I can think of a couple of suggestive counterfactuals. First there are any number of population studies that show a strong correlation between IQ and income.
Second, in terms of income Asians actually occupy the top of the hill in the US, earning more than every other racial group, including whites. If culture is of such critical importance then why does a group that includes many recent immigrants with a different religion, different social customs, unsure grasp of English as a primary language, etc. dominate the top spot in terms of earnings? As a personal anecdote I worked with somebody a few years ago whose father runs a daal processing facility in India. When a piece of industrial machinery broke down, idling the factory, the office manager asked his father if he had considered sacrificing a goat. And I work with somebody now who slaughters a goat every Eid.
Plus Asians are disproportionately represented among the ranks of four year and advanced degree holders--which, again, correlates with high IQ.
Surely earnings are the "economic" part of "socio-economic status". Plus Google and a lot of other tech companies are just a few decades old. What kind of institutional memory can they possibly have, other than generic startup culture which is decidedly multicultural at this point.
My point is that surely it's obvious that immigrant high earners come from a different culture than the old native variety. Do people in your social circle commonly talk about their experiences sacrificing goats? How about this: I know a guy who as a child in elementary school witnessed sanitation workers chase down, butcher and cook a dog in an adjacent parking lot. And yet that cultural background doesn't prevent them from ascending to the top tiers of the country in terms of income. That is one of the truly wondering aspects of this country: cultural differences are no impediment to joining the ranks of the upper class.
"I personally can't think of anything less important than earnings when it comes to one's placement within that hierarchy." Within reason I agree; however you need to at least occupy that portion of the economic spectrum designated as "comfortable". It is hard to imagine somebody who is homeless or living in a basement apartment in a slum being able to afford to patronize the types of bars or restaurants frequented by the right type of people. But surely the point with being comfortable is that you have to get there first. And also surely we can recognize that the country is so big and so diverse that it contains a multiplicity of hierarchies. I am sure that I can name people that I have met that I would consider famous that you have never heard of, and vice versa.
Finally, geek culture is actually stunningly diverse. Why? Because its most salient feature is that the almighty dollar conquers everything. The demographics of tech have for decades been driven by one overriding phenomenon: a short of qualified people compared to the number of jobs available. That meant that in the 1970's and 1980's it pulled in generally intelligent individuals whose sole qualification was that they handle the job: across the industry it was probably more common to have a co-worker who had majored in French or History or English Lit in college rather than CS or engineering, or one who had never gone to college at all. Starting in the 1990's it also meant importing labor from overseas, lots of labor. I can recall visiting enormous tech campuses near Boston and eating in enormous cafeterias that were 90% Indian or Chinese. Every been to Dallas? They have move houses than show exclusively Bollywood fare. Plus "Fun Asia One", the local Indian radio station that in addition to broadcasting news and entertainment items of interest to the Desi population also answered questions on green cards and H1B's. And don't even get me started on the Valley, or SoCal, or NYC.
ARGH! I can't stop replying! Sorry, but two more thoughts:
1) I have posted before about a friend of mine who has a master's in poli sci. Now of course it's not like the job market for that field is booming, but she did take a look around and in an attempt to be relevant her thesis was on international cybersecurity. I am given to understand that her advisor thought it was first rate.
But she makes a living delivering pizzas. Maybe the job market for poli sci majors isn't all that great but she has other obstacles. She comes from a working class background, obviously so. She smokes. She has tattoos. She listens to the wrong kind of music and watches the wrong kind of movies. She is a poor fit culturally. And so she delivers pizzas with six figures worth of debt. I can't help but think that if she knew how to code that I am personally familiar with any number of techies with tattoos, who smoke and listen to heavy metal.
2) You and I are in similar situations in that the majority of our co-workers are Asian. If your co-workers occupy a similar demographic niche as mine then they probably also have stories about sacrificing goats. My co-workers revealed their stories to me while shooting the breeze over a couple of beers. There was much merriment from those assembled at the table--both native and foreign born. Have your co-workers ever talked to you about the time they watched from their classroom window as some garbagemen killed and cooked up a dog in the parking lot next door? Could it be that a requirement for "cosmopolitanism" is causing them to self-censor?
In terms of Silicon Valley half the tech workers are Asian, including many, many recent immigrants. Whites are actually underrepresented relative to their share of the general population.
And one more thing I have to throw out: in terms of intergenerational economic progress Asians are not comparable to the rest of the country. Second generation Asians are far, far more likely to occupy a higher economic strata than their parents. Talk of resentful elites who have failed to ascend the SES ladder seems to me to imply the native born and the "overproduction of elites" phenomenon that Peter Turchin studies.
All the down-sides that you enumerated plus the undue burden placed on children who just aren't great at doing school. No one is good at everything - few intellectuals make good quarterbacks, and some not gifted at learning school stuff are greatly gifted in other kinds of intelligence: spatial, physical (kinesthetic), people, whatever. Whether these other kinds of intelligence are also at least partly genetic I don't know. In any event, we need to stop fixating on the intelligence (and habits of mind, e.g., self-direction, motivation, ability to focus) required to do well in school. Let's just give everyone the chance to be most fully who they are and to excel at endeavors other than STEM.
I agree with you, so much gets lost when we obsess on IQ. It's one of many human attributes and only seems like the most important b/c it's what the capitalist class rewards the most and b/c it's the most amenable to quantitaive measurements.
The idea that the brain is somehow immune to generic influence makes sense when you remember that many of these people also believe in a fundamental split between the brain/mind and the body - that’s how phrases like “girl brain” and “born in the wrong body” become part of accepted discussion. Also, anyone who’s a parent knows that kids are not blank slates - I’m a bookworm introvert mother to an artsy extrovert, and she’s been the way she is since infancy.
"...a robust understanding of the influence of the genome could lead to the abandonment of the ideal of just deserts and with it the destruction of meritocracy and capitalism."
A proper appreciation of genomics would dispense with the fiction that the intelligent have "earned" their elite economic status via hard work alone. But at the end of the day economics are based on supply and demand. Computer programmers make more money because, among other factors, it is tougher to find people who can do the work.
"...the worst parts of the right gleefully ponder the influence of the genome."
If the issue is IQ scores across the races then Asians come in at the top, followed by whites and everybody else. Are white supremacists going to be content to parade around chanting "We're number 2"?
“asians (not jungle asians) are richer, smarter, more stable, less degenerate. they are objectively better than white and black men.”
There is racial thinking and there is white supremacy. This is undoubtedly an example of the former but the latter? "White supremacy" be definition cannot postulate other races as being superior. The linked article confuses the two because on the left the first is indistinguishable from the second--ANY discussion of race is of course rooted in white supremacy.
That's just wrong on any number of levels. The trivial counterexample would be to point out that racial thinking is itself extremely common in Asia, Africa, etc.
"And for conservatives who hold up the purported Asian American success story as an example of how the American dream “still lives,” this only serves to obscure the institutional racism baked into our country’s policies."
'"White supremacy" be definition cannot postulate other races as being superior."
You're not accounting for the intellectual dishonesty of white supremacists. They can readily believe that they are somehow innately superior, while allowing for other groups to superficially appear superior in certain ways, such as IQ. That's especially true when there are just-so stories to justify why this supposed innate superiority hasn't made itself fully manifest, such as conspiracy theories about "International Jewry."
If you think that Dylann Roof, who said in his manifesto, "I have great respent [sic] for the East Asian races," isn't still a white supremacist, I don't know what to tell you.
“asians (not jungle asians) are richer, smarter, more stable, less degenerate. they are objectively better than white and black men.”
That is a pretty unequivocal statement. Not better in terms of IQ, just better. Maybe it doesn't represent the mainstream of white supremacist thinking, whatever that is, but the fault here lies with the writer in that case for including it and thinking that it somehow bolsters his case.
And do you mean "superficially" superior in terms of IQ to mean that Asians don't really have higher IQ scores? Or that the quality of intelligence isn't really what makes one race superior to another?
"And do you mean "superficially" superior in terms of IQ to mean that Asians don't really have higher IQ scores? Or that the quality of intelligence isn't really what makes one race superior to another?"
Neither one. The latter option is *almost* what I have in mind, but I'd replace "quality of intelligence" with "IQ score." Not everyone equates "IQ" with intelligence, especially if they are motivated not to do so. Given that white supremacists are not known for their intellectual honesty, I would expect them to be (*ahem*) "flexible" in their interpretation of IQ, depending on whether it makes whites look good. For example, whites having a higher average IQ than blacks would show that they are superior to them, but Asians having a higher average IQ than whites would just mean that they're book-smart or nerdy. Don't expect consistency from white supremacists.
"Maybe it doesn't represent the mainstream of white supremacist thinking, whatever that is, but the fault here lies with the writer in that case for including it and thinking that it somehow bolsters his case."
You may be right, but it's interesting to see what other replies there are to the /pol/ thread "East Asians have a higher IQ than whites" (https://archive.is/TyZMz):
"Maybe, but the [racial slur for Asians] webms prove that they have no souls."
"no sh-t
we still have bigger dicks than [racial slur for Asians], and are superior to [racial slur for those with brown skin] and n-----rs"
"Only Japan was able to build a civilization worth anything that didn't constantly fall apart without heavy western influence and direction, and even they got the majority of their scientific base from Dutch studies"
"Why is the [racial slur for Asians] unable to create anything with their high iq"
"The IQ in the West decreases for 30 years, I don't think East Asians have better genetics for intelligence"
"It's cute that you're saying that when they're doing a test devised by a white man, whit a pen invented by a white man, while dressed with clothes tailored by a white man, while cheating on their phones created by yet another white man... We own this world and the souls of everyone who live inside it shill."
"Add to that decades of jewish brain washing and degeneration and we are still superior.Asians are close and maybe peers but not the cream of the crop."
Notice a whole lot of downplaying the importance of the IQ of East Asians, while finding various ways to affirm the superiority of whites.
Actually I think most of these quotes support my argument more than yours.
"Why is the [racial slur for Asians] unable to create anything with their high iq" seems to me to be more of a denial of those IT test scores--i.e. "they can't be that smart because they haven't invented anything".
"It's cute that you're saying that when they're doing a test devised by a white man, whit a pen invented by a white man, while dressed with clothes tailored by a white man, while cheating on their phones created by yet another white man... We own this world and the souls of everyone who live inside it shill." See above.
