor
Re:Anon @ 06/08: "The Jews are one of the oldest living ethnic groups. They must have done something right to have survived all this long."
This is a major falsehood. The Jews of modern times have no known links or relation to the ancient Hebrews/Israelites/Jews of the Biblical or Pre-Biblical Era(s). Anyone who claims they do are either clueless or lying.
The Ashkenazim (the overwhelming majority of 'Jews' alive today) especially are of recent ethnogenesis, having only came about within the last 1,500 years or so (at most). The female line of most Ashkenazim also descend mostly from a small group of European (non-Semitic) women who were apparently adopted as wives by traveling Jews.
It seems that throughout history certain groups here and there decided to adopt Judaism and thus carry 'the Jewish banner' forward. These groups which adopted Judaism and started calling themselves Jews often had no links whatsoever to ancient Israelite Jews. Also, until the fall of the Roman Empire many Jews actively sought converts amongst non-Jews in Europe, Turkey, Greece, North Africa, Central Asia, etc.
There is no continuous line of descent between modern Jews and ancient Jews...stop repeating that myth.
Concerned:
I also forgot, another thing Jewish groups and the Jewish elite is NOT involved in: suing to remove Christmas trees , and the general 'war on Christmas', in fact the whole IDEA of a 'war' on Christmas is yet another anti-semitic canard.
"The BNP has a lot of negative baggage, but they made a compelling case against NAM immigration and they were resoundingly defeated."
The BNP is against all immigration, especially immigration of what in the UK are referred to as "Asians."
People who post on this blog overuse this "NAM" phrase.
The acceptance of the importance of genetic heritage is akin to the acceptance of that of providence and fortune: a humbling and realistic perspective, vs. the Ayn Rand Superman theory that "I did it all."
A Randian loon on a comment thread here! Who'd have thunk it?
Rands fourth-rate Nietzschism is not dispositive, sorry.
So, you think that if Pygmies adopt free market theory that they will develop an advanced technological society?
It is difficult to carry on any sort of discussion with a person who insists on responding to every question with a question.
FYI, the terms "free market economy" and "advanced technological society" are not synonyms. It's disurbing that you don't know this.
Unlike you, I will answer your question. It is prefectly possible for "pygmies" or anyone else to have a free market society, and reap the benefits of it.
It is also perfectly possibe to have an advanced technological society without a free market. Nazi Germany was the most technologically advanced country of its time withour a free market.
The Soviets and currently the Chinese are technologically advanced without free markets. Even technologically advanced Japan and Korea largely ignore free market principles.
You strke me as the sort of "libertarian" who would cheerfully give up virtually all freedom in exchange for wealth and advanced technology. There are far too many of you around.
Genuinely intelligent people understand that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all".
Hey, someone who quotes the Bible and belives in the genetic superiority of some indivduals over others! You don't see that every day.
I'm pretty sure that nobody, Christian or Jew, ever interpeted that particular passage in that particular way before.
Bullies aren't a function of the school being public: they're an inevitable consequence of the school having other kids in it.
I don't live in Utah and never have.
"Why angry black chicks? They could just as easily be angry white chicks pulling out her hair and beating her up with their crosses."
Because there are no angry white chicks running through the halls of Harlem public schools, which are the places where Cochran-type fathers would draw the line as far as offspring attendance.
"The evidence on race and behavior suggests this is not true. So do Social Identity Theory and my own experience."
White chicks don't pull each other's hair out? Where did you go to Junior High?
I'm the sad genius who lamented my internment in a public school in the above comment.
Cochran and Fred replied in a dismissive way. Here is my reply to Fred's reply:
"It's not a surprise that this thread would attract some handful of self-described geniuses feeling sorry for themselves. Such sad geniuses seem to be attracted to HBD, perhaps out of some unconscious hope that if HBD were accepted by society, these delicate geniuses would then be asked to take their rightful place in leadership roles."
I don't want priviledges based on IQ, I don't want to circumvent the meritocratic selection processes in our society. You're fooling yourself if you imagine you have fathomed my character and motivation on the basis of a blog comment.
What I want is freedom for the cognitive elite, a group of which I am by nature a member. Ego doesn't enter into it - like David said, it is not a choice. I'm not going to prove myself to you by saying something clever or stating my credentials.
