This post responds to a number of post's at Marc Cooper's Blog - home of the last honest leftist.
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This post is long due to the 3 post limit, the complexity of the subject, and the fact that I've had many hours to recharge my wind bag.
Re: Churchill. His thinking is disgusting. There is a logic to it, but not a balance or even sanity, in the following sense: In a democratic country, the citizens as a whole are responsible for what the country does; hence if the country does evil, the citizens are responsible. This is a mirror image of the Doctrine of Odious Debt . Where the logic breaks down is in two places:
1) Collective punishment is usually wrong. In this case, attacking a civilian target on purpose was an extreme atrocity.
2) The "harm" we inflicted to induce this "punishment" was, according to the enemy, two things:
......2A) Having troops on Saudi soil, the soil of the sacred country entrusted with Mecca and Medina.
......2B) Defiling Allah in our culture (in Christian terms, "being sinners") - as seen mostly through our exports of media, which exaggerates the sexual characteristics of our society (a sensitivity of their sick and twisted theology) and in general how our women are perceived and to a lesser extent, our men. A
None of these is something that should bring a judgment of death on civilians in the society. If Churchill wasn't so disgusting, we could just consider him part of the tin foil crowd and ignore him. And in fact, we should, but the media won't be able to - witness this thread.
There is another factor of importance here, though... the result of campus PC'ism in getting someone like him in position in the first place. How did a jack-ass like this ever get tenure? What is wrong with the faculty at that school? Well, for one thing, they are very highly leftist.
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The Bell Curve is NOT about racial differences in IQ. Only one chapter addresses the subject. However, differences are well known, and some statistics are shocking when you look far down the right hand side of the curve (the high g side). The Bell Curve addresses a perceived trend, one with positive feedback making it more powerful, in achieving a stratified (read: class oriented) society as a result of a number of processes that cause higher IQ to be associated more and more with greater economic and political success, and to pass that status on through generations. America is great partly because few families succeed in passing on their "social status" and money for more than about 3 generations. IQ stratification goes against that positive trend.
I have not yet read the IQ comments after mine, because first I want to clear up some details that I left out about the genetic contribution to IQ. It is not 100%.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND that when a group of people is discussed, it is always in the statistical sense unless obviously otherwise. E.G. you can say that people have iris pigment in general. The fact that albinos do not does not mean the generalization is wrong, it just means it is a simplified assertion for brevity (which is in short supply in this comment, sigh).
Terminology - "q" is the term used for general intelligence ( IQ is the score result intended to measure g as accurately as possible ). The existence of g as an important factor in human cognition is solidly established. The accuracy of testing for group measurements of g is also well established, even though there are many traps by which it can be done incorrectly.
g is affected as follows (fair estimates - lots of studies around this area):
40% environment
60% genetic
Environmental impacts are clearly a factor of poverty and other issues - maternal nutrition, prenatal care, child rearing techniques - stimulation, etc. The brain is plastic in at least some skill areas for a while after birth ( 2 years? ). Hence median IQ in some Indian castes is 70-80 - very low. This could result fromgenetics tied to malnutrition, disease and maybe child rearing methods.
Notice that IQ stratification can be caused by two effects: higher IQ leads to improved environment, and also higher IQ tendencies in the offspring due to genetics.
The rest of this post will address two issues: the problem of IQ stratification (i.e. it will assume this is a problem, and that higher IQ is better - which is not a given at a societal level), and responses to whatever responses I find as I read down.
But first, Nazi references are in the lowest tradition of modern debate and are great fun for some, but this is a serious topic. There are dangers in this subject almost as great as Naziism, but that doesn't mean that asserting these facts IS equivalent to a Nazi viewpoint. Not discussing or suppressing the topic (as the PC world tries to do) increases the danger. This is a case where stereotypes, drawn from observation, can best be combatted with scientific truth.