"The IQ in the West decreases for 30 years, I don't think East Asians have better genetics for intelligence". An explicit rejection of the idea that genetics are responsible for higher IQ scores in Asian populations.
"Add to that decades of jewish brain washing and degeneration and we are still superior.Asians are close and maybe peers but not the cream of the crop." An explicit rejection of the idea that whites are second banana to Asians in terms of IQ. Environmental factors have degraded white test scores which provides a convenient explanation as to why genetics cannot favor Asian populations. Ironically that is what liberals argue when faced with lower IQ scores in the black community.
These quotes aren't downplaying the IQ of Asians, they're rejecting the thesis of higher IQ scores outright. That, it seems to me, is consistent with white supremacy. That idea that any white supremacist is going to be content to fall into the #2 position compared to another race is just ludicrous. And isn't it interesting how both they, and the political left, are eager to turn to environmental arguments as a means of discrediting the idea that genetics could be a factor?
Also, I would be as leery as Freddie is about assuming that average differences of IQ scores between various races are due to genetics rather than environments, simply because both past and present racism has meant that the environments that the various races live and grow up in are often *very* different. That's true even for so-called "model minorities" such as Asians, where IIRC, their "model" status can vary a lot based on ethnic group (e.g. Chinese vs. Vietnamese vs. Filipino).
Charles Murray himself has never argued that there is definitive proof that the difference in IQ scores is based in genetics. The science just isn't there. However it's cowardice not to examine the question of whether a genetic contribution is plausible or not.
I would not be disappointed if there is no genetic contribution. But I would not be surprised if there is.
"would be as leery as Freddie is about assuming that average differences of IQ scores between various races are due to genetics rather than environments"
Not something I believe or have said - my book very explicitly rejects this idea. I think it's environmental and likely the aggregate of innumerable small causes.
I think we're in "violent agreement" here. I said you were *leery* of assuming that racial IQ differences were genetic, not that you were in support of that!
I'm asking myself if there has *ever* been a technological breakthrough enabling human beings to increase their power over nature--including their own nature--which was morally controversial at first, and which was collectively rejected because people stuck to the belief that it was wrong.
I'm pretty sure this has never happened, at least not if the nature of the breakthrough is defined broadly enough. (The world rejected free availability of nuclear weapons, but not nuclear technology in general. There are limits on research in microbiology, but only for the kind of projects that risk unleashing a pandemic. Every banned use of technology I can think of involves consequences that are uncontroversially terrible.)
What always, always happens instead is a Nietzschean "revaluation of values", led by social elites but eventually trickling down to the rest of society. Instead of abandoning the technology, people abandon the moral principle that prohibited its use. Almost everyone has stopped believing that birth control is immoral, and once gene editing to increase an unborn child's IQ becomes a practical option for the wealthy, people will stop disapproving of that too.
Freddie didn't mention this, but it's worth noting that if you go to a sperm/egg bank, they will invariably give some basic information regarding the donor, including height, hair/eye color, and highest degree achieved. And indeed, tall, educated people have sperm/eggs which are in more demand. This is straight-up eugenics, no two ways about it. If people really thought DNA didn't matter, they should be willing to allow anyone's semen or ova into their body.
The thing I've never been able to grok is why the left has such a hard time coming up with a template for thinking about this...when disability rights are sitting right there?
I mean seriously. I know there are are a lot of wacky ends it can go down in terms of repeated invention of new terms to replace older ones deemed offensive. And of course some people (both within the community and outside of it) insist they have no disability whatsoever. But for the most part we have arrived at a consensus that people who are hearing impaired, vision impaired, mobility impaired, etc. do have genuine issues getting around society as it is constructed - issues to some extent immutable, and often there from birth (though sometimes from trauma or disease as well). The onus is on society to make accommodations to become more inclusive of their abilities - to work for everyone. In recent years this has even been extended to mental illness and addiction, with an understanding that it's not the fault of the individual suffering, asking someone to "snap out of it" is not a valid policy solution, and that the affected individual will never be "normal" (recovering alcoholics can't be expected to be causal drinkers, depression will never truly be cured, and so on).
So why can't we in this realm accept that difference exists, and yet insist this does not mean that it consigns some to an inferior life? I think part of it how deeply the poisonous ideology of meritocracy has wheedled its way into the American "left." I remember once making a statement that on average, a doctor is indeed smarter than a janitor, which then caused the individual I was talking with to jump to all sorts of conclusions (that I thought doctors should be paid more than janitors, that I thought doctors were superior people, etc.) Lots of people on the "left" believe they are so committed to the principle of tearing down hierarchies that they will reject out of hand any fact which they believe gives the ruling class a fig leaf of legitimacy. Whereas I see it similarly to you - that given it's totally beyond our control whether we end up smart or dull, it bears about as much moral sense to reward the smart (or punish the dull) as it does to force a paralyzed man to crawl up courtroom steps using their arms for want of a ramp.
I was about to bring up disability rights myself. I just watched a bunch of Paralympics and one of the categories recently reinstated is intellectually impaired. (It was banned for awhile because the Spanish basketball team cheated.)
The Paralympics use an exacting, rigorous set of criteria to categorize athletes by their disabilities to create a semblance of fairness based on ability--which may or may not be something caused by genetics. It doesn't really matter the cause. What matters is the parity of abilities.
Women have reduced fertility is my understanding. Regardless, as of 2006 there were only 29 recorded cases of someone with Down Syndrome successfully reproducing, meaning their increasing absence has a minimal effect on the gene pool (particularly when you consider the association with higher maternal age meaning it may have become more prevalent in the late 20th century).
I think few parents would abort based upon a gay gene - there simply aren't that many pro-abortion, but anti-LGBT people out there.
On the other hand, I do think it's likely that if parents had the option of selecting their child's sexuality ala carte almost no one - no matter how progressive - would willingly pick a gay child. Perhaps they'd pick bi/pan, but being gay severely cuts down on your dating options, and parents generally speaking want to maximize options for their progeny. Not to mention eventually wanting grandkids.
Yup. In my original formulation it would be genetic markers that predisposed a child to homosexuality in combination with something like low testosterone levels in the womb. The obvious fix is therapy to boost in utero testosterone levels. I agree with you that's far more likely.
This reminds me of a discussion I had online with a trans person where I noted in the future it would be likely that trans status as such wouldn't exist, as either "brain gender" or "biological gender" would be corrected before birth or at a very young age, meaning there would be no salience of identity due to being trans.
They found the idea quite horrifying - the equivalent of advocating genocide.
" almost no one - no matter how progressive - would willingly pick a gay child. "
Exactly. And if you could test early enough for a "gay gene" and not have people know about it, I think a lot of parents would abort, even if they aren't anti-LGBT. The grandkids thing is huge. Who would deliberately opt to have their family line end?
The fact that so many people abort fetuses with Down syndrome relates to why there's so much concern about this kind of genetic research -- I think there's an underlying fear that once the "dumb" genes are identified, those fetuses will be aborted. But as Freddie says, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. We on the Left should absolutely be shaping the ethical framework or we will wind up in a very cruel and dystopian place.
I think neither side of the theoretical debate (because as Freddie says people do their utmost to avoid talking about it at all) wants to grapple with the reality that as a species our technology has outstripped our moral evolution.
In a rights-based democracy, these questions go beyond "your right to own a gun vs. my right to feel safe and not threatened by tons of guns" and land squarely in "a woman's right to choose vs. a person with Down syndrome's right to exist."
Liberals don't want to have that conversation, because we're supposed to be the side with compassion. So who gets more compassion? Now this is where intersectionality becomes a big juicy tempting morsel because it pretends you can quantify questions like this.
I think this is a fair description of intersectionality as it is often practiced, but a terrible one of intersectionality the academic idea.
The point of intersectionality is that the various axes of oppression are orthogonal and can't be compared, ie that racism and sexism aren't the same thing and you can't say that one is worse than the other. But that what you can say is that the combined racism and sexism suffered by a black woman is more than the sum of the racism suffered by a black man and the sexism suffered by a black woman. That's where all those ugly portmanteau words ("misogynoir", etc) come from.
But it has definitely been abused to try to measure different oppressions against each other, which is annoying because the original concept was that this was intrinsically impossible.
On the specific case, it's really individual rights against group rights. Individual women are pregnant and can exercise their right to choose. The Down's fetus is not a person with individual rights (if you think they are, then you're probably pro-life), so there's no single individual losing out. But if, as a statistical group phenomenon, the vast majority of Down's births never happen, then Down's people as a group are ceasing to exist.
People have the right to be members of groups, but does a group itself have rights? Even to continue to exist?
Yes this is precisely the conversation that must happen. I wouldn't describe myself as pro-life because I don't think I ought to be allowed to make pregnancy decisions for other people in the majority of cases. (I don't think abortion should be a primary form of birth control.)
That being said, the group rights vs individual rights issue is exactly what's happening in current politics with the increasing demand for "equity" over equality of opportunity. There's an interesting confluence between some portion of the larger Black population and pro-life beliefs because abortion is being branded as Black genocide.
And to your question does a group have rights, even to exist? Members of minority groups (including women) have specific protections under the law, so there's a potential argument to be made that if individuals of a group all have the same specific rights, then the group itself has rights. Because if the individuals within it didn't exist, neither would the group.
To connect this to Evelyn's comment, I feel as though people are carving out a smaller and smaller domain of humanity where their dualistic, morally-inflected thinking about human behavior still applies. If you have an IQ just just below a certain threshold, you fall into a protected category of persons, whom it would be shameful to mock, insult, and exclude in showy ways, but also to whom the typical standards of behavior don't apply. If you have an IQ just above the threshold, though... Is there an insult more ubiquitous in our culture than "stupid" and its variants? The same implicit threshold reasoning divides "lazy people" from "people with ADHD". No one wants to bite the determinism bullet and admit that we are all equally products of forces beyond our control, that the same laws of physics and biology apply to someone with an IQ of 70 and an IQ of 71. Maybe we all need that kind of moral grace anyway, and not just people with obvious differences.
Well, for one thing, I don't know if any society has been well served when it treats people deterministically.
It reminds me a bit of morality and free will. Maybe free will doesn't actually exist according to philosophy or physics, but lack of free will is just not a feasible basis to build a society in which we have to hold people accountable for their decisions. And I'm pro holding people accountable to their decisions.
Maybe merit is to power as free will is to morality. Democratic societies are built on choices.
