A few days ago, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones was wondering if college students really did study much less than in the past. A physics professor wrote in to say that during his career teaching introductory college physics, he had always given his classes a standard pretest and post-test to see how much they learned. From 1990-1998, he taught at Coastal Carolina, a "fourth tier" public college in the Carolina golf resort metropolis of Myrtle Beach, then gone into research, then resumed teaching in 2004 at private Spelman College in Atlanta. The Spelman students seem much less like slackers than the Coastal Carolina students, yet his test showed they learned much less physics from him. What had changed between 1998 and 2004?
I of course pointed out the obvious. The professor later commented that the professors at Spelman were more interested in value-added analyses of teaching effectiveness than elsewhere in his experience. I could well believe this is true, precisely because Spelman is racially and sexually segregated (it's the best-known women-only historically black college). Value-added analysis and diversity are, in practice, antagonistic to each other.
Everybody is in favor of in-depth analysis of educational statistics in theory, but when they actually finally look at them, the obvious leaps out: Holy cow, compared to everything else, race really matters. You can't adjust it away (except by using cynical proxies for race the way Steven Levitt tried to do a few years ago: e.g., favorite soda flavor is Grape or the rough equivalent). And when it comes to physics and a few other subjects, sex matters.
And so the reformers give up on honest analysis of educational statistics in despair, boredom, and cynicism. On the other hand, if you are teaching at Spelman, race and sex differences don't get in the way, so trying to look at subtler matters of the impact of teaching style and the like is less psychologically devastating.
Still, there are things to be learned. For example, here are the counts of every high school student who got the maximum score of five on the Physics C Advanced Placement test. Keep in mind that there are about 4 million 17-year-olds, so these kids represent about the top quarter of one percent (although taking AP tests is by no means universal among those who could do very well on them, although the trend is moving in that direction):
| 5 on AP Physics C 2008 | ||||
| Male | Female | Sex Ratio | % of Total | |
| Total | 9,017 | 2,010 | 4.5 | 100.0% |
| White | 5,705 | 1,127 | 5.1 | 62.0% |
| Asian | 2,414 | 708 | 3.4 | 28.3% |
| Other | 316 | 69 | 4.6 | 3.5% |
| Not Stated | 199 | 57 | 3.5 | 2.3% |
| Other Hispanic | 177 | 32 | 5.5 | 1.9% |
| Mexican American | 98 | 7 | 14.0 | 1.0% |
| Black | 78 | 6 | 13.0 | 0.8% |
| Puerto Rican | 18 | 3 | 6.0 | 0.2% |
| American Indian | 12 | 1 | 12.0 | 0.1% |
These are quite striking figures. Leaving aside the ambiguous "Other Hispanic," "Not Stated," and "Other" categories for the moment, only 17 of the 11,027 high school students in America to max out the Physics C AP test in 2008 were specified Non-Asian Minority girls, or 0.15%.
And that's with a massive national effort to get NAM girls interested in science. If we doubled that effort and there were no diminishing marginal returns, we'd be all the way up to 0.3%. If we doubled it again with no fall-off in return, we'd be up to 0.6%.
The sex ratio column is interesting. It's highest for NAMs and lowest for Asians. This is the opposite of scores on less difficult tests where black females often outdo black males.
And that's with a massive national effort to get NAM girls interested in science. If we doubled that effort and there were no diminishing marginal returns, we'd be all the way up to 0.3%. If we doubled it again with no fall-off in return, we'd be up to 0.6%.
The sex ratio column is interesting. It's highest for NAMs and lowest for Asians. This is the opposite of scores on less difficult tests where black females often outdo black males.
My theory is that girls are more conformist, so in a culture that obsesses over academic credentials, such as Asians, they do well, but in cultures that don't, they don't. Thus, only 6 black girls in the entire U.S. in 2008 got 5's on Physics C, and only 7 Mexican-American girls. In contrast, boys are more individualistic, so 78 black youths and 98 Mexican-American youths just went with their inner physics nerdishness and pulled down 5s. Good for them.
Another thing to note is that the Other Hispanic category shows up large compared to Mexican-American on most tests of high achievement. For example, the number of LSAT test-takers who identify themselves as Mexican Americans is remarkably tiny.
Another thing to note is that the Other Hispanic category shows up large compared to Mexican-American on most tests of high achievement. For example, the number of LSAT test-takers who identify themselves as Mexican Americans is remarkably tiny.
Some of these Other Hispanics are of course Cubans, some are elite immigrants from the capitals of Latin America, some are middle-class Central American refugees' children. And others who check "Other Hispanic" represent what I might call "non-homeboy Latinos," the strivers. If your Mexican-American dad went off to college and there he met your Guatemalan mother, then "Other Hispanic" would be natural for you to check. But, the key here is that your parents left their neighborhoods for their educations. In contrast, the homies who are pure Mexican by descent come from a culture that validates loyalty to family ties over individual advancement.
There is another and probably better reason for the low male:female ratio for Asians.
ReplyDeleteBecause Asians are a little bit smarter than whites generally and are particularly smarter in the areas which are necessary for AP Physics (e.g. math, spatial ability), a 5 on the Physics AP is not as far out out on the right end of the bell curve for Asians as it is for whites; therefore, the sex ratio will be closer to one for Asians. Conversely for less intelligent minorities, the ratio is much higher than for whites because a 5 on the physics is much further to the right of their bell curves (so there is more room for the greater male variance and mean to take effect).
Interesting analysis Steve. Though surely part of the reason why Asian women do better than say black women on the Physics C exam has to do with intrinsic aptitude. :)
ReplyDeleteHere's another piece of data related to how the physics elites are doing.
The 2010 American Physics Olympiad team has been chosen. The final 5 member team this year includes 2 East Asians, 2 whites, and 1 South Asian. The original training camp included 20 members, where by my count there were 12 East Asians, 5 whites, and 3 South Asians.
http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/pr20100601.cfm
http://www.aapt.org/physicsteam/2010/team.cfm
The first link is for the final 5 member team. The second link is for the original 20 man training camp, from where the final 5 were eventually chosen. There were quite frankly a relatively high percentage of women amongst the initial 20. 4/20 of the initial training camp members were in fact women.
Steve said:
ReplyDelete... counts of every high school student who got the maximum score of five on the Physics C Advanced Placement test:
5 on AP Physics C 2008
Male | Female | Sex Ratio | % of Total
=================================
Total | 9,017 | 2,010 |4.5 | 100.0%
White | 5,705 | 1,127 |5.1 | 62.0%
Harvard women's group rips Summers
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | January 19, 2005
A suggestion by Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, that women may not have the same innate abilities in math and science as men has touched off an angry response from many Harvard professors, including members of a committee on women's issues ...
