Nathan Cofnas wrote a paper [ Science is not always “Self-Correcting” ] on how various scientists and philosophers choose or reject scientific theories about human intelligence. Not just quietly avoiding truths they don’t like, but explicitly saying that everyone should do so. Reminds me of a New Mexico politician [ Patricia Madrid] that filed charges against guys that had bribed two state treasurers, but had been given immunity in return for their testimony by the Feds. Not a proven thief, last I checked – but a principled proponent of theft. Probably a paid spokesman for the Thieves’ Guild. I voted for her, by the way, when she ran for this Congressional seat.
Let us name some names. Jared Diamond, Howard Gardner, Philip Kitcher, Ned Block and Gerald Dworkin, Noam Chomsky, Robert Sternberg, Eric Turkheimer, Richard Lewontin. And not forgetting to speak ill of the dead, Steven J. Gould and Leon Kamin.
A number of these guys clearly believe that there are racial differences in average intelligence that need to be hidden. For example, Howard Gardner (2001) writes that he does “not condone investigations of racial differences in intelligence, because [he] think[s] that the results of these studies are likely to be incendiary.” Well, if it was shown that no such differences existed, that would hardly be incendiary. Surprising, maybe, but not obviously incendiary. Or if we found that people in New Guinea mentally towered over everyone else [The Masters of the Future], that would apparently be just fine. Clearly, Gardner believe that such differences likely exist, differences large enough to matter, and that their pattern is not one that people at Harvard would be happy to see. So why haven’t they fired him? There are those that suspect his work in general is probably not correct – in fact, Gardner himself seems to suspect this. ” [E]ven if at the end of the day, the bad guys [such as Jensen, who emphasize the importance of g,] turn out to be more correct scientifically than I am, life is short, and we have to make choices about how we spend our time. And that’s where I think the multiple intelligences way of thinking about things will continue to be useful even if the scientific evidence doesn’t support it.”
Eric Turkheimer seems to think that the possibility of racial IQ differences is refuted by an “ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the
genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair”. That’s an odd argument. Does it work with Downs and Fragile X? I doubt if he has ever used it for any other issue. Should I use it to deny the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction, or smallpox epidemics, or asteroid strikes? If he thought that there just weren’t any such differences, he wouldn’t need special new ‘logical’ principles to prevent them from existing – would he?
Philip Kitcher advocates raising the bar for evidence supporting theories he doesn’t like. I’ve talked about this [The Veeck effect]. Why do you think he makes this argument? If populations really were effectively the same in IQ, there would be lots of easily observable evidence for it. No way to prove exact equality, but it wouldn’t be hard to show that group A and B were close. But nobody does, because nobody can. If this were true, it would show up in a genetic admixture study: so nobody will do one.
You would not see anything like the patterns we actually experience – you wouldn’t see a single family ( like the Bernoullis or Braggs or Bohrs) be competitive with a whole race at at the highest intellectual level. You do see that in running – girls from a single town in Ethiopia can beat every female in China – but that’s not equality.
Only a few of these people are old-fashioned, deep-fried Marxists – Gould was and Lewontin is. Of course Marxists lie: they believe in it. And they have to, because reality hasn’t been all that favorable to their cause. The future of Marxism is in VR.
So what must be done? If a researcher is a liar and isn’t particularly interesting, sure, fire him. That probably applies to nearly everyone on this list. But sometimes the liar is also a genius: what then? What about Haldane?
West Hunter 
“Jared Diamond, Howard Gardner, Philip Kitcher, Ned Block and Gerald Dworkin, Noam Chomsky, Robert Sternberg, Eric Turkheimer, Richard Lewontin…. Steven J. Gould and Leon Kamin”
I believe Kitcher isn’t Jewish, but there is certainly quite a pattern there.
Cofnas mentioned Daniel Dennett, but I have the impression that he may have misunderstood something Dennett said. Wasn’t clear to me.
