A commenter on the PISA post below writes:
Well, the question I ask myself is what percent of the American population doesn't really deep down believe that HBD is probably a substantial factor in all these sorts of things...
Ten percent? Five percent? One percent? Zero percent?
The floor is open for people's guesses...
Back before I started participating 18 years ago in Internet discussions with anonymous participants, I would have agreed with these low estimates. All these years later, however ... I dunno. Maybe there is a Silent But Sensible Majority out there somewhere. Maybe.
To pick a random example of the quality of contemporary thought, here is an online discussion on Hacker News / Ycombinator about Tino's recent blog post at Super-Economy showing the PISA results when you adjust for demographics. Reading through it, it's hard to take away the impression that there are a lot of people out there who are well informed and hold reasonable views. Instead, you just see a lot of people getting intellectually snarled up in their own underwear.
My approach has always been based around my sense that I'm not smart enough to juggle in my head complex wrong ideas. I need to find the simplest answers that work (but, as Einstein said, no simpler).
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191 comments:
Well everyone on a YouTube is a race and gender realist. Does that count for something?
Internet commenters will tend to be younger, in their '20s and '30s. Older people tend to be more sensible - but half will still have 2-digit IQs, of course.
Overall, I think most people (unlike Steve Sailer) can easily comparmentalise their intellectual lives, adhering to different beliefs in different contexts. The AGW advocate is happy to buy beachfront property. The Liberal Egalitarian makes sure not to send his children to black-majority school (or here in UK, to any normal State 'Comprehensive' school).
Where Affirmative Action operates, people behave as if they 'know' that beneficiaries are on average less capable than non-beneficiaries, even if they will deny believing this when asked.
In Communist societies, people will express belief in Marxist doctrine while acting in their own self-interest, contrary to Marxist dialectic.
Well I may be a holdout myself, as I still suspect culture as being most the NAM's problem. BUT they must fix it themselves! And blacks were on their way, via separate schools, separate colleges and so forth, up until 1960 and all the civil rights legislation aimed at "helping" them.
When you read the writings of people like Booker T Washington and WEB DuBois, even Henry Louis Gates, it's clear they were painfully aware of their many shortcomings, and dubious of overcoming them. Even DuBois predicted that only a talented tenth could hack college and the white world. They anticipated integration with great reservation.
One does not encounter the narrow specialty of differential pyschology or narrower niche, the psychometricians's craft in either primary or secondary education. Autodidacticism or nothing.
In skimming responses to the Buchanan article commenters bring anything and everything unrelated to the neglect of the point which is a foreign concept, an illiteracy.
Steve, it's the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome again.
- You can judge the truth of the matter by the number of verbal gymnastics and obfuscations per column inch.
The more twistings and gyrations you get, the more straw men and red herrings, the more you just know your opponent is not only wrong, but more importantly knows that he is wrong.
It's an interesting one for the psychologists to study.It reminds me of kids who take up smoking or hard liquor for the first time.The habit takes time to form and at first it is anything but enjoyable - but kids still manage to convince themselves - and others - that they enjoy the habit from the get go.
The Silent But Sensible Majority was the corner stone of America's formerly great democracy. They got pissed off by economic conditions under Nixon and Ford, but after four years of Jimmy Carter, they swung rapidly right to Ronald Reagan. Compare that kind of sensible mass political behavior to what happened in CA last Nov. Democrats are complete tools of the corrupt, greedy public employees unions and have driven the CA economy into the ground, while driving taxes, deficits, and the unemployment rate through the roof, but they get swept back into power like everything was go-go great. That, too, is America's future.
I don't have any numbers but from reading various blogs and from discussions with various folks, the delusions about race and ethnicity might be greatest among the just above average smart ( IQ 110 to 120 approx.) kind of people. A vast number of these people have completely internalized the whole "race doesn't exist" nonsense. They simply can't believe that a smart person could take race seriously, which is why you have just above average dullards having the guts to publicly attempt to school a man like James Watson in genetics. They don't stop for a minute to think that maybe this well known geneticist knows something that they don't. They heard from Gould that correlation isn't causation and that's enough for them.
Consider a somewhat low-brow online blog such as http://bit.ly/hnDOj1
People admit that there are race-based differences in obesity but do not admit to race-based genetic differences that may have a causal role, preferring to only admit environmental/cultural factors.
Only when specific diseases that have zero environmental inputs (sickle cell anemia) then is discussion of race-based genetic differences entertained. So this seems to be a boundary condition for consideration of race-based genetic differences (clearly biological, inherited diseases).
That biology can influence culture and vice-versa (co-evolution) is not even on the table.
This is the type of "logic" that is used. Outcome X differs across R races. Cultural/Environmental factor C is associated with R. So any genetic factors G that covary with race are eliminated. Pointing to genetic differences at the group/race level seems to be morally wrong (taboo)in the West in a way that it is not in Asia (or even Africa, I suspect).
I think there are a lot of people teetering on the edge of being sensible. They've heard bits and pieces of the research supporting group IQ differences, and deep down they feel that, hey, maybe it does make sense. But they still need something to close the deal -- something like definitive genetic mapping, for example.
We also need a few brave, credible black scientists who are willing to discuss the B-W gap objectively. People need to see that whites and blacks can discuss these issues without a race war breaking out.
There's one other problem: So far, the people most likely to start this kind of discussion (conservatives) are also, to a large extent, the same people who have the most to lose, because an acknowledgement of inherent disadvantages can undercut conservative arguments for self-reliance and a laissez-faire economy. Charles Murray and you are the only writers I'm aware of who have grappled with this tension.
Steve,
There may be a difference between online discussions and the general population. In random party conversations, I find that people are generally privately in accord with HBD. I would be very surprised if they were up on all the science behind it, or where completely correct in all their impressions. I don't think many of them have ever considered getting involved in a combox discussion.
As for getting snarled up in your own underwear, making good arguments is hard. Even for well-educated people, the potential pitfalls are many, especially when your argument is written down to be analyzed at leisure. Have you ever listened to a recording of yourself making casual conversation? At least in my case, I find myself less than eloquent. Online discussions are like conversations frozen in time.
Obviously very difficult to tell. But I'd guess that the country is full of Whites who are extremely aware of HBD. You can tell from their behavior in selecting schools for their kids, neighborhoods to live in, who to associate with, what churches, to attend, etc. But only a tiny percentage would admit to thinking that way. Indeed, many have mastered doublethink and are capable of both believing in and not believing in HBD.
I'd guess based on some experience that a substantially higher fraction of men than women believe HBD. On Free Republic, there is widespread but not universal acceptance of it, when the topic comes up. (Ironically, FR banned Steve Sailer and VDARE some time ago.)
Hacker News users tend to use real names. They may not want to have hatefacts connected to their real names on the internet for the rest of eternity.
I don't think so. Look here.
'I WANT MY CHEESEBURGER AND FRIES!!'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QflmPjqbRZo&feature=related
I wonder what Bill Gates would make of Dixmoor School district here in huge # of minorities and broke Illinois:The all black district is being investigated for stealing large amounts of money for personal use,said money being used for such things as hotels,vacations,limosuines and,er,wigs. Not sure I get the last one,but still,the patterm of MINO's stealing form the schools is so widespread and so deeply ingrained,that it has to be considered all but universal. In an interview with Newsweek Bill states flatly that our schools have,and are,falling behind Europe. He HAS to be aware that thats a lie. I think people like him certainly are aware of HBD and are harvesting money from Whitey to school Jose so they dont have to hire Whiteys son. We are paying for the ropes theyre using to hang us!
Most people have always had an intuitive notion of HBD and had some ethnic ranking system in the back of their minds. It just was vague and didn't have a numerical scoring system attached to it. The educational system has worked to beat this idea out of everyone, telling them their instincts are wrong. It takes indoctrination to reach this level. Any peasant farmer can tell you that there's differences among the various species.
I didn't believe in HBD until I finally forced myself to see the reality around me. It's the black violence in the streets and Jewish power all around me that finally woke me up.
I grew up on PBS, sociology classes in school, and etc.(generic liberal stuff prior to rampant PC, so things only could have gotten worse since I was in high school from early to mid 80s). When I started college, most professors were liberal older guys who were open-minded and moderate in temperant, people who didn't politicize the classroom or try to push their agenda onto students. But they began retire en masse and by late 80s, boomer professors took over and they were shrill, always ranting, and politicizing every topic.
Highschool classes taught me that racial differences are ever so trivial, and PBS shows told me that any 'racist' idea leads to lynching and the holocaust. But then the reality around you is so obvious that you have to see it for what it is. It generally helps if you enter the battlefield. I did substitute teaching in big cities in the early 90s and that was like a shock treatment in truth.
Losing this faith still aint easy, especially if liberalism/leftism was your religion. Your body literally aches. Your soul feels filthy and shameful. You feel like Judas. Perhaps, this is why some rightwing people dabble in Satanic imagery. They've internalized the notion that rejecting liberalism and PC is to go with the devil.
Anyway, this liberal do-goodery never goes away entirely, just as cancer can never be defeated 100%. Even now, certain sounds and images have the effect of the brainwashing in The Manchurian Candidate. When I see images of poor blacks, a part of me wonders what can I do to help? A part of me still wants to win approval from some fictional Jew lodged in my brain.
Since PC has gotten even more obnoxious over the yrs, more kids today are bound to be PC.
Most young people fall into two categories. They reject HBD as 'racist' or they refuse to think about it at all; it's so uncool. What interests them are not ideas but images of diversity, feely goodness, etc. A lot of young people are for 'gay marriage' not because they thought long and hard about the issue but because they think gayness is cool from TV show they've seen.
Also, HBD is no guarantee that whites will be for white survival. I've met white liberals who admit that, yes, racial differences exist, but it's wonderful that we're all coming together since we can all share different qualities. It's like the story of guy with short arms and a guy with long arms. Long arm guy picks the fruit from tree but short arm guy ensures they can both eat the fruit.
And even for HBD people, there is the religion of Magic Negro MLK.
Was the Silent Majority of the 60s sensible? Nixon pushed forth every liberal policy, yet Archie Bunkers of America stood by him.
According to the GSS, there is no Silent but Sensible HBD Majority, and there wasn't one three decades ago.
No, but there's a very vocal minority on the web who create the impression that the HBD movement is actually bigger than it is. :D
First of all, within the conservative movement itself, you have to take Evangelical and other religious types into consideration. They don't tend to believe that humans are 'different.' It's why they send so many missionaries into the third world. All human beings are equal and worth saving. Most abolitionists were also devout churchmen. So you can write off the large chunk religious America as believing in HBD.
Most people take the (accurate) view that racial and ethnic differences generally have a cultural and social root, rather than a biological one.
IQ fetishists might be surprised to learn that few people spend time thinking about this kind of thing.
To answer the titular question: NO.
Sensible = the ability to connect cause to effect.
The fact that large numbers of "conservatives" still believe in the Laffer Curve, and that the vast majority of Congress still managed to get re-elected after all they've done to this country in the last decade, demonstrates that conclusively. The vast majority of people accept, almost without question, what they are taught in school, and what they are taught in school is crap.
I think that, ironically, the majority of Americans understand and accept the natural racial disparities in intelligence, yet of those who do, not one in three believes that should have any bearing on immigration policy.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of white folks in America have absolutely no idea of inherent racial disparities in intelligence or propensity to commit crime. The relentless propaganda campaign of the last few decades (white=BAD, nonwhite=GOOD) has been very effective. This is how politicians and pundits can say stupid things like "closing the achievement gap is the civil rights issue of the 21st century" without getting laughed at.
"My approach has always been based around my sense that I'm not smart enough to juggle in my head complex wrong ideas. I need to find the simplest answers that work (but, as Einstein said, no simpler)"
Best Quote Of 2010.
It's just a strange thing to expect that there exists some silent majority on such questions as this.
For all practical purposes, the belief that genetics plays a major role in cognitive differences between races is a religious issue. For most people, it's easy enough to square poor performance by certain groups on cognitive tests with fundamental genetic equality by appealing to socio-economic factors. Really, it's only by careful, statistical examination of the impact of such factors that the dominantly environmental explanation can be dismissed. Short of that, it's an open question as to what the true explanation might be. For the ordinary layperson, a belief in decisive power of the environment is both compatible with what they believe rationally and required by what they believe on the basis of their secular religion.
I think the centrality of that belief is roughly akin to the belief in God in the face of rampant evil in the universe. Yes, it does sometimes strain the credulity of a believer in God that an all powerful, all good being would allow earthquakes to make suffer and kill thousands of innocent children, but they've got their rationalizations (conveniently afforded them by religious functionaries).
So it is today with the public and the belief in fundamental genetic equality. Credulity may be strained, but it is rarely broken.
The disgrace here lies in the social scientists and geneticists and evolutionary biologists who are in a position to know better, and in many cases clearly do know better, but either shout down those who would dare to tell the truth, or simply keep their mouths firmly shut.
The Inductivist has a post up in response, and his conclusion is that the number of people who believe in HBD is shrinking.
The comments on the page you linked to are not anonymous, so the incentive is to posture.
Just looking or clicking on the first few names, one is "kenjackson" and another is "endtimes" but there is a user profile linking to a standford.edu e-mail address.
Most of the people, I know, that have HBD-like views are immigrants, older people, and less educated, ie people that understand race through life experience and have very few hangups about learning from those experiences. Unfortunately, those people tend to be poor spokesmen for a HBD movement. Old Uncle Fred and Rodrigo the Aztec mechanic are not the sort of people you want the support of.
The majority do not believe in anything resembling HBD. They notice differences, but they attribute them to environment or culture or family. The consensus is that if everyone had the same culture and same family system, everyone would be the same.
Among the respectable, institutional failures and racism are often cited when discussing racial gaps. Some of them, secretly, believe in the culture/family stuff.
Among white Americans, I think Jews are probably the most admanant in their denial of HBD. Southerners and Italian-Americans, along with other east coast ethnics, seem to be the most willing to accept it.
I assume that PISA is an aptitude test (like the SAT) rather than a knowledge test like the Advanced Placement exams. Can you confirm this, Steve?
I believe it's well established that teaching/coaching has a negligible effect on aptitude test scores, to the point that Kaplan was legally barred from claiming to improve scores. Correct me if I'm wrong on this please, Steve.
With these two premises, it seems obvious that PISA scores are not the result of the education system, beyond a certain minimum level. QED?
Here's a great sample of the comments there:
"I didn't mean to say that their role models should only be black. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. For a black kid, I think the impact of seeing someone who's black and successful is huge. Think about the numbers of black kids who started playing golf because of Tiger Woods. Like I said, it's hard to quantify but it makes a difference."
Just think about it. Of course, this commenter has no idea whether or not lots of black kids started playing golf because of Tiger. He assumes they did, because obviously black kids who see successful blacks will be inspired to emulate them. Which proves his point that black kids who see successful blacks will be inspired to emulate them!
No, there is not. Why? Because orthodoxy in PC/Multiculturalism is a requirement in almost everything. Including dating. Women are by huge majorities, very, very PC. If you want success in business, in your career, in dating, you MUST be PC compliant. Unless you are already a big shot. Then you can do and say what you want.
One of the unfortunate aspects of the explosion in the number of blogs is the tendency of people who always (correctly) thought that their minority opinion was just that, to suddenly change their minds based on the their eagerness to conflate what is actually a small number of blog comments with large numbers of actual people.
Unfortunately, the sensible thing to do is keep one's mouth shut. The other thing is that the internet is the equavalent of a tree falling in the forest. Without an outlet to mass media, especially TV, we are doomed to have no one hear us falling.
Before you get too optimistic abou this, here's a study that's tweeted back and forth a lot today: "Seeking Congruity Between Goals and Roles:
A New Look at Why Women Opt Out of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers"
there is really only one piece of evidence people need to see, the iq scores controlled for socioeconomic status. but i i've never seen it mentioned in the media. so it isn't surprising that people believe the nonsense spoonfed to them.
"The relentless propaganda campaign of the last few decades (white=BAD, nonwhite=GOOD) has been very effective."
No. It isn't. When you say you avoid an area because it is a "bad area" everybody knows what you mean. Some of these areas even have nice, big houses and house a lot of government employees. I'm thinking D.C., and it's suburbs. But predominantly blacks areas are always coded as "bad" and predominantly white areas are usually "good." Predominantly Hispanic--not exactly bad, but profoundly annoying and dangerous to drive in. You're always seeing crosses on the sides of the avenues with large Hispanic populations.