Robert: F:There are several ways to ameliorate the potential problems of IQ stratification. Just within the US I'd list the following:
mixed marriages, which I suspect will take care of a lot of it over a long period of time;
abortion eugenics, which I would strongly oppose. Planned Parenthood was formed by a proponent of forced eugenics. Voluntary abortion eugenics for sex selection is common now in some countries (leading to a dangerous excess of horny young men - a good place to recruit terrorists or guerillas), and with advances in knowledge of the human genome, IQ predisposition selection will also be popular. This is obviously a dangerous trend.
measures to improve the environmental effects: improved maternal care, improved maternal behavior, improved nutrition.
I'm sure there are others.
Ahmed, that book actually shows East Asian, South Asian and Jewish supremacy in the g category, not white supremacy. You are way off base. Chinese and Jews in the US have the highest median IQ's, and have corresponding life success. In India, members of the Brahmin caste have 1 SD higher IQ's than the American mean (or is it median), while some other castes are below the American mean. Maybe you should read the book (of course, only one chapter deals with race, but you wouldn't know that from the reaction to it) and again, http://gnxp.com/ has lots of good discussion on this subject, although much is very technical). You will also find a number (all?) of the authors describe themselves as "brown people" meaning Arab, Persian, Indian, etc.
I will happily agree with you about O'Reilly. The guy is simply a gigantic narcissist with a rude style and a, well, relatively low g. He's an embarrassment to conservatives when we are lumped with him. He isn't a conservative - he is an O'Reilly'ist in the sense that he has no consistent ideology. He does tend to be anti-left, but mostly he is just a blow-hard. He is a counterexample to the g correlation with success, since the guy makes huge bucks and his TV ratings have to be stroking his narcissistic needs.
As a side note, the Japanese internment type of thing (or some other "safety measure") *will happen* if there are too many attacks and not enough self policing by Islamic Americans. It won't matter who is president or in Congress either, when people get frightened enough. My Arab and Iranian friends are not worried about this, but I am. If there are future attacks in the US, they probably will be carried out by ethnic Europeans (which includes white Americans) rather than the Arabs, Persians, or Pakistanis, but the masterminds will most likely be middle eastern - probably Saudi or Egyptian.
Personally, I am in favor of ethnic profiling for the detection of terrorists, and I think a person who "looks like a terrorist" in his ethnicity but is an American citizen has an affirmative civic duty to make it easier for the security people to do their job. This in spite of my prediction above. It is a price some will pay as citizens. I volunteered for and went to Vietnam. Others are dying in Afghanistan or Iraq. Others ("terrorist looking people" can suffer embarrassment and delay. Others drew the long straws and don't have an issue in this area. It is not fair and it is not equal, but it is probably necessary if megaterrorism returns to the US.
The big danger is that a major attack of certain kinds (say, suicide bombers in shopping centers all over the country, spread out randomly through a week) will cause such demands for safety by the citizenry that overly-extreme measures will be taken. This subject would itself make several good blog articles, because it is complex, counter-intuitive in that it specifically calls for unfair treatment, and controversial. I also think a related issue (National ID Cards and networked surveillance cameras of public places) is important, and you can read and reply to that here: http://snow.he.net/~ozone/BlogArchives/000141.html and here: http:/snow.he.net/~ozone/BlogArchives/000797.html
Said is worse than the quote would imply, because of the so-called "Right of Return" question. Other than that, I'll ignore that in this long post.
GMRoper - I finally get to disagree with you:-) I respect your experience and education which are superior to mine; however, there are people who trump us. Furthermore, as you know, what gets taught in this area is often censored for PC reasons. I rely on my daughter as a sanity check here, since she did study this in depth at JHU, and the studies were tied to neuroscience as opposed to pure black box observations. Importantly, the arguments apply to large numbers of people, while your anecdotes do not. That doesn't mean they are meaningless, as they show the potential dangers, but they do not defeat some of the studies (there are lots of bad studies in the area also).