"So why can't we in this realm accept that difference exists, and yet insist this does not mean that it consigns some to an inferior life?"
I think a lot of the reason "the left" (and by that I really mean the elite, college-educated left -- not sure to what extent non-college, non-elites are part of "the left" in this context, and my assumptions on this color my ideas) struggles with this is that the left thinks of college-educated white collar workers as some kind of "ideal" both in terms of quality of life and in terms of things like making good political and moral choices. Said another way, they think everyone should aspire to be what they are, and for those who cannot reasonably get there, it's reason for pity and guilt. It's one significant reason almost all schooling is bent towards the end of a liberal education, and the idea that everyone should go to college.
Maybe I'm retrograde in my thinking here, but I'd like to bring back some version of tracking that was much more common many years ago (with far weaker "rails" keeping people "on track" to allow for much greater flexibility). That's a large, complicated task, but I think we do people no favors when we force someone who lacks the tools to be college-bound (and by tools I mean more than simply intelligence; I also mean interest, disposition, etc.) into the same learning environment, same studies, etc. as someone who does have those tools. But since we place such high value on that liberal arts college education, we find it impossible to accept "tracking" because that is "mean" somehow to those not in the college track...because we secretly do indeed feel we are better than they are, when in truth, there is no inherent "betterness" of a schoolteacher or accountant or manager or analyst over a truck driver or HVAC tech or warehouse worker. All make valuable contributions to our society; the trouble comes when we privilege one over all the others.
The "bettering" of liberals arts college educated is real, and not just in hearts and minds. Imagine if people without degrees were paid more than pittance wages, and in fact earned a living wage. We wouldn't be crapping our pants about foisting everyone into college if being a warehouse worker yielded a comfortable life.
I think that's a good point. I'm not sure what to do with it as yet, other than to say I think part of the reason these jobs earn so little is that they -- and those who do them -- have so little respect, but I'd be willing to bet there's some feedback loop here where the low wages only further reinforce the existing feeling.
I struggle within myself as to what constitutes fair wages for work, and what we "owe" people for their labor. I think we owe a living wage; but where that line is drawn is unclear to me. I've seen the $15 / hour wage often cited, but naturally this is *heavily* influenced by geography; San Francisco and NYC don't carry $15 and hour very far, but in some more rural areas in, say, North Carolina it may be enough to own a home.
Just for one example, a warehouse worker typically earns less than $15; they clock in around $12 or so (and varies roughly between $10 and $15 depending on the state). (data from here: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Warehouse-Worker-Salary)
So IMO, should we pay warehouse workers more? Yep. How much more? I'm really not sure. But based on what I hear from a lot of warehouse managers (I work for a company related to supply chain), it's *really* hard right now to hire more people, so you'd think wages should be going up.
As it happens I myself live in NC :) you’re absolutely right that cost of living varies enormously. But even in our area (the Triad), when my husband (who has a four year degree) worked as a police officer we were barley making ends meet (I eventually became a stay at home mom because the cost of childcare vs what I earned in a white collar office job wasn’t worth it. I believe he was earning about $30,000 a year. We didn’t use credit cards, we didn’t have car payments, and it was still a struggle. I’m a big fan of the child credit and other basic support measures on top of higher minimum wage precisely because of what you mentioned above.
I admit, I'm still very on the fence about this genetics-and-intelligence stuff -- I know enough to realize I need to actually sit myself down and read a lot more books before I can offer much of value. My first response was outright rejection, even a bit of moral revulsion, until I recalled the Osmium Parable:
I realized my sense of morality was based on an assumption about the world that may or may not be true. That I needed to step back and say, "okay, what is the fundamental principle at work, that I am not afraid to apply fairly and consistently whether I'm right or wrong"?
There was an implicit link between my belief in the worth of a human and their intelligence; thus, suggesting that someone was less intelligent was suggesting they were worth less than their fellow human beings. Laid bare, it's obviously absurd, and I can reject it, but it went unspoken in my mind for a long time. And most of the knee-jerk rejection of the possibility is based on the same unexamined belief in others.
I'm thinking of something Susan Sontag once said (I can't find a citation, but I think I've got it more or less correct): "Human beings do not differ at all, except in intelligence."
There's more to this than meets the eye. Obviously Sontag didn't mean that people don't differ in height, weight, age, or skin color. Her point was that differences in intelligence are the only morally significant differences: the only ones that affect a person's inherent worth.
So on the one hand she was rejecting a kind of conservative or traditionalist view, which would be that having (say) a certain skin color actually *does* increase your inherent worth. But she was also rejecting a particular type of liberal view, which I think is captured by the slogan of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: "All Lives Have Equal Value". A lot of people on the left are committed to this principle, and it requires you to believe one of two things. Either you have to believe that differences in intelligence don't affect people's inherent worth, or you have to believe that differences in intelligence don't exist.
The people Freddie is describing are trying to defend the second position, even though it's very hard to defend. I think they're forced into it by the fact that the first position is also pretty hard to defend, at least if you don't believe the Judeo-Christian narrative about equality in the sight of a creator god.
For the record, I absolutely support vaccinating African children and the other things the Gates Foundation does, but not because I think all lives have equal value. Spending half an hour at a cocktail party is enough to disprove that hypothesis, IMHO
If a bear is charging you what matters if if the guy with the rifle is a good shot, not how good his aim is. "Value" here is so subjective as to be meaningless. How smart does your average cop have to be? Yet a society without cops, or one in which they avoid doing their job, is going to be a very unpleasant place to live.
If you are a materialist, the term "value" is just a human invention anyway. Certainly more intelligent people have greater economic utility, but jumping from this to moral value is a spurious leap of logic.
IMHO everything that gives a human life inherent worth is completely unrelated to intelligence. The dull can love their children, and their beloved. The dull can suffer great pains, both physical and mental. The dull can experience great joys. My capacity for empathy for them is in no way limited because they don't read as many books as I do, or have a hard time understanding basic algebra.
When Sontag said intelligent people were worthier I'm pretty sure she wasn't talking about their economic utility. She was a completely different kind of snob: more Nietzsche than Ayn Rand.
Nietzsche himself identified this as a problem that arises from the decline of religion. In a society where almost everyone believes the Hebrew Bible is revealed truth, people can agree that all humans are "essentially" equal because even if they're not equal in any other respect, they're equal objects of God's love and that's the only thing that counts.
When you stop believing in revelation, it turns out there isn't a clear secular substitute for God's equal love. It becomes hard to see what makes people equal in moral worth despite not being equal in anything else.
I dunno. Maybe it's the residual ethics from my Catholic upbringing. Maybe it's a result of being a heavily-teased nerd growing up. Or maybe it's because I'm a vegan who avoids stepping on insects. But I've not once looked at someone and thought "You know what, I think I'm superior to them!" The idea of using myself or anyone else as a yardstick to compare individuals just doesn't even cross my mind. I am me, and they are themselves, and that is enough.
I do think it's possible though to defend the ethics of absolute equality in moral worth on the principal of the Golden Rule. I recognize that in a hierarchy of moral worth I wouldn't be at either the top or the bottom. I do not want others to be morally more worthy than myself, therefore I reject judging any as morally less worthy.
People who avoid eating meat (or stepping on bugs) for ethical reasons don't usually believe that animals have *just as much* moral worth as people. They believe animals have some, and that's enough to justify a moral response.
In theory you could construct a moral outlook for human relations that also did without the idea of equal worth, but it would go against all of Western social thought since the Enlightenment. (All respectable social thought, anyway. Plenty of people do operate without a belief in humans' equal worth, but moral philosophers hardly ever talk about them except to point out that they're obviously wrong.)
The problem is that without an objectively verifiable claim about humans being equal in some crucial way, there's no solid secular basis for liberalism, socialism, feminism or any of the other doctrines that nearly all of us (not just the left) accept in some form or other.
Nietzsche rejected all those doctrines in favor of a sort of aristocratic proto-Nazism. But even if you're sure that's the wrong solution, as most people are, I think the problem remains unsolved.
A minimum guarantee of rights is there to ward off authoritarianism. Large carve outs based on IQ or some other arbitrary criteria would fatally weaken the whole enterprise.
I'd actually argue the existence of psychopathy is a much bigger issue for equal human moral worth than stupid people. Psychologists are finally coming around to the idea that psychopathy is largely immutable (and possibly genetic) as increasingly early childhood detection and intervention has done nothing.
But - at least to me - it's much harder to treat someone who has no ethical center as a free moral agent. How do you empathize with someone with no empathy after all?
I think you have it backwards. People have an inherent tendency to like (for lack of a better term) the idea that all people are created equal. When someone came along a created a religion that tapped into that pre-existing preference, it was very popular.
Nietzsche agreed, sort of. He thought most people found Christianity attractive because it tells them they're just as good as the handful of people who are truly excellent, even though they aren't. He called that "the slave revolt in morality".
I think people are forced to defend position 2 because they are unable to consciously acknowledge that "intelligent people are worthier than others" is one of their foundational cultural beliefs. Contra your expectation, I think people will find it indefensible that moral worth scales with intelligence when they are forced to cache it out so plainly.
The Quiggin-style response is incredible because the people who offer the various versions of them are ostensibly in careers dedicated to tackling, not dismissing, thorny problems.
But Quiggin's response suggests an alternative diagnosis that makes more sense to me, which is simply ignoring the problem because of its complexity, going all in on the few things we seem to have some control over, and hoping for the best. I grew up in one of the most progressive/liberal town's in the country and I was never taught that innate differences don't exist. Rather, it seemed that people just wanted to ignore the issue and hammer as much as possible on what there was some public governance of. And that is a near universal human tendency, not reducible to a blank slate ideology
Thirty years ago Deroy Murdock argued that Social Security was inherently racist. Why? Black men do not attend college at the same rate as whites or Asians. They start their working careers much earlier as a consequence. Then they die earlier as well. The net result is that black men contribute relatively more to SS and recoup relatively less.
Talk about reforming SS, maybe by switching it over to privatized savings/retirement accounts like Singapore, and you are persona non grata for most of the country. What we choose to hammer on doesn't necessarily reflect what would do the most good so much as what we are most comfortable with. And that has tragic consequences.
Right. I didn't attempt to justify it. I'm arguing that other factors besides an ideology explain it. Maybe blank slate-y -like post hoc rationalizations are reached for sometimes, but I'm not convinced by Freddie's reasoning that the ideology drives the policies discussed.