1. Bad news: No Silent Majority about race and HBD. Not even close. And forget about their private behavior, people perfectly decouple ideology and utility maximization.
2. Good news: We don't need a Silent Majority on race and HBD. For now, we only need to stop or slow immigration. And a new silent majority is emerging on illegal immigration and on multiculturalism.
Focus all efforts on immigration, and co-opting conservatives. They are radicalizing on their own for unrelated reasons, but it's still good news.
If you manage to convince conservative Republicans that Hispanic immigration will destroy their party and power, many of them agree to your immigration policy, without any need to convince them about HBD.
If the country is still here in some recognizable form in 2050, with time and technology things will work out fine.
Steve Sailer surviving cancer and Google-searchers are the best hope for the future.
ogunsiron said...the delusions about race and ethnicity might be greatest among the just above average smart ( IQ 110 to 120 approx.) kind of people.
I believe this is correct. People at this level of intelligence tend to be insecure about it, and look to see what the people regarded as "smart" are saying. Thus, they take their cues from the people whose intelligence their peers admire, such as John Stewart, Barack Obama, Bill Moyers, NPR hosts, etc.
Even someone like my father, who is smart in his field but has not given great thought to politics, is spoonfed his political views by the New York Times.
Can someone please clarify this for me: Is HBD a sociopolitical movement, or is it a science movement? Or is it a sociopolitical movement motivated by science? Is the ultimate goal of HBD to sanction the use of the genetic and psychological evidence of racial differences to influence social policy?
"The fact that large numbers of 'conservatives' still believe in the Laffer Curve"
Yeah the mathematical concept of extrema is real, Bishop Berkeley. Sorry?
Steve,
I guess you got your answer. We went from universally seeing differences to being oblivious to them in just a couple decades.
It isn't just the religious belief we've been taught, integration has made people of other ethnicities much more our neighbors in a Christian sense. People care and look out for their "fellow men" hoping for all the good things in life for them.
Our entire society is based and ordered on a liberal premise and it would be psychologically and spiritually hard for most people to accept that it is a lie.
A few years ago, I was sitting with a Christian black woman while we waited for both our daughters to finish their ballet lesson. She asked all about homeschooling. "The schools are so bad," she said. My response? "Yeah". She was a good, smart, woman who deserves all the good things in life. I don't even like thinking about the likely disadvantages that are simply an accident of birth and living in a majority white country; inequality breaks hearts. Auster is excellent on this topic.
Hacker News comments are about intellectual one up man ship to hopefully catch the attention of the Y-combinator gods and get your start-up some seed funding and mentorship.
Hardly the place to get people's raw opinions.
"Internet commenters will tend to be younger, in their '20s and '30s. "
Oh you have stats for that? It seems to me that the ones who take the time to comment are rather old, at least 30 and probably pushing 50. The younger ones are not very literate and it shows.
Given that the we evolved to recognize patterns I would say that virtually everyone minus the mentally retarded recognizes group differences in IQ, athleticism, rhythm, etc.
I don't think most people give the question as to why the differences exist much thought and they will parrot whatever they need to get by in life.
So I think you have to distinguish between implicit and explicit thought.
I don't think the GSS data is illuminating. People might lie just for the purpose of not feeling a slight twinge of pain associated with the truth. Yet some of the same people might respond in kind to a racist remark, in a blue collar zone where you lose points for seeming wimpy - 'hey, sometimes the truth is a bear - at any rate, I didn't bring it up'.
Moreover, I think people realize there could be a slight chance that data could be misused. That's what is constantly put forth by opponents of traffic light cams, and all other types of cams. Sure, the odds of getting 'busted' might be well under 0.1% - but why bother pondering this when it's so easy to write the fake-true answers?
And finally, if you're going to use ketman in whatever degree - well - why not use it at all times? Unless you have some reason not to. Practice makes perfect.
Now, personally, I suspect there's plenty of non-reality-recognizing people out there of very high IQ. The very high IQ people who recognize the facts are the silentest of all the realists, though. So aside from the James Watson anomaly, they have no influence on those around them.
Obviously, there's a lot of realists out there in blue collar land. I suspect a lot of these realists don't have a problem voting for Obama, or else just not voting if they are not otherwise inspired to do so, after considering his individual traits. Otherwise I think he would have had trouble winning the election. Not all such blue collar realists are solid GOPers, by a long shot; some are swing voters. And others are partisans on one side or the other, but only come to the polls about every eight years, when they really care, which means they are also 'contested' voters, in a different way.
I think ogunsiron nailed it. People who are 10-20 points above average, who have never had their intellectual limits pushed or exposed, often fancy themselves on the same level as James Watson and company.
Steve S. said:
Maybe there is a Silent But Sensible Majority out there somewhere. Maybe.
I don't think there is much point about railing against foolish words, as opposed to foolish deeds. The trick is to get politicians to do the right policy without waving a red flag at race warriors of either side.
In Australia the PM John Howard managed to steer a sensible Centre-Right course on cultural policy which has been more or less completely vindicated. Most elites still go through the motions of mouthing post-modern liberal platitudes but the populus have no desire for their society to be turned into a social experiment laboratory.
There are good reasons for the race taboo in the era of globalisation. Just as there were good reasons for the the sex taboo in Victorian era.
We saw what happened to the lifting of the sex taboo in the aftermath of the Pill. Not altogether pretty.
So given the history of the 20thC its understandable that most pragmatic liberals are happy to indulge in some moderate double-think in order to preserve a quiet life. Concentrate on getting the borders closed and ethnic lobbies exposed whilst nodding one's head reassuringly as post-modern liberals chant their mantra.
"Really, it's only by careful, statistical examination of the impact of such factors that the dominantly environmental explanation can be dismissed."
There is another way to undermine cultural explanations: the study of history. The sub-Saharan world has never contributed anything to science or technology, has never created any powerful states, has never explored the outside world, has never come up with a writing system of its own, has not created any monumental architecture, etc., etc.
Written history is 5,000 years long. Over that sort of span cultures are like fleeting trends or the ever-changing winds. Paganism, late classical decadence, Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, modern leftism - they've all pulled the West in wildly different directions. And yet some things have remained pretty stable. The relative levels of cultural achievement among the world's continents/sub-continents haven't changed much in thousands of years. This is obviously because something less malleable than culture is involved.
Another line of attack: pointing out racial hierarchies that don't involve whites. For example, people of Indonesian and sub-Saharan backgrounds have mixed in Madagascar for more than a thousand years before being discovered by European explorers. Without any involvement by white colonialists these people developed a clear-cut hierarchy that goes exactly how you'd expect it to go - relatively pure Asians on top, pure blacks at the bottom, mixed groups in the middle. This hierarchy held in politics, economics, the arts, etc. Along the same lines one could mention the modern situation in Trinidad and in Guyana (East Indians vs. blacks), or in Fiji (East Indians vs. Melanesians).
Often, the majority of comments at large mainstream media sites that don't practice censorship are reasonable.
"Well I may be a holdout myself, as I still suspect culture as being most the NAM's problem."
What on earth would make you think this? What kind of improved culture would suddenly start producing Nobel Prize winning scientists in Africa?
Because orthodoxy in PC/Multiculturalism is a requirement in almost everything. Including dating.
Like Steve-o has said, what's forbidden in the workplace is fuel in the bedroom. I've never brought up HBD on dates--women don't like men obsessed with heavy topics on a night out. But when engaged on issues directly I've never hid my views. Some women will reject you, and you're better off anyway. Most are intrigued. Even if they refuse to acknowledge HBD, women like assertive, articulate men who don't back down. I feel sorry for the herbs dutifully mouthing platitudes at the heel of their dominatrix womenfolk. They will find the bar is always being raised.
Height Privilege:
I use HBD as shorthand for the recognition that there are probably important differences between identifiable racial groups, based on both genetics and culture.
That doesn't provide you with an ideology. James Watson, Charles Murray, and Jerry Pournelle are rather distinct in their political positions, yet all three are believers in HBD.
Specifically, HBD is based on a claim about reality. It may be wrong--perhaps there really aren't important differences between racial groups that can't be best explained by discrimination, differences in starting position (wealth gap, the damage done by slavery), etc. If not, then HBD is wrong, and hopefully it will never become widely believed.
But if HBD is true, then we ought to be thinking about how to make policies that make sense. Something like immigration policy takes a really different tone, if you think that some populations of immigrants are just likely to have less capable, productive descendants than others. Education policy looks really different if you don't take the black/white performance gap as evidence that something's going wrong with the school. And so on.
Some people seem to believe that HBD implies all kinds of awful policies. But that's nonsense--we make policies based, ultimately, on our values. Getting the best possible picture of reality doesn't change our values, it just makes our policies less likely to fail.
Think about how we treat disabled people. Now, there's no denying the fact that the disabled are, you know, less able to do all stuff than the rest of us. People in wheelchairs can't climb stairs, deaf people can't hear car horns, blind people can't drive, etc. And yet, knowing that hasn't forced us to somehow try to pass laws to screw over the disabled. Instead, we passed laws to require some level of accomodations for various disabilities in all sorts of situations, to provide various kinds of assistance at taxpayer expense, to require private companies to support stuff like TDD and closed-captioning, etc.
Now, this isn't a great parallel--being black isn't a disability, the history of screwing over disabled people is quite different from the history of screwing over blacks, etc. But it's a kind of existence proof--we can, in fact, recognize much larger inequalities than exist between blacks and whites, and then behave decently.
Unfortunately, Inductivist's GSS data shows what I've observed over the years. People are pretty conditioned to the blank slate. I've been in a few in-depth conversations hashing race issues out -- it's almost always like they have an electric dog collar on and the virtual fence is at the point where you broach group differences in inherited IQ. They just cannot get themselves to go there . . . For a lot of us, it took some serious personal effort, self-education, and gradual awakening to deprogram.
"Is there a Silent but Sensible Majority anymore?"
We have a country full of people with no apparent interest in moving to Detroit, so that's something.
I dont think there is much of a silent majority who believes in hbd. There must be a majority who understand at some level, that the average white is smarter than the average black, but accepting genetics as its root is beyond them. As formerly.jp said, accepting hbd undermines conservatism/ capitalism which rests on the assumption that we all have an equal shot. Of course it also undermines many liberal values as well. Also, if whites were at the top of the ladder, it would be easier to accept for the majority (which is still white). But who wants to believe something that puts your ethnic group third in line, behind Jews and East Asians? It's a cozier world when we are all equal.
A majority of whom?
White Americans? Impossible to know whether a majority acknowledges HBD. Too much static from the thought police to undertake an assessment.
People of the world? Yeah, a big majority acknowledges HBD.
"I don't have any numbers but from reading various blogs and from discussions with various folks, the delusions about race and ethnicity might be greatest among the just above average smart ( IQ 110 to 120 approx.) kind of people. A vast number of these people have completely internalized the whole 'race doesn't exist' nonsense. They simply can't believe that a smart person could take race seriously, which is why you have just above average dullards having the guts to publicly attempt to school a man like James Watson in genetics. They don't stop for a minute to think that maybe this well known geneticist knows something that they don't. They heard from Gould that correlation isn't causation and that's enough for them."
They can afford to think that way because they don't have to deal with reality. If you dropped them off in the middle of Detroit or Zimbabwe for several months, they might be forced think outside their comfort zone. Smart people are affluent, and affluence affords comfort and security. In their safe bubble, they wanna believe things that sound nice and pleasant, not things with thorny implications. Also, affluent people want to be respectable and have a natural allergy to controversial views that might gie anyone offense. They want a polite society.
To an extent, wanting to be nice and pleasant is understandable. If a parent loves one child more than the other, it's not wise for the parent to tell the kids, 'I like Jim more than Bob.' But people should never confuse the virtue of niceness with truth of reality.
Also, some kinds of ignorance or blindness can only be arrived at by 'higher' education or 'intellectualism'; the reason for anti-racism's effectiveness owes something to its packaging as 'scientific', 'progressive', and 'advanced'.
Thus indoctrinated, one comes to regard simple truths as 'vulgar' and 'crude' and to prefer intellectual truisms based on higher concepts, principles, and ideals as 'noble' and 'enlightening'.
Ideality is smart and beautiful, reality is dumb and ugly.
Maybe there should be a word to describe this kind of delusion that can only come about through 'higher thinking'. It's like only an intellectual can believe in something as wrong as Marxist theory. Only a mind packed with abstractions--and indeed prefers ideas over what might be called reas(basic stuff of reality)--can sometimes be totally blind to real reality. This goes for religions too. They provide people such beautiful and profound visions/promises of the universe, humanity, and righteousness that it doesn't matter if they have nothing to do with reality.
Maybe such people can be said to be UNlightened than enlightened. More they learn, less they know.
"There is another way to undermine cultural explanations: the study of history. The sub-Saharan world has never contributed anything to science or technology...has never come up with a writing system of its own..."
Yeah, that's what you say and I believe you, but I'll bet my life against five bucks that's not what high school or college students are reading in their history texts today. And those books were written by white liberals for a majority white readership.
As of 2010/11 the number of births of non-white babies surpassed the number of newly born whites. The textbooks of 10, 20 and 30 years from now will have authors who are much more likely to be descendants of the Africans, Aztecs and other international all-stars. The books will continue to emphasize our history of slavery, genocide and imperialism, but will have additional sections on the Aztec space program and African math wizards.
The winners get to write history and they are the winners in terms of demographic trends. Whites will be the largest minority but will be divided, as is the case now. The other, more tribal, groups will cohere and exercise more power proportionally. There is a chance that whites will be so traumatized by their minority status that they will regain some of their old-time ferocity. "Race realists" are a minority among whites now, the coming years will probably increase their number. The learning process, however, will be accompanied by some serious suffering.
The relative levels of cultural achievement among the world's continents/sub-continents haven't changed much in thousands of years.
I think your study of history needs a little more work.
Paganism, late classical decadence, Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, modern leftism - they've all pulled the West in wildly different directions. And yet some things have remained pretty stable.
Make that a lot more work.
When you think that your logical or moral position is logically or morally unassailable, it is easy to believe that any reasonably intelligent person who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.
Regarding HBD, the arguments supporting the hereditarian position are very strong, but they are logically abstract and as such are not so easy to communicate, especially to a public that has been propaganized against such logic. Arguments supporting the nurture position are often logically weak, but they are more concrete (e.g. I know a smart black colleague / Don't we all feel the same basic emotions) and can be spun in such a way as to make them sound reasonable - not forgetting here that some of them are accurate.
It is always a mistake to underestimate the sincerity of your ideological opponent just because he or she disagrees with you. On the other hand, there is some intellectual dishonesty.
Probably the greatest numbers of intellectually dishonest people in the hereditarian debate are those Jews who present themselves as suppporters of the nuture position. They feel a deep emotional antipathy towards the hereditarian position because of the way Hitler misused hereditarian ideas. But even among Jews, I think most who support nature are arguing honestly.
- Rudy
Anonymous said:
there is really only one piece of evidence people need to see, the iq scores controlled for socioeconomic status.
Can anyone point/link to a peer-reviewed study testing this relationship, published in a reputable journal? It would seem to be a clincher.
Thoughtcrimes prevent the existence of silent but sensible majorities.
The issue is one of constrained vision vs. unconstrained vision.
Either you believe in a constrained vision of human capital and human achievement or you don't. If you don't, there's no reason to expect you believe in a constrained view of the educational and intellectual possibilities either.
After enough time being told that your career will end (or never begin) if you even suggest in a thought that you don't believe in the "unconstrained vision" of student achievement, you stop thinking such things. Conservatives have long since abandoned the idea that not everyone can be educated up to the same level of wonderfulness, and they are the ones who are supposed to hold some of the constrained worldviews of human potential. Getting anyone to say that some people are dumber than others and school won't fix that isn't allowed--most won't even notice they don't think it anymore.
Is HBD a sociopolitical movement, or is it a science movement? Or is it a sociopolitical movement motivated by science? Is the ultimate goal of HBD to sanction the use of the genetic and psychological evidence of racial differences to influence social policy?
Sociopolitical, yes. Not purely scientific - it is a political movement, though not a very strongly bound together one, with relatively little internal factioning behaviour. The main goal of HBD is purely negative, arguing against and with a goal to wiping out the non-scientific, non-HBD ideologies used to influence current policy. This is agreed upon.