...
Melissa Franklin, a physics professor, said she wished that Harvard had "a president who can add something positive rather than something negative." And while she didn't call for Summers to resign, she said his remarks constituted "a resignable thing."
"The biggest problem with female science students is confidence," Franklin said. "When they are sitting there constantly saying, 'Am I smart enough? Am I smart enough?' it doesn't really help when the president of the university says, 'Maybe you're not.'"
And maybe they aren't, Professor Franklin. There is a very high probability that the smartest girls aren't as clever as the smartest boys.
This is tangential, but how many high schools actually have decent physics teachers? Good enough to have kids score a 5? My high school is ranked "Silver" by US News & World Report and my teacher sucked, the book sucked, and I hated physics. Yet, when I went to college, the professor (even in an auditorium-sized lecture class), book (Halliday and Resnick), and lab was much better and I enjoyed it and got As.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, too, it would be only proper to point out that results for blacks, Hispanics and even whites are probably somewhat depressed relative to Asians by the lack of AP Physics courses (or quality physics instruction in general) available in schools with mostly black and Hispanic students, or in rural, suburban or parochial schools populated mostly by whites.
ReplyDeleteEven my large, upper middle class, southern high school only had an AP Physics course in some years, if there were enough students willing to take it. And, yes, the class was disproportionately Asian - about 1/4th of the class the year I took it, vs. < 4% of the student body.
Mostly-black schools will mostly be filled with students incapable of doing calculus-based Physics, so the rare black student who would be capable of scoring so high won't even have the opportunity as there won't be enough of them in any given school to justify a dedicated AP class. 100, 200 or even 300 of them? Perhaps. Same goes, to a somwhat lesser degree, for Hispanic and white rates.
More Asian students will get 5's on the exam than blacks will, but it's probably not 31 times as many. Of course at the very, very high end - students who earn a 5 with 100% of the correct answers versus, say, 95% correct, it could very well be 31 or even 100 times as many, and even that has been found to make a huge difference in who ultimately winds up with a PhD, tenured faculty position, or Nobel Prize. A decent IQ student who studies hard can score 95%, but the 100 percenters simply get physics in a way the rest of us don't, and probably can't.
Those 84 blacks will be set for life.
ReplyDeleteLady Engineer says:
ReplyDeleteThis is tangential, but how many high schools actually have decent physics teachers? Good enough to have kids score a 5?
Sigh. Always blaming the lack of good teachers or the lack of role models.
It's actually the students. Good students will succeed in spite of the teacher.
On another subject, the differential male/female ratios matches my experience in Silicon Valley. Those females that work in Engineering are predominantly Chinese and Indian.
On yet a third subject, I used to think that it was the Imperial Exam system in China (and rampant downward mobility) that selected for intelligence in Asia, but then I realized that in Japan they did not have such a system. Back to the drawing boards.
so the rare black student who would be capable of scoring so high won't even have the opportunity as there won't be enough of them in any given school to justify a dedicated AP class
ReplyDeleteI would predict that every such black student (and probably 99.9% of black students capable of scoring a 2 or higher) in the last 30 years or so has been given every possible opportunity to realize that potential.
The word south asian is a horrible misnomer
ReplyDeleteIndians have 64% college rate vs 53% for pakistanis and 40% for bangladeshis
and in UK the the muslim south asians are at afro-caribbean levels
Also,
http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/pr20100601.cfm
Anand Oza = Gujurati Brahmin
No patels and no sikhs ( about 50% of the Indian diaspora )
vs just 20% for brahmins
http://www.aapt.org/physicsteam/2010/team.cfm
Anand Oza =Brahmin
Mihika Prabhu = Brahmin
Alok Saxena = Kayastha ( scribe )
Some where along the line, I read a theory that certain intelligence genes are carried on the X chromosome. This would explain the greater variance in men at the far ends of the spectrum. It also explains an Obama (white X chrom). Now I will bet that a good amount of those black test takers are half white. Which half? White mommas. So you get a black male with all of his X from the white gene pool. Meanwhile, his sister gets one X from black daddy and one X from white momma.
ReplyDelete(this is not a concession that Obama is super smart, if he was the Sats and Lsats would be out there)
Some where along the line, I read a theory that certain intelligence genes are carried on the X chromosome. This would explain the greater variance in men at the far ends of the spectrum. It also explains an Obama (white X chrom). Now I will bet that a good amount of those black test takers are half white. Which half? White mommas. So you get a black male with all of his X from the white gene pool. Meanwhile, his sister gets one X from black daddy and one X from white momma.
ReplyDelete(this is not a concession that Obama is super smart, if he was the Sats and Lsats would be out there)
Why would anyone be so stupid as to set an exam where people often score 100%? When I was a young academic one of the first things I was taught was to set exams "so that only Isaac Newton could score 100%".
ReplyDeleteThe notion that APs are only available if there is a set number of good students is just false. My son was the first person in his school to want to do AP Latin and the school just arranged for him to take this class after hours via computer from some local college. Advanced math and physics are ridiculously easy to take long distance IF you're motivated enough. And when I went to Caltech there were always several kids who self-studied calculus and physics to a level that would make the APs seem childish and trivial.
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone be so stupid as to set an exam where people often score 100%? When I was a young academic one of the first things I was taught was to set exams "so that only Isaac Newton could score 100%".
ReplyDeleteAn AP 5 does not equal a 100%. It is equivalent to receiving an A in the respective college course(s). There are certainly people who earn 100% scores on the AP exam, but so far as I know the data is never published.
Some where along the line, I read a theory that certain intelligence genes are carried on the X chromosome.
I've heard the theory too, and wonder if scientists searching for the function of various genes related to intelligence have taken it into account. I do know that whenever I hear that a particularly successful person is of mixed race or ethnicity, I generally look to see whether it's his mother that belongs to the group considered to be more intelligent. Generally she is, which may simply be a result of the fact that Asian women marry outside their race more than Asian men do, and that white women are likelier to marry black men than the reverse.
I would predict that every such black student (and probably 99.9% of black students capable of scoring a 2 or higher) in the last 30 years or so has been given every possible opportunity to realize that potential.
Maybe. I wasn't dismissing the fact of disparity so much as arguing at the margins of how great that disparity actually is - 31 times as many Asian boys scoring 5's, or only 20 times as many? - which is obvious from my last paragragh. There may not be much to be said for environment, but there is still something to be said for it.
