Re: Race, intelligence, and anti-racist prejudice (Was: Genetic Evolution)

Larry Olson (orion@sierra.net)
Sat, 25 Feb 95 03:55:12 GMT

gupta@mrspock.mt.att.com (Arun Gupta) wrote:

>You just gave yourself away.

Come, I conceal nothing. I'm an engineer and a software developer - I love
science, and as a consequence, I endeavour as best I can to look for what
_is_ rather than what I wish to find. It makes problem-solving faster and
infinitely more effective. I'm not expert by any stretch in psychometrics and such,
but I can analyse quantitive data just fine. The opposition wants to bury
a pretty good study (inperfect though it is) because it doesn't support
their emotional bias. It rubs. The other reason: black and latino
racists/nationalists work unsupportable race-based law to do a nasty thing
to the society. That's all over.

>I suggest you take your copy of The Bell Curve,
(and shove it? :)
>go to the appendices, and read the numbers for yourself. You will find
>exactly how much of success in life is "explained by IQ". Clue to the
>clueless : you must have read people commenting on the very tiny R^2
>values. Find out what that means.

>From regression analysis? I know what it means. You guys can work the
margins in whatever way meets your predetermined outcomes, but it doesn't
change what reasonable people will find. I'm a little surprised to see
this one even questioned. HiQs tend to create the new things that the
larger society find useful. They sell those things, and thus cash comes
their way. Is that causal enough for you? Other HiQs tend to see the
patterns and opportunities in things, and then employ people to work that.
This doesn't mean something silly such as a world full of 140s would be
happy and productive. Smart people are not more valuble as human beings,
nor is wisdom a function of intelligence, but they are more _key_ in
society, as there are fewer of them. Every kind of person is needed in a
functional society, in roles that they self-select according to their
ability (merit). This is what's wrong with egalitarianism, "equal rights",
equ-anything - It immediately turns into an assumption that all are
literaly equal in potential and then attempts to enforce it. Communists
had one kind, the racist left in this country has their kind. You don't
have to predict the result, you can see it, in every place it's done.

I've said it before, but consider that if people didn't wish to be legally
defined into racial/victim groups by government programs and laws, you
would have a simple spread of all people with differing cognitive and
physical abilities working at whatever they're best at - finding a "valued
place" for themselves in H&Ms words. The personal bigotry that puts anger
in people has been a constant as long as there have been people -it's not
fixable, and is not something you can compel others about through laws and
government- that institutionalizes it and makes them into
government-recognized official losers. Why should any person who wishes to
be seen and treated that way expect any respect from the rest of society?