I quoted Dennett saying: “If I encountered people conveying a message I thought was so dangerous that I could not risk giving it a fair hearing, I would be at least strongly tempted to misrepresent it, to caricature it for the public good. I’d want to make up some good epithets, such as genetic determinist or reductionist or Darwinian Fundamentalist, and then flail those straw men as hard as I could. As the saying goes, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Some people thought I was claiming that Dennett was talking about intelligence research here and saying that intelligence research is dangerous (he wasn’t). My point was that he endorses the principle that if a scientific theory is dangerous enough, it can be appropriate to attack it for nonscientific reasons for the public good. (He has endorsed this idea in at least two places.) I then note that he dismisses the theory that Europeans are more intelligent than Papua New Guineans as an “awful racist hypothesis,” yet he treats Jared Diamond’s environmentalist theory with kid gloves. (Actually Diamond says that New Guineans are innately more intelligent than Europeans.) Since Dennett rejects the hereditarian theory of intelligence differences a priori by smearing it as evil, it seems reasonable to suppose that he is following his attack-dangerous-theories principle.
If someone came up with a simple way of turning cans of beer into multi-megaton fusion bombs, I guess I’d do my level best to suppress that info. So would you, I think.
I suppose I should read what Dennett said, to make sure I understand where he’s coming from. Maybe. He never sounded very interesting, to me. I could say that about nearly everyone on that list of yours.
I can think of a few people you might want to add, by the way, like Ashley Montagu.
If I added another Jew to the list people might think I’m an anti-Semite.
Zing. But he was fairly prominent on such issues. Totally full of shit, of course.
By the way, it is not the case that Jews ( In the US, anyhow) have had politics similar to non-Jews with similar IQs. Definitely not at the fringe: I remember my old boss ( also Jewish) talking about the kids growing up in the co-ops in New York, singing Red Army songs. But not true in general.
Has anyone controlled for location? I mean, you wouldn’t expect equal-IQ populations to have similar politics if one group was in New York City and one was in the Midwest or the South. Or at least I wouldn’t.
Blacks in New York City vote 95% for the Democratic Party, but in say, rural Alabama – blacks vote 95% for the Democratic Party.
It does not appear to be the case that elevated IQ as measured by the usual means prevents some groups of people from being utterly illogical in their political beliefs, to the point of being self-destructive . Andrew Gelman who is a capable statistician, despite his chosen area of activity of political “science”, would be one example. Chicoms, perhaps not rulers but ordinary folks, would be another.
It seems that IQ measured skills are completely divorced from whatever determines religious/political views. Maybe they are all lying, but I find it hard to believe being personally acquainted with some of the zealots — they are true believers, especially young people.
This is a massively incomplete list. The humanities are dominated by race denialists, and in philosophy these include prominent people (who don’t deserve prominence) like Kate Manne and Sally Haslanger, whose hysterical denials of race or sex differences make Gould or Lewontin look sane. Michael Dummett was arguably the worst offender in philosophy, who actively encouraged non-white migration to England and took a few years off of teaching philosophy to become an activist against racism.
Creationism is the main game in town in the humanities, especially philosophy.
Have you ever heard the name Simon Mol? He wasn’t really an intellectual, but he was a black African anti-racist activist who tricked liberal Polish women into having sex with him without a condom by accusing them of racism whenever they asked him to wear a condom–only to subsequently infect them with HIV/AIDS due to him having it! He died of AIDS in Poland in 2008.