"Why would anyone be so stupid as to set an exam where people often score 100%?"
ReplyDeleteEh?
What are you on about?
And when I went to Caltech there were always several kids who self-studied calculus and physics to a level that would make the APs seem childish and trivial.
ReplyDeleteI taught myself Calculus.
[I basically got kicked out of high school - by my senior year, I only showed up to go to Jazz Ensemble and Concert Band.]
PS: In college, all of our Physics lab equipment was broken, and after reporting the results accurately on the first lab, and getting burned with an "F" [or something equivalent, like a "C"], I said to myself, "Fornication be upon that defecation", and then, for all the subsequent labs, I just worked the equations backwards, figured out what the results should have been, added a little random noise to make the numbers look more plausible, and ended up getting an "A" for the semester.
"2010 American Physics Olympiad team has been chosen. The final 5 member team this year includes 2 East Asians, 2 whites, and 1 South Asian."
ReplyDeleteA huge number of Asian kids are present in America because their folks are here on H1-B visas. I see no reason that cohort ought to even be on the American team. Let them compete for a place on the team of their ancestors' home countries.
America was built by people of Euro extraction for their own children. So it should remain, including the makeup of the competitors in American contests.
"It's actually the students. Good students will succeed in spite of the teacher."
ReplyDeleteNot really. Brilliant students will succeed no matter what, but the merely good students can be severely hampered by bad teachers. I've seen this first hand.
I also think we should be teaching conceptual physics in 8th grade before high school biology and chemistry; then take calculus-based physics in eleventh grade. Physics is the fundamental science and it's important to learn the concepts before introducing calculus. It would definitely help understanding biology and chemistry, and you'd see a rise in scores there as well.
"There is a very high probability that the smartest girls aren't as clever as the smartest boys."
ReplyDeleteThey are not. Also please note, on average females are not as good as men when it comes to fixing/maintaining shit either, from cars to carbines.
--Sigh. Always blaming the lack of good teachers or the lack of role models.--
ReplyDeleteThat's the excuse these days. Big class size is bad too! Another fine excuse. But crazily enough, my dad, a poor guinea from Brooklyn, went to school in the public school system(!) with other poor guineas, micks and yids. Class size was in the 40's! No air conditioning either. Uphill both ways in blizzards in July on the way to class! And shockingly, he did well and went on to NYU and later Cor fucking nell...Crazy, I know.
My mom, from Pittsburgh, went throught the same horrid system of education: large classes, no AC, you name it...Luckily, she lived to tell the story. Didn't do too bad at CMU either, considering her slavic background. Teachers didn't care for them, that's for sure! All they brought for lunch was kielbasa and vodka...On Fridays, just šljìvovica!
Now get this, his friend from the army, a poor yid from Kansas City, did well too. Shocking, I know.
The Asian sex ratio doesn't need much explanation. The male brain is better on quantitative and spatial matters. So is the Asian brain. So you should expect that Asian women would be better on exactly those items that differentiate white male brains from white female brains. Or to put it crudely, Asian women have more masculine brains.
ReplyDeleteThe other reason the Asian sex ratio is expected is sexual dimorphism. As is well known the relative stature and bulk of the great apes varies by sex and species. So male gorillas and male orangutans are approximately twice as big as their respective females. Whereas in chimpanzees and bonobos the sexes are more similar in size.
The same is true with human races. White and black males are quite a bit larger than their respective females but Asian males and females are closer to each other in size. This is sexual size dimorphism. The sex ratio in physics scores in your article is sexual brain dimorphism. It appears as if this type of dimorphism is also lowest among East Asians.
No social psychological explanations needed.
Albertosaurus
What Underachiever said. If 1) there is an absolute threshold and 2) males' IQ mean AND/OR sigmas is higher for all ethnic groups, then simple math says you should expect lower sex ration for a group with higher IQ and higher sex ratio for a group with lower IQ. The specific numbers will vary greatly depending on how the exact distributions look like (e.g., it is possible that Asians' means are the same and sigmas are only a little different while Black's means are significantly different and Black males' sigma is significantly higher, too).
ReplyDeleteThis is simply another example of the remarkable predictive power of the basic Bell Curve-style thinking.
Based on the results, it would seem that the best bang for dollar would be for public money to be spent on poor Chinese kids.
ReplyDeleteAm I correct, Steve?
Sigh. Always blaming the lack of good teachers or the lack of role models.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually the students. Good students will succeed in spite of the teacher.
True. But environmental factors can sometimes get in the way of students performing at their best and good teachers can counterbalance them. So you can't neglect the quality of the teachers. It's obviously not teacher knowledge that matters here and liberals are right to downplay it. Liberals err in the kind of psychological intervention they apply -- endless unearned self-esteem; endless sensitivity; endless anti-racism etc.
Couchscientist: I've also heard that theory, it came out through statistics. I thought it was accepted fact, but haven't heard it again for a long time so maybe it was just speculation. Somewhere in there too, was that the mom's-side influence could be due to the quality of life in her womb; health, diet, etc.
ReplyDeleteFWIW (about nothing) one of the few smart black guys I knew (have known few black guys though) also had a white mother.
Other Hispanics are an interesting category. They might be Cubans or middle class Latin Americans, but probably also include a number of whites with some level of Hispanic ancestry.
ReplyDeleteAmong Asians, there's a strong tendency to work really hard. Strong cognitive ability, combined with strong work ethic and lots of parental pressure, are at play here. Same with Indians.
If 15 of 20 Physics camp members are Chinese or Indian, it tells you something. Sure the kids are really smart, but there's got to be something else going on if they are that hyper overrepresented. That something else = parents, culture, and hardwork.
By the way, how are Jewish-Americans doing in the Spelling Bee or Math Olympiad?
I think Underavhiever (1st comment) makes a good point.
ReplyDeleteJody made some sense in the thread about the first white sprinter to break the 10 second barrier. Basically, he argued convincingly that whites in the US are shunted away from short distance sprints because it is assumed that blacks are superior to whites in sprinting (and I imagine it's not entirely the system shunting them away, but self-selection as well). As a result, the top white sprinters are in Europe or Australia, with no American men coming close. It's likely that at least to some degree similar mechanisms are at work in shunting blacks and mexicans away from math and physics - an argument that probably wouldn't be popular with Jody and some others here. In any case, as opposed to the anecdote in another comment, most of the smartest blacks I've met, including some that excelled in engineering, were pure-blooded blacks who were born and completed their primary and secondary education in Africa. Another parallel to the best white sprinters being from Europe. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, how are Jewish-Americans doing in the Spelling Bee or Math Olympiad?