(Also: Note that the ideologies HBD attempts to argue against and remove the influence of are "facts" based ideologies, which differ from reality through assertions about facts which are wrong, not "values" ideologies, which simply place different values on particular things than the mainstream consensus.)
Whether HBD can then be used in formulating policy after this is relatively more contentious.
Personally I would say that informally and indirectly, certainly HBD insights should be used, although while steering clear of mere indirect discrimination (there should to be some sound logic for the policy other than "Put HBD insights into policy informally in a randomly discriminatory fashion", but if HBD should create disparate impact on a cogently formed policy with justification, that's not really a problem). I'm a bit more chary about formally and directly putting specific laws into effect targetted towards specific ethnic groups (and gender groups and sexual groups and other coherent biological groups/populations).
Off topic, sorry.
"In China, notions of Jewish business acumen lead to a publishing boom—and stereotyping."
Selling the Talmud as a Business Guide
I've found my peers in their 30s far more aware of HBD than the boomers. All the boomers I've mentioned things too have a "No - do you really think" attitude about it. I think this is one place that exposure to "diversity" really helps. People who grew up in the 50s and 60s in white suburbs and maybe went to college or the workplace with a few exceptional NAM examples just don't have much data to go on outside what television feeds them. People of my generation have seen NAM misbehavior first hand and can contrast it with seeing literal boat people excel in college and work.
Still no where a majority though. Put pushing through the surface on people who actually think about these things.
Qaz said... As formerly.jp said, accepting hbd undermines conservatism/ capitalism which rests on the assumption that we all have an equal shot.
I don't believe so. It may undermine the neo-conservatism or "right-liberalism" of people like Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, George W. Bush, John McCain, etc., but it validates the paleo-cons and traditionalists like Pat Buchanan and Lawrence Auster. (Is Steve Sailer a paleo-con? somehow that label doesn't fit.)
"We have a country full of people with no apparent interest in moving to Detroit, so that's something"
No interest in moving AND no interest in investing in real estate there.
Because pretty much everyone believes that (1) racial differences in behavior exist; and (2) those differences are intractable, i.e. that the differences are very unlikely to go away even with affirmative action; head start; anti-discrimination laws; boot camps; charter schools; etc.
Similarly, nobody seriously expects that folks in Haiti or Kenya will start acting in a civilized way any time soon.
It's like the old story of the Rabbi who promises rain if everyone in town comes together and prays in the central square. The people all turn out to pray, but none of them brings an umbrella.
Jack Strocchi gets at the heart of the matter. Jared Taylor tells us "noble lies are for children," but aren't there usually good reasons for taboos? Perhaps the potential damage to race relations aren't worth the risk of spreading these ideas. Better, as he says, to push for your policies without bringing the controversial science in.
"What on earth would make you think this? What kind of improved culture would suddenly start producing Nobel Prize winning scientists in Africa?"
If there were a Nobel for music, they'd have won many, decades ago. I know music does not rank high in HBD quarters, but for an aspiring musician their accomplishment seems beyond category and quite intellectual.
And yet now black music has fallen into desuetude along with the rest of their endeavors. Something about the last 50 years just put them in the tank. I blame welfare..
My general impression is that people believe in HBD with regards to things like the black advantage in athletics and the East Asian advantage in academics. However, due to social conditioning, very few people can come to grips with the reality of HBD for the B/W IQ gap. It just isn't acceptable to talk about it and most people have NOT considered the idea. In fact, a lot of Asian-Americans I talked to, many of whom had racist leanings(did not like blacks or Hispanics), had no idea that an IQ gap existed between blacks and everyone else. It is just something that has gone beyond the realm of public discourse.
"I need to find the simplest answers that work (but, as Einstein said, no simpler)."
No, you're very susceptible to just-so stories. Way to compare yourself to Einstein, though.
I work "HDB" points of view into conversations all the time. It comes so naturally I don't even have to think about it. I can't recall ever having sparked any obvious signs of outrage. I find people are quite apt to regard "observational" commentary as sensible and accurate, provided that's how you frame it.
The Sailer/Vdare point of view, though it's among the mildest on this side of the political spectrum, is so tightly argued that even though beyond an immigration moratorium (which isn't even strictly/solely an "HBD" issue) it doesn't promote any specific policies there's an unmistakable demand that something (quite drastic) be done lurking between the lines that tends to unnerve people.
Everyone needs to remember that whatever the value of the HBD factor is now it will be larger in the future.
Herrnstein of "The Bell Curve" is usually credited with being the first to point this out. If for example in year one 50% of the explained variance is genetic that means - obviously - the other half is environmental. Possibly the schools are not quite equal - so we will fix that.
Then in year two after our school equality program has had its intended leveling effect, environmental factors are not so important as before. When we measure again we find that genetics now explain perhaps 60% of the variance.
The result is that in the long run all the differences we see between individuals will be genetic. Many liberals are appalled by that prospect but it is an inevitable consequence of removing inequalities.
Albertosaurus
A few people have mentioned religion as a factor. IMO, increased secularism makes it harder for people to countenance HBD, because they have no commonly shared basis for distinguishing spiritual equality from equality in abilities. To Christians and Jews (and maybe members of other religions; I don't know), every person has an immortal soul, is equal in the eyes of God, and is deserving of our caritas. But the Judeo-Christian religions have never (to my knowledge) taught that everyone has equal human capabilities. My sense is that the latter is a secular dogma that originated in the Enlightenment (political and legal equality) and grew in strength throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, until now we have the PC dogma that everyone could be a high-earning professional if given the proper environmental "advantages." (With the corollary that anyone who doesn't become a high-earning professional must have been held back solely by environmental disadvantages.)
Was the Silent Majority of the 60s sensible? Nixon pushed forth every liberal policy, yet Archie Bunkers of America stood by him.
And weren't the guys running the country into the ground mostly "the greatest generation?" Born in 1920, went to war in 1940, inherited the country in 1960...yup, sounds about right. I always wonder about WHO gave our country away, WHO rolled over for the left, before I start idolizing this generation or that.
The "Greatest Generation" spawned the Boomers? Something doesn't compute here.
As for HBD belief, let's circumscribe the absolute minimum as parents with kids. Every parent with more than one kid has a pretty good handle on nature vs. nurture. Trouble is, that seems to be as far as it goes. So no, Americans aren't HBD aware, but the families are a natural HBD constituency. Part of why the war for the past, present, and future must be a perpetual one?
But who wants to believe something that puts your ethnic group third in line, behind Jews and East Asians? It's a cozier world when we are all equal.
See? One minute Jews are "white," the next minute, not. And this is from a presumably non-ethnopatriotic white guy.
"Jews are white" might get more traction from me if I saw Jews responding to "HBDers" and "cognitive elitists" who assume Jews aren't white, the way they respond to WNs who say they aren't. But when Kato over at Mangan's "insults" Jews this way, none of the Jews I normally argue with there are to be found.
Did any Jews object between the time that quote appeared in the thread, and I responded?
They can afford to think that way because they don't have to deal with reality.
But their thinking guarantees they'll have to deal with it eventually.
"Race realists" are a minority among whites now, the coming years will probably increase their number. The learning process, however, will be accompanied by some serious suffering.
Yeah but my impression of "race realists" is "see everything, do nothing." That is, if a guy's still calling himself a "race realist" and not something else, he opposes actually doing anything like, say, what the Zionists did to get their ethnostate.
But yeah, it's common among ethnopatriots, the idea that whites are going to go through what Jews went through 3000 years ago.
Man you guys all have some pussies for friends and coworkers. Maybe this is a bigger problem than immigration? Just a thought.
I don't know a single person with the glaring exception of white women who work for the government who doesn't acknowledge this particular aspect of reality. And even those nice white ladies aren't exactly lining up to get jobs teaching in Watts.
I don't socialize with pathetic mindcontrolled twerps. Why do all of you?
"Yeah the mathematical concept of extrema is real, Bishop Berkeley. Sorry?"
The fact that deficits surge everytime a tax cut is enacted would suggest to me that the maxima lies well to the right of current tax rates, and it does not explain why that supposed maxima is 35% for earned income but only 15% for income made through investments.
Look at economic growth rates. They do not improve with cuts in capital gains rates.
Look at a chart of presidents with the largest deficits. After Obama, the 4 presidents with the highest budget deficits as percentage of GDP were all Republicans.
Yes I understand the concept of maxima and minima, but belief in the Laffer Curve is a cult.
"The textbooks of 10, 20 and 30 years from now will have authors who are much more likely to be descendants of the Africans, Aztecs and other international all-stars. The books will continue to emphasize our history of slavery, genocide and imperialism, but will have additional sections on the Aztec space program and African math wizards."
Static analysis presumes that certain trends will continue (the growth rate of minorities in the USA) while everything else stays the same. This is categorically false when it comes to minority growth rates, as can be witnessed even now. What has happened with the rise of NAM political influence? Economic collapse. A productive, non-NAM population fed up with deficit spending and with welfare sponges - not a majority, but enough to tilt the balance of power.
The result from that is that net illegal immigration has fallen to almost zero. Public opposition to increasing legal immigration is high and rising.
Minority population growth rates are sustained in large part by public welfare programs. My state has a 13% Latino population, but data just released show that40% of recipients of WIC vouchers in our state are Latino. Remove the welfare subsidies, which have become unaffordable, and you remove the birthrate sudsidies. You also force native poor into the workplace, which crowds out illegal immigrants.
This will happen in the next five years because our welfare state has become unaffordable. I predict that in at least one of the next five years the Latino population which actually see a net decline, as illegals are forced to move back home, and as Latino birthrates drop.
The time may very well come when American schoolchildren are reading about the marvelous deeds of African math wizards, but those schoolchildren will not be white. Whites will have fled the schools by the time that happens, and no elites will be able to force them to stay. Those places that do not afford to their productive classes the chance to flee such chaos will collapse. See: California.
The parasite needs the host. The host does not need the parasite.
Matt:
HBD is a claim about reality. To the extent differences about policies revolve around differences in opinion about reality, it's easy to figure out policy implications. To the extent they revolve around differences in values, HBD will not resolve anything.
An example where HBD has pretty clear policy implications is in racial quotas for university admissions. If you think different racial groups aren't equal in ability, then holding open X% slots for a group with X% of the population is a pretty obviously bad idea--it leaves some students in over their heads, and other students bumped down to less demanding, less rewarding schools than they could have handled.
The implications w.r.t. immigration are less clear, because there's a sort of values question there--should we be considering the likely impact of immigrants' descendants when deciding whom to admit to the country? (Also, I tend to think of the predictions we can make about performance of immigrants' kids as being far, far less solid than predictions that the black/white school performance gap will continue next year.)
Steve, there's two issues here.
Race- phenotypic-realism (i.e acknowledging that there is a difference in general intelligence and that this is at the nexus of a whole web of social, psychological, and behavior differences) and Race-genotypic-realism (i.e acknowledging that probability that genes contribute the above difference).
The disturbing thing is that there isn't even a silent majority about the former.
Reading this blog always leaves me feeling at war with myself. On the one hand, I agree with much of what Steve says. I sympathize with his frustration over the media's brazen lies about the nature of the problem.
And yet... I worry about the direction you people want our country to take. We're talking about aggregate statistics here - useful stuff only in the hands of government bureaucrats. The government created all this mess with affirmative action in the schools and subsidies and hiring practices. Without all this government intervention, nobody would care about what poor blacks are doing. You don't want to live near them? Fine. You don't want to hire a female physicist? OK by me. But I sense that your solution is to address this issue with the clumsy hand of government, and that bugs me. Who's to decide which people get to live here and enjoy the full rights and privileges of being an American? Your worldview is conveniently self-promoting - a motive you angrily attribute to other groups (as if millions of people really act in a united effort, without holding regular meetings!) So blacks are too dumb, Asians insuffiently creative, and Jew too successful? Who does that leave undisturbed? And don't you think Asians and Jews look down on YOU in the same fashion? The free market rewards the hardest working and the most talented - and those who create the most benefit, e.g. Michael Jordan entertaining millions of people. Can't we just leave it there? Why should group averages have any bearing on public policy aimed at individuals?
I would rather live in the self-deceiving liberals' world than one in which every black child is tarred as a hopeless case from birth, and every affable Jewish dentist viewed as some kind of enemy insurgent. You've started this campaign as a reaction to government policy, but it seems like your solution is more government intervention.
"As for Asian supremacy, if most of the Asian supremacists I ran into weren't Asians who fled their homelands (or their descendants), I'd have less problem with it. As it stands, Asian supremacy seems more like 'Asians are supreme, if they can escape the environments they create, into the bosom of the freedom and prosperity Europeans create.'"
You make an interesting observation but I recall the most obnoxious Asian supremacists were Japanese in the 1980s--'we work hard, Americans are razy'. And we have plenty of bit talkers about the superiority of the Asian way in China, rising India, and Singapore.
I haven't met any Asian supremacist in the US but maybe the are keeping secrets from me. But then, some of them may get ideas from US media which tell us 'Asians will rule everything in the 21st century'.
And it's probably not unusual for supremacism to exist among exile communities. Germans in South America felt superior to locals, and Dutch felt superior to black Africans in South Africa. And Jews have often felt superior to the goyim they lived amongst.
"And weren't the guys running the country into the ground mostly 'the greatest generation?' Born in 1920, went to war in 1940, inherited the country in 1960...yup, sounds about right. I always wonder about WHO gave our country away, WHO rolled over for the left, before I start idolizing this generation or that."
Not so simple. Some might argue this country was 'given away' when waves of non-Anglo European immigrants were allowed in. Others might say this country was doomed since the New Deal.
At any rate, no generation was ever all powerful, and we also have to take into consideration the motives and estimations of previous generations. The elites of Greatest Generation wanted to be just and fair. And they could not foresee what might happen to this country in the 60s and onwards. In hindsight, everything is easy. Much of what GG did AT THE TIME seemed decent, moral, and necessary.
I would argue that the real seeds of this nation's destruction were sowed by its overly idealistic Constitution--which was bound to make Wasps look like hypocrites--and importation of black slaves from Africa. I would say, even now, 80% of all the most serious problems are black related.
I would also say it was during Bush I that this country was really lost. Not only did liberal Jews have dominance in the Democratic Party, but GOP became a tool of neocons.
"And yet now black music has fallen into desuetude along with the rest of their endeavors."
Your apparent idealizing of black music of past decades is, I believe, undeserved. To my ears this music was always pretty crude.
I remember reading in Kingsley Amis's memoirs that when he was a teenager in the 1930s, his father used to ridicule his obsession with jazz by saying that to him jazz sounded exactly like the kind of stuff savages would play while dancing around a cauldron of boiling human remains.
This is one of the many examples I know of where the sort of black music that modern hipsters favorably compare with 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne was regarded with the same (to me justified) condescension by white non-teenage contemporaries that 50 Cent gets now. Of course then this condescension was worded in less PC terms.
The modern PC worldview demands that hipsters regard at least something made by black folks favorably. Black people do enjoy their music, but apparently it's too much to ask SWPLs with their refined sensibilities to swoon over Lil' Wayne and Jay-Z. So they choose something old and obscure, something that doesn't remind them of modern black dysfunction as much as 50 Cent does, something less vulgar lyrically - jazz, early blues, Motown, Otis Redding, whatever.
But is this stuff less vulgar musically? Is it actually good music? Would SWPLs have enjoyed it without the political subtext? I don't think so. Complexity often does pay off in music. Not when it's done for its own sake of course, but when it's done to entertain as in the music of the Baroque, it can lead to a pretty sublime effect. Repetitiveness, predictability, a casual attitude to anything one might be doing - not so much.
"You don't want to hire a female physicist? OK by me."
It's not OK by the government though. The Justice Department sues companies for not hiring enough [insert grievance group] all the time.
"But I sense that your solution is to address this issue with the clumsy hand of government, and that bugs me."
That's not what I sense at all. I imagine that in hiring, as in many other areas of life, Steve would be OK with the government keeping out of private decision making.
"The free market rewards the hardest working and the most talented - and those who create the most benefit, e.g. Michael Jordan entertaining millions of people. Can't we just leave it there?"
But the government doesn't want to leave it there. Haven't you read any of Steve's articles about the 4/5 rule?