But you’re Jewish yourself, so you get a virtual shield to protect yourself from charges of anti-Semitism! 😉 So do I, for that matter (well, quarter-Jewish, but Jewish last name, so close enough)! 🙂
Anyway, if you’re curious, when Jews make arguments such as these (and also push against hereditarianism in general), it might help fuel anti-Semitism among the alt-right. True, there have been some Jewish (and half-Jewish, and quarter-Jewish such as Arthur Jensen) hereditarians as well, but I seem to recall Spencer Quinn arguing that hereditarian Jews had less of an impact on the public and on public consciousness than environmentalist Jews had–and that thus Jewish influence in regards to this was more “negative” than “positive”, as Kevin MacDonald argues. I looked at your debate between you and KMac and also at Spencer Quinn’s summary and analysis of it. I do think that Spencer Quinn did a good job of reformulating KMac’s arguments and argued that while you did debunk KMac’s Jewish evolutionary group strategy argument, this argument was the least important part of KMac’s books and analysis. What I would have really enjoyed seeing would have been a debate and/or discussion between you and Spencer Quinn. I doubt that you would have changed either of your minds in regards to this, but such a debate and/or discussion could have still had value in the sense that it could have given onlookers such as myself a more thorough picture and analysis of this whole situation. A large part of a debate and/or discussion is, of course, to sway people who are undecided.
BTW, have you ever read John Derbyshire’s review of KMac’s book(s)? I think that his review of this book/these books is pretty fair. 🙂
There’s a huge difference between suppressing information while being honest about one’s motives and suppressing information while being dishonest about one’s motives, though. If someone figures out an easy way to make WMDs, obviously it would make sense for the government to try suppressing this information and to argue that it is doing this in order to protect public safety. In contrast, if someone suppresses information about hereditarianism and claims that they’re doing this because it’s pseudoscience whereas the actual reason for this is to preserve social peace and stability and avoid a resurgence of racism, then they are being dishonest about their motives for doing this and are also willfully misrepresenting the relevant state of facts and knowledge in regards to this.
I recently wrote another paper where I made basically the same argument: “There is also an important sense in which restrictions on publishing instructions to create deadly viruses and restrictions on intelligence research are not analogous. In the former case, the proposal is to conceal knowledge while being open about our motives: we should not (according to the proposals) publish instructions about how to make deadly viruses because we do not want terrorists to use them to make biological weapons. In the latter case, however, the proposal is to, if necessary, misrepresent the state of knowledge while being dishonest about our motives – to assert that there are no innate differences between groups while pretending that this is an established discovery of science. Given the disanalogy, we cannot so easily make an inference from the acceptability of limits on publishing work in virology to the acceptability of censoring or prohibiting work on intelligence, even if findings concerning intelligence differences could be shown to produce some sort of harm.” – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2019.1697803
Beautifully said, Nathan! 🙂 I would also like to make some additional points here:
As you also mentioned in your paper, there are also risks of not doing research on the genetic causes of group differences on important traits such as intelligence. In addition to (as you mentioned) this resulting in white people getting blamed, resented, and/or hated for something that isn’t actually their fault (specifically the lower black average IQ, the worse average black health, et cetera), not doing research on the genetic causes of group differences on important traits could also make it more difficult to eliminate these group differences–which would be a problem for someone who indeed views these group differences as a problem. For instance, if we want to eliminate achievement gaps between blacks and whites but can’t even do research on some of the possible causes of these achievement gaps (specifically genetics), then it won’t actually help us narrow these gaps in the event that the proposed causes that we aren’t going to do research on will indeed turn out to be the actual causes of this. Indeed, if one actually wants to fix a problem (such as eliminating black-white achievement gaps), one first needs to figure out the cause of this problem–and that means researching all possible explanations for this as opposed to only researching the inoffensive explanations for this. This would be similar (from a social science perspective) for a social scientist to speculate about possible causes of Muslim violence, terrorism, misogyny, and backward views but without ever actually being willing to contemplate that Muslim religious texts could serve as a basis for such views due to the fact that this idea could be taboo, offensive, and/or Islamophobic. In such a scenario, one will ignore a very real actual cause of this problem–though here a realistic solution might be more difficult than for narrowing group achievement gaps.
I also want to make an additional point here. Purposely misrepresenting someone’s argument/position carries a very real risk that one will sooner or later get exposed for this deception and thus A) be branded a dishonest, untrustworthy liar and thus very possibly lose a lot of one’s credibility and B) have people realize that you weren’t attacking your opponents’ actual position but rather a strawman/caricature of their position while your opponents’ actual position remains unscathed and continues to look just as credible as it previously looked.