I think that at least with some specific issues some of it is ideologically driven. There is an IQ score disparity between whites and black in this country. That is probably at least partially some of the reason behind why fewer blacks go to college comparatively. If college isn't the answer to eliminating racial income inequality then where's the value in programs like affirmative action?
AA can be/was(?) instituted to eliminate or counteract as much of the disparity in social discrimination as possible and/or to make people feel like they are doing *something* (and/or more besides). Why it continues whether or not it is 'working' is a separate issue where institutional inertia and other factors play significant roles. Sociological causes often don't align with individual reasoning.
I didn't say that ideology per se plays no role. I said that Freddie hasn't convinced me that a specific one, the "Blank Slate" ideology, is doing all the work he claims.
Affirmative action can be used elsewhere besides higher education. I'd also argue there are certain occupations (like say journalism or politics) where there's a strong argument to be made that having a workforce representative of society as a whole will help deliver better results.
I am more comfortable with the concept of AA in journalism than politics, where for me it raises the specter of special interest groups vying with one another under the assumption that everything is a zero sum game where for one tribe to thrive another must necessarily suffer. And maybe in terms of government funding that is a perfectly valid world view.
Privatized savings does not solve the problem of what to do for an individual who fails to save enough. Thet's why "social security" is called SOCIAL security: it's a socialist program. Each contributes according to ability, each receives according to need.
I actually read a right-leaning defense of pensions from the standpoint of inherent human difference once.
The argument was basically this - people vary based upon their ability to save/spend wisely, and this appears to be to a large extent immutable - it's not responsive to financial incentives. Therefore if we establish private tax-free accounts for retirement we're basically rewarding people who don't need a reward - people who would have saved anyway (this has been proven by studies in Denmark) - and punishing those who are naturally financially impaired. Pensions, in contrast, work as a great leveler because asset management is ported over to professionals who know what they are doing, which allows those who are not financially savvy to have an adequate retirement.
That's conflating the goal of forcing people to save for retirement versus providing a social safety net. Plus how is SS socialist? The entire idea is that it's universal, meaning that it is not subject to means testing. I think in a sane system Warren Buffett would get bupkis from SS (and Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, etc.) at the same time that he still has to pay into it.
I’ve seen a lot more denial about the bottom of the distribution than the top. It’s one thing to acknowledge that some kids are naturally smart, but few people are willing to talk about the limitations of kids who struggle despite interventions.
Those who say “maybe genes matter, but who cares” seem believe everyone could succeed with proper support. The existence of talented kids doesn’t threaten this vision. But if we get real about kids at the bottom, we have to acknowledge all sorts of uncomfortable truths about our current strategies.
I think that’s what people mean when they say “Well, genes matter a little, but….” They’re thinking about smart kids vs. average kids, and how the environment can shape outcomes for those who are capable of achieving. They won’t concede that kids at the bottom of the distribution face challenges that environment can’t fix.
You asked whether Quiggan is crazy. I want to take this opportunity to share some stories about a colleague from my philosophy department.
This colleague told me once that the discipline of chemistry is intrinsically white supremacist because it was started by white males. That when we teach the problem of evil to our intro students, we should say that it works against Christian theism but not against Islam, because saying it worked against Christian theism would force Christians to interrogate their privilege, but saying it worked against Islamic theism would marginalize the Muslim students. This colleague also told me that s/he thinks that everyone actually agrees with her/him about politics, they just refuse to admit it. I had another colleague who stopped her/himself because s/he said "trailblazing" and "pioneering", which were "colonialist" words. I know yet another colleague who thinks the word "jungle" is racist, at least when you use it in phrases like "it's a jungle out there".
I bring this up because these colleagues, who say these things, are very smart and successful, in many cases smarter and more successful than I am. But I don't understand how they can believe these things without having lost their minds. I'm being half-literal here. I have lost my ability to simulate these people. I don't know what's going on in their minds anymore, and it's kind of frightening, because I don't feel confident I can predict their behavior anymore.
Am I overreacting? Or is this just how people feel about me when I say that I think Jesus of Nazareth literally died and literally came back to life?
At the very least a powerful reminder that the intelligent can be just as brain washed and delusional as anybody else. What's their intrinsic value I wonder?
Have you ever seen the movie - The Invention of Lying? If not you should watch it. Long story short people are really attached to ideas that provide a comforting worldview when the alternative is disturbing. This would seem to hold true in the cases you mentioned.
I've seen it, but I really disliked it, because it equated engaging in metaphysics (plausible speculations that are not empirically grounded) with lying. Or at least that's what I recall.
Funny you should ask. After a young lifetime of belief (going on 35 years, I'd say), I no longer can say I believe Jesus literally died and literally came back to life. And in fact I do have a hard time conceptualizing the minds of people who still do. It seems such a bizarre thing to believe to me now.
It's not bizzare if the alternative is accepting that you just blink out of existence when you die. Or perhaps even scarier for some, "We really have no idea what happens. Could be nothing, could be better, could be worse, could be the same... who knows?'
Oh sure I understand it as a belief system that is in many ways comforting. It's from the standpoint of "having seen, it cannot be unseen" mentality that I see it as bizarre.
I get that. But that said, if someone asks me why I think Jesus physically rose from the dead, I'll give an argument (namely, the Bayesian one that Tim and Lydia McGrew give; see here: http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf). By contrast*, I think a lot of the people I'm talking about, who are quite used to giving arguments in other contexts, get angry when you ask them for their justification, and also don't seem to get why you think their views are unusual.
*--I realize, *lots* of Christians will get angry if you ask them to justify why they think Jesus rose from the dead, but I'm talking about academics here.
You are not over-reacting or are crazy. What you are encountering is a specific type of religion which I call "secular fundamentalism". Others also use that term.
It's essentially a fundamentalist religion but with much of the trappings of humanism/post-modernism, and now, I think we can add the identity sphere to this.
I'm not sure why you seem to think that proving the existence of a genetic component to intelligence, ability, etc. somehow destroys meritocracy. It doesn't. If anything, it confirms it. The whole point of meritocracy is that people aren't equal and that those with the most ability should rise to the top. It may sometimes be presented in a distorted way that suggests that anyone who works hard will be successful, but I don't think that's an accurate or sensible interpretation.
This is a completely separate question from asking whether meritocracy is good. In practice, it tends to be somewhat illusory, since actual merit (however one might measure it) is never the only factor in someone's success.
Destroys meritocracy in terms of destroying its legitimacy as a way of allocating economic resources.
Personally I think the legitimacy remains because while people can't decide to do more than they are capable of, they can definitely decide to do less. That's why communism didn't work. But that's a different justification than the one our system operates under today.
Societies need incentives, but there is no reason why they need to be monetary incentives.
Hell, while academics in our own economy are generally solidly upper-middle class, I think it's self-evident to say to the extent they are driven by external forces to continue to research and publish, it's much more the social credit of recognition by their peers than crass monetary rewards.
Right but on average people prefer monetary incentives as they are fungible. You can convert money into respect, things, security, appeal on the dating market, experiences, etc.
Allocating resources based on supply and demand is still valid. It doesn't matter why somebody is a brain surgeon, all that matters when it comes to compensation is that there are very few of them compared to the demand for their services.
The blank slate mindset is probably the only way you can live with yourself when everything you do for yourself and your family is premised on the fear of falling that lots of liberals have. The things you do to stave off that fear - the way you pick a partner, the way you raise your kids - don't make sense if you actually believe down to your bones in the Blank Slate. But if you don't examine what you actually believe down into your bones, just telling yourself that the blank slate is real probably drags you across the finish line.
>"Right now, the academically untalented just suffer, and we do nothing to help them. That’s wrong."
Happily, there is an organized political party in the US with significant power that is dedicated to helping the academically untalented. You might consider supporting their candidates for office as an effective action item.
Western novels have not been around very long in the scheme of things. but out of the gate the issue of marrying the wrong person was a central theme. I could name many but __Jude the Obscure__ (Hardy, 1894) comes to mind. There are genetic issues (Arabella) but not named as such and education issues. As for blank slates-- Reagan's _A Nation at Risk_ was the grandfather of NCLB and look who was in on that (David P. Gardner).
Now I'm not sure why I mention Hardy, then Gardner but if the latter read the former maybe there would not have been a blank slate.
Thomas Frank talks about this a bit in "Listen Liberal." He doesn't touch the topic of genetics, but he does point out how neo-liberals (his word, not the Twitter bastardization) like Obama, the Clintons, Larry Summers, etc like to focus on education as the solution rather than old-school solutions like labor unions or economic redistribution. They do this because it a) justifies the power of their own class (I deserve my wealth cuz I went to Harvard), b) worked for them, and c) puts the policy preferences of their upper-middle class above working class people.
In short, denying genetics allows neo-liberals to advocate their favorite policy: education. If people actually differ genetically, they may have to settle for the icky labor union and New Deal stuff.
Is there anything more absurd than protesting that black representation at the elite levels of the Oscars and Hollywood movie stars/directors/producers will somehow trickle down and help poor blacks? And yet it's just the extreme version of the argument that the way to remediate disproportionate levels of black poverty is to produce more black engineers or physicists.
Once you ask whether interventions should be targeted at blue collar workers instead of white collar professionals that raises questions about the validity of affirmative action. Talk about taking on a sacred cow.
Yeah, it confused micro with macro, I think. If I take an individual person, helping him before an engineer (if he's capable of it) will 100% improve this material life. But that can't scale. Even if everyone had a 150 IQ, that would still mean there are people with 150 IQs cleaning the floor, serving us at restaurants, caring for the sick etc.
I can think of a couple of suggestive counterfactuals. First there are any number of population studies that show a strong correlation between IQ and income.
Second, in terms of income Asians actually occupy the top of the hill in the US, earning more than every other racial group, including whites. If culture is of such critical importance then why does a group that includes many recent immigrants with a different religion, different social customs, unsure grasp of English as a primary language, etc. dominate the top spot in terms of earnings? As a personal anecdote I worked with somebody a few years ago whose father runs a daal processing facility in India. When a piece of industrial machinery broke down, idling the factory, the office manager asked his father if he had considered sacrificing a goat. And I work with somebody now who slaughters a goat every Eid.
Plus Asians are disproportionately represented among the ranks of four year and advanced degree holders--which, again, correlates with high IQ.