"Why should group averages have any bearing on public policy aimed at individuals? "
Steve doesn't say they should. The government does. The government says that group representation in hiring should reflect group representation in the population.
Can someone please clarify this for me: Is HBD a sociopolitical movement, or is it a science movement?
Neither. It's a fact.
Humans are diverse.
@ Wallflower: The policy implications depend on whom you ask. Beyond immigration issues (tightening restrictions, closing the border with Mexico, and deporting illegal immigrants), what HBDers want the government to do or not do varies a lot.
I like Steve's concept of citizenism -- let's do what's best for the people who are currently citizens. That leads us first to restricting Latin American immigration, which will actually benefit most blacks and impose costs on a lot of whites. So that's not something that someone concerned about the state of American blacks (or poor citizens of any race) should oppose.
Other things many HBDers favor involve shrinking government, not enlarging it. E.g., ending affirmative action, reforming welfare, doing away with "disparate impact" (as opposed to "disparate treatment") as a cause of action against employers, ending the money torrent to ineffective programs designed to close the B-W achievement gap.
"Why should group averages have any bearing on public policy aimed at individuals?"
Public policy is not aimed at individuals. It can't do so by definition. Only a public policy that named a specific individual and applied only to them would be one aimed at an individual.
This laizez faire world you describe does not exist, yet you excoriate everyone else for wanting government intervention. What do you think right-wing HBDers are about?
If blacks are performing roughly at a level that their cognitive abilities would indicate it would mean that the concept of Institutional Racism is mostly hokum.
If people have a cognitive ability that correlates with race (insert whatever PC term here you wish to indicate general heredity) and that race is performing across society in a way that could be predicted by this measurement of their ability then all would be well. That people believe in the psychic unity of mankind means that if, as a percentage of the population, more whites meet enrollment criteria for any number of institutions than blacks, then clearly there is some cultural phenomena keeping blacks down. Currently we go through great effort to alleviate these disparities when it is extremely likely that these disparaties are caused by something that is simply not very mutable.
Probably more importantly, it means that this disparity isn't caused by some inherent iniquity of the White Race, and we can stop teaching children that they, their parents, their forfathers and their future descendants have souls tainted with evil; which is exactly the policy we have.
So good luck with whatever Libertardian dreamworld you live in. It certainly isn't the US, and it never has been, and it probably never will be.
Another thing I've been wondering is how you guys pronounce the acronym "NAM." I tend to pronounce it as I do the last syllable of "Vietnam." I doubt anyone I speak to would understood what I meant were I to use the word, though.
Jack Strocchi gets at the heart of the matter. Jared Taylor tells us "noble lies are for children," but aren't there usually good reasons for taboos?
You mean, like, "obey my taboo or I'll crush you"? Well, yeah, avoiding being crushed is good logic but it doesn't make the taboo any less onerous.
Perhaps the potential damage to race relations aren't worth the risk of spreading these ideas. Better, as he says, to push for your policies without bringing the controversial science in.
Lol, if liberals were really worried about race relations, they should've thought twice before blaming everything on whitey. "Blame it on whitey" gives moral justification to all of HBD.
How many GD times am I going to have to post this argument here, anyway? Steve, maybe you could put it on the masthead?
So blacks are too dumb, Asians insuffiently creative, and Jew too successful?
Was Al Capone "too successful" too? Was that his problem? Just curious.
Who does that leave undisturbed? And don't you think Asians and Jews look down on YOU in the same fashion?
I guess we can put this guy into the "Jews aren't white" column, too. Amazing, how often you find these anti-semites!
Why should group averages have any bearing on public policy aimed at individuals?
Because public policy is based on a presumption of white guilt, when group averages are the real culprit.
*Taps mike* is this thing on?
I would rather live in the self-deceiving liberals' world in which every white kid is blamed for black failure and targeted by a "culture of critique" than one in which every black child is tarred as a hopeless case from birth, and every affable Jewish dentist viewed as some kind of enemy insurgent. You've started this campaign as a reaction to government policy, but it seems like your solution is more government intervention.
FTFY. You put your own foot in it when you mentioned freedom of association. If all laws against freedom of association were abolished (preferably by an explicit Constitutional Amendment), I'd declare victory and retire from politics. You pretty much described the brier patch and assumed I'd never jump in.
Who's to decide which people get to live here and enjoy the full rights and privileges of being an American?
Americans, you twit.
And don't you think Asians and Jews look down on YOU in the same fashion?
Since both follow us around, what does that suggest about them?
there is really only one piece of evidence people need to see, the iq scores controlled for socioeconomic status.
IQ scores can't be controlled for socioeconomic status.
I've found my peers in their 30s far more aware of HBD than the boomers. All the boomers I've mentioned things too have a "No - do you really think" attitude about it.
It's panglossianism. They grew up in the wealthiest society the world has ever known.
As formerly.jp said, accepting hbd undermines conservatism/ capitalism which rests on the assumption that we all have an equal shot.
Conservatism and capitalism are not identical; in fact they're closer to opposites.
Read Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism".
Controlled for environment and SES, the IQ data show pretty similar means for whites and East Asians. You can check the Flynn data, comparing children of pre WWII Chinese and Japanese to whites, or look the comparison between Greeks and Chinese. It shows very similar means. Asians only have a pronounced advantage on visuospatial skills.
To the extent whites and Asians vary, traits like testosterone and personality likely explain the differences. Asians seem to be lower testosterone, more diligent and industriousness, and less rebellious - so better students and more of a middle class mentality. Whites are likely higher in T and more adventurous - so more innovative and dynamic. Yet, when you examine HDI or GPD, East Asia and the West are pretty comparable. It doesn't seem that one race is clearly more advanced.
For example, for all their slacker behavior, the English are still doing about as well as the Taiwanese. The Spaniards punch up there with the Koreans. So it's not clear that HBD reality would be that bad for whites - as it would likely show whites ahead in some respects, East Asians ahead in others, and both similar in most ways.
For whites, the biggest issue with HBD is that they don't want it to show them ahead of Africa or Latin America. East Asia isn't an issue here. Especially since most whites already accept their academic superiority.
For Africans or southeast Asians or Middle Easterners/Muslims or Pacific Islanders or Latin Americans or Carribeans or Aborigines or Native American or Central Asians or Gypsies or even some North Asians, the data isn't so good at all, no matter how you analyze it. For South Asians, things are more mixed, so you can see good and not so good. For China, it'd be interesting to see if there are regional differences in IQ, as there have been longstanding regional differences in imperial exam results, which go back many centuries, and even today the gaps are vast. HBD reality would likely be a better pill to swallow for these groups....
For secular Ashkenazi Jews, the data is exceptional from every angle, but Jews don't want to draw too much attention to themselves, so they wouldn't like HBD either.
In the grand pyramid, European Jews - then whites and East Asians - then South Asians - then mostly everyone else - then Africans and Aborigines - then gypsies.
It's unfortunate that these gaps exist and it's more unfortunate that these gaps might be permanent. Equality would be nice, but it may never be a reality. Better to bury your head and hope everything will come out equal. The alternative is not so nice.
Only East Asians, who near the top of pyramid and aren't so empathetic in general, seem likely to buy the HBD stuff in full. Maybe eastern Europeans too.
"See? One minute Jews are "white," the next minute, not. And this is from a presumably non-ethnopatriotic white guy."
Jews, esp. Jewish jurists, believe in racial quotas. By classifying Jews as white, Jews are entitled to the all of the white race's 65% share of any quota. Simple as that.
Break Jews out as a separate race and their political support for quotas will diminish considerably.
Needless to say, being almost entirely ethnically British myself, I am rather fed up with being told, by Jews, that my race is overly wealthy and overrepresented with respect to this or that.
I'm not really certain. It's kind of like asking if the woman in this video, in introducing Cornel West, really believes all the nice things she says about the clown. Maybe people really are that stupid.
I've been in a few in-depth conversations hashing race issues out -- it's almost always like they have an electric dog collar on and the virtual fence is at the point where you broach group differences in inherited IQ. They just cannot get themselves to go there . . .
Don't assume that it's necessarily because they don't want to think in terms of genetically favored/disadvantaged groups. I'd guess it's at least as likely that they balk at the implications for their own lives and/ or their children -- the possibility of other people being able to be objectively adjudged as "better" than them or their offspring creates panic.
For a lot of us, it took some serious personal effort, self-education, and gradual awakening to deprogram.
Right. But look at the sources most(?) internet HBDers get their information from, WNs and such, for whom HBD facts are a sledgehammer. Thus the constant focus on how bad things are how bad they threaten to get. It's the most negatives spin possible, because these people are determined to frighten you into agreeing with them.
But WNs' is hardly the only valid interpretation of HBD. Take the black-white "gap." It's not all bad news; there most certainly exists a positive way to view it.
"Hey," you can say, "now that we know what the source of these differences in outcomes is we can stop wasting resources on "correcting" what was never a man-made disparity in the first place. Plenty of whites will be relieved to know that they're not the hidden, subconscious evil behind every black problem."
"And rather than waste certain students' time and annoy them with subject matter they'll never much understand or appreciate we can point them to activities and life choices that they that much more likely to find fulfilling.:
"Sure, the implication is that some people will advance themselves economically at rates vastly exceeding the bulk of the populace, but by and large their success doesn't come at the majority's expense. These people are, in fact, wealth creators, and the rest of us only enjoy the prosperity that we do because of their efforts; left solely to our own devices, half of us would likely starve."
"On the other hand, the wealth creators could never realize their ambitions without working people to carry out the tasks whose doing they've enabled, so rather than depress us the facts of HBD should help us all better appreciate what a collaborative effort raising a community's living standards is."
"If it's determined that a greater level of intelligence is required for further improvements, then aren't we fortunate that we know how a society can acquire it? Simple: create incentives for the highly intelligent to have more offspring or for the non-highly intelligent to adopt such, or artificially ("eugenically") procreate them."
"Lastly, the hyper-individualistic post-modern sure could use a healthy dose of the humility that hereditarian views tend to support. This would be a positive development because accepting raw reality is the first step to realizing it's not really inherently "unpleasant" at all -- it's perfectly possible to feel upbeat and excited about life despite being fully aware of the limitations nature has placed on us all."
Sorry everyone, liberal whites avoiding inner city blacks is no evidence that they accept HBD implicitly. One can acknowledge behavior and still declare it to be entirely rooted in environment and institutional racism. There is no contradiction or doublethink in this perspective, though a good deal of ignorance is helpful.
And yet... I worry about the direction you people want our country to take.
blah blah blah
But I sense that your solution is to address this issue with the clumsy hand of government, and that bugs me. Who's to decide which people get to live here and enjoy the full rights and privileges of being an American? Your worldview is conveniently self-promoting
blah blah blah
I would rather live in the self-deceiving liberals' world....
So, there we have it, straight from the horse's mouth.
Your worldview is "conveniently self-promoting". The horrible consequences for *us* mean nothing to you. No rational being could fault us in reciprocating ypur selfishness.
I am a white guy who went to a high school that was 70% black. Every one of my white high school friends, without exception, firmly believes in HBD.
Then I went to college with a bunch of kids who went to all-white suburban high schools. Most of those clueless idiots did not believe in HBD. Plus the black people they met in college were smart and nice!
Those kids from the all-white suburban high schools are now running this country. They still live in the suburbs. They still don't believe in HBD.
Most people whose IQ's are below 120 don't form their own opinions. They just parrot the opinions of those they are trying to suck up to. So you get a lot of lemming-like follow-on rejection of HBD from that large, dim group.
Those who firmly believe in HBD from actual experience are a large number, but not anywhere near a majority, due to continuing de facto segregation in America. Plus the media has played a role with its numinous Negroes, typified by Sidney Poitier and Morgan Freeman.
It's unfortunate that these gaps exist and it's more unfortunate that these gaps might be permanent.
No, it's not unfortunate. It just *is*. You have really swallowed the liberal claptrap.
Equality would be nice....
No, it would entail exterminating everyone but you and your clones, and even then differences in environment and experience would differentiate the genetically identical. Ultimately, equality can be achieved only by the death of every human but one.
"The 'Greatest Generation' spawned the Boomers? Something doesn't compute here."
Sure it does. People who've come up from nothing usually do everything in their power to spare their children the same kind of hardships that brought out their own fortitude and resourcefulness.
I would rather live in the self-deceiving liberals' world . . . than one in which every black child is tarred as a hopeless case from birth. . .
Do you consider yourself a hopeless case compared to people whose IQ is one standard deviation higher than yours? I don't. I've also met people whom I know are less intelligent than I am who seem perfectly happy with their lives, in fact, happier than I am with mine.
What makes you think life is all about how smart you are?
"Yes I understand the concept of maxima and minima, but belief in the Laffer Curve is a cult."
Nope, you didn't understand the Laffer Curve. That's ok, high school calc isn't everyone's bag.
All it says is that extrema exist! It's not a terribly deep result. It is, however, a useful litmus test for whether an interlocutor is innumerate.
The free market rewards the hardest working and the most talented - and those who create the most benefit, e.g. Michael Jordan entertaining millions of people. Can't we just leave it there?
Well, a trait which individuals do have which isn't exposed to market scrutiny is "Regress to your group's mean" on various traits. Society as a whole is stuck with a person's kids and must employ them (unless we're basically going back to slavery), while any individual actor in a free market does not. Likewise for individuals on a fixed term contract, after their employment ceases, they're society's problem. So there's an externalisation of this cost, and a market failure.
For another example, "Is part of group X" is an individual trait, which plausibly has effects on performance and other qualia. If we say members of group X work better together and members of group Y work better together, or are more happy in one another's company, for example, or even the converse, that members of each group work better with outgroups (which is unlikely IMO, but hey).
It's hard not to say that "Is part of group X" is not an individual trait. We can't throw it out as a group trait, unless other traits expressed only in contexts of others such as "Good leader" are also thrown out (which I think we would be loathe to do). But this is generally not integrated into the market or considered by it, basically because of well meaning anti-discrimination legislation and the fact that this is internalised into the corporate culture. So market failure again.
Yet, when you examine HDI or GPD, East Asia and the West are pretty comparable. It doesn't seem that one race is clearly more advanced.
I'm not Asian, but when you look at ten year GDP per capita growth predictions into the future, this does not really look to be the case. Seems like there's a clear East Asia and European separation (Taiwan seems like it overtakes pretty much every comparably large West European nation).
Don't get me wrong, I think that Asians and Whites are a lot closer in terms of genetic potential IQ than the boosters who would put Asians at 105 or 107 IQ would say they are and of course, I think that in general Whites live better in most respects, but I still feel like I have to throw this out there.
""The 'Greatest Generation' spawned the Boomers? Something doesn't compute here."
Sure it does. People who've come up from nothing usually do everything in their power to spare their children the same kind of hardships that brought out their own fortitude and resourcefulness."
Very astute.
And now boomers, who had comparatively idyllic childhoods, are inflicting diversity and multiculturalism on their kids. It looks like the generation-y crowd and beyond must view their futures through 3D glasses, dimly.
Jeff said:
"Most people whose IQ's are below 120 don't form their own opinions. They just parrot the opinions of those they are trying to suck up to. So you get a lot of lemming-like follow-on rejection of HBD from that >>large, dim group.<<"
I understand that commenters on this blog like to talk about those of high intellect, especially those whose IQ surpasses 130 (I also believe a great many assume their IQs are above 130). But those commenters often tend to downplay the more realistic, more common high IQ scores (110-120) as being inconsequential, and they tend to regard those who possess those IQs as being "dull." I don't think those commenters who do so understand the distribution of IQs and the rarity of those folks whom they seem to believe are a dime a dozen (those whose IQs are 130+). A person with an IQ of even 115, although not outstanding, is in no way "dim," and has a reasonable chance of succeeding in the majority of high-IQ fields. Don't just toss out an IQ because it sounds good, lest you alienate the majority of the "smart" people you'll actually come into contact with.
when they've run out of every social condition, historical condition, oppressor group, interest group, and any other explanation, the last group to blame in this country are high school teachers. We're the the new punching bag that every ideology can agree on. To those of you who blame us for this country's failures, F... you and have a happy new year.
For a different, more sympathetic take on the problem:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/26877
jack strocchi said...
iq scores controlled for socioeconomic status. Can anyone point/link to a peer-reviewed study testing this relationship, published in a reputable journal? It would seem to be a clincher.