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I recognized the truth of the HBD-sphere's message is because I noticed, several years after the fact, that roughly half of my "white" IMO teammates were of Jewish descent.
"They are not. Also please note, on average females are not as good as men when it comes to fixing/maintaining shit either, from cars to carbines."
ReplyDeleteI agree that since there is more variation in male IQ, the most intelligent males are more intelligent than the smartest females. I've actually noticed this since middle school or so. However while average females have worse mechanical skills than average males certainly, it should be obvious to most people that average females have a little bit of an intellectual edge on the average males. At least the way things are currently going; average females still make better grades and pay more attention in class. Average males are incredibly lazy, even if they are capable of performing better.
I would predict that every such black student (and probably 99.9% of black students capable of scoring a 2 or higher) in the last 30 years or so has been given every possible opportunity to realize that potential.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at "capable" as having both the innate ability as well as the requisite habits and restraint, then you're probably right. The Black Genius is to educators what the Great White Defendant is to prosecutors (which is essential to understanding the effortless rise of Barack Obama).
However, to be fair, blacks as a group probably do end up seeing a greater percentage of their most talented fall through the cracks than do other ethnic groups.If so, I'd suspect it has to do with the really hard cases of crime and drugs, not because someone couldn't get money for college.
Culture and circumstances aren't completely determinative, but they do matter - which is why all those bright Asian parents are so strict with their kids.
Albertosaurus,
ReplyDeleteExcellent point about sexual dimorphism. I think that might be part of the explanation along with my and Steve's explanation.
"[H]e argued convincingly that whites in the US are shunted away from short distance sprints because it is assumed that blacks are superior to whites in sprinting... As a result, the top white sprinters are in Europe or Australia, with no American men coming close. It's likely that at least to some degree similar mechanisms are at work in shunting blacks and mexicans away from math and physics..."
ReplyDeleteBut there is a difference here: in the US the media, educational establishment, and public policy makers strongly favor blacks and push them forward in everything, regardless of whether they are better or worse than whites at it. Blacks are faster on average and jody is arguing that the powers that be want to keep it that way. I used to think that a talented white sprinter could make a lot of extra money for being white, but the whole Jeremy Wariner situation dropped the scales from my eyes: when he won the 400m olympic gold in 2004 and anchored the gold medal winning 4x400m, the Sports Illustrated headline said "US men sweep 400m" and then showed the 3 black US competitors celebrating, leaving Wariner out of the picture. It appears he was an embarrassment that the media wanted to cover up. In academics, on the other hand, where whites do better on average, the media and public policy makers are obsessed with finding every talented black they can and encouraging them to succeed and are constantly trying to "close the gaps." I think US sportswriters are very happy with the black-white "speed gap" and don't really care to see it closed, probably because deep down they suspect that blacks are dumber and that, "hey, let them have athletic glory; it's all they've got."
Couchscientist wrote:
ReplyDelete"I read a theory that certain intelligence genes are carried on the X chromosome. "
====================
Well then, all you young men should forget all that nonsense about "game". You want to marry a smart, kind girl with a stable personality. MUCH more important than looks in the long run.
Couchscientist,
ReplyDeleteHumans have 20-25 thousand genes. 2,000 are on the X chromosome. Statistically speaking, you can be certain that some of them involve intelligence.
On a related note: girls with only one X chromosome, Turner's syndrome, have some difficulty with math.
Regarding Jews and the IMO...
ReplyDeletehttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/10math_report.pdf
"Analysis of the USA and Canadian boy participants
led to a similar conclusion: Asian and ethnic Jewish
boys were approximately ten- to twenty-fold more
likely to become IMO participants than other non-
Hispanic white boys."
Came here to post the same thing Underachiever and Nanonymous wrote. As statistics go, it's a pretty basic concept. I'm a little surprised that Steve tripped up there; I think he's gotten that one right before.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, Steve is nowhere near a math genius. Of course he's stronger with math than 99.9% of reporters, but that's not much of a compliment.
"Honestly, Steve is nowhere near a math genius."
ReplyDeleteThat's for sure!
In this case, though, I have an excuse. I didn't want to go with the bigger male standard deviation theory because the best source I have for black variance -- Charles Murray sent me the military's 1997 scores for the renormalization of the updated AFQT on a new nationally representative sample -- showed that black females had slightly higher variances than black males.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-black-women-have-higher-iqs-than.html
Still, I suspect the greater male variance theory remains true at the tails and for physics-type thinking. But I don't have data to support it.
OT.
ReplyDeleteGOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!
Well then, all you young men should forget all that nonsense about "game". You want to marry a smart, kind girl with a stable personality. MUCH more important than looks in the long ru
ReplyDelete----------------
in the long run, we're all dead. the short term is important and, therefore, so are looks.
"black females had slightly higher variances than black males"
ReplyDeleteThat is the reason I almost didn't write my first comment; however, the variance/mean explanation appears to explain every other gap (provided that puerto rican immigrants are more intelligent than mexican immigrants).
I wouldn't let the black exception discount the theory since blacks are different from non-blacks in many ways (even in areas where non-blacks are similar to each other).
Off topic, but here's a Newsweek article on the decline of American creativity since 1990.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html?from=rss
Lots to speculate on here.
The problem with college level physics is that it requires 3rd semester (multivariable) calculus and diffeQs, especially for E&M as at least corequisites. mechanics you can get by with first year calc though.
ReplyDeleteAt least, as I recall, BTW, you got two scores for the physics C test. One for mechanics and one for E&M. A guick cramming on torationial equations of motion (not covereed in PSSC or calculus, but pretty much analagous to linear mechnaics) allowed me to get a 4 on mechanics. E&M was a bloodbath and I limped out with a 2.
BTW, if AP people really want another frontier to help GT kids, I would suggest second year calc (multivariable and then DiffeQs). Lots of tkids at this point are taking calculus by 11th grade. If they create the tests, school systems will follow on the coursework (it;s not like orgo or something with tricky labs and high content knowledge required...it's just frigging math.)
@Curvaceous
ReplyDeleteI find it ironic that you would choose to ignore the history of America. America originally belonged to the Native Americans, before they were driven off of their native lands and virtually exterminated. Not to mention that your ancestors were the ones who chose to bring African slaves to America against their will, where they provided labor and helped to build up the economy. I see no reason why African Americans today are any less entitled to remain in America than say white Americans of European descent.
But of course, if you had any real principles, you would advocate the return of white Americans to Europe, the return of Asian Americans to Asia, the return of African Americans to Africa, etc. And you would return America back to the Native American Indians. But with people like yourself, there's often very little principle and mostly just a me-first mentality.