Surely earnings are the "economic" part of "socio-economic status". Plus Google and a lot of other tech companies are just a few decades old. What kind of institutional memory can they possibly have, other than generic startup culture which is decidedly multicultural at this point.
My point is that surely it's obvious that immigrant high earners come from a different culture than the old native variety. Do people in your social circle commonly talk about their experiences sacrificing goats? How about this: I know a guy who as a child in elementary school witnessed sanitation workers chase down, butcher and cook a dog in an adjacent parking lot. And yet that cultural background doesn't prevent them from ascending to the top tiers of the country in terms of income. That is one of the truly wondering aspects of this country: cultural differences are no impediment to joining the ranks of the upper class.
"I personally can't think of anything less important than earnings when it comes to one's placement within that hierarchy." Within reason I agree; however you need to at least occupy that portion of the economic spectrum designated as "comfortable". It is hard to imagine somebody who is homeless or living in a basement apartment in a slum being able to afford to patronize the types of bars or restaurants frequented by the right type of people. But surely the point with being comfortable is that you have to get there first. And also surely we can recognize that the country is so big and so diverse that it contains a multiplicity of hierarchies. I am sure that I can name people that I have met that I would consider famous that you have never heard of, and vice versa.
Finally, geek culture is actually stunningly diverse. Why? Because its most salient feature is that the almighty dollar conquers everything. The demographics of tech have for decades been driven by one overriding phenomenon: a short of qualified people compared to the number of jobs available. That meant that in the 1970's and 1980's it pulled in generally intelligent individuals whose sole qualification was that they handle the job: across the industry it was probably more common to have a co-worker who had majored in French or History or English Lit in college rather than CS or engineering, or one who had never gone to college at all. Starting in the 1990's it also meant importing labor from overseas, lots of labor. I can recall visiting enormous tech campuses near Boston and eating in enormous cafeterias that were 90% Indian or Chinese. Every been to Dallas? They have move houses than show exclusively Bollywood fare. Plus "Fun Asia One", the local Indian radio station that in addition to broadcasting news and entertainment items of interest to the Desi population also answered questions on green cards and H1B's. And don't even get me started on the Valley, or SoCal, or NYC.
ARGH! I can't stop replying! Sorry, but two more thoughts:
1) I have posted before about a friend of mine who has a master's in poli sci. Now of course it's not like the job market for that field is booming, but she did take a look around and in an attempt to be relevant her thesis was on international cybersecurity. I am given to understand that her advisor thought it was first rate.
But she makes a living delivering pizzas. Maybe the job market for poli sci majors isn't all that great but she has other obstacles. She comes from a working class background, obviously so. She smokes. She has tattoos. She listens to the wrong kind of music and watches the wrong kind of movies. She is a poor fit culturally. And so she delivers pizzas with six figures worth of debt. I can't help but think that if she knew how to code that I am personally familiar with any number of techies with tattoos, who smoke and listen to heavy metal.
2) You and I are in similar situations in that the majority of our co-workers are Asian. If your co-workers occupy a similar demographic niche as mine then they probably also have stories about sacrificing goats. My co-workers revealed their stories to me while shooting the breeze over a couple of beers. There was much merriment from those assembled at the table--both native and foreign born. Have your co-workers ever talked to you about the time they watched from their classroom window as some garbagemen killed and cooked up a dog in the parking lot next door? Could it be that a requirement for "cosmopolitanism" is causing them to self-censor?
In terms of Silicon Valley half the tech workers are Asian, including many, many recent immigrants. Whites are actually underrepresented relative to their share of the general population.
And one more thing I have to throw out: in terms of intergenerational economic progress Asians are not comparable to the rest of the country. Second generation Asians are far, far more likely to occupy a higher economic strata than their parents. Talk of resentful elites who have failed to ascend the SES ladder seems to me to imply the native born and the "overproduction of elites" phenomenon that Peter Turchin studies.
All the down-sides that you enumerated plus the undue burden placed on children who just aren't great at doing school. No one is good at everything - few intellectuals make good quarterbacks, and some not gifted at learning school stuff are greatly gifted in other kinds of intelligence: spatial, physical (kinesthetic), people, whatever. Whether these other kinds of intelligence are also at least partly genetic I don't know. In any event, we need to stop fixating on the intelligence (and habits of mind, e.g., self-direction, motivation, ability to focus) required to do well in school. Let's just give everyone the chance to be most fully who they are and to excel at endeavors other than STEM.
I agree with you, so much gets lost when we obsess on IQ. It's one of many human attributes and only seems like the most important b/c it's what the capitalist class rewards the most and b/c it's the most amenable to quantitaive measurements.
The idea that the brain is somehow immune to generic influence makes sense when you remember that many of these people also believe in a fundamental split between the brain/mind and the body - that’s how phrases like “girl brain” and “born in the wrong body” become part of accepted discussion. Also, anyone who’s a parent knows that kids are not blank slates - I’m a bookworm introvert mother to an artsy extrovert, and she’s been the way she is since infancy.
*genetic
"...a robust understanding of the influence of the genome could lead to the abandonment of the ideal of just deserts and with it the destruction of meritocracy and capitalism."
A proper appreciation of genomics would dispense with the fiction that the intelligent have "earned" their elite economic status via hard work alone. But at the end of the day economics are based on supply and demand. Computer programmers make more money because, among other factors, it is tougher to find people who can do the work.
"...the worst parts of the right gleefully ponder the influence of the genome."
If the issue is IQ scores across the races then Asians come in at the top, followed by whites and everybody else. Are white supremacists going to be content to parade around chanting "We're number 2"?
'Are white supremacists going to be content to parade around chanting "We're number 2"?'
Looks like they do say that sometimes: https://splinternews.com/the-alt-rights-asian-exception-is-cribbed-directly-from-1822421189
“asians (not jungle asians) are richer, smarter, more stable, less degenerate. they are objectively better than white and black men.”
There is racial thinking and there is white supremacy. This is undoubtedly an example of the former but the latter? "White supremacy" be definition cannot postulate other races as being superior. The linked article confuses the two because on the left the first is indistinguishable from the second--ANY discussion of race is of course rooted in white supremacy.
That's just wrong on any number of levels. The trivial counterexample would be to point out that racial thinking is itself extremely common in Asia, Africa, etc.
Plus this pretty much gives it away:
"And for conservatives who hold up the purported Asian American success story as an example of how the American dream “still lives,” this only serves to obscure the institutional racism baked into our country’s policies."
'"White supremacy" be definition cannot postulate other races as being superior."
You're not accounting for the intellectual dishonesty of white supremacists. They can readily believe that they are somehow innately superior, while allowing for other groups to superficially appear superior in certain ways, such as IQ. That's especially true when there are just-so stories to justify why this supposed innate superiority hasn't made itself fully manifest, such as conspiracy theories about "International Jewry."
If you think that Dylann Roof, who said in his manifesto, "I have great respent [sic] for the East Asian races," isn't still a white supremacist, I don't know what to tell you.
“asians (not jungle asians) are richer, smarter, more stable, less degenerate. they are objectively better than white and black men.”
That is a pretty unequivocal statement. Not better in terms of IQ, just better. Maybe it doesn't represent the mainstream of white supremacist thinking, whatever that is, but the fault here lies with the writer in that case for including it and thinking that it somehow bolsters his case.
And do you mean "superficially" superior in terms of IQ to mean that Asians don't really have higher IQ scores? Or that the quality of intelligence isn't really what makes one race superior to another?
"And do you mean "superficially" superior in terms of IQ to mean that Asians don't really have higher IQ scores? Or that the quality of intelligence isn't really what makes one race superior to another?"
Neither one. The latter option is *almost* what I have in mind, but I'd replace "quality of intelligence" with "IQ score." Not everyone equates "IQ" with intelligence, especially if they are motivated not to do so. Given that white supremacists are not known for their intellectual honesty, I would expect them to be (*ahem*) "flexible" in their interpretation of IQ, depending on whether it makes whites look good. For example, whites having a higher average IQ than blacks would show that they are superior to them, but Asians having a higher average IQ than whites would just mean that they're book-smart or nerdy. Don't expect consistency from white supremacists.
"Maybe it doesn't represent the mainstream of white supremacist thinking, whatever that is, but the fault here lies with the writer in that case for including it and thinking that it somehow bolsters his case."
You may be right, but it's interesting to see what other replies there are to the /pol/ thread "East Asians have a higher IQ than whites" (https://archive.is/TyZMz):
"Maybe, but the [racial slur for Asians] webms prove that they have no souls."
"no sh-t
we still have bigger dicks than [racial slur for Asians], and are superior to [racial slur for those with brown skin] and n-----rs"
"Only Japan was able to build a civilization worth anything that didn't constantly fall apart without heavy western influence and direction, and even they got the majority of their scientific base from Dutch studies"
"Why is the [racial slur for Asians] unable to create anything with their high iq"
"The IQ in the West decreases for 30 years, I don't think East Asians have better genetics for intelligence"
"It's cute that you're saying that when they're doing a test devised by a white man, whit a pen invented by a white man, while dressed with clothes tailored by a white man, while cheating on their phones created by yet another white man... We own this world and the souls of everyone who live inside it shill."
"Add to that decades of jewish brain washing and degeneration and we are still superior.Asians are close and maybe peers but not the cream of the crop."
Notice a whole lot of downplaying the importance of the IQ of East Asians, while finding various ways to affirm the superiority of whites.
Actually I think most of these quotes support my argument more than yours.
"Why is the [racial slur for Asians] unable to create anything with their high iq" seems to me to be more of a denial of those IT test scores--i.e. "they can't be that smart because they haven't invented anything".
"It's cute that you're saying that when they're doing a test devised by a white man, whit a pen invented by a white man, while dressed with clothes tailored by a white man, while cheating on their phones created by yet another white man... We own this world and the souls of everyone who live inside it shill." See above.
"The IQ in the West decreases for 30 years, I don't think East Asians have better genetics for intelligence". An explicit rejection of the idea that genetics are responsible for higher IQ scores in Asian populations.
"Add to that decades of jewish brain washing and degeneration and we are still superior.Asians are close and maybe peers but not the cream of the crop." An explicit rejection of the idea that whites are second banana to Asians in terms of IQ. Environmental factors have degraded white test scores which provides a convenient explanation as to why genetics cannot favor Asian populations. Ironically that is what liberals argue when faced with lower IQ scores in the black community.