Here is a good start. Instead of the peer-reviewed study published in the reputable journal (which today doesn't account for much) raw data with a very large N, all of the SAT takers for 1994. The data hosted by NSF, a US government's agency:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf96311/tables/at2-32.xls
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf96311/tables/at2-33.xls
From the Table 2-32: Whites from families with estimated annual family income less than $10,000 score 861 on SAT, Blacks with family income of over $70,000 score 853 on SAT.
Exactly the same was true for 1995. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-vs-Income-Education.png
The 1995 numbers are frequently criticized because those graphs come from the data presented by La Griff du Lion (and thus, according to critics, inherently suspect).
"I am a white guy who went to a high school that was 70% black. Every one of my white high school friends, without exception, firmly believes in HBD.
Then I went to college with a bunch of kids who went to all-white suburban high schools. Most of those clueless idiots did not believe in HBD. Plus the black people they met in college were smart and nice!"
This is the paradox of American life. White people move to the suburbs to get away from black reality. But safely removed from black reality, they can indulge in feel-good black fantasy--of the Magic Negro on PBS and from Hollywood. Also, from a safe distance, even stuff like RAP seem more cool than threatening.
There's another problem.
White people who move away from black reality to white suburbs are reluctant to explain to their kids(or even admit to themselves)why they did so. Instead of telling their kids about the dangers of black reality from which they fled, they affect a kind of willed amnesia. Having internalized the religion of MLK and Oprah, they simply don't wanna think about it. They'll act like, "Oh, we were just looking for a nicer place." After all, it would be 'racist' to admit this. And for white guys, it might sound chickenshit to admit they 'ran' than stood their ground.
Similary, white liberals who live in their gentrified urban enclaves will never admit their choice of residence had anything to do with race. They'll admit it had something to do with CLASS, a kind of quasi-Marxist explanation which is more fashionable and correct. They'll admit they are afraid of crime(whatever the color, because as we all know, there are swedish-american thugs hanging around every street corner), and it just so happens that many are black; you see, it's not blackness but crime they have problem with. But of course, blacks are victims too.
White liberals put forth their 'anti-racist' credentials by saying the reason why blacks are poor and prone to crime is because of past injustices and that's why, they, as good white liberals, support liberal politicians and policies to reverse this social injustice. And since they care and know so much, they deserve more wealth, power, privilege, and influence to fix the problems of social inequity in America. And when their goals are reached, EVERYONE will be just as well off as themselves--affluent white liberals in their gentrified communities.
Just look at the white liberals living in their enclave in Hyde Park in Chicago surrounded by depressed black communities. Though they live in their own oasis away from most blacks, they profess to looking for solutions that will enable ALL PEOPLE to live as one--or at least more clever excuses as to why the racial gap still remains.
CONTINUED:
I'll say this though. When whites--affluent and poor--had a separate popular culture and identity for themselves, black people and culture could seem threatening. But when white kids of all stripes identify with black culture as they do today, a lot of poor whites just wanna be black. They may still feel threatened by black thugs but they also wanna be like black thugs. And white girls may wanna be with black thugs.
This may be why some boomer parents wanna instill love of class rock to their kids. Rock music, though rooted in black music, was made into something white. It's better to have young white kids identify with this white music than grow up identifying mainly with rap, which is black to the core. Rock was whites taking elements of black music and making it white. White rap is just whites wanting to be black.
Traveling around US last summer, even in mostly white smalltown, I saw interracial couples. I guess pop culture has penetrated into the heartland of America. Every household watching American Idol, MTV, Flavor of the Month. Whatever the racial gap may be in intelligence, if the races do eventually come together, it may be through the lower orders. Especially with white middle class and working class folks losing jobs overseas(and losing out to affirmative action and disparate impact), more of them will slip to the underclass. They won't have the means to escape from blacks and browns anymore like their parents did. And with black culture being cool and dominant, more white guys will try to be like eminem while more white girls will put out to blacks. It's gonna be like CITY OF GOD. Help.
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2010/12/30/maddow-guest-harris-perry-michael-vicks-abuse-dogs-payback-bull-connor
This is the sort of myth that white liberals prefer to embrace.
Black people are inherently noble(even nobler than whites) and if they do wrong, it's all due to trauma of what evil whites did to them in the past. Since liberal whites see themselves as almost a separate race--WONDERFUL PROGRESSIVE WHITES--from other whites-EVIL RACIST WHITES(of the past and conservative politics)--, they need to cling to myths like this(peddled by very lightskinned blacks who, ironically, got ideas such as this from white radical intellectuals).
To Silver and Harry Baldwin,
Great posts. The people who whine that they believe in HBD but cannot fathom how pubic acknowlegement of it can serve any useful purpose should be shown your words.
Maybe there should be a word to describe this kind of delusion that can only come about through 'higher thinking'. It's like only an intellectual can believe in something as wrong as Marxist theory. Only a mind packed with abstractions--and indeed prefers ideas over what might be called reas(basic stuff of reality)--can sometimes be totally blind to real reality.
Voegelin (and the Church) called it 'gnosticism.'
Anon:
The practical question isn't "is there some tax rate at which lowering taxes increases revenue," which is tautological. The practical question is "are we anywhere close to that tax rate now?". The Laffer Curve is currently used to give politicians a cover story, so they can do things that are destructive long-term, but politically beneficial short-term.
I think there is a mch stronger case that our fiercely complex tax code costs us orders of magnitude more revenue (thanks to zero-sum added spending on evading and enforcing the incomprehensible tax laws, perverse
incentives, and such) than the effect described by the Laffer curve. But politicians like complex tax codes, into which they can stick gifts for their supporters, so we rarely hear about this as a political concern.
Ben Tillman:
If IQ and related important attributes didn't vary between blacks and whites, I suspect US society would largely accept hbd. The ugly history of slavery, widespread bigotry and discrimination is strongly associated with the idea of hbd, to the point that a book as tame as the bell curve was widely seen as somehow supporting a return to Jim Crow, or worse.
Peoples' minds don't run on formal logic; when hbd is seen to imply support for evil policies, many people will go to some lengths not to accept hbd. This works for the same reason you sometimes see creationists arguing that evolution is untrue because accepting it implies (in their minds) abandoning morality.
I like Steve's concept of citizenism -- let's do what's best for the people who are currently citizens.
One of the problems I have with citizenism is it glosses over corruption and theft. E.g., turning the country from 90% white to 60% white represents a massive theft from white American citizens, but citizenism would just paper over this theft and give it the veneer of legitimacy.
Not so simple.
But I didn't make it simple. I said I don't idolize the "greatest generation," which is moving away from the simplicity inherent in the term, "greatest generation."
The reality is that looking down, thinking poorly of, or even -- God help us -- hating other races is no big deal. What people do is vastly more important than what they think.
Too true. How many of us know someone we hate? I'd guess most people have had more than a few someones to hate over the years, a great many they look down on and think poorly of. I doubt most of them shoved any of the objects of their scorn, derision, or hate into ovens or hanged them from nearby trees.
But suddenly it's unforgivable if you do it wholesale? Bodega hate=great, Costco hate=doubleplusungood?
Do you consider yourself a hopeless case compared to people whose IQ is one standard deviation higher than yours? I don't. I've also met people whom I know are less intelligent than I am who seem perfectly happy with their lives, in fact, happier than I am with mine.
Thanks for pointing that out. It's odd to see a liberal IQ fetishist project his IQ fetishism onto "race realists," HBDers, WNs, etc. Okay, there are tons of IQ-fetishist HBDers, but that was still weird.
One of the problems I have with citizenism is it glosses over corruption and theft. E.g., turning the country from 90% white to 60% white represents a massive theft from white American citizens, but citizenism would just paper over this theft and give it the veneer of legitimacy.
I see what you are saying here, but the alternatives, which are either actually taking a hardline WN stance or a complete cosmopolitan stance, are both untenable. The former disposesses enormous numbers of people who know no other country, particularly unless you accept some kind of Hart-esque tripartite division of the state (which would again be a kind of theft from Americans), which seems wrong to most right thinking people, to most sane people don't hold ludicrous notions that everyone has a "right" to be an American/Canadian/European/Australian. While the latter invites the world, and well, I don't think I have to explain what's wrong with that to you.
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2010/12/30/maddow-guest-harris-perry-michael-vicks-abuse-dogs-payback-bull-connor
Oh come now, the women's just standing up against "Dog privilege". We all know it's true! Every day, dogs be in a privileged and power hegemonic position over Black people...
Plus, have you seen all those pictures for lost dogs in people's neighbourhood? Compare that to non-existant media coverage of missing Black children and adults. Racists.
Nope, you didn't understand the Laffer Curve. That's ok, high school calc isn't everyone's bag.
All it says is that extrema exist! It's not a terribly deep result. It is, however, a useful litmus test for whether an interlocutor is innumerate.
While this comment was not directed at me, I'd just like to point out that from my reading of the original post on the laffer curve, it's quite clear that the poster was critiquing the GOP's "defense of asinine tax policy by invocation of the lasser curve," not the existence of said curve. But I guess sometimes the more pretentious of Steve's commenters like to latch on to any statement that isn't semantically bulletproof in order to showcase their supposed intelligence.
In this particular case, I suspect the reason "anonymous" took issue with the lasser curve comment was to tell the world "looke me, I'm so clever that I can make offhand remarks about high school calc! Whoopee!" Now I'm not a hater of the cognitive elite (I'm a NMSQT Semi-finalist myself, for what it counts) but some of them have the unfortunate tendency to be in such love with their own supposed smarts that the greatest thing they ever end up accomplishing in life is a very big 3 digit number on an IQ test. Then they bitterly comment on blogs like this one about their intellectual "lessers" rolling in porsches while they themselves drive second hand civics. lol.
"Nope, you didn't understand the Laffer Curve. That's ok, high school calc isn't everyone's bag. All it says is that extrema exist! It's not a terribly deep result. It is, however, a useful litmus test for whether an interlocutor is innumerate."
Well since I aced the high school calc exam (if only the AB portion, since BC wasn't offered) clearly it was my bag.
As I said, I understand perfectly well the concept of maxima, minima, the extreme value theorem, yada, yada, yada, if I happen to have forgotten a little of it.
I'm not referring to that. The "Laffer Curve" is a political tool, not a mathematical one. I'm referring to Art Laffer himself, and his followers. If we slashed tax rates to 5% these folks would argue that 2% would be even better. By all appearances these fools think maximum tax collection would occur at a 0% rate.
Deficits surged after the Reagan & Bush tax cuts. Clinton raised taxes and the deficit actually disappeared, and economic growth never suffered.
What is hurting our economy is the uncertainty created by insanely high budget deficits. Will the government have to slash spending, slash entitlements, and/or jack up tax rates to bring the deficit under control? Will interest rates soar, and will inflation skyrocket? This creates massive uncertainty for every single American, businessman or not.
I would rather have minor adjustments now than such massive adjustments in the not-too-distant future, and I think the economy would benefit from it. And I am a conservative so, yes, I would prefer that most of that correction be through lower spending (incl. on defense).
"I am a white guy who went to a high school that was 70% black. Every one of my white high school friends, without exception, firmly believes in HBD. Then I went to college with a bunch of kids who went to all-white suburban high schools. Most of those clueless idiots did not believe in HBD. Plus the black people they met in college were smart and nice!"
These people are naive because they and they're parents have always been able to insulate themselves from the consequences of their stated beliefs. 120 IQ kids live in neighborhoods which are effectively un-integrated. They move to them because they are un-integrated. Un-integrated is practically inherent in the definition of a "nice neighborhood." If there is a decent percentage of blacks in their schools they attend private schools, or end up in the advanced classes, separated from the black kids in the remedial ones.
Their parents don't work in integrated environments. They are professionals or managers, not peers of NAMs. They don't attend church with them, assuming they attend at all. They don't even shop at the same stores.
Remove private schools, remove school tracking, force absolute integration and they would be forced to acknowledge the bubble in which they have lived.
A 95-100 IQ white, blue collar worker has to live in a mix-raced neighborhood, work in a mix-raced workplace, and send his kids to a mix-raced school. He cannot afford to not be so naive.
That is why it is the highly educated whites who are the most liberal.
I'm not Asian, but when you look at ten year GDP per capita growth predictions into the future, this does not really look to be the case. Seems like there's a clear East Asia and European separation (Taiwan seems like it overtakes pretty much every comparably large West European nation).
Much of the explanation can be distilled down to two antithetical economic strategies: free trade vs mercantilism. Asian nations not only see but also practice a zero-sum game when it comes to trade. Free trade with Asia is to Western economies what third world immigration is to Western demographics. Without "trade," the West would be much better off economically, and Asia would still be a third world cesspool. Then you'd use economic growth rates vis a vis IQ in exactly the opposite direction.
"The 'Greatest Generation' spawned the Boomers? Something doesn't compute here."
Strangely enough, they were once denounced of the spawn of Satan - see Phlip Wylie, Generation of Vipers.
"Much of the explanation can be distilled down to two antithetical economic strategies: free trade vs mercantilism."
Uh, yeah; or maybe they're just SMARTER!
127 comments on "why don't white people accept HBD, and Felix was good enough to encapsulate the total and complete answer in his preceding post.
Is there anyone here who still doesn't get it?
"I think that a large number of persons who believe in HBD are atheists."
Possible, but most atheists are hardcore leftists who simply replace Christianity with some PC religion.
The main problem is that the American public--left, right, and center--have bought into the view that any racial inequalities are due to whitey's evilness.
I see what you are saying here, but the alternatives, which are either actually taking a hardline WN stance or a complete cosmopolitan stance, are both untenable.
I think the choice is between letting it go, and not letting it go. No need to build a whole ideology out of it.
I choose not to let it go. I don't see the up side of letting it go. E.g., I can accept that the cops aren't going to do squat to get back my stolen property. It's common knowledge where I live that nothing comes of that sort of thing.
Doesn't mean I would go around pretending I wasn't robbed, or that I wouldn't like to get my property back.
Letting it go is negotiable, but that's kind of my point. Why give up a claim for nothing?
Aubrey reminded me that I wouldn't mind AA if it targeted the power elites in this country. In fact, I think media companies should have to double down; double representation of blacks at every position in the media, except of course where that would impact free speech, i.e., in front of the camera (media uses free speech as a clause out of EEOC in front of the camera, from what I understand, though they're pretty downlow about this). Double representation of yellows, too. And "hispanics."
Same for finance and government, at the higher levels, not the rank and file. Why should ambassador to Israel be a Jewish sinecure? Let's give the job to a black lesbian.
I'd like to see some democratic action on how groups are defined. What if American blacks don't want to be lumped in with immigrant blacks, don't want to have the cream of sub-Saharan Africa get the goodies while assuaging "white guilt" and serving as window dressing? Maybe Italians would like to be broken out, so they get their fair share. Maybe Euros don't want to be lumped in with Jews. Whatever.
Why should the czars make all these decisions? They're too important for bureaucrats - leave them the bean counting.
A Philip Wylie reader! I thought I was the last one.
Svigor made an interesting comment I wanted to follow up on, describing his problem with citizenism.
...turning the country from 90% white to 60% white represents a massive theft from white American citizens....
I don't see why this is true. In particular, let's imagine two countries:
In country A, the founding white population has a lower-than-replacement birthrate, and immigration from other whites (Albanians, say) fills in the losses and provides a steady increase in population.
In country B, the founding white population has a lower-than-replacemen birthrate, and immigration from Mestizo Bolivians fills in the losses and provides a steady increase in population.
I'm missing why there's any more theft happening in Country B than in Country A. The founding population's posterity is being replaced over time by immigrants. What does it matter, from this perspective, whether the immigrants look kinda like the founding population or don't?
Similarly, let's imagine two more countries. In one country, the founding population is outbred by the lower-class population of indentured Irish servants that were brought over and eventually freed. In the other, the founding population is outbred by the lower-class population of enslaved black servants that were brought over and eventually freed. What's the difference?
Is it just the fact that the white immigrant/servant population will probably blend in and become indistinguishable from the founding population over time? Because it's pretty obvious that isn't inevitable. There's plenty of intermarriage going on between races.
The real difference here, I think, is that you're treating race as a defining feature of the posterity of the founders and builders of the country. I'm not.