I honestly can’t believe that Dennett was unaware that purposely misrepresenting someone’s argument/position could sooner or later severely blow up in one’s own face like this–with one’s own credibility taking a severe hit while the argument/position of one’s opponents remaining as strong and as credible as it previously was.
Dennett has claimed on Twitter that he is sarcastically chiding Lewontin in that passage, not endorsing his views.
Whyvert misinterpreted what I wrote. I wasn’t saying that Dennett wanted to caricature etc. hereditarianism, but that he endorses a principle that if a hypothesis is dangerous it can be appropriate to try to undermine it even if it’s true.
A number of people have misinterpreted this passage, so I wish I had been clearer. But if you read it carefully you will see that I am not claiming that Dennett says he wants to caricature hereditarianism. (I do give evidence that he rejects hereditarianism about group differences in intelligence for moral reasons. I asked Dennett on Twitter to clarify whether or not he opposes research on group differences in intelligence but he didn’t respond–I assume because he doesn’t want to admit his position openly.)
Does he endorse that principle? Honestly it’s not clear to me from the whole passage in context. It’s written very ambiguously.
He says something similar here, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrCZYDm5D8M#t=23m
“but that he endorses a principle that if a hypothesis is dangerous it can be appropriate to try to undermine it even if it’s true.”
But wouldn’t purposely creating a strawman out of a particular dangerous hypothesis be counterproductive due to the fact that if someone will (sooner or later) call you out on your deception, then:
You will be exposed as an untrustworthy, dishonest liar–thus possibly making your credibility take a severe hit.
People will realize that you haven’t actually been attacking this dangerous hypothesis but instead have been attacking a caricature/strawman of this hypothesis–thus causing them to conclude that this actual dangerous hypothesis hasn’t actually been challenged, weakened, demolished, or even subjected to criticism at all.
But wouldn’t purposely creating a strawman out of a particular dangerous hypothesis be counterproductive due to the fact that if someone will (sooner or later) call you out on your deception, then:
A) You will be exposed as an untrustworthy, dishonest liar–thus possibly making your credibility take a severe hit.
And B) People will realize that you haven’t actually been attacking this dangerous hypothesis but instead have been attacking a caricature/strawman of this hypothesis–thus causing them to conclude that this actual dangerous hypothesis hasn’t actually been challenged, weakened, demolished, or even subjected to criticism at all.
The pattern gets stronger if you know that “Gould” is a common Anglicization of “Goldberg” and “Goldstein”.
All on that list except possibly Kitcher are definitely Jewish. They and their arguments are also very much of a type common among Jewish academics, though the correlations among the various factors {Jewish, academic, Marxist, disingenuous propagandist} aren’t perfect in any direction, they are all higher than between, say, being stabbed and dying.
It is natural for Jews to assume that all minorities have untapped potential that is being repressed because that is exactly how their own history unfolded. It is normal for humans to assume that others are like them.
It is natural for Jews to assume that all minorities have untapped potential that is being repressed because that is exactly how their own history unfolded. It is normal for humans to assume that others are like them.
Beautiful hypothesis. How does it cope with the ugly fact of, say, Bibi’s desire to deport 10,000s of dark-skinned infiltators rather than fund them on nano-tech courses? I believe Israel is an explicitly Jewish state, so one would expect “natural” Jewish assumptions about the Psychic Unity of Mankind to flourish there.
If those Jewish assumptions really exist. Stevie Gould’s work on Morton suggests to me that mendacity and manipulation are better terms for what’s at work.
Bibi’s support base in majority non-Ashkenazim. Secular Ashkenazim in Israel are for the most part the same as Ashkenazim outside Israel, with the exception that they are a bit more realist about Arabs wanting to cut off their heads (kind of hard not to be, but some of them still manage it). For now, the minority of based, quietly realist secular Ashkenazim is still large enough to lead a coalition made up of Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Russian non-Jews and half-Jews, and Orthodox Jews, directing it into more or less sane government. Maybe not forever though.