These quotes aren't downplaying the IQ of Asians, they're rejecting the thesis of higher IQ scores outright. That, it seems to me, is consistent with white supremacy. That idea that any white supremacist is going to be content to fall into the #2 position compared to another race is just ludicrous. And isn't it interesting how both they, and the political left, are eager to turn to environmental arguments as a means of discrediting the idea that genetics could be a factor?
Also, I would be as leery as Freddie is about assuming that average differences of IQ scores between various races are due to genetics rather than environments, simply because both past and present racism has meant that the environments that the various races live and grow up in are often *very* different. That's true even for so-called "model minorities" such as Asians, where IIRC, their "model" status can vary a lot based on ethnic group (e.g. Chinese vs. Vietnamese vs. Filipino).
Charles Murray himself has never argued that there is definitive proof that the difference in IQ scores is based in genetics. The science just isn't there. However it's cowardice not to examine the question of whether a genetic contribution is plausible or not.
I would not be disappointed if there is no genetic contribution. But I would not be surprised if there is.
"would be as leery as Freddie is about assuming that average differences of IQ scores between various races are due to genetics rather than environments"
Not something I believe or have said - my book very explicitly rejects this idea. I think it's environmental and likely the aggregate of innumerable small causes.
I think we're in "violent agreement" here. I said you were *leery* of assuming that racial IQ differences were genetic, not that you were in support of that!
Oh, gotcha, my bad.
I'm asking myself if there has *ever* been a technological breakthrough enabling human beings to increase their power over nature--including their own nature--which was morally controversial at first, and which was collectively rejected because people stuck to the belief that it was wrong.
I'm pretty sure this has never happened, at least not if the nature of the breakthrough is defined broadly enough. (The world rejected free availability of nuclear weapons, but not nuclear technology in general. There are limits on research in microbiology, but only for the kind of projects that risk unleashing a pandemic. Every banned use of technology I can think of involves consequences that are uncontroversially terrible.)
What always, always happens instead is a Nietzschean "revaluation of values", led by social elites but eventually trickling down to the rest of society. Instead of abandoning the technology, people abandon the moral principle that prohibited its use. Almost everyone has stopped believing that birth control is immoral, and once gene editing to increase an unborn child's IQ becomes a practical option for the wealthy, people will stop disapproving of that too.
Freddie didn't mention this, but it's worth noting that if you go to a sperm/egg bank, they will invariably give some basic information regarding the donor, including height, hair/eye color, and highest degree achieved. And indeed, tall, educated people have sperm/eggs which are in more demand. This is straight-up eugenics, no two ways about it. If people really thought DNA didn't matter, they should be willing to allow anyone's semen or ova into their body.
The thing I've never been able to grok is why the left has such a hard time coming up with a template for thinking about this...when disability rights are sitting right there?
I mean seriously. I know there are are a lot of wacky ends it can go down in terms of repeated invention of new terms to replace older ones deemed offensive. And of course some people (both within the community and outside of it) insist they have no disability whatsoever. But for the most part we have arrived at a consensus that people who are hearing impaired, vision impaired, mobility impaired, etc. do have genuine issues getting around society as it is constructed - issues to some extent immutable, and often there from birth (though sometimes from trauma or disease as well). The onus is on society to make accommodations to become more inclusive of their abilities - to work for everyone. In recent years this has even been extended to mental illness and addiction, with an understanding that it's not the fault of the individual suffering, asking someone to "snap out of it" is not a valid policy solution, and that the affected individual will never be "normal" (recovering alcoholics can't be expected to be causal drinkers, depression will never truly be cured, and so on).
So why can't we in this realm accept that difference exists, and yet insist this does not mean that it consigns some to an inferior life? I think part of it how deeply the poisonous ideology of meritocracy has wheedled its way into the American "left." I remember once making a statement that on average, a doctor is indeed smarter than a janitor, which then caused the individual I was talking with to jump to all sorts of conclusions (that I thought doctors should be paid more than janitors, that I thought doctors were superior people, etc.) Lots of people on the "left" believe they are so committed to the principle of tearing down hierarchies that they will reject out of hand any fact which they believe gives the ruling class a fig leaf of legitimacy. Whereas I see it similarly to you - that given it's totally beyond our control whether we end up smart or dull, it bears about as much moral sense to reward the smart (or punish the dull) as it does to force a paralyzed man to crawl up courtroom steps using their arms for want of a ramp.
I was about to bring up disability rights myself. I just watched a bunch of Paralympics and one of the categories recently reinstated is intellectually impaired. (It was banned for awhile because the Spanish basketball team cheated.)
The Paralympics use an exacting, rigorous set of criteria to categorize athletes by their disabilities to create a semblance of fairness based on ability--which may or may not be something caused by genetics. It doesn't really matter the cause. What matters is the parity of abilities.
Another thing to consider: the abortion of fetuses because they have Down's syndrome. If that's not eugenics, what is? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/the-last-children-of-down-syndrome/616928/
Technically I don't think abortion of Downs' fetuses counts as eugenics because most people with Downs are sterile anyway.
Women with Down's aren't infertile; studies are being done to test whether the idea that men with Down's are infertile is valid.
Also my bad it's simply Down syndrome not Down's
Women have reduced fertility is my understanding. Regardless, as of 2006 there were only 29 recorded cases of someone with Down Syndrome successfully reproducing, meaning their increasing absence has a minimal effect on the gene pool (particularly when you consider the association with higher maternal age meaning it may have become more prevalent in the late 20th century).
Yeah, but as a hypothetical what if parents started to abort based on a gay gene?
I think few parents would abort based upon a gay gene - there simply aren't that many pro-abortion, but anti-LGBT people out there.
On the other hand, I do think it's likely that if parents had the option of selecting their child's sexuality ala carte almost no one - no matter how progressive - would willingly pick a gay child. Perhaps they'd pick bi/pan, but being gay severely cuts down on your dating options, and parents generally speaking want to maximize options for their progeny. Not to mention eventually wanting grandkids.
Yup. In my original formulation it would be genetic markers that predisposed a child to homosexuality in combination with something like low testosterone levels in the womb. The obvious fix is therapy to boost in utero testosterone levels. I agree with you that's far more likely.
This reminds me of a discussion I had online with a trans person where I noted in the future it would be likely that trans status as such wouldn't exist, as either "brain gender" or "biological gender" would be corrected before birth or at a very young age, meaning there would be no salience of identity due to being trans.
They found the idea quite horrifying - the equivalent of advocating genocide.
" almost no one - no matter how progressive - would willingly pick a gay child. "
Exactly. And if you could test early enough for a "gay gene" and not have people know about it, I think a lot of parents would abort, even if they aren't anti-LGBT. The grandkids thing is huge. Who would deliberately opt to have their family line end?
Why would having a gay kid end the family line - I'll have to look at the numbers but most of the lesbian couples I know have kids.
Hum...looks like 22% of female-female couples have children present in the home vs. 41% of male-female coupes.
The fact that so many people abort fetuses with Down syndrome relates to why there's so much concern about this kind of genetic research -- I think there's an underlying fear that once the "dumb" genes are identified, those fetuses will be aborted. But as Freddie says, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. We on the Left should absolutely be shaping the ethical framework or we will wind up in a very cruel and dystopian place.
I think neither side of the theoretical debate (because as Freddie says people do their utmost to avoid talking about it at all) wants to grapple with the reality that as a species our technology has outstripped our moral evolution.
In a rights-based democracy, these questions go beyond "your right to own a gun vs. my right to feel safe and not threatened by tons of guns" and land squarely in "a woman's right to choose vs. a person with Down syndrome's right to exist."
Liberals don't want to have that conversation, because we're supposed to be the side with compassion. So who gets more compassion? Now this is where intersectionality becomes a big juicy tempting morsel because it pretends you can quantify questions like this.
I think this is a fair description of intersectionality as it is often practiced, but a terrible one of intersectionality the academic idea.
The point of intersectionality is that the various axes of oppression are orthogonal and can't be compared, ie that racism and sexism aren't the same thing and you can't say that one is worse than the other. But that what you can say is that the combined racism and sexism suffered by a black woman is more than the sum of the racism suffered by a black man and the sexism suffered by a black woman. That's where all those ugly portmanteau words ("misogynoir", etc) come from.
But it has definitely been abused to try to measure different oppressions against each other, which is annoying because the original concept was that this was intrinsically impossible.
On the specific case, it's really individual rights against group rights. Individual women are pregnant and can exercise their right to choose. The Down's fetus is not a person with individual rights (if you think they are, then you're probably pro-life), so there's no single individual losing out. But if, as a statistical group phenomenon, the vast majority of Down's births never happen, then Down's people as a group are ceasing to exist.
People have the right to be members of groups, but does a group itself have rights? Even to continue to exist?
Yes this is precisely the conversation that must happen. I wouldn't describe myself as pro-life because I don't think I ought to be allowed to make pregnancy decisions for other people in the majority of cases. (I don't think abortion should be a primary form of birth control.)
That being said, the group rights vs individual rights issue is exactly what's happening in current politics with the increasing demand for "equity" over equality of opportunity. There's an interesting confluence between some portion of the larger Black population and pro-life beliefs because abortion is being branded as Black genocide.
And to your question does a group have rights, even to exist? Members of minority groups (including women) have specific protections under the law, so there's a potential argument to be made that if individuals of a group all have the same specific rights, then the group itself has rights. Because if the individuals within it didn't exist, neither would the group.
To connect this to Evelyn's comment, I feel as though people are carving out a smaller and smaller domain of humanity where their dualistic, morally-inflected thinking about human behavior still applies. If you have an IQ just just below a certain threshold, you fall into a protected category of persons, whom it would be shameful to mock, insult, and exclude in showy ways, but also to whom the typical standards of behavior don't apply. If you have an IQ just above the threshold, though... Is there an insult more ubiquitous in our culture than "stupid" and its variants? The same implicit threshold reasoning divides "lazy people" from "people with ADHD". No one wants to bite the determinism bullet and admit that we are all equally products of forces beyond our control, that the same laws of physics and biology apply to someone with an IQ of 70 and an IQ of 71. Maybe we all need that kind of moral grace anyway, and not just people with obvious differences.
Well, for one thing, I don't know if any society has been well served when it treats people deterministically.
It reminds me a bit of morality and free will. Maybe free will doesn't actually exist according to philosophy or physics, but lack of free will is just not a feasible basis to build a society in which we have to hold people accountable for their decisions. And I'm pro holding people accountable to their decisions.