If the immigrant population were forcing the original population not to reproduce, somehow, I'd get the complaint.
But that's not really what's going on. Wealthier people with more education and choices have fewer kids, presumably because having kids is a lot of work and expense, and it's now possible to get laid regularly without having any. This happens just about everywhere.
Asia has higher growth rates because they are suddenly catching up. This is process that in the West took over 200 years.
Obviously it's much easier to copy other peoples growth and technology than to do it first.
The same is true for Africa: they have higher growth than Europe, because low hanging fruit effect in growth. Doesn't prove they are smarter.
The per capita output of American whites even during the recession is still above than Hong-Kong, and much higher than Japan.
What makes you think life is all about how smart you are?
When an authority on the subject, like Charles Murray, entitles a piece of writing, "IQ Will Put You In Your Place," I think you can forgive people for getting that impression.
That isn't to dispute Charles Murray's facts (or Chris Brand's, or any other g-man's); it's to dispute the aspect of those facts he considers most salient, highlighted in the above article by the title itself -- you'll be "put in your place." That's what it's "all about," apparently.
Wait a minute, you say, it's not "all about" that at all? Oh, it's not? Then choose your words more carefully. Because people will take you at face value.
In this sense it's almost criminal that HBD-boosters continue to associate IQ with the dumber=inferior=undesirable inference that so many people reflexively draw.
In reality, so what if someone's "inferior"? Don't we all have a friend, a cousin, a parent that, gun-to-our-heads, we would call "inferior"? As "dull" as they might be according to IQ tests, certain "dumb" people (I mean, academically/intellectually, really, really dumb) have been some of the most entertaining I've ever known, and I'd rather have dinner with them -- and I'd gladly drive 30 miles across town to do it -- than with some stuffy IQ fetishist who's calculated the price of everything but appreciates the value of nothing. (Not that I'd do so every day, of course. The ideal for everyday life is to fill your world with people at roughly your level, and a couple definitely beyond it, in order to get some inspiration -- but not so far beyond you that you're alienated rather than inspired.)
"Why should ambassador to Israel be a Jewish sinecure? Let's give the job to a black lesbian."
Well, the fact that a Jew is more likely to speak Hebrew might have something to do with it, Svigor.
Svigor,
Too true. How many of us know someone we hate? I'd guess most people have had more than a few someones to hate over the years, a great many they look down on and think poorly of. I doubt most of them shoved any of the objects of their scorn, derision, or hate into ovens or hanged them from nearby trees.
That was in response to my point about "hate" not really being a big deal. Not to disagree with anything you said above, but rather than, or in addition to, it being no big deal to "hate other races" (and apart from professional antiracists I doubt many people at all think it's THAT big a deal) what I originally meant to say (but failed to) was that it's no big deal to be hated for your own race.
In contrast to only professional antiracists and politicians (because they're forced to, usually) really caring about hatred of other races, almost everyone believes being hated for one's own race is a very, very big deal. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not -- it can certainly seem like it is, but it's actually not.
Remember, I'm talking about sentiment here, not action. Action is very important. Being persecuted or exterminated for your race is a hugely big deal (there's really none bigger). But mere sentiment, that that should trouble so many is the delusion of our age.
"You hate the slimy, greasy dagos? Hey, that's great. We can still be friends." Aren't people of other races who think that way the easiest to get along with? Who wants to feel like he has to walk on eggshells around people?
That's not an attempt any political theory or platform. It's just about daily life and how and you can make it work easiest for yourself by circumventing the obsessions of the educated buffoon class.
"Much of the explanation can be distilled down to two antithetical economic strategies: free trade vs mercantilism."
"Uh, yeah; or maybe they're just SMARTER!...Is there anyone here who still doesn't get it?"
What do we supposedly not get, Tr-uth?
I certainly don't endorse the idea of underestimating your competitor, and that certainly holds true for South and Eastern Asia.
But the evidence for Asian superiority is murky at best.
Asians who come to this country tend to do pretty well, even those Asians allowed to immigrate for other than explicitly professional reasons. But does that mean S & E Asia (henceforth, Asia) is filled with ~3 billion people of roughly similar intelligence and/or drive? As I said, murky.
These countries are still well-matched by white countries, and I see scant few migrants trying to force their way into the Asian tigers.
Western Europe - everything including and west of Finland-Denmark-Germany-Austria-Italy - has only ~400 million people, and still holds up impressively well compared to the ~3 billion people living in the Asian dynamos. It and the Anglosphere are still far wealthier and more innovative than Asia, and could continue to be so, assuming our current political stupidity doesn't cause us to piss our lead away.
Ethnically European countries have, in recent history, considerably outperformed Asia considerably in terms of culture, innovation, economics, science, technology, and even athletically (even if you exclude the contributions of black athletes).
I see some reasons to think that Asians are, on average, slightly inferior to Westerners, in terms of traits that lead to creating prosperous, free, innovative societies. I see lots of reasons to assume they are roughly at parity, and I see a few reasons to think they may be superior. But it's been 600 years, at best, since any major Asian country managed to outcompete Western Europe or the Anglosphere.
Mercantilism does explain a lot of Asian success, and the reining culture influences people far more than we'd like to admit. If we correct our cultural and political missteps, we may yet outperform Asia. Simple necessity may soon force us to do both.
"Much of the explanation can be distilled down to two antithetical economic strategies: free trade vs mercantilism."
"Uh, yeah; or maybe they're just SMARTER!...Is there anyone here who still doesn't get it?"
What do we supposedly not get, Tr-uth?
I certainly don't endorse the idea of underestimating your competitor, and that certainly holds true for South and Eastern Asia.
But the evidence for Asian superiority is murky at best.
Asians who come to this country tend to do pretty well, even those Asians allowed to immigrate for other than explicitly professional reasons. But does that mean S & E Asia (henceforth, Asia) is filled with ~3 billion people of roughly similar intelligence and/or drive? As I said, murky.
These countries are still well-matched by white countries, and I see scant few migrants trying to force their way into the Asian tigers.
Western Europe - everything including and west of Finland-Denmark-Germany-Austria-Italy - has only ~400 million people, and still holds up impressively well compared to the ~3 billion people living in the Asian dynamos. It and the Anglosphere are still far wealthier and more innovative than Asia, and could continue to be so, assuming our current political stupidity doesn't cause us to piss our lead away.
Ethnically European countries have, in recent history, considerably outperformed Asia considerably in terms of culture, innovation, economics, science, technology, and even athletically (even if you exclude the contributions of black athletes).
I see some reasons to think that Asians are, on average, slightly inferior to Westerners, in terms of traits that lead to creating prosperous, free, innovative societies. I see lots of reasons to assume they are roughly at parity, and I see a few reasons to think they may be superior. But it's been 600 years, at best, since any major Asian country managed to outcompete Western Europe or the Anglosphere.
Mercantilism does explain a lot of Asian success, and the reining culture influences people far more than we'd like to admit. If we correct our cultural and political missteps, we may yet outperform Asia. Simple necessity may soon force us to do both.
"She was a good, smart, woman who deserves all the good things in life. I don't even like thinking about the likely disadvantages that are simply an accident of birth and living in a majority white country; inequality breaks hearts."
The question you need to ask yourself is: what would her life be like today if her ancestors had remained in (or returned to) Africa? Probably not anywhere near as good as it is now. That puts the whole "disadvantage" thing into an interesting perspective.
Projecting much, Felix?
Seriously, extrema are taught in high school calculus. I don't know why on earth you thought someone would be waving high school calculus around as a boast.
If I had said "Way to fail at elementary school grammar" to someone, would that be bragging? I guess I'm announcing to the world that I was not pulled out of school in 5th grade to work in the coal mine. :bragbragbrag:
And, hey, guys, get literate. Some idiot thinks extrema don't exist. He may be George Berkeley - he does not seem to get that calculus exists no matter how inconvenient it is for one's political views. Whether we are on the "right" or "left" side of the revenue-maximizing tax rate is an empirical question, but even if, as is probably true, we could maximize revenue by raising taxes from their current rate to some other rate, that does not discredit the Laffer Curve. That's an absurdity and indicates a fundamental failure to grasp what the concept is. It's not hard - "high school calculus" was exactly what it seemed, and not a codeword for "smart stuff only smart guys like me know." I still think people shouldn't trip over pretty basic math.
...women like assertive, articulate men who don't back down. I feel sorry for the herbs dutifully mouthing platitudes at the heel of their dominatrix womenfolk. They will find the bar is always being raised...
This.
ben tillman: No, it would entail exterminating everyone but you and your clones, and even then differences in environment and experience would differentiate the genetically identical. Ultimately, equality can be achieved only by the death of every human but one.
This is a very important point, but it took me roughly half* my life to realize that all of The Left's rhetoric about "equality" is merely so much window-dressing to mask the fact that their motivating obsession is Death.
BTW, their rhetoric about "peace" is exactly the same as their rhetoric about "equality" - ultimately, the only true "peace" on this earth is the peace of the graveyard.
[*Knock on wood.]
Jeff: Those kids from the all-white suburban high schools are now running this country. They still live in the suburbs. They still don't believe in HBD.
Albertosaurus: I think that a large number of persons who believe in HBD are atheists.
Albertosaurus, you're like Jeff's insulated white suburban leftist who has never met a "real" black person before [the kind of black who makes your palms sweat as you wonder whether he might slit your throat just for the fun of it] - you need to get out of that Blue State enclave of yours [Oakland, CA, as I recall?], and meet the legions of caucasian bible-thumpers in flyover country who understand perfectly well that HBD is a certainty which amounts to little more than a trivially obvious observation.
[Unless maybe you meant to say something like this: "I think that a large number of persons who believe in HBD are like atheists trying to survive within the ambient theocracy of political correctness."]
"If the immigrant population were forcing the original population not to reproduce, somehow, I'd get the complaint." - None of the Above
How do you know that, in a sense, they're not? Working class whites forced to compete with working class immigrants may reproduce less. They may delay childbearing so they can afford to raise their children in a part of town with fewer immigrants. The desire to live in a part of town where they don't feel like foreigners may force both parents into the workforce, a massive shift that has taken place since...well, gee, since the latest immigration flood was unleashed in 1965, thus giving native white mothers less time to spend with their children.
It's quite possible that instead of filling in for a native birthrate that would be falling anyway that immigrant children are actually replacing native children in a literal sense.
"But that's not really what's going on. Wealthier people with more education and choices have fewer kids..."
Are we sure that's exactly what's happening? Are birthrates a function of income, or a function of income AND race, or even just race? We say that poor people (or uneducated people) are having more children than rich people, but maybe it's that whites and Asians, who are generally educated, are having more children
than blacks and Hispanics, who generally aren't.
That seems a good explanation, or at least part of it, because white birthrates seem to have fallen across the board, regardless of education levels.
Aside from that, I don't see importing Europeans as better than importing Latinos because Eruopeans are white. I see them as better because they're better educated and because they won't use their race against me. Because let's face it, there is a hell of a lot of Latin political organizing going on for a group that is not oppressed, that America has never oppressed, and that is actively coming to this country in massive numbers and demanding the right to do so; that is coming to this country not against their will, as with the slaves, but against our will.
"...but even if, as is probably true, we could maximize revenue by raising taxes from their current rate to some other rate, that does not discredit the Laffer Curve."
No, but it discredits the Art Laffer cultists, so please stop posting like a troll.
If the "Laffer Curve" is just an example of using basic calculus to find the point of maximum revenue then why not just call it "the tax curve," "the tax function" or "the inverted tax parabola"?
Because it's not effing calculus, which Art Laffer sure as hell could have never invented. What it is is an effing drawing with political content, and as even you acknowledged, that political content is false.
Similarly, let's imagine two more countries.
Assume instead a scenario C in which we're talking about Tibetans without a declining population and Chinese migrating in. This is largely seen as a kind of theft, even a kind of genocide. (Let alone if we assume that the declining population is Amerind due to disease and the immigrants are White and Black.) The fact that Western populations have a declining fertility and that they have quisling governments rather than being ruled by foreigners, does not make it any less theft.
Nations have the right to decline in population without being race replaced. No one is obligated to be an economist with their baked in Utilitarian reasoning. We have no reason to give a privilege an increase or steady state in population over other desirable factors.
And just because its done by an unrepresentative traitor government who have brainwashed the populace into accepting it, rather than an alien government using guns does not make it any less of a theft. Being conned into giving up money, even money you yourself are too ignorant to understand the value of, is not less of a theft than being held up at gunpoint.
not letting it go
Good point. I was thinking from a pointy headed technocratic perspective where you change your values and opinions to fit what is practical.
Asia has higher growth rates because they are suddenly catching up. This is process that in the West took over 200 years.
Obviously it's much easier to copy other peoples growth and technology than to do it first.
The point is that projected growth trends are due to leave them with GDP per capita than Western nations. Will mere copying with no added value do this? Maybe. (I have pretty poor knowledge of economics and I've been dubious of the GDP metric's relation to IQ since learning that private and government consumption are included, which seem to allow this metric to inflate without anyone actually producing anything desirable).
Well, the fact that a Jew is more likely to speak Hebrew might have something to do with it, Svigor.
Most US ambassadors do not speak the language of their host country. In any case, the vast majority of ambassadors to Israel, including the last two, seem to have been non-Jews.
"I certainly don't endorse the idea of underestimating your competitor, and that certainly holds true for South and Eastern Asia.
But the evidence for Asian superiority is murky at best."
"Asia has higher growth rates because they are suddenly catching up. This is process that in the West took over 200 years.
Obviously it's much easier to copy other peoples growth and technology than to do it first."
"Much of the explanation can be distilled down to two antithetical economic strategies: free trade vs mercantilism."
I'm beginning to notice that some HBDers, themselves, resort to HBD-denialism any time the East Asian IQ advantage is mentioned. From now on, I'm going to refer to them as HBD-opportunists--those who fatalistically yield to the tenets of HBD whenever their group is perceived to be on top, but reserve a healthy amount of skepticism for any evidence that biological advantages exist in other groups.
"Similarly, let's imagine two more countries. In one country, the founding population is outbred by the lower-class population of indentured Irish servants that were brought over and eventually freed. In the other, the founding population is outbred by the lower-class population of enslaved black servants that were brought over and eventually freed. What's the difference?"
Culture.
"If the immigrant population were forcing the original population not to reproduce, somehow, I'd get the complaint."
Ok, I was almost buying your argument until you claimed this.
Immigrants ARE forcing the orig population not to reproduce. They do it by causing increased competition for housing in good, safe (i.e., immigrant-free) neighborhoods, so the price of Family Formation goes up, and therefore the birthrate goes down.
Don't you even read Steve's stuff?
"presumably because having kids is a lot of work and expense"
Yeah, it is a lot of expense, which White middle class and higher parents bear entirely alone.
If you are middle class or higher White, you get pretty much zero assistance from society with the cost of childrearing, since the public schools are bad. Private (i.e., safe and effective, i.e., White) schools are frightfully expensive, so it's not surprising middle class and higher have one or at most two kids, since they can't AFFORD more.
They can't AFFORD more because the cost of escaping, for the childrens' sake, the immigrants' social pathologies is so expensive.
Read Elizabeth Warren's The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke
The (White) birthrate is dropping pretty much everywhere because there is immigration into pretty much all White lands.
Captain Jack:
It would be interesting to try to work out whether immigration policy is driving the relative drop in fertility. My understanding is that the same pattern is seen everywhere, though--more educated, more wealthy, more urban people tend to wait longer to have kids, and to have smaller families. But that would be a mechanism by which you could talk meaningfully about theft of the nation's wealth from the descendants of its creators. (I think it would be hard to make that argument w.r.t. blacks, since black slaves and later black citizens did in fact do a lot of work toward building up wealth in the US. Mostly not inventing machines or amassing great fortune, but then, hardly anyone from any ethnic group manages either of those things. If grunt labor by white longshoremen counts, so does grunt labor by black sharecroppers.)
I wonder how we'd resolve that question.
The second part of your response to me raises an entirely distinct issue--how does our immigration policy do at maximizing the well-being of the country in a generation or two?
Now, I think it doesn't do that very well, or I'd be supporting it. But not because of any kind of theft from the descendents of the folks who originally built up the country.
In country A, the founding white population has a lower-than-replacement birthrate, and immigration from other whites (Albanians, say) fills in the losses and provides a steady increase in population.