With that said there’s not a lot of race-realism in Israel. Take a random right-wing Israeli and say something like “the most parsimonious explanation for why Ethiopian Jews do badly at Maths is because they are not very bright, not because THE SECULAR ASHKENAZI ELITE is keeping them down”, then watch the sparks fly.
Bibi’s support base is majority non-Ashkenazim.
Yes: bright race-realist Ashkenazim control Israel. And bright Ashkenazim outside Israel do not put serious pressure on Israel over its border-fences and deportation policies. Which is not what DataExplorer’s hypothesis predicts, is it?
Maybe not forever though.
The border-fences are a very big help in the meantime. And how much did the crazy egalitarian Ashkenazim in Israel protest about those? A lot of protest about the deportations is posturing and I cannot see any serious pressure from the Diaspora for Israel to reverse its xenophobic attitudes towards immigration.
Take a random right-wing Israeli and say something like “the most parsimonious explanation for why Ethiopian Jews do badly at Maths is because they are not very bright, not because THE SECULAR ASHKENAZI ELITE is keeping them down”, then watch the sparks fly.
What human beings say and what they really believe are often very different. It would not be good for Israel’s international image for right-wing Jews there to openly espouse race-realism. However, Israel’s fences and deportations are race-realistic.
@Nomen Est Omen
You don’t know what you are talking about, which is fine. Israel’s demographic strategy consists of encouraging Mizrahi Jews to pound out children, blame their low test scores on meanypants Ben Gurion putting their great grandfather in transit camps, then sit around scratching our heads wondering why we have a great biotech industry, but our postal service doesn’t work and most of our cities look like slums. It’s about as race-realist as encouraging Hispanics to move to the US because they are natural Republicans.
Your other stuff is just dumb and can be refuted with a Google search or two, except that you intentionally put in the weasel term ‘serious’ to make your claims unfalsifiable.
Incidentally, (((Nathan Cofnas))) has this very week tried his hand at refuting the holy KMac.
@g_man
You don’t know what you are talking about, which is fine.
And you’re being dishonest in typical Ashi fashion, which is also fine.
Israel’s demographic strategy consists of encouraging Mizrahi Jews
Yes, a demographic strategy can only ever be one thing at time, can’t it? In fact, cupcake, Israel’s “demographic strategy” also consists of excluding kushim and Arabushim with big bootiful walls. Which is not what DataExplorer’s hypothesis about “natural” Jewish assumptions predicts, is it? You won’t answer that simple question of course. Which is fine again.
Nor does DataExplorer’s hypothesis predict that race-realist Ashkenazim would be in charge of Israel. Does it? (Again, you won’t answer etc.) Nor does it predict that many Ashkenazim in the Diaspora, very much in favor of open borders for the goyish countries in which they are currently resident, should be silent about Israel’s horrendous xenophobia. Not just the planned mass deportations, but those big bootiful walls I spoke of earlier, which have been in place for some time now.
Your other stuff is just dumb and can be refuted with a Google search or two, except that you intentionally put in the weasel term ‘serious’ to make your claims unfalsifiable.
“Dumb” is not the word. I mean, I thought that the Board of Deputies is full of high IQ Ashkenazim:
Board of Deputies criticised for silence on Israel’s deportation of migrants
A number of deputies have urged the organisation’s leadership to speak out on the issue
The leadership of the Board of Deputies has been criticised by members for its failure to condemn Israel’s plan to deport tens of thousands of African migrants to Rwanda, with references to the plan as “ethnic cleansing” and a form of slavery. At the Board meeting today, a number of deputies aired their thoughts on the issue, and implored Jonathan Arkush, their organisation’s president, to speak out on the matter.
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/board-of-deputies-criticised-for-silence-on-israel-s-deportation-of-migrants-1.458905
Do you think there’d have been “silence” from the Board of Deputies if the UK government suggested similar deportations in the UK or started using terms like “infiltrator”?