Maybe merit is to power as free will is to morality. Democratic societies are built on choices.
"So why can't we in this realm accept that difference exists, and yet insist this does not mean that it consigns some to an inferior life?"
I think a lot of the reason "the left" (and by that I really mean the elite, college-educated left -- not sure to what extent non-college, non-elites are part of "the left" in this context, and my assumptions on this color my ideas) struggles with this is that the left thinks of college-educated white collar workers as some kind of "ideal" both in terms of quality of life and in terms of things like making good political and moral choices. Said another way, they think everyone should aspire to be what they are, and for those who cannot reasonably get there, it's reason for pity and guilt. It's one significant reason almost all schooling is bent towards the end of a liberal education, and the idea that everyone should go to college.
Maybe I'm retrograde in my thinking here, but I'd like to bring back some version of tracking that was much more common many years ago (with far weaker "rails" keeping people "on track" to allow for much greater flexibility). That's a large, complicated task, but I think we do people no favors when we force someone who lacks the tools to be college-bound (and by tools I mean more than simply intelligence; I also mean interest, disposition, etc.) into the same learning environment, same studies, etc. as someone who does have those tools. But since we place such high value on that liberal arts college education, we find it impossible to accept "tracking" because that is "mean" somehow to those not in the college track...because we secretly do indeed feel we are better than they are, when in truth, there is no inherent "betterness" of a schoolteacher or accountant or manager or analyst over a truck driver or HVAC tech or warehouse worker. All make valuable contributions to our society; the trouble comes when we privilege one over all the others.
The "bettering" of liberals arts college educated is real, and not just in hearts and minds. Imagine if people without degrees were paid more than pittance wages, and in fact earned a living wage. We wouldn't be crapping our pants about foisting everyone into college if being a warehouse worker yielded a comfortable life.
I think that's a good point. I'm not sure what to do with it as yet, other than to say I think part of the reason these jobs earn so little is that they -- and those who do them -- have so little respect, but I'd be willing to bet there's some feedback loop here where the low wages only further reinforce the existing feeling.
I struggle within myself as to what constitutes fair wages for work, and what we "owe" people for their labor. I think we owe a living wage; but where that line is drawn is unclear to me. I've seen the $15 / hour wage often cited, but naturally this is *heavily* influenced by geography; San Francisco and NYC don't carry $15 and hour very far, but in some more rural areas in, say, North Carolina it may be enough to own a home.
Just for one example, a warehouse worker typically earns less than $15; they clock in around $12 or so (and varies roughly between $10 and $15 depending on the state). (data from here: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Warehouse-Worker-Salary)
So IMO, should we pay warehouse workers more? Yep. How much more? I'm really not sure. But based on what I hear from a lot of warehouse managers (I work for a company related to supply chain), it's *really* hard right now to hire more people, so you'd think wages should be going up.
As it happens I myself live in NC :) you’re absolutely right that cost of living varies enormously. But even in our area (the Triad), when my husband (who has a four year degree) worked as a police officer we were barley making ends meet (I eventually became a stay at home mom because the cost of childcare vs what I earned in a white collar office job wasn’t worth it. I believe he was earning about $30,000 a year. We didn’t use credit cards, we didn’t have car payments, and it was still a struggle. I’m a big fan of the child credit and other basic support measures on top of higher minimum wage precisely because of what you mentioned above.
I admit, I'm still very on the fence about this genetics-and-intelligence stuff -- I know enough to realize I need to actually sit myself down and read a lot more books before I can offer much of value. My first response was outright rejection, even a bit of moral revulsion, until I recalled the Osmium Parable:
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/belief-identity-bias-and-the-osmium-264
I realized my sense of morality was based on an assumption about the world that may or may not be true. That I needed to step back and say, "okay, what is the fundamental principle at work, that I am not afraid to apply fairly and consistently whether I'm right or wrong"?
There was an implicit link between my belief in the worth of a human and their intelligence; thus, suggesting that someone was less intelligent was suggesting they were worth less than their fellow human beings. Laid bare, it's obviously absurd, and I can reject it, but it went unspoken in my mind for a long time. And most of the knee-jerk rejection of the possibility is based on the same unexamined belief in others.
I'm thinking of something Susan Sontag once said (I can't find a citation, but I think I've got it more or less correct): "Human beings do not differ at all, except in intelligence."
There's more to this than meets the eye. Obviously Sontag didn't mean that people don't differ in height, weight, age, or skin color. Her point was that differences in intelligence are the only morally significant differences: the only ones that affect a person's inherent worth.
So on the one hand she was rejecting a kind of conservative or traditionalist view, which would be that having (say) a certain skin color actually *does* increase your inherent worth. But she was also rejecting a particular type of liberal view, which I think is captured by the slogan of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: "All Lives Have Equal Value". A lot of people on the left are committed to this principle, and it requires you to believe one of two things. Either you have to believe that differences in intelligence don't affect people's inherent worth, or you have to believe that differences in intelligence don't exist.
The people Freddie is describing are trying to defend the second position, even though it's very hard to defend. I think they're forced into it by the fact that the first position is also pretty hard to defend, at least if you don't believe the Judeo-Christian narrative about equality in the sight of a creator god.
For the record, I absolutely support vaccinating African children and the other things the Gates Foundation does, but not because I think all lives have equal value. Spending half an hour at a cocktail party is enough to disprove that hypothesis, IMHO
If a bear is charging you what matters if if the guy with the rifle is a good shot, not how good his aim is. "Value" here is so subjective as to be meaningless. How smart does your average cop have to be? Yet a society without cops, or one in which they avoid doing their job, is going to be a very unpleasant place to live.
If you are a materialist, the term "value" is just a human invention anyway. Certainly more intelligent people have greater economic utility, but jumping from this to moral value is a spurious leap of logic.
IMHO everything that gives a human life inherent worth is completely unrelated to intelligence. The dull can love their children, and their beloved. The dull can suffer great pains, both physical and mental. The dull can experience great joys. My capacity for empathy for them is in no way limited because they don't read as many books as I do, or have a hard time understanding basic algebra.
When Sontag said intelligent people were worthier I'm pretty sure she wasn't talking about their economic utility. She was a completely different kind of snob: more Nietzsche than Ayn Rand.
Nietzsche himself identified this as a problem that arises from the decline of religion. In a society where almost everyone believes the Hebrew Bible is revealed truth, people can agree that all humans are "essentially" equal because even if they're not equal in any other respect, they're equal objects of God's love and that's the only thing that counts.
When you stop believing in revelation, it turns out there isn't a clear secular substitute for God's equal love. It becomes hard to see what makes people equal in moral worth despite not being equal in anything else.
I dunno. Maybe it's the residual ethics from my Catholic upbringing. Maybe it's a result of being a heavily-teased nerd growing up. Or maybe it's because I'm a vegan who avoids stepping on insects. But I've not once looked at someone and thought "You know what, I think I'm superior to them!" The idea of using myself or anyone else as a yardstick to compare individuals just doesn't even cross my mind. I am me, and they are themselves, and that is enough.
I do think it's possible though to defend the ethics of absolute equality in moral worth on the principal of the Golden Rule. I recognize that in a hierarchy of moral worth I wouldn't be at either the top or the bottom. I do not want others to be morally more worthy than myself, therefore I reject judging any as morally less worthy.
People who avoid eating meat (or stepping on bugs) for ethical reasons don't usually believe that animals have *just as much* moral worth as people. They believe animals have some, and that's enough to justify a moral response.
In theory you could construct a moral outlook for human relations that also did without the idea of equal worth, but it would go against all of Western social thought since the Enlightenment. (All respectable social thought, anyway. Plenty of people do operate without a belief in humans' equal worth, but moral philosophers hardly ever talk about them except to point out that they're obviously wrong.)
The problem is that without an objectively verifiable claim about humans being equal in some crucial way, there's no solid secular basis for liberalism, socialism, feminism or any of the other doctrines that nearly all of us (not just the left) accept in some form or other.
Nietzsche rejected all those doctrines in favor of a sort of aristocratic proto-Nazism. But even if you're sure that's the wrong solution, as most people are, I think the problem remains unsolved.
A minimum guarantee of rights is there to ward off authoritarianism. Large carve outs based on IQ or some other arbitrary criteria would fatally weaken the whole enterprise.
I'd actually argue the existence of psychopathy is a much bigger issue for equal human moral worth than stupid people. Psychologists are finally coming around to the idea that psychopathy is largely immutable (and possibly genetic) as increasingly early childhood detection and intervention has done nothing.
But - at least to me - it's much harder to treat someone who has no ethical center as a free moral agent. How do you empathize with someone with no empathy after all?
I think you have it backwards. People have an inherent tendency to like (for lack of a better term) the idea that all people are created equal. When someone came along a created a religion that tapped into that pre-existing preference, it was very popular.
Nietzsche agreed, sort of. He thought most people found Christianity attractive because it tells them they're just as good as the handful of people who are truly excellent, even though they aren't. He called that "the slave revolt in morality".
I think people are forced to defend position 2 because they are unable to consciously acknowledge that "intelligent people are worthier than others" is one of their foundational cultural beliefs. Contra your expectation, I think people will find it indefensible that moral worth scales with intelligence when they are forced to cache it out so plainly.
I really appreciate your transparency and good faith grappling -- we need everyone to do this!
The Quiggin-style response is incredible because the people who offer the various versions of them are ostensibly in careers dedicated to tackling, not dismissing, thorny problems.
But Quiggin's response suggests an alternative diagnosis that makes more sense to me, which is simply ignoring the problem because of its complexity, going all in on the few things we seem to have some control over, and hoping for the best. I grew up in one of the most progressive/liberal town's in the country and I was never taught that innate differences don't exist. Rather, it seemed that people just wanted to ignore the issue and hammer as much as possible on what there was some public governance of. And that is a near universal human tendency, not reducible to a blank slate ideology
Thirty years ago Deroy Murdock argued that Social Security was inherently racist. Why? Black men do not attend college at the same rate as whites or Asians. They start their working careers much earlier as a consequence. Then they die earlier as well. The net result is that black men contribute relatively more to SS and recoup relatively less.
Talk about reforming SS, maybe by switching it over to privatized savings/retirement accounts like Singapore, and you are persona non grata for most of the country. What we choose to hammer on doesn't necessarily reflect what would do the most good so much as what we are most comfortable with. And that has tragic consequences.