Any kid with IQ 140+ has the tools necessary to direct his own learning process. Perhaps not entirely alone, but anyone above this level has the ability - and I hope one day the right - to direct their own learning process with minimal statist intervention.
Thats my message absent the pathos.
The Jews of modern times have no known links or relation to the ancient Hebrews/Israelites/Jews of the Biblical or Pre-Biblical Era(s). The Ashkenazim (the overwhelming majority of 'Jews' alive today) especially are of recent ethnogenesis, having only came about within the last 1,500 years or so (at most).
Just say it. Ashkenazim are Khazars. Not that I believe it, but it's obvious someone here does.
What I want is freedom for the cognitive elite, a group of which I am by nature a member.
...
Thats my message absent the pathos.
Then I'd hate to see it with the pathos, because your insinuation that the "cognitive elite" are everywhere in chains does not pass the laugh test.
You have "freedom". Don't cry to us about what use or misuse you made of it.
What America really does not need right now is yet another whiny self-absorbed interest group claiming they are victims.
The Jews of modern times have no known links or relation to the ancient Hebrews... The Ashkenazim (the overwhelming majority of 'Jews' alive today) especially are of recent ethnogenesis, having only came about within the last 1,500 years or so (at most). The female line of most Ashkenazim also descend mostly from a small group of European (non-Semitic) women who were apparently adopted as wives by traveling Jews.
So who were these traveling Jews who started the Askenazim line yet had no connection to the Jews of a few centuries earlier?
Also, are you saying the ancient Jews were completely wiped out by the Romans?
>It is difficult to carry on any sort of discussion with a person who insists on responding to every question with a question.<
It is difficult to carry on any sort of discussion with a person who tacks a question mark onto the end of a declarative sentence and who seems to think that that somehow makes it a question.
>It is prefectly possible for "pygmies" or anyone else to have a free market society, and reap the benefits of it.<
Thanks for clearing that up. Say, are there any examples of free market Pygmy societies that you could cite to buttress this truly amazing claim? Any at all?
{Sound of crickets chirping.}
Moving right along, how about we give the Pygmies some books to read on the free market?
Oh, wait, they have an average IQ of 54 and can't even read. My bad.
Given enough time, though, I'm sure you'll be able to come up with some sort of a work-around. Do you think fifty thousand years and an ice age or three ought to be long enough?
Or is it just barely possible that there are certain miracles that even the free market can't perform?
It's not a surprise that this thread would attract some handful of self-described geniuses feeling sorry for themselves. Such sad geniuses seem to be attracted to HBD, perhaps out of some unconscious hope that if HBD were accepted by society, these delicate geniuses would then be asked to take their rightful place in leadership roles. -- quote Fred.
Doubtless that is the motivation of some. But it is simply true that heredity-blindness misallocates resources, and in its worst manifestation, AA, woefully.
Heredity-blindness encourages students to ignore their innate capacities (by telling them that such don't exist, even though every seven year old can tell you who the "smart" kids are) and, to a lesser extent, proclivities. Social and market forces then combine to encourage the student to seek the highest paying careers with little regard for their suitability or likelihood of achieving success. As a result, some end up with jobs they don't "deserve," and do poorly, while others' talents are left underutilized.
Therefore the desire for a widespread appreciation of "HBD" can also be motivated by the desire to create a more functional society. Even in the case that proponents see something in it for themselves, this can in part result from a motivation to be "assigned" a work role commensurate with their ability.
Racialists, or racial separatists, have an additional interest in seeing a widespread appreciation of "HBD" come about: Race-blind HBD/citizenism robs "minorities" of their best people. Non-hateful racial separatists believe such people's talents should be directed to serving their own people, into creating and reinforcing group ties where those are weak or barely existent, rather than recruited into serving the multiracial status quo. For instance, Thomas Sowell is a great man, but racialists would prefer to see him devote himself to black America than in perpetuating a multiracial status quo that so poorly serves human ends -- the sorts of cooperative societies that result from strong cultural bonds, cultural bonds which are feel most natural when they result from appreciation of a shared racial heritage.
"We already spend more on education than any other G8 country."