When someone like Nick Griffin declares that he wants Britain to be for the native British Caucasians, I have no problem with that kind of sentiment. In some sense, Britain does "belong" to the white British, just as say Japan belongs to the ethnic Japanese. Which is why I have no problem either with Japan wanting to drastically limit the amount of immigration to the country and preserve Japanese solidarity.
However, America is an entirely different scenario altogether, and one has a much harder time justifying that somehow America should belong to the white Europeans. Taking over the lands of someone else by force is hardly a valid moral justification for being allowed to hold on to that land. This is why the actions of the Japanese and the Germans during WW2 were reviled. And this is why if say China invaded Switzerland tomorrow and eventually took it over, most of us would be outraged and would argue that the Chinese have no right to the land that belongs to the ethnic Swiss, simply through a superior exertion of force.
I am glad however that I could fill you in on a crucial history lesson.
Culture and circumstances aren't completely determinative, but they do matter - which is why all those bright Asian parents are so strict with their kids.
ReplyDeleteI have lived in Japan for 16 years and have never seen a strict parent, by American standards. They do encourage studying, though, but I suspect it more a general social expectation, than individual urging, that makes the difference.
"in the long run, we're all dead. the short term is important and, therefore, so are looks."
ReplyDeleteYeah. Including yours.
Well then, all you young men should forget all that nonsense about "game". You want to marry a smart, kind girl with a stable personality. MUCH more important than looks in the long ru
ReplyDelete----------------
"in the long run, we're all dead. the short term is important and, therefore, so are looks."
and that dear friends, encapsulates why certain Indian castes have IQs in the superior range and also, probably, Ashkenazi Jews; and why Jane Austen's characters were so conflicted.
"BTW, if AP people really want another frontier to help GT kids, I would suggest second year calc (multivariable and then DiffeQs)."
ReplyDeleteGood point, something like 15,000 high school students per year get 5s on Calculus BC, so there is definitely room for another test beyond that one.
"Good point, something like 15,000 high school students per year get 5s on Calculus BC, so there is definitely room for another test beyond that one."
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be an aversion to this. None of the AP exams seem to be "sequential", in the sense that you'd take one then pass through another year of schooling and take the next one. They seem to be structured more along the lines of "hard" and "easy" versions of mostly the same material. I wonder if this is at least in part because most schools are reluctant to allow students to "skip" a grade level in a subject and thus a "Calc 2" or "Physics 2" exam would either be available to an insignificant fraction of students or would pressure schools to offer "Calc 1" and "Physics 1" AP classes to students before their senior year. Anyway, for many selective schools this problem is solved by offering direct college-credit programs in partnership with a local university, but AP exams would go a long way toward providing this opportunity to schools that might have only a few high-achievers.
"Taking over the lands of someone else by force is hardly a valid moral justification for being allowed to hold on to that land. "
ReplyDelete"native" Americans didn't own America.Their ancestors came across the land bridge between what is now Russia ans Alaska. They also didn't have a country like we know them--nation state.
If the Chinese are so smart why don't you stay there and live in that great country. The white people are the only ones to create a half way decent society.That's why you want to live here.
Why would you want to live in a difiled place like America then if you think the history is so bad.If someone stole a car and wanted to give it to you would you take it?
We can live without Asians in this country. Just think about this. Who wants to move to whose country?
"Those 84 blacks will be set for life."
ReplyDeleteAren't American blacks on average 20% white?
So, it would be interesting to know how many of the blacks with 5's on AP Physics C are half white and half black (that is actually 20% white). So, really more white than black.
Same for Native Americans.
"I also think we should be teaching conceptual physics in 8th grade before high school biology and chemistry; then take calculus-based physics in eleventh grade. Physics is the fundamental science and it's important to learn the concepts before introducing calculus."
ReplyDeleteYup.
I homeschool and that is what my son is doing.
"average females still make better grades and pay more attention in class. Average males are incredibly lazy, even if they are capable of performing better."
ReplyDeleteOkay, yes but.
Males in high school are growing which makes them more tired. Females in high school are basically grown. Younger males that haven't started puberty are way more wiggly than the girls. School rewards conformity. Girls are more compliant. So yeah, girls do better but it reflects female willingness to submit more than their capacity for strong performance.
"BTW, if AP people really want another frontier to help GT kids, I would suggest second year calc (multivariable and then DiffeQs). Lots of tkids at this point are taking calculus by 11th grade. If they create the tests, school systems will follow on the coursework (it;s not like orgo or something with tricky labs and high content knowledge required...it's just frigging math.)"
ReplyDeleteWhen I was teaching high school, the really smart kids were more than happy to take those classes at the local colleges and universities and get the heck off campus. The public colleges let them come for free if they were still in high school. Of course, that doesn't work in small towns with no colleges. But most students are close enough to some college to make it work.
"I find it ironic that you would choose to ignore the history of America. America originally belonged to the Native Americans, before they were driven off of their native lands and virtually exterminated."
ReplyDeleteOh the drama. Same thing has happened all over the globe from the dawn of time. Hittites anyone?
They were already in poor health harboring plenty of pathogens with deplorable hygiene.
"Not to mention that your ancestors were the ones who chose to bring African slaves to America against their will, where they provided labor and helped to build up the economy."
Not my ancestors and damned few of anyone else's. Slave owners were a very small minority of whites. I blame them and their greed and malice for plaguing our country with all this lamentable racial strife.
"I see no reason why African Americans today are any less entitled to remain in America than say white Americans of European descent."
Yeah. Valid point.
"When someone like Nick Griffin declares that he wants Britain to be for the native British Caucasians, I have no problem with that kind of sentiment. In some sense, Britain does "belong" to the white British, just as say Japan belongs to the ethnic Japanese."
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Neanderthals who were the original inhabitants? Shouldn't Cro-magnon man go back to where he came from?
And much later, the Saxons invaded the Anglos or Anglos invaded the Saxons(I get confused), so there is the matter of does Britain really belong to Angies or Saxes.
And as I recall, there were the Ainu in Japan before the Mongoloid invasion. So, maybe the hairy Ainu should be the real owners of Japan.
And why should Han people have all of China? Didn't they conquer the Uighurs, Tibetans, and other ethnic groups in the vast western territories? Shouldn't 2/3 of China belong to indigenous people who are not Han? Han should only own the eastern 1/3 of China, which is where they rose to prominence.