Right. I didn't attempt to justify it. I'm arguing that other factors besides an ideology explain it. Maybe blank slate-y -like post hoc rationalizations are reached for sometimes, but I'm not convinced by Freddie's reasoning that the ideology drives the policies discussed.
I think that at least with some specific issues some of it is ideologically driven. There is an IQ score disparity between whites and black in this country. That is probably at least partially some of the reason behind why fewer blacks go to college comparatively. If college isn't the answer to eliminating racial income inequality then where's the value in programs like affirmative action?
AA can be/was(?) instituted to eliminate or counteract as much of the disparity in social discrimination as possible and/or to make people feel like they are doing *something* (and/or more besides). Why it continues whether or not it is 'working' is a separate issue where institutional inertia and other factors play significant roles. Sociological causes often don't align with individual reasoning.
I didn't say that ideology per se plays no role. I said that Freddie hasn't convinced me that a specific one, the "Blank Slate" ideology, is doing all the work he claims.
Affirmative action can be used elsewhere besides higher education. I'd also argue there are certain occupations (like say journalism or politics) where there's a strong argument to be made that having a workforce representative of society as a whole will help deliver better results.
I am more comfortable with the concept of AA in journalism than politics, where for me it raises the specter of special interest groups vying with one another under the assumption that everything is a zero sum game where for one tribe to thrive another must necessarily suffer. And maybe in terms of government funding that is a perfectly valid world view.
Privatized savings does not solve the problem of what to do for an individual who fails to save enough. Thet's why "social security" is called SOCIAL security: it's a socialist program. Each contributes according to ability, each receives according to need.
I actually read a right-leaning defense of pensions from the standpoint of inherent human difference once.
The argument was basically this - people vary based upon their ability to save/spend wisely, and this appears to be to a large extent immutable - it's not responsive to financial incentives. Therefore if we establish private tax-free accounts for retirement we're basically rewarding people who don't need a reward - people who would have saved anyway (this has been proven by studies in Denmark) - and punishing those who are naturally financially impaired. Pensions, in contrast, work as a great leveler because asset management is ported over to professionals who know what they are doing, which allows those who are not financially savvy to have an adequate retirement.
That's conflating the goal of forcing people to save for retirement versus providing a social safety net. Plus how is SS socialist? The entire idea is that it's universal, meaning that it is not subject to means testing. I think in a sane system Warren Buffett would get bupkis from SS (and Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, etc.) at the same time that he still has to pay into it.
And for the specific scenario Deroy Murdock described how is SS not regressive?
I’ve seen a lot more denial about the bottom of the distribution than the top. It’s one thing to acknowledge that some kids are naturally smart, but few people are willing to talk about the limitations of kids who struggle despite interventions.
Those who say “maybe genes matter, but who cares” seem believe everyone could succeed with proper support. The existence of talented kids doesn’t threaten this vision. But if we get real about kids at the bottom, we have to acknowledge all sorts of uncomfortable truths about our current strategies.
I think that’s what people mean when they say “Well, genes matter a little, but….” They’re thinking about smart kids vs. average kids, and how the environment can shape outcomes for those who are capable of achieving. They won’t concede that kids at the bottom of the distribution face challenges that environment can’t fix.
You asked whether Quiggan is crazy. I want to take this opportunity to share some stories about a colleague from my philosophy department.
This colleague told me once that the discipline of chemistry is intrinsically white supremacist because it was started by white males. That when we teach the problem of evil to our intro students, we should say that it works against Christian theism but not against Islam, because saying it worked against Christian theism would force Christians to interrogate their privilege, but saying it worked against Islamic theism would marginalize the Muslim students. This colleague also told me that s/he thinks that everyone actually agrees with her/him about politics, they just refuse to admit it. I had another colleague who stopped her/himself because s/he said "trailblazing" and "pioneering", which were "colonialist" words. I know yet another colleague who thinks the word "jungle" is racist, at least when you use it in phrases like "it's a jungle out there".
I bring this up because these colleagues, who say these things, are very smart and successful, in many cases smarter and more successful than I am. But I don't understand how they can believe these things without having lost their minds. I'm being half-literal here. I have lost my ability to simulate these people. I don't know what's going on in their minds anymore, and it's kind of frightening, because I don't feel confident I can predict their behavior anymore.
Am I overreacting? Or is this just how people feel about me when I say that I think Jesus of Nazareth literally died and literally came back to life?
At the very least a powerful reminder that the intelligent can be just as brain washed and delusional as anybody else. What's their intrinsic value I wonder?
lol
Have you ever seen the movie - The Invention of Lying? If not you should watch it. Long story short people are really attached to ideas that provide a comforting worldview when the alternative is disturbing. This would seem to hold true in the cases you mentioned.
I've seen it, but I really disliked it, because it equated engaging in metaphysics (plausible speculations that are not empirically grounded) with lying. Or at least that's what I recall.
Funny you should ask. After a young lifetime of belief (going on 35 years, I'd say), I no longer can say I believe Jesus literally died and literally came back to life. And in fact I do have a hard time conceptualizing the minds of people who still do. It seems such a bizarre thing to believe to me now.
It's not bizzare if the alternative is accepting that you just blink out of existence when you die. Or perhaps even scarier for some, "We really have no idea what happens. Could be nothing, could be better, could be worse, could be the same... who knows?'
Oh sure I understand it as a belief system that is in many ways comforting. It's from the standpoint of "having seen, it cannot be unseen" mentality that I see it as bizarre.
I get that. But that said, if someone asks me why I think Jesus physically rose from the dead, I'll give an argument (namely, the Bayesian one that Tim and Lydia McGrew give; see here: http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf). By contrast*, I think a lot of the people I'm talking about, who are quite used to giving arguments in other contexts, get angry when you ask them for their justification, and also don't seem to get why you think their views are unusual.
*--I realize, *lots* of Christians will get angry if you ask them to justify why they think Jesus rose from the dead, but I'm talking about academics here.
Yes ok good point. I retract my accusation.
Did you accuse me of anything? If you did, I didn't notice it!
I could get to like this practice of quiet accusations. Much less stressful.
Haha It was a veiled, implied accusation of bizarre thinking.
You are not over-reacting or are crazy. What you are encountering is a specific type of religion which I call "secular fundamentalism". Others also use that term.
It's essentially a fundamentalist religion but with much of the trappings of humanism/post-modernism, and now, I think we can add the identity sphere to this.
I'm not sure why you seem to think that proving the existence of a genetic component to intelligence, ability, etc. somehow destroys meritocracy. It doesn't. If anything, it confirms it. The whole point of meritocracy is that people aren't equal and that those with the most ability should rise to the top. It may sometimes be presented in a distorted way that suggests that anyone who works hard will be successful, but I don't think that's an accurate or sensible interpretation.
This is a completely separate question from asking whether meritocracy is good. In practice, it tends to be somewhat illusory, since actual merit (however one might measure it) is never the only factor in someone's success.
Destroys meritocracy in terms of destroying its legitimacy as a way of allocating economic resources.
Personally I think the legitimacy remains because while people can't decide to do more than they are capable of, they can definitely decide to do less. That's why communism didn't work. But that's a different justification than the one our system operates under today.
Societies need incentives, but there is no reason why they need to be monetary incentives.
Hell, while academics in our own economy are generally solidly upper-middle class, I think it's self-evident to say to the extent they are driven by external forces to continue to research and publish, it's much more the social credit of recognition by their peers than crass monetary rewards.
Right but on average people prefer monetary incentives as they are fungible. You can convert money into respect, things, security, appeal on the dating market, experiences, etc.
You’ve just nailed down why a communist society will likely not use money
Allocating resources based on supply and demand is still valid. It doesn't matter why somebody is a brain surgeon, all that matters when it comes to compensation is that there are very few of them compared to the demand for their services.
"they can definitely decide to do less" haha! Never thought of it in those terms before. I like it.
I for one appreciate your re-use of the term "denialists."
The blank slate mindset is probably the only way you can live with yourself when everything you do for yourself and your family is premised on the fear of falling that lots of liberals have. The things you do to stave off that fear - the way you pick a partner, the way you raise your kids - don't make sense if you actually believe down to your bones in the Blank Slate. But if you don't examine what you actually believe down into your bones, just telling yourself that the blank slate is real probably drags you across the finish line.
>"Right now, the academically untalented just suffer, and we do nothing to help them. That’s wrong."
Happily, there is an organized political party in the US with significant power that is dedicated to helping the academically untalented. You might consider supporting their candidates for office as an effective action item.
https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/
Western novels have not been around very long in the scheme of things. but out of the gate the issue of marrying the wrong person was a central theme. I could name many but __Jude the Obscure__ (Hardy, 1894) comes to mind. There are genetic issues (Arabella) but not named as such and education issues. As for blank slates-- Reagan's _A Nation at Risk_ was the grandfather of NCLB and look who was in on that (David P. Gardner).
Now I'm not sure why I mention Hardy, then Gardner but if the latter read the former maybe there would not have been a blank slate.
Thomas Frank talks about this a bit in "Listen Liberal." He doesn't touch the topic of genetics, but he does point out how neo-liberals (his word, not the Twitter bastardization) like Obama, the Clintons, Larry Summers, etc like to focus on education as the solution rather than old-school solutions like labor unions or economic redistribution. They do this because it a) justifies the power of their own class (I deserve my wealth cuz I went to Harvard), b) worked for them, and c) puts the policy preferences of their upper-middle class above working class people.
In short, denying genetics allows neo-liberals to advocate their favorite policy: education. If people actually differ genetically, they may have to settle for the icky labor union and New Deal stuff.
Is there anything more absurd than protesting that black representation at the elite levels of the Oscars and Hollywood movie stars/directors/producers will somehow trickle down and help poor blacks? And yet it's just the extreme version of the argument that the way to remediate disproportionate levels of black poverty is to produce more black engineers or physicists.
Once you ask whether interventions should be targeted at blue collar workers instead of white collar professionals that raises questions about the validity of affirmative action. Talk about taking on a sacred cow.
Yeah, it confused micro with macro, I think. If I take an individual person, helping him before an engineer (if he's capable of it) will 100% improve this material life. But that can't scale. Even if everyone had a 150 IQ, that would still mean there are people with 150 IQs cleaning the floor, serving us at restaurants, caring for the sick etc.