And don’t worry: I’m already on the files of Unit 8200 et al. Like Liberty and Tolerance, the surveillance state is a core Judeo-Christian value, no?
@Nomen Est Omen
“Nor does DataExplorer’s hypothesis predict that race-realist Ashkenazim would be in charge of Israel. Does it”
What are you on about? How would DataExplorer’s hypothesis predict the ethnic balance in Israel, the rapid growth of the orthodox community, the failure of the Oslo process, the decision of large numbers of Russian gentiles to settle in Israel, the rise of militant Islam, or Palestinian irrendentism, the cumulative result of which was to give power to the right-wing minority among secular ashkenazim? And, for what it’s worth, this group are not race realists and cannot afford to be because their fragile coalition relies on stoking anger among non-ashkenazi Jews about having to drive a taxi while ashkenazim keep all the good jobs in science and hi-tech to themselves.
“Do you think there’d have been “silence” from the Board of Deputies if the UK government suggested similar deportations in the UK or started using terms like “infiltrator”?”
Probably. It’s an organisation of old dodderers which like most organisations has a subversive left wing element trying to turn it into an activist organisation. Sometimes they get their way, sometimes not. The trend is towards them getting their way: Conquest’s 2nd law. Your misuse of Hebrew slang, clumsy attempts to demonstrate knowledge, and ham handed insertion of random unconnected memes into a single post rank somewhere around one bajillion on a 1-10 scale of gaylordry.
@The G_Man “Do you think there’d have been “silence” from the Board of Deputies if the UK government suggested similar deportations in the UK or started using terms like “infiltrator”?” Probably.
That’s a funny way of spelling “No.” But some groups lie as naturally as they breathe. With that, their good looks, strict ethics, and their well-known love of all mankind, no wonder so many goys are jealous of them.
It’s an organisation of old dodderers which like most organisations has a subversive left wing element trying to turn it into an activist organisation. Sometimes they get their way, sometimes not. The trend is towards them getting their way: Conquest’s 2nd law.
BOD is nothing special, my fellow white males. And it would probably stay silent if the UK started treating enrichers the way Israel does.
Your misuse of Hebrew slang
Mea culpa. Kushim and Arabushim are in fact terms of endearment, reflecting that well-known love of all mankind.
, clumsy attempts to demonstrate knowledge,
So Unit 8200 wouldn’t bother with gaylords? My mistake. But the goys gotta be kept under strict surveillance, no? Lest their jealousy of white-male-and-female good looks and strict ethics break out again. See H. Weinstein.
and ham handed insertion of random unconnected memes into a single post rank somewhere around one bajillion on a 1-10 scale of gaylordry.
“Ham-handed”, cupcake. I suppose it’s kinda the equivalent of “cotton-picking,” for a white male like you.
And by the way:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/second-jewish-building-in-sweden-attacked-in-attempted-firebombing/
‘Group Evolutionary Strategy’ working to a T.
Have you heard of a book called the Tanakh? It will tell you that, oddly enough, the malevolent are not always immune when they seek to harm others: “Proverbs 26:27 He who digs a pit will fall into it, And he who rolls a stone, it will come back on him.” And that attempted fire-bombing may be exploited by its targets to strengthen their power.
I’d also ask you whether goys are suffering far, far worse in Sweden and France than a certain good-looking, strictly ethical, muslim-immigration-supporting group, but I already know how you’d respond.
If Israel was genuinely “race realist”, it might have been considerably less willing to allow Mizrahi, Sephradi, and Ethiopian/black Jews to immigrate there en masse and might have also been much more willing to allow non-Jewish cognitively elitist immigration like Canada and Australia do.
Ok… But so is Arthur Jensen. (At least on his mother’s side)
Doug. You don’t understand how this works. If someone has any Jewish ancestry and is a Left wing buffoon he is doing it because he is impelled by his deep ethnocentric urges to act upon his group evolutionary strategy to undermine white people, even if, perhaps especially if, he marries a non-Jew, practices no known form of Judaism and takes no part in Jewish communal life.