In country B, the founding white population has a lower-than-replacemen birthrate, and immigration from Mestizo Bolivians fills in the losses and provides a steady increase in population.
I'm missing why there's any more theft happening in Country B than in Country A.
Because the first population is genetically more similar to the founders. Duh.
But the problem with your response is that it has nothing to do with our situation inasmuch as it is predicated on a failure of the white founders to maintain a replacement-level birth rate.
Whites had a replacement-levbel birth rate when this immigration invasion was begun. And even if we hadn't, how in the hell would that have had anything to do with immigration?
Nations with declining populations don't need immigrants, and immigration obviously has nothing to do with the welfare of the population anyway.
Well, the fact that a Jew is more likely to speak Hebrew might have something to do with it, Svigor.
Humbug. We can make the ambassador to Israel's translator a sinecure for Hebrew-speakers.
What does it matter, from this perspective, whether the immigrants look kinda like the founding population or don't?
[...]
What's the difference?
Well, math. EGI?
The real difference here, I think, is that you're treating race as a defining feature of the posterity of the founders and builders of the country. I'm not.
Er, yeah. Race is, relatively speaking, very relevant as a defining feature when you're discussing things like "posterity."
If the immigrant population were forcing the original population not to reproduce, somehow, I'd get the complaint.
Blood and soil, ever heard that one? Old school nationalists harped on it because, I suppose, they knew that blood is soil. The Israelis sure seem to. Mix people on soil, and you are, in effect, mixing their blood.
You may not share my position, but surely you acknowledge its legitimacy?
"I like Steve's concept of citizenism -- let's do what's best for the people who are currently citizens."
"One of the problems I have with citizenism is it glosses over corruption and theft. E.g., turning the country from 90% white to 60% white represents a massive theft from white American citizens, but citizenism would just paper over this theft and give it the veneer of legitimacy."
It's not theft if it was given away. White people elected politicians who let this happen. And I don't see too many white people organizing to start a war to end the current policies or to stop the current demographic trends. Both Right and Left mostly talks about the evils of 'racism'.
From Larry Auster:
Immigration does not “replenish” a country’s population, it replaces it. American history is instructive on this point. Between 1790 and 1830, a period in which the total number of immigrants was about 385,000, or under 10,000 per year, the U.S. population increased by an astonishing nine million (from 3.9 million in 1790 to 12.9 million in 1830). This tripling was due mainly to the natural increase of the 1790 population, not to immigration. As population expert Francis A. Walker noted in a famous essay published in 1891, this very high native birthrate dropped subsequent to the upward turn of immigration after 1830 and the even sharper increase of immigration [particularly Irish immigration] after 1840. The reason for this, Walker argued, was that immigrants lowered living standards, wage levels, and working conditions, which resulted in reduced prospects for the native population, which made having large families less attractive. Immigration thus caused a drop in the native birthrate, replacing those lost native births with immigrants. The same effect of mass immigration on wages and working conditions is clearly in operation today, along with the same effect on the native birthrate.
I'm beginning to notice that some HBDers, themselves, resort to HBD-denialism any time the East Asian IQ advantage is mentioned.
Maybe you're beginning to notice this... because you're an idiot? Just a thought. I mean, it's obvious that anyone who thinks that Asia's high growth rates relative to the West is proof of Asians' superior intelligence must be an utter idiot. Am I right? Just look at this list of IQ all stars on the 2010 fastest growth list.
Country Growth Rate
1. Qatar 16.4%
2. Botswana 14.4%
3. Azerbaijan 12.3%
4. Republic of Congo 11.9%
5. Angola 9.3%
6. East Timor 7.87%
7. Liberia 7.53%
8. China 7.51%
9. Afghanistan 7.01%
10. Uzbekistan 7.00%
11. Turkmenistan 6.96%
12. Iraq 6.69%
"From now on, I'm going to refer to them as HBD-opportunists-"
HBD opportunists. I've been looking for the perfect term to describe the strange mental disease so common here, for over 3 years. Utterly perfect.
"I mean, it's obvious that anyone who thinks that Asia's high growth rates relative to the West is proof of Asians' superior intelligence must be an utter idiot"
What about anyone who thinks that "Asia's" superior IQ scores and school achievement are proof of Asian's superior intelligence? Utter idiots also?
"I'm beginning to notice that some HBDers, themselves, resort to HBD-denialism any time the East Asian IQ advantage is mentioned. From now on, I'm going to refer to them as HBD-opportunists--those who fatalistically yield to the tenets of HBD whenever their group is perceived to be on top, but reserve a healthy amount of skepticism for any evidence that biological advantages exist in other groups."
Word. They're instantly recognizably by their insistence on plying the hackneyed canard that Asians are uncreative - especially now that bogus claims of lower verbal aptitude has been proved wholly erroneous.
Felix Choi
"They're instantly recognizably by their insistence on plying the hackneyed canard that Asians are uncreative - especially now that bogus claims of lower verbal aptitude has been proved wholly erroneous."
Bah. Talk of Asian IQ is trumped by the questions:
Who is doing the clamoring to get into whose elite schools, academic contests, and country? Americans into China? Or Chinese into America?
Who took on all the factories (and the pollution that goes with it)? America took them from China? Or vice versa?
"It's not theft if it was given away"
But there are 10's of millions of illegal immigrants and their children. Granted, nobody did much to stop it, but it was still illegal.
Country Growth Rate
1. Qatar 16.4%
2. Botswana 14.4%
3. Azerbaijan 12.3%
4. Republic of Congo 11.9%
5. Angola 9.3%
6. East Timor 7.87%
7. Liberia 7.53%
8. China 7.51%
9. Afghanistan 7.01%
10. Uzbekistan 7.00%
11. Turkmenistan 6.96%
12. Iraq 6.69%
I believe Africa is growing because of demand for resources from China and Indian. And much of the new industry and infrastructure are built by Chinese and Indian workers than by Africans.
Also, African GDPs are so low to begin with that any upshot looks huge. If someone with only $100 gets $10, his income has risen by a whopping 10%.
"Asians" aren't a homogenous group. The Japanese are actually fairly creative and bring a lot of interesting products and technologies to the market. They've slowed down, but they'd be a lot more competitive now if their demographic situation was better. The Chinese, however, have been copying American products and technology at a furious pace since the 1980s, which is why most people here aren't going to concede Chinese superiority.
A lot of the East Asian countries have leveled off, after a few decades of really quicky growth. Aging populations and the rising cost of labor are likely factors in this. It's not clear if they're going to overtake the U.S. or the rest of the West, but possible. Only China continues to grow consistently - and it's starting from a very low baseline.
White nationalists don't care much about Asians and most concede higher Asian IQ. Most of their criticism is directed at Jewish groups.
On IQ, virtually every study shows Jewish Europeans testing about 1/2-2/3 of a SD above the white mean. Jewish performance on almost any metric you can think of (business, finance, chess, Nobel Prizes, income) matches or even exceeds these IQ results. It's pretty hard to deny that Jews are well above every other group intellectually.
With Asians, there are a number of studies that show them out ahead, but other data shows parity.
Recently, Demetriou et al. [4] compared the intelligence of Greek and Chinese pupils aged 8 to 14. It is generally reported that East Asians tend to score somewhat higher than Europeans in IQ tests, but the causes of this are little known. In this study, the researchers compared the two groups on measures of processing efficiency, working memory, and reasoning and the three separate domains: verbal/propositional, quantitative, and visuo/spatial.
The methodology used in this study allowed for a more fine-grained assessment of the intelligence of the two groups. A series of different models were tested, and a particular three-level model was found to best explain the performance of the two groups. The first-order factors of this model were: speed, control of processing, phonological/visuo-spatial/executive working memory, and spatial/quantitative/verbal thinking. These are obviously not independent of each other, and three second-order factors were identified: processing efficiency, working memory, and thinking. Finally, a third-order general factor, or g was identified.
This model captures the fact that individuals have both general capacities which are useful for many different tasks, as well as more specialized capacities, which are useful for particular ones, e.g., reasoning about numbers. It is thus a better way to compare two groups than just g, measured by IQ tests, because that is a mix of all different aptitudes and obscures the underlying factors in which two groups may differ.
The first important finding of the study was that the model described above was valid for both Greeks and Chinese pupils. This provides some evidence that the thought process of the two groups is similar, and uses the same set of biological tools, which can be conceptualized as organized in a three-tier hierarchy. There is no difference between the two groups in this respect.
The second important finding is that the Greek pupils did not differ from the Chinese in g or general intelligence. This contrasts with many reports in the literature about the superior intelligence of East Asians compared to Europeans, which are based on studies which average across different capacities and do not take the architecture of mental processing into account.
The Chinese did outperform the Greeks in visuo/spatial ability, but this difference was smaller at earlier ages, grew during the first years of schooling and decreased later. The authors suggest that this pattern can be explained as follows: the Chinese students train their visuo/spatial ability during their early school years, as they have to learn many logographic characters of the Chinese writing system. Later in life, the Greek students adopt compensating strategies to deal with visuo/spatial information, and therefore the difference decreases in this realm.
Professor Flynn also didn't find any Asian advantage in intelligence when examining IQ data for the descendants of pre-WWII Japanese and Chinese immigrants, but he did find stronger visuospatial abilties among Asians. Which is consistent with this study.
"Most people whose IQ's are below 120 don't form their own opinions. They just parrot the opinions of those they are trying to suck up to. So you get a lot of lemming-like follow-on rejection of HBD from that >>large, dim group.<<"
I understand that commenters on this blog like to talk about those of high intellect, especially those whose IQ surpasses 130 (I also believe a great many assume their IQs are above 130). "
Thank you Height Privilege, you are so right. I first noticed this IQ inflation (in the minds of those who pay explicit attention to it) many years ago when I was only a kid. There was an article in Reader's Digest (ok, I was only 11; I lost interest in that rag by 12) discussing IQ and parents worrying about how one of their kids had an IQ of 135 and the other only 133. This was a sort of random example they chose. 133 is already in the upper 2% (Mensa territory), and the percentage points go down incrementally after that number. Even the Ivy Leagues can't possibly average that high, except in some of the hard sciences.
A few geniuses are responsible for sudden leaps forward, but a host of merely "smart" people are absolutely necessary to assist in the invention processes, implementation, maintainance, improvement and continuance of whatever was invented. Why do you think societies deteriorate when a high iq group withdraws, leaving a predominantly low-iq group which nevertheless, probably has a genius or two. Even invention is usually not the work of a single person, but the combined efforts of many. John Lennon said all great artists steal. Well all great scientists steal too. That's why I'm amused at the emphasis on Nobel Prize winners as indicators of singular genius. Maybe, maybe not. Western civilization emphasizes the individual and this does give drive to the invidual, but it doesn't always reflect reality.
Back to IQ. An IQ of 115 is well above the average and all that is needed to do very well in college and even in most of the professions. Unless the commenters here are all Mensa-eligible, they should be careful about framing every IQ argument around a desirable hypotethical population consisting of the upper 2% of Europeans. Most of the arguments are better served by using more realistic evaluations of what we are--on the average.
I'm beginning to notice that some HBDers, themselves, resort to HBD-denialism any time the East Asian IQ advantage is mentioned.
What a crazy comment!
You're upset because people you consider IQ fetishists turn out to be genuine HBDers who recognize human biodiversity regarding more than that one admittedly important trait.
HBD has to do with more than genes; it also addresses phenotype, including the socities created by different peoples. We need something more than IQ to explain qualitative differences between Western and Eastern societies.
Finally, what motive would a White person have to pose as an HBDer while surreptitiously engaging in "HBD denialism"? Whites don't need to justify their existence in any objective terms. White people don't give a shit about how we stack up against Asians, and there is absolutely no point in lying about it.
"It's not theft if it was given away. White people elected politicians who let this happen."
So, since there's never a cop around when you want one, it's okay, it's not theft, if I walk into your house and take your tv.
After all, you elected public officials who failed to put a cop outside your door, so you must have meant to give away your tv to me.
It's not theft if it was given away.
But it wasn't given away.
White people elected politicians who let this happen.
I see. So if you steal from me, and I don't know it yet, everything's okay then. Stealing's okay if you get away with it.
Wait...isn't that fraud? Don't we put people in jail for fraud?
And I don't see too many white people organizing to start a war to end the current policies or to stop the current demographic trends. Both Right and Left mostly talks about the evils of 'racism'.
And little old ladies often sing the praises of fraudsters, until you sit them down and show them what really happened.
But of course, the cops are thoroughly corrupt in our story...
No, fraud is not okay as long as you get away with it.
HBD opportunists. I've been looking for the perfect term to describe the strange mental disease so common here, for over 3 years. Utterly perfect.
Lol. Cracking a thesaurus could've saved you about 2 years, 364 days there, sport.
From now on, I'm going to refer to them as HBD-opportunists.
So, who are the real HBDers then? IQ-fetishism doesn't work because Asians lag. Trying to fit theory to reality is just good sense IMO. If IQ-fetishism worked, we'd be explaining why Europeans lag.
Actually, there's a perfectly good explanation for IQ-fetishists as to why Asians lag. La Griffe du Lion gift-wrapped it for them, but they don't seem to want it. I guess they're too hardcore HBD for la Griffe.
As for HBD-opportunists, I guess we can throw China, India, and most of the rest of the world into that column. Don't see them race-replacing themselves for a buck, or admitting why not.
Word. They're instantly recognizably by their insistence on plying the hackneyed canard that Asians are uncreative - especially now that bogus claims of lower verbal aptitude has been proved wholly erroneous.
I don't see how the uncreative Asians thing is a canard. East Asians show a remarkable tendency toward groupthink and conformity. Kryptonite to innovation. Innovation has largely been the domain of mavericks. Mavericks are in relatively short supply in east Asian populations. Notice how many achievers of east Asian descent have western backgrounds.
WNs didn't invent the reports by Euros in Japan saying the Japanese can't take a dump without a consensus.
"I don't see how the uncreative Asians thing is a canard. East Asians show a remarkable tendency toward groupthink and conformity. Kryptonite to innovation. Innovation has largely been the domain of mavericks. Mavericks are in relatively short supply in east Asian populations. Notice how many achievers of east Asian descent have western backgrounds."
This is why Asians seem to achieve most during times of uncertainty and instability when traditional bonds are loosened; mavericks are given a chance to their thing. Japan produced some very great and original filmmakers from the 30s to 60s when society was much in flux from all sorts of changes and challenges. And Hong Kong cinema was one of the most inventive and brilliant in the 80s. Eventually, Japan settled down to its new norm beginning in the early 70s, and it's been a rather dull place since.
If China adopts a culture more open to innovation and individualism, it may achieve great things in the future. Of course, there may be something genetic that makes most Asians prefer conformism to individualism, but a society doesn't need too many mavericks to achieve great things. In any given society, even in the West, only a relatively small number of people are in the innovative or creative fields. In fact, most societies thrive when they have mostly uncreative and stable drones who go through the same routines day in and day out. Most Germns during the 19th century were disciplined drones. And even after Germany lost its best brains in the 1930s and 40s, it's had a powerful economy because most Germans are good workers who obey the law.
A mass of hardworking stiffs functions as the main support for the creative/innovative people. It's like a tree needs a huge trunk for there to be green leaves on top. Smart scientists can do what they do because most people do the dreary but necessary stuff to build, clean, and maintain the facilities. Without construction workers, janitors, and cleaning personnel, scientists would have to do all that stuff on their own. And even most smart people are hired to take/follow orders than come up with mindblowing theories of their own. There's a lot of gruntwork even in the intellectual and creative field. Most people in the movie business are hired to take orders than be creative.
Asia has a lot of people capable of doing gruntwork, we know that. But can Asian produce a community/culture that also gives free reign to innovative/individualistic people?I think Japan, in the long run, has failed at this. The social structure is such that even highly talented or smart people feel the pressure to keep their heads low and keep their brilliance in check lest it upset social order and hierarchy. But maybe Chinese will be different. Maybe not. If Chinese produce a society that is Japan/German-like for the lower 90%while America/Jewish-like for the upper 10%, it may surpass the US.
especially now that bogus claims of lower verbal aptitude has been proved wholly erroneous.
have been
I should add, being a maverick can give you "extra IQ" when it comes to innovating. There was a thread here not long ago where most people were swearing up and down that creativity had nothing to do with IQ, by the way, which makes Mr. Choi's comment about creativity canards kinda funny. Even funnier, I was one of the people arguing for at least considering a correlation between "hard" artistic talent (e.g., realistic, aesthetically-appealing rendering) and IQ.