We spend more on both education and health care and get worse results for some of the same reasons:
Doctors routinely order all kinds of largely unnecessary tests because they don't want to miss something and get sued for malpractice. "Educators" adopt all sorts of expensive and largely worthless programs to "close the gap" becaused they don't want to be sued for - or even accused of - racism.
Our health care systems spend extraordinary amounts of money on patients just before they die, meaning that they have extened Grandma's life for a few miserable weeks by spending a huge amount of money. Why not spend that money better on preventative care for other patients? Our public school systems spend a fortune on remedial classes and special ed and seem to redouble their efforts just before the low-performing student drops out. Why not spend that money on accelerated education for the students who are interested and are learning and teach those who aren't interested and/or can't learn some useful trade/work, starting by middle school at the latest?
C Murray talks about this last issue in "Real Education". I am willing to spend money to make sure that a student comes out of school - whether it's after 8 years or 18+ years - able to support himself. I am happy to support scholarships for poor but capable students. However, I'm tired of spending money on an endeavor that is not going to come to pass anytime soon if ever - "closing the gap".
The Jews of modern times have no known links or relation to the ancient Hebrews...
5769 years.
I work in a very, very multicultural enviornment that is high pressure and highly technical. Anytime management requests that they need something that requires innovativeness or creativity both the Asians and Blacks in my department have their hands firmly entrenched in their pockets. It's ALWAYS left up to the white guy to do the initial creative or innovative parts of the project. Then once that's done the Asians come in and take over because their higher IQ allows them to be experts at mimicry and copying.
Care to provide some real details on how the white guy is the only one creative enough in your workplace to find an innovative new way to change out the french fry grease, instead of making ridiculous vague statements that sound like a crock?
For a sensitive nerd, the worst parts of the school day are lunch and recess, when one is in a halfway state between the pure regimentation of the classroom and the pure freedom (under parental authority) of home. That is when the bullies and the jerks have the most power. In the classroom itself the instruction may sometimes have been behind my abilities, but I certainly never thought I was in a death camp or being raped.
DNA evidence seems to refute the Khazar theory. The Y chromosomes of widely scattered Jewish communities appear to be the same. Whether this is utterly definitive is beyond my competence.
White chicks don't pull each other's hair out? Where did you go to Junior High?
Try Hooked on Phonics.
Why are you now a parody of yourself?
~Svigor
Part of the emotional resistance to HBD (or part of the emotional argument against it) is pride: "I am not subject to determinism in any form - I can be whoever I want to be - my success is all my own doing! I am the master of my fate - the captain of my soul" etc.
But wise people understand that parents, genes, providence, and luck are equal players along with effort.
The narcissist is very susceptible to "blank slate" theories. They are flattering.
Don't think race-flat-earthers don't play you Ayn Randers and other libertarian superheroes like violins.
"I jumped over my own forehead, so why can't the NAMs do s?...Achievement is mostly about character and, by extension, mostly about culture, which is only an expression of the character one chooses to have...and if only NAMs would make the right choices more of them would have my sterling character...!"
Disgusting.
Correction: "I jumped over my own forehead, so why can't the NAMs do so?" Apologies.
"Why are you now a parody of yourself?"
Well Svigor, my original goal was to become a parody of you, but I couldn't make my posts read self-important or arrogant enough.
It is difficult to carry on any sort of discussion with a person who tacks a question mark onto the end of a declarative sentence and who seems to think that that somehow makes it a question.
Yes, it is. So why do you keep doing it? It is certainly difficult to carry on a discussion with a person who is plainly determined to stick to his clownish talking points and NOT carry on a discussion.
You don't need to be able to read to engage in a free economic transaction. You are just repeating your earlier idiotic argument in a different form, that "free market" means "advanced".
What is there to say, really?
To hold that one way of ordering life is best for all humans at all times and places, regardless of any group differences, genetic and otherwise, is the ideologue's equivalent of force-feeding Wisonsin millk to lactose-intolerant Asians.
I am done with this thread. The last word is yours, if you think it a prize worth having.
I can tell from the comment total that new comments must have been added to this thread, but I can't for the life of me figure out where they are.
Thank you, Mr. LIFO stack.
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