However, if anyone who is not a left wing buffoon has Jewish ancestry, you have two options. Either find some issue that he is left wing on and go back to step one, or, well, it’s just one of those things. If this doesn’t make perfect sense then you can always starting throwing around parentheses.
oh give me a break. yeah some alt right guys go silly on the J issue, but let’s not pretend that Rothbards and Rands aside there’s not a preponderance of pushing Leftist subversive prog nonsense from you know who. I get the rationalizations, heck I even get the defensiveness on the issue, but it simply is.
well to be fair jensen actually was a lefty in his outlook
It’s pointless to evade the issue..Sure, 20% or so aren’t left oriented to a noticeable extent, but compared to other populations, Leftism and the resultant lying is massively overrepresented in this group.
is paranoia genetic? if so what might select for paranoia?
@ G_man: Excellent comment! Made my day.
Also, to add: Any discussion of a Left wing buffoon with any Jewish ancestry must be accompanied by pointing to some supposedly nationalistic thing done in Israel, with a tone that it is the first time that any human being has realized that there is nationalism in Israel, and with an implied accusation that the Left wing buffoon is pro-Israel, even if the Left wing buffoon is a noted anti-Israel polemicist.
Genetically, Arthur Jensen is a quarter-Jewish just like I am–except with him on the maternal line and with me on the paternal line.
While this list is quite Ashkenazi-heavy, I want to give an input from over Europe. Over here, there are plenty of North European leaders (politicians, academics, ofcourse 99% of the press) who are as anti-hereditarian as any of these guys.
Recently, here in the Netherlands, a libertarian Surinamese aspiring politician, clearly influenced by Stefan Molyneux’ YT series, argued for the ethnic differences in IQ position, but he got criticized into giving up his seat. Our vice president, Kajsa Ollongren, spoke about the issue and declared this discussion by definition inflammatory and racist. Interestingly, her family is of Swedish-Lithuanian noble descent for centuries, so I have hard time believing she’s unaware of good genes and talent being inherited from your parents.
Politicians follow the lead of Ashkenazi-dominated media and Academics…Most politicians have no real personal beliefs…
Do you live in Northern or Western Europe? Because, believe me, leftism, ideological egalitarianism and progressivism is really deep here. It simply is not true that they’ve catched the liberal leftist bug from bugs. This is really what they believe. I’m Dutch, and I’ve met about 10 Jews in my life; about half of them were completely assimilated, Jewish in name only.
You might not know this, but there was this guy, Adolf Hitler, who killed off the Jewish population down here, in a very short time frame in the 40s. Now, true, there are still Jews around, though few, and while they lean left, they’re learning quickly about the realities of the New Europeans who have fled to our shores.
Ouch: bugs = Jews
egalitarianism as a kind of moral engine definitely exists among certain groups but the engine’s output depends on the data it’s fed so if naturally egalitarian people are told there are no genetic differences in traits such as IQ then they’ll naturally look for other (inevitably wrong) explanations for unequal outcomes – chaos ensues.
Pyrrhus, your statement is vacuous. You can always find a way to make it appear that group X is behind everything nefarious. But even if that were true, in your view that should make everyone who listens to group X so stupid and inferior that they are not worth defending.
“Interestingly, her family is of Swedish-Lithuanian noble descent for centuries, so I have hard time believing she’s unaware of good genes and talent being inherited from your parents.”
Did the nobility marry on the basis of “good genes” or merely on the basis of noble genes, even if they were held by a blithering idiot?
European nobles married European nobles.
Often their first cousins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rose
Steven Rose is another name that can be added.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/08/race-science-depends-on-dubious-genetics
Steve Jones [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jones_(biologist)] is a particularly annoying one from the UK. He’s not Ashkenazi, he is (may Allah forgive me for uttering this word) a Welshman.