Anyway, back to my point, odds are a sub-130 IQ maverick is going to have a more entrepreneurial tinker type streak than the next sub-130 guy. Europeans like elbow room and this translates into more experimentation.
Being enthusiastic, motivated about experimentation can be much more important to success than being super high IQ.
Svigor:
Sure, I think your position is historically far more common than mine, and is still common in a great deal of the world. For good or ill, people identify with those who look, talk, worship, and act like they do. Which of these is most important varies from place to place.
But I don't see how it makes sense to worry more about theft of the nation from its founding/building population, in the case where their offspring are replaced by Albanians than by Bolivians or Chinese. If there's a theft at all, it's happening because the founding/building population is being replaced, not because of who's replacing them.
And the weird thing there is, the replacement is basically a matter of choice. Yes, our economic and social policies aren't as friendly as they should be to families. But Jose and Consuelo aren't forcing career women to wait to have kids till they're 42, at which point they drop $30K on fertility treatments. The career women are choosing that on their own.
Is there any good data on how much of the East Asian tendency toward conformity survives, say, trans-racial adoption? That is, are Chinese kids adopted young by Americans and raised here more like Americans or Chinese when they grow up, in terms of conformity and agreeableness?
The societies we set up for ourselves are wildly varying within races. What's the standard white society look like? The Holy Roman Empire? Soviet Russia? Yugoslavia? The Dutch East India Company? Modern-day Sweden? Canada? The US in 1900? Similarly, what's the standard Asian society look like? China? (Today, or under Mao?) Cambodia? Vietnam? South Korea? Japan? Singapore? North Korea?
I'm sure the underlying nature of the people matters in what kinds of societies can and will be formed, but there's so much driven by culture, technology, the ideas floating on the wind at the time, and random chance, that I have a hard time seeing that you can say much about what societies can be established by some group based on what has been established so far.
The common understanding is that genes affect physical things (like eye color) but not mental/spiritual things (like intelligence or competence).
This body v. mind split in the public head is absolute. The public regards HBD's physical applications as scientific, but quails at any mental-spiritual application as being clear and present Nazism.
I have tried such lines as "evolution doesn't stop at the neck" but have gained no traction whatever against this body-mind dichotomy.
The public subconsciously suspects it's all conected...but when confronted consciously, they assert firmly that genes have no bearing on mentality.
There seems to be more involved with this than merely the parroting of a communist "line." They seem afraid also that HBD is more or less an attack on their self-esteem - they construe it as determinism, and nobody except Calvinists likes determinism. Remember the public head runs wholly on myths. The American myth is that of the free spirit who can do and be anything. Any realistic negative assessment (such as "you are an 82-year-old amputee, the NBA is not for you") is either rejected angrily or admitted reluctantly and with an embarrassed lack of discussion.
Can the broad public be trained to be scientific-minded? No. What they can be taught to do is to have respect for scientists, and HBDers must have a better press than they now enjoy if they wish to impose the necessary respect on Joe-Bob and Sally.
The solution is that all the old scientific and media figures must die off in the course of time and be replaced by our people, one by one. No scientific revolution or "paradigm shift" is more than merely the last step of just such a long, sometimes arduous replacement process. (No overnight success in any serious field is actually overnight.) How close are we to that sudden sea change of opinion? Your guess is certainly better than mine.
"But Jose and Consuelo aren't forcing career women to wait to have kids till they're 42"
Personally? No. Jose and Consuelo aren't personally holding Kathy the Career Woman down and forcing her to swallow birth control pills.
But Jose and Consuelo just being here, along with 12 million + of their own coethnics, makes a house or apt. in a good, safe (i.e., White, i.e., Jose-and-company-free) neighborhood with good schools frightfully expensive. So Kathy and hubby can't afford one until she's 42.
At which time she discovers she can't quite manage conception, so she goes into new debt for fertility treatments.
"The career women are choosing that on their own." Only because she, being a responsible White woman, will NOT have kids unless she can give them a decent life (safe neighborhood, nice neighbor kids for playmates, safe and effective school) and it takes her 'til age 42 to be able to do so.
None of the above wrote: "Is there any good data on how much of the East Asian tendency toward conformity survives, say, trans-racial adoption? That is, are Chinese kids adopted young by Americans and raised here more like Americans or Chinese when they grow up, in terms of conformity and agreeableness?"
None of the above, I've read about a study in which newborns (I think it was newborns) of different races were put on their stomachs, in a position that caused them some discomfort, by researches. White newborns were statistically more likely to turn themselves over so that they coluld lay on their backs. East Asian babies were more likely to accept their fate - they didn't turn themselves over. I thought that was fascinating. Think of Taoism's main message. On a related note I've read that the Chinese never practiced surgery, while Westerners have been doing it since prehistoric times. The "let it be", "resign yourself to fate" attitude seems to be deeply rooted in the East.
I'm sure the underlying nature of the people matters in what kinds of societies can and will be formed, but there's so much driven by culture, technology, the ideas floating on the wind at the time, and random chance, that I have a hard time seeing that you can say much about what societies can be established by some group based on what has been established so far.
You've got this turned around bass-ackwards. It makes the most sense to give a race more credit for being capable of x type civilization based on how similar it is to the races that have shown they're capable of x. Everything else is just speculative.
I generally don't say things like "that group could never do x," I just say "that group never has done x, and I have no good reason to believe it could." Seems more reasonable to me.
But I don't see how it makes sense to worry more about theft of the nation from its founding/building population, in the case where their offspring are replaced by Albanians than by Bolivians or Chinese. If there's a theft at all, it's happening because the founding/building population is being replaced, not because of who's replacing them.
You've been around here for years, do I have that right? 'Bout time you read at least a little about EGI (Ethnic Genetic Interests) if you're going to argue with ethnopatriots, dunnit?
And the weird thing there is, the replacement is basically a matter of choice.
Not really. Not any more than a granny chose to be defrauded by con artists.
If you can't see the fraud and coercion going on, you aren't looking hard enough.
But Jose and Consuelo aren't forcing career women to wait to have kids till they're 42, at which point they drop $30K on fertility treatments. The career women are choosing that on their own.
Is the conversation about fertility rates, or race-replacement? They're quite distinct.
"There was a thread here not long ago where most people were swearing up and down that creativity had nothing to do with IQ, by the way, which makes Mr. Choi's comment about creativity canards kinda funny. Even funnier, I was one of the people arguing for at least considering a correlation between 'hard' artistic talent (e.g., realistic, aesthetically-appealing rendering) and IQ."
Maybe we should distinguish between SparQ--spark IQ--that is 'creative', eccentric, and innovative AND TasQ--task oriented IQ--that is useful and functional but not necessarily original.
It probably has a lot to do with personality and social/historical context; some individuals have the spark and live in interesting times that value that sparkness.
Some people are smart but well-adjusted and don't have a neurotic-creative hunger for something new and different. Also, their egos are under control; they wanna succeed in life but don't necessarily care to make a name for themselves as 'great men'. There may have been other men just as capable of being military-strategically brilliant as Alexander or Napoleon in their times, but they may have lacked the desire/passion/hunger to attain immortality that someone like Alexander and Napoleon had. Some people simply have more drive. Since their drives are often frustrated, they turn to complexes, which leads to neurosis, which leads to imagination and creativity. People are creative because they are unsatisfied with the world as it is. Reality as it is and old paradigms just don't satisfy their desire for something profoundly different and suits/satiates their huge egos.
And some highly intelligent people seem to have something extra. If most smart people are fast at figuring things out, there are other smart people with a 'spark' inside their brains that, unexpected even to themselves, make connections that other people cannot. They feel 'inspired' in their thoughts/ideas/expressions, almost as if their ideas aren't their own but channeled thru them from a higher source. I think this is especially true in music. Some very highly intelligent music critics cannot make music while some musical artists, though perhaps lacking in high critical intelligence, seem wired to some divine creative source.
The case of John Nash was interesting because he made connections that didn't really exist but were brilliant and inspired nevertheless. Maybe he should have been an artist than a scientist. Artistic genius is, after all, about making up stuff.
That spark thing goes beyond analysis. Arthur C. Clark had intended the ape in 2001 to learn about using the bone by looking at a kind of 'how-to-video' on the monolith. The skill would be gained by external use of senses: monkey see, monkey do.
But Kubrick came up with different idea. In the presence of the monolith, a 'spark' would appear within the mind of the ape, so that mysteriously, it would start seeing things in a different way. It would 'inspirededly' see patterns and ideas it had never thought of before. Clark's idea of learning/knowledge is superficial. Kubrick's idea of is internal/Platonic. It's kinda like the difference between Skinner's behavioralism and Chomsky's 'universal grammar' wired inside the brains.
"I don't see how the uncreative Asians thing is a canard. East Asians show a remarkable tendency toward groupthink and conformity. Kryptonite to innovation. Innovation has largely been the domain of mavericks. Mavericks are in relatively short supply in east Asian populations. Notice how many achievers of east Asian descent have western backgrounds."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhhWcRGRtOI
The above video--equally funny and sad--sums up what is wrong with Asian culture. The real problem in the video is not so much the foolish old man who thought he had spiritual/martial powers but all his students who played along with the delusions of the 'master'. It's a culture so obsessed with respecting the 'master' that the inferiors preferred to submit to the myth than have the guts to say, 'master, your tricks are totally baloney'. The old fool watches his power work on all of his students and devotees and gets to thinking he REALLY has some mythical power(and takes on a real MMA fighter and gets his ass whupped by reality).
Wasn't there a HUGE STORY about 10 yrs ago about some Korean scientist who supposedly cloned the first human or something like that? The most incredible thing about the story was not the fraud--which is common enough among scientists--but the CULTURE of mindless loyalty among the scientist's research aids and students. They knew his stuff was false but pretended otherwise in a kind of Confucian duty to their master. When the scandal broke, the scientist's aids were seen on the news crying and bawling in devotion to their master. Loyalty mattered more than truth.
OTOH, we have a similar kind of blind loyal thinking when it comes to Jews. We believed in the magic of Wall Street finance since, by golly, who are we to challenge or question the god-like genius and wisdom of Jews?
And when it comes to racial reality, MSM is like those students of the 'master' in the video. A willful loyalty to PC truisms.
The common understanding is that genes affect physical things (like eye color) but not mental/spiritual things (like intelligence or competence).
No. Lots (probably a majority) of Americans don't think genes determine racial differences in intelligence, but almost everyone thinks so regarding individuals. As for other character traits like competence, you're on sounder footing.
There seems to be more involved with this than merely the parroting of a communist "line." They seem afraid also that HBD is more or less an attack on their self-esteem - they construe it as determinism, and nobody except Calvinists likes determinism.
Of course people are going to be afraid. People can tolerate the thought that there exist "out there" (ie none of their friends!) other people who are "better" than them, as long as the criteria by which the determination is made remain vague, and more related to something those people have accomplished rather than something inherent about them. IQ shatters all that. A society in which someone else (particularly someone you know, particularly a "friendly rival") can feel completely justified in feeling superior to you seems horrifying.
What you'd probably end up with is -- to use your term -- something like "biological (or racial) Calvinism," in which, far from meekly "submitting" to what the facts of heredity have to say about their make-up (or group), people alter their behavior so as to give the impression that they're one of the elect.
(Speaking for myself, my response is simply to say, "Okay then, so you're better than me. And?")
Remember the public head runs wholly on myths. The American myth is that of the free spirit who can do and be anything. Any realistic negative assessment (such as "you are an 82-year-old amputee, the NBA is not for you") is either rejected angrily or admitted reluctantly and with an embarrassed lack of discussion.
That's true. But the obvious danger is that rationalization will begin to run in the opposite direction -- a great many people will simply assume that because they've never previously achieved a certain objective they never can, for genetic reasons, so why even bother trying? Is American mythology really worse than that?
Moreover, it's never really as clear cut as an 82 year old amputee and the NBA. What if this were 1986 and Spud Webb (5'7) showed up claiming he had a shot at winning the Slam Dunk contest? Wouldn't every single HBDer and his dog ridicule him to the high heavens? "But genetics, man, think genetics!!!" (That's how they'd put it. Not "height"; "genetics.")
Can't there be a happy medium between being realistic and being "too realistic"? Isn't that what a healthy society should aim to strike? Isn't that what the people we entrust with explaining the world to us should be aiming for? It's obviously ridiculous to believe that literally anyone can become literally anything. But the genetic determinists are almost as stupid in their failure to realize what impact our beliefs about earthly possibilities and our own potential have on the results we produce -- come on, a lengthy sampling of HBD-oriented commentary is hardly required before one notices the way it leans towards negativity and despair about everything.
Lots (probably a majority) of Americans don't think genes determine racial differences in intelligence, but almost everyone thinks so regarding individuals.
They might believe genes "have some effect" but it's highly doubtful that "almost everyone" believes that genes determine those differences (set them in stone). And as much people might be inclined to believe that genes "have some effect" it's even more doubtful still that they make the connection between that and "lineage" -- they may regard someone as brilliant and that he's "naturally that way," but they don't see the connection between that and who his ancestors are.
"On a related note I've read that the Chinese never practiced surgery, while Westerners have been doing it since prehistoric times. The "let it be", "resign yourself to fate" attitude seems to be deeply rooted in the East."
I'm no great apologist for the Chinese, but really...
They just didn't believe in carving up the body, unless it was execution by a thousand cuts.
They used herbs and potients instead of surgery. Acupunture shows profound understanding of the body processes and the ability to manipulate them.
In the future, most medicine (except when urgent and necessary) will be closer to this method. In some ways, all this cutting and carving is pretty barbaric IF it is possible to treat the dis-ease systemically by balancing the system. IF a cancer can be stopped with a herb concoction that puts the body chemistry back in balance, that is obviously preferable to chopping it out and not curing the cause of the affliction.
And btw, Arab medicince used preparations for anesthetic long before ether and chloroform. To this day some medical historians wonder why European doctors did not use these pain killers when they actually were aware of their existence and had even used them at different periods of European history. Perhaps a fear of killing the patient; but personally, after reading Fanny Burney's account of having her breast removed (1812) without anesthetic, I'd have preferred to die of too much anesthetic.
"Remember the public head runs wholly on myths. The American myth is that of the free spirit who can do and be anything."
It's like this. Even though most Indians were never Brahmin, they look to the Brahminic model. Even though most Japanese were never samurai, they look to the samurai model. Though most Americans were never cowboys, they look to the cowboy model.
Though judging by CITY SLICKERS, it seems like Jewish cowboys are riding us for a horse. And maybe the remake of TRUE GRIT, made by the very Jewish team of the Coens, is portent of sorts. For one thing, the pen, the camera, and computer are mighter than the gun. The Right has a lot of guns and like cowboys of old. Jews are the like cowboys of the 21st century with more advanced weapons.
None of the above, I've read about a study in which newborns
There was a similar study with infants, where their noses were pinched shut. White and black babies swat the hand away or turn their heads to get loose. Yellow babies open and breathe through their mouths instead.
>Can't there be a happy medium between being realistic and being "too realistic"? Isn't that what a healthy society should aim to strike?<
The solution is a free society in which everyone is at liberty to try to earn something unlikely at his own expense and on his own responsibility. And in which others are free to act according to their own judgment of those efforts.
Any outlier who can prove the rule should do so to his glory. The common attitude should be: try as hard as you can if you think you can make it and if you pay your dues.
But realism should be propounded without embarrassment. For example, since blacks seeking a college education are better advised to apply for smaller institutions than for Harvard, they should be so advised, openly.
A society somewhat similar to this already existed in the USA in the past and still exists anywhere there are sensible people, so my solution isn't original.
An interesting point is that the aforementioned society would be ideal from an HBD standpoint. Science lives on a rich input of fresh observations. Surprises are especial grist to thought.
>Though judging by CITY SLICKERS, it seems like Jewish cowboys are riding us for a horse.<
Jesus, what a non sequitur. (Though you're probably right.)
Because Spanish is the language of the poor and the ignorance Carlos Slim and Amancio Ortega are the first and third poorest man in the world. Here there are more than one with an anglo-inflated ego.
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