Well since you admit that the land was more or less stolen, I'm sure you'll have no problem relinquishing the claim that somehow America should "belong" to the white Europeans only. And since you seem to place so much value in productivity, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if the Chinese invaded say Portugal, took it over, and made it into a more productive place than it currently is today.
ReplyDeleteYan Shen - I'm sure you wouldn't mind if the Chinese invaded say Portugal, took it over, and made it into a more productive place than it currently is today.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I love our modern nuanced politics. These what-ifs.
Any attempt by modern Portugese to take over another country is of course utter evil. A similar attempt by the Chinese on Portugal would simply be a sign of progress.
Anyhow, either we accept the right of populations to their existing territories as they stand now due to some kind of morality - or we dont.
And if we dont, any population can invest any other population's territory - then all bets are off. Those ethnic groups are then free to defend their territory by any means necessary, no more whining about racism.
If, as it appears from YS, that the Chinese have an absolute right to enrich white countries, white have an absolute right to resist.
Yan Shen is a bit of an ethnocentric Chinese guy. Ok, fine.
ReplyDeleteYan, just give props where it's due to the group that invented the modern world.
Yeah, non-poor straight white gentile men have been hate objects for a while now. And we've seen better times. But when you have the Culture of Critique paralyzing your society, well, there's not much you can do to flex your intellectual muscles.
I don't begrudge you thumping your chest a bit. We're down on our luck and China is on the way up.
But hark! I bespie a Culture of Critique headed your way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMsZM-MNI1A
The USA held out almost 120 years between the first wave of "Critiqs" and their final triumph in the person of Mr. Obama. Given how quickly and zealously your people took up communism, they have no innate immunity to Criticism. Let's see how long you last once they finish devouring the West and turn their attentions to penetrating your society.
You can start by freeing your "state run media", which means signing it over to Soros and Sulzberger...
I would guess that 40 percent of the white 5s come from people of Jewish origin. Also there are some south Asians who have an Aryan fantasy and classify themselves as white. And immigrants like Turks also class themselves as white. We need a genetic white category to seethe true achievements of Gentiles
ReplyDeleteI'm the nonny who advocates second year calculus as an AP. I took BC and got a 5 in 11th grade. Was a pain in the ass to go to a local college at night and take second year calc. Would much have preferred to have it in school, free (except the exam), AP credit, etc. And for that matter, you could say don't have first year college APs either by the logic that kids should go to local colleges.
ReplyDeleteSchool rewards conformity. Girls are more compliant. So yeah, girls do better but it reflects female willingness to submit more than their capacity for strong performance.
ReplyDelete---
Are females really more conformist than males? The social costs for non-conformity is much, much higher for females than for males. As a high-IQ female, I know this from personal experience.
You Gameboys post here all the the time about how all you want from a woman is "youth and beauty." You loudly proclaim that a woman who doesn't "conform" to those standards is useless to you.
So how can you then say that women are "naturally" more "conformist" when you are enforcers of that "conformity"? (And quite brutal in that enforcement, I might add.)
Learn your facts, buddy. The Ainu only lived on one of the Japanese islands, Hokkaido. Kuril and Sakhalin are both considered parts of Russia. The Native American tribes basically were located across the entire landscape of America.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people
"Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin."
"if you had any real principles,"
ReplyDeleteI've GOT a principle: Me and my people first.
YOU obviously have the same principle --and yet, you, hypocritically, have the gall to scold ME for it?
"fill you in on a crucial history lesson."
You, sir, are in the need of a history lesson -- one from an old history book, say, prior to 1965, rather than getting your "history" from the talking points pamphlets of minority-grievance counselors.
See, the true history is, U.S.A. was founded and built by the Founders for themselves and their Posterity (people like me).
Immigrants, up til now, at least, when they were let in, were let in under the agreement that they, and their progeny, would forsake loyalty to their coethnics and give their loyalty to
The Posterity.
Now, the Blacks and Indians are a special case. The blacks were brought here involuntarily. Our problems with them are for us to deal with.
The Indians in U.S. are the best-treated conquered peoples the world has ever seen. When they lost, they were given reservations to live on, which have insulated, electrified houses heated by piped-in natural gas, an income from U.S. taxpayers, full citizenship rights AND the right to leave the reservation if they wish, whereupon they will receive AA
preferences for schools and jobs.
(Oh and the "native Americans" were not -- they came here from Asia.
They, also, were not the first. The Solutreans from France were already on the east coast of North America, and the paleoindians genocided them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml)
But YOU, Mr. Immigrant or Immigrant's Progeny who is failing to keep up
his end of the Social Contract between immigrants and The Posterity,
meed to be humble, be appreciative that you were allowed to come here, or be gone.
After all, *I* didn't come to your East Asian country and start telling
your people what, did I? No. You (or your daddy) came to MY country, whereupon you commenced popping off.
Anon said:
ReplyDeleteAre females really more conformist than males? The social costs for non-conformity is much, much higher for females than for males. As a high-IQ female, I know this from personal experience.
You Gameboys post here all the the time about how all you want from a woman is "youth and beauty." You loudly proclaim that a woman who doesn't "conform" to those standards is useless to you.
So how can you then say that women are "naturally" more "conformist" when you are enforcers of that "conformity"? (And quite brutal in that enforcement, I might add.)
Heh.
Have a look at Eleanor MacCoby's The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together.
Yes, it is males who enforce gender roles, not because of "insecurity" as some morons suggest, but rather because it as a successful reproductive strategy that is pretty much hard-wired now.
Still, there are males out there who find high IQ females to be attractive: usually they have more interesting proclivities.
Are females really more conformist than males? The social costs for non-conformity is much, much higher for females than for males. As a high-IQ female, I know this from personal experience.
ReplyDeleteYou Gameboys post here all the the time about how all you want from a woman is "youth and beauty." You loudly proclaim that a woman who doesn't "conform" to those standards is useless to you.
So how can you then say that women are "naturally" more "conformist" when you are enforcers of that "conformity"? (And quite brutal in that enforcement, I might add.)
Why the victim card? Look, women are just as strict enforces of conformity on men, and the evolutionary stakes are much higher as women hold the keys to mating and reproduction in the modern world. Women filter out men based upon wealth, looks, height, hair, hipness, humor, intelligence, etc. Every man must meet these standards set by women or die out. Aren't men just as much victims as women?
Free of external pressures to conform by the opposite sex, look at how men and women choose to spend their discretionary time and resources on things that promote conformity.