Steve Jones, Steve Gould, Steve Rose — what is it with Steves?
Does Steve Sailer even the scales a bit?
Maybe we should have a Steve coefficient that suggests the overlap between the Overton Window and what the majority of Steves hold to be true.
I think it is something more specific than mere Jewishness: it is the residue of Jewish creationism. All Orthodox Jews are nominally committed to the separate creation of man, and to many other completely untenable views such as a young earth and geocentrism. Of course they no more believe this than they believe that electricity is fire, but that is because orthodox Judaism is not a system of belief but of practice. You can’t press a light switch on the Sabbath whether electricity is fire or not. I think it comes very naturally to minds of that kind to suppose that you don’t have to be right about anything as long as you have a good motivation, and that the attitude can persist long after religious commitment has been abandoned.
What I say refers only to those for whom Judaism is Orthodoxy or nothing. Traditions such as Reform originated in a complete rethink at the time of emancipation and the Enlightenment. I also think that many non-Jews have a similar outlook. There are plenty of ways in which political correctness and Jewish law look like two species in the same genus.
I don’t think so.
Leftist thought actually has lot in common with Sabbateanism, a Jewish heresy that for a brief period was the majority opinion among Jews and remained a large underground movement for at least a century, leading to some pretty weird stuff. Gershom Scholem is the man to go for those who are interested. The problem is that a lot of the source material has been deliberately destroyed and people interested in the subject tend to be more than a little nuts.
The bottom line, though, is that when Jewish Emancipation rolled around, there were a lot of Jews who adherence to traditional Jewish religion was, at best, shakey and who were pre-primed for revolutionary, utopian, and antinomian ideas. It was bad timing to say the least.
I’m also inclined based on my personal experience (I’m slightly less than half-Jewish by ancestry) that the structure of Ashkenazi intelligence makes it easier for Ashkenazism to adopt abstruse ideologies that can be easily refuted with a bit of common sense. This would follow logically if Richard Lynn is right about the distinctive form of talmudic scholarship pioneered by the ‘Tosafists’ and taken to absurd extremes in eastern Europe being positively selected for. Obviously, Cochran rejects this though.
“Obviously, Cochran rejects this though..” Dig up the right kind of demographic/genealogical evidence and I might change my mind.
@ G_man. Do these two explanations of Jewish radicalism not cancel each other out? The Lithuanian rabbis who founded the yeshivas and took halakhic study to new extremes of abstruseness and unreality were sworn enemies of the Hasidic rebbes who ritually flouted halakhah and were suspected of secret Sabbatean sympathies.
I don’t think so. The rise of ‘Brisker Lomdus’ and the like shows that there had already been selection for intelligence and, I would argue, a particular form of intelligence. Jews possessing this form of intelligence whose bond to normative Judaism was strong would take it one direction, those whose bond was weak would take it in another.
To make an analogy, if you look at Japanese culture in the first and second halves of the 20th century respectively you see some pretty big differences, but you can also see how both cultures reflect the same underlying mental architecture.
I also think your view of the Mitnagdic-Hassidic split is somewhat overdrawn. I tend to the view that Hassidut was overall a movement bringing Sabbatean-influenced Jews back into Jewish practice. The Rebbes found a way to flout certain aspects of halakha without breaking the system (i.e. you can pray the morning prayer later than the prescribed limit if it helps you concentrate, but that doesn’t mean you can participate in wife-swapping orgies). Of course, the system is not entirely stable and you get freak show movements as the fringes of Breslev, but overall it has held up OK.
I have just looked up Brisker Lomdus, and it beautifully illustrates what I mean – the divorce of halakha from truth and the remarkable resemblance between the new nonsense and the old.
I don’t think it’s caused by their religion or culture, personally.
I get a bizarre impression from some dishonest people that they’re not even deliberately lying, but rather they simply don’t care if what they’re saying is or isn’t true. The truth value of a statement is totally perpendicular to their odds of saying it, and they don’t even understand the concept of honesty.
Were