While we don't know exactly what g is, we do know that it strongly correlates (and predicts) certain abilities and in general, life success (except for the somewhat higher than normal percentage of losers at Mensa, but that's a small self-selected subset of those eligible). While there are no culturally neutral tests I know of (other than evoked response potential and probably future FMRI tests), there are culturally neutral results - i.e. ways to compare across cultures. Lots of folks have worked on this for many decades (for various reasons) and their primary goal (in that academic subfield) is to refine measurement of g, to make the tests as accurate as possible. While you provide ways the tests can be misapplied, they can also be done right - when you are looking at broad statistical averages and medians.
Simple logic tied to developmental neuroscience leads one to the conclusion that differences are highly probably (as you suggested). "superiority" or "inferiority" are obviously subjective definitions, but some relatively simple criteria can be agreed on by most (except, perhaps, Marxists who would probably use different measures - but then the Russian Marxist/Leninists forced the whole USSR to use Lysenkoism until it got Khruschev fired). Criteria are typically academic achievement potential (control issues to measure this are tough, of course), life success in terms of professional accomplishment, financial achievement, etc. In this sense, success does not equate to happiness or a "good life" but it helps (although the tendency for high IQ people to suffer from psychiatric disorders - especially bipolar - is a ball and chain for some).
In our society, higher IQ is generally beneficial.
HOWEVER, high IQ does not make the individual superior - a crucial issue. Is Churchill superior because he (probably) has a one or two standard deviation high IQ. Obviously having a high IQ and borderline personality disorder simply makes one a better criminal! High IQ and a racist attitude may still allow life success, but does not connote a good person. So while g is an important human characteristic, it is not a single qualifier of "goodness" or even success. It is like having good running stamina - part genetic, part development, part regular maintenance - and no indicator if you are a "superior person" or not. BTW, my comments about Mensa are meant to show that people with medium high IQ (top 2 percentile of population) or above are NOT necessarily superior or even successful. I joined because it was a way to meet some interesting people, but fewer than I had hoped. At least it is not the ego-stroking group (here in Phoenix) that so often pollute colleges.
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Marc - you win the comeback award, although I think tim may have been paying you a complement.
Wagner - outstanding insight - are you familiar with Gresham's law of currency, because that is what you are using on ideas? Very nice! I disagree slightly with your taxpayer arguments - there are reasons for academic freedom.
Neodude - is that because you are a neonate? So far I have seen nothing but low quality trollery from you.
PJ - I hope you are right in your last two paragraphs, but I don't know how it can be achieved given the rules the academic world operates under. Maybe you can answer that here (if you haven't used up your limit) or on my overflow blog entry (see above)
And so many more interesting posts I'd love to respond to. Sigh. [control yourself, john, you blabbed too much already]
Since this is post #3 on this very difficult subject, responses directed to me for which you want answers should be posted on my overflow site at http://snow.he.net/~ozone/miscblog/"
If you want to debate about John Kerry, and it isn't appropriate for the forum you found this reference at, here's the place to do it.
I may delete highly abusive comments. I will not modify comments without first notifying the offender (via email) and the community (via comment) that the rules have changed - and only for future comments.
On Marc Cooper's blog, run by the last honest leftist in America, (who uses BOLD too much), those who wanted to dispute the WMD issue regarding the Iraqi Invasion were urged to step outside.
THIS IS OUTSIDE.
Please put your comments here and not in Marc's blog!
I said that the only assertions on Iraq and WMDs I care to make are:
1)The war was justified and legal without the existence of WMDs, and was consistent with the goals of the War on Terror Bush Doctrine. I posted those justifications on my blog to avoid clogging up this one and there's not much evidence than anyone even bothered to see them, since WMD's are still the anti's favorite way to attack the justification of the war.
2)There were terrorist quantities of WMD's in Iraq and plans to make much more once the sanctions lifted. If you were to give me one of those binary shells that was found, and an electric drill and some plastic bags, I could kill everyone in a big office building. And I'm not a chemist and have never worked with chemical weapons.
3)Bush didn't lie about WMDs and neither did Powell. They were mislead, as were the rest of the world's intelligence agencies - effectively fooled by Saddam's maskirova tactics and his past history.
Have at it! No punching below the belt.