Which sex freely buys mindless hollywood mags in the checkout so they can slavishly emulate their rolemodels or scorn them for non-conformity. Which sex obsesses over fashion/style nonsense so they can be told how they should look, dress and act by other women and gay men? Which sex watches all those heavy, deep and real talk shows which pries into the perverse and personal lives of others moral transgressions from our conformist society. Which sex is obsessed in keeping up with the Jones or making entertainment out of people following or transgressing societal standards?
Which sex gravitates more solitary pursuits like academic research, woodshop, mechanics, repair, programming, accounting, etc? Which sex is more likely to transgress societal norms or take risks be it crime, inventing, exploring, entrepreneurship? Who is more likely to commit or see through and expose mass delusions, scams, ripoffs, PC-BS etc. and who is more likely to fall under such spells and even vociferously defend the established dogma with faith more than facts?
It's painfully obvious that men and women are very different when it comes to societal conformity. Both are needed to have a stable, functioning and perpetuating society and such specialization helps advance society.
Not to see this obvious difference requires a high degree of comformity to current PC dogma. What surprises me about women is that, unlike most men, even high-IQ types fall prey to the madness of crowds with disturbing frequency.
Anonymous wrote:
ReplyDeletein the long run, we're all dead. the short term is important and, therefore, so are looks.
==========================
A smart, stable partner is important for your happiness in the short term and long term. Also for the happiness of your progeny who will perhaps live on after you are dead.
The HBD crowd often talks about how certain races are less "future oriented" than others. It is hard to imagine any practice that is more about immediate gratification, and less about planning for the future, than "game".
So it is the dumb white racists who have an Aryan fantasy
ReplyDeleteGentlemen, gentlemen! They both have dumb Aryan fantasies!
Well then, all you young men should forget all that nonsense about "game". You want to marry a smart, kind girl with a stable personality. MUCH more important than looks in the long ru
ReplyDelete----------------
"in the long run, we're all dead. the short term is important and, therefore, so are looks."
___________________________________
Who would make the best choice for a woman? Nihilist or the pater familias? A man cannot be both.
BTW, I'm not knocking looks, but there is a reason young men have been taught since the times of the Old Testament to regard character (some men are really bad at detection). Advice meant to protect women from similar harm was usually aimed at the parents as women are submissive and need to be protected. An example in our culture of this need to protect is parents or good girlfriends who shoo a cad away for whom a woman is often too timid, nice, or even naive, to reject herself.
________________
Yan Shen,
You've miscalulated the principles Curvaceous believes in and thus assume she has abandoned them. She does not subscribe to the idea of the proposition nation ergo she is not a hypocrite.
Steve has articulated a more liberal "citizenist" philosophy which some here embrace while others are more in line with Curvaceous.
Whether women are more conformist than men is a purely descriptive statement. Is it true or isn't it? If it is true, then it may explain conformity in school and thereby success in school.
ReplyDeleteWhy women are more conformist than men (if they are) is another matter. If you have a hypothesis on why this is the case, if it is the case, then you have to present something that is ideally testable. If not then at least not expect people to buy a "reason" that has no real theory behind it and is only refutable by people to whom it would obviously be politically useful not to refute (like a theory based on "my experiences as a woman, which only a woman can have, and which conveniently say how men are doing these awful things and why they should listen to women more").
The evo-psych theory that males in almost all species are more likely to express risky and showy behaviour in order to reap greater reproductive gains and that tendency has extended to humans, of course, may or may not be that testable, but as a theory it's at least based on a lot of solid evidence and is objective.
Yan Shen,
ReplyDeleteIt seems a bit specious to say "because group X were brought here by force, group Y can immigrate as much as they wish". There are Black people brought to Britain by force, historically. That doesn't mean Chinese can come there if they wish, automatically, surely? Nations form, they have cohesion.
That one person was, at some point in the past, brought somewhere by force or a group removed, does not remove the legitimacy of a people who live there and their peoplehood. They are a people or not.
Some White Americans would argue that they are a people and that, even if they cannot form a "perfect" White American nation state, they have the right to try and make sure it doesn't become less of a nation state than it is as they would desire. Taking lands over by force is no justification to own land. Having your land taken over by force generations ago, neither is this a justification, (though if you're landless, there's certainly a need for some moral redress there). But being a people in a land, ah, now that's a justification!
Of course, personally, I think Curvaceous is being too extreme here of course. You must include people already within your community. You have no obligation to include people outside your community in it though.
"You Gameboys post here all the the time about how all you want from a woman is "youth and beauty." You loudly proclaim that a woman who doesn't "conform" to those standards is useless to you.
ReplyDeleteSo how can you then say that women are "naturally" more "conformist" when you are enforcers of that "conformity"? (And quite brutal in that enforcement, I might add.)"
That's a bizarre non sequitor. Being young and pretty isn't a choice, so there's really nothing "conformist" or "non-conformist" about it.
"School rewards conformity. Girls are more compliant. So yeah, girls do better but it reflects female willingness to submit more than their capacity for strong performance."
ReplyDeleteIdk about this. It might be true in elementary school. However by the time high school/middle school swings around, I'd say that average IQ males lackadaisical attitude towards school is actually evidence of excessive conformity to peer norms. They are clearly more crippled by a fear of being considered a "good student" than similar girls are. It is the (generally smarter) males who try harder that stand out as non-conformists. Notice the flippant attitude towards academics is basically non-existent among average males in Asia and Eastern Europe, where schools are actually far more conformist and rigid in structure than ours are.
You misinterpret the argument entirely. My argument is as follows. Because Group X virtually exterminated Group Y, while bringing over Group Z against their will, that doesn't mean that only Group X is entitled to this particular nation.
ReplyDeleteWhen the obvious fact of the Native American genocide is illuminated, most people on here simply use the old, "oh but people have been killing one another and taking over other people's land for countless centuries" defense. Okay fine. So if that's the line of defense you want to employ, all that seems to suggest is that you have no moral ground for asserting that only whites belong in America, since land doesn't really "belong" to anyone right and people take from one another by force as they've always done.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. It would seem that a convenient place to draw the line would be at the point where persistent civilizations evolved on the different continents, i.e. whites in Europe, Asians in Asia, blacks in Africa, native american indians in North and South America, etc, and use that geographic distribution as a way of determining who is entitled to what.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. It would seem that a convenient place to draw the line would be at the point where persistent civilizations evolved on the different continents, i.e. whites in Europe, Asians in Asia, blacks in Africa, native american indians in North and South America, etc, and use that geographic distribution as a way of determining who is entitled to what.
ReplyDeleteThe Kennewick_Man controversy:
http://archaeology.about.com/od/kennewickman/Kennewick_Man_and_the_New_World_Entrada.htm
..."all that seems to suggest is that you have no moral ground for asserting that only whites belong in America, since land doesn't really "belong" to anyone right and people take from one another by force as they've always done"
ReplyDeleteSo is this your way of lending a subtle hint that your people, the East Asians, intend to take America from us White Americans, by mass immigration if possible, or war if necessary?
"can't have your cake and eat it too. It would seem that a convenient place to draw the line would be at the point where persistent civilizations evolved on the different continents, i.e. whites in Europe, Asians in Asia"
Mr. Asian Immigrant with your oh-so-objective, in-no-way-self-serving-no-never-of-course-not principles, okay, so when does your boat back to Asia leave?
@Melkyin
ReplyDeleteSeems to me like places like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore are doing just fine technology wise. I'm sure the various ethnic immigrants from America can all take back their various contributions. So Chinese Americans can take back their contributions to China(Yahoo, Nvidia), Indian Americans to India, Russian Americans to Russia(Google), etc.
I'm sure you Europeans will do fine without Japanese companies like Sony or Nintendo, or Korean companies like Samsung or LG supplying you with the latest tech gadgets. And maybe you people can take that great American car manufacturing back to Europe. I mean, who needs low quality cars made by Toyota, when you can have the latest offerings from Ford or GM.
I'm sure China will do just fine exporting to the rest of Asia.
Choosing the AP Physics C exam seems deliberately unrepresentative. I'm an upper-middle class white dude who went to an excellent but public high school that routinely sends people to Ivies and top liberal arts colleges, and it didn't even even offer the lowest level of AP physics. Students taking the AP Physics C exam either go to the kind of schools that offer dozens of AP courses - which are going to tend to be expensive, private, and white/Asian, or they have tremendous drive and a lot of people supporting them.
ReplyDeleteThus, making inferences about the abilities of any particular racial subgroup off of this exam is highly misleading. Try something standard, like AP Calculus AB. I'm sure it'll skew in a similar way, but not in nearly as pronounced a manner.
I do admit the gender tendencies are interesting, but this is a very rare and non-standard AP exam. It would be far more interesting if you had the percentage of each gender receiving a five, rather than the raw number. I would not be surprised to see something much closer to parity, if not even past it in the other direction.
" I mean, who needs low quality cars made by Toyota, when you can have the latest offerings from Ford or GM'
ReplyDeleteLook up W Edwards Deming,an American, and you will see he taught the Japanese about quality.
American cars are high quality now too.
It is the (generally smarter) males who try harder that stand out as non-conformists.
ReplyDeleteOr they may not have a choice. They may know that no matter how hard they try, they will never fit in, so instead they be themselves.
It actually takes energy and effort to conform.
Notice the flippant attitude towards academics is basically non-existent among average males in Asia and Eastern Europe, where schools are actually far more conformist and rigid in structure than ours are.
Academically rigid, you mean, and without the so American religious devotion to social conformity.
Well, this is fun. An Asian guy saying that whites shouldn't feel entitled to America because "the Native Americans were here first." Whites attacking the Asian guy because "America was founded by whites, so why not go home?" Apparently no one feels obligated to understand that underneath all of this is the fact that each of us is human and that fighting over whose country this is only means that one subscribes to a zero-sum understanding of America. Ethnic warfare -- it worked out so well for the Serbs, huh?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, to use Ronnie Reagan's example, who among us would believe that if some alien force from another planet were to threaten mankind, all these petty questions about whose race we're from would be thrown out the window pretty damn quick?
And if that force treated humans the way that white nationalists want to treat Asians (go back home and improve your own countries!), and nationalist Asians treat whites (you foreigners!), who would dispute that aforesaid nationalists would have absolutely no leg to stand on based on principle? After all, might makes right -- right?
And as for the "we founded America" argument: Some day -- not now, and maybe not in our lifetimes -- humanity will encounter a truly superior race with technology so advanced that ot seems, as Clarke said, to be magic. And when they take over our planet in the guise of "serving humanity," we'll look back at our intrahuman squabbles with a sense of nostalgia and fondness. Not.
The bottom line is that if, in the future, "nationalist" aliens were to colonize Europe, Asia, and North America, and make it their home, however advanced, humans would still be pretty damned pissed they were excluded from the home the aliens built based on the fact of their humanity. So what does that say for nationalism today?
Of course, you could say, "Principles be damned -- I want my country back!" But, to use a Kantian trope, those who deny categorical imperatives deny the greatest good of all. And, I might add, are not showing a helluva lot of the humanity they claim they have.
But what did Kant know, right? Just another dead European pale male, I guess.
@Anon
ReplyDelete"But what did Kant know, right? Just another dead European pale male, I guess."
You give the readers of Steve Sailer's blog a little too much credit. I'd say that maybe 10% of the people here are somewhat intelligent, and the remaining 90% are losers from Stormfront, or those of a similar ilk. I doubt that most of the white trash here, the 10% of smart people excluded, have even read a line of any of Kant's works. It's quite possible that some may not even have heard of him. They are however experts are intentionally misspelling my name, because I assume that they're trying to mock me. Given the fact that most of these people are probably grown men, the level of immaturity on display is absolutely frightening. And yet, some of these people boast about the moral superiority of Europeans. Go figure. :)
I think my comment was lost, so I'll try another.
ReplyDeleteAnon Kant fan:
Young'un, you've been watching too many sci-fi horror flicks.
There is no current threat from space aliens. Nor is there likely to ever be one. Google Fermi Paradox.
Western Civilization of Planet Earth, in the system of Sol, in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, is the pioneer space-faring civilization in the universe. And it was, virtually entirely all of it, due to the accomplishments of White men. But pc-mc/ AA hiring is killing NASA.
There IS a threat to my people, White Americans. A people need a land to survive and reproduce. No reproduction = extinction.
Already our fertility is below replacement levels due to the various effects upon us of the encroachment by non-coethnics, most notably the inability to form families affordably.
We've been ethnically cleansed out of our cities (sneeringly termed White Flight.) CA is a goner. Europe is being colonized by Arabs. There's nowhere left to go.
History is unanimous: When two unrelated ethnicities share the same territory, war is inevitable and continues until one ethny is genocided or driven out. Happens in the animal world, happens with humans.
So, yeah, I'm gaining the courage necessary to tell off the Asian colonizers. A small thing, to be sure, but valuable. Because it's good practice, for the day may not be far off when far greater courage will be required.
"But, to use a Kantian trope, those who deny categorical imperatives deny the greatest good of all."
The greatest good, the categorical imperative, is the continuance of my people. Else Kant is just scribbles on paper to be shredded for a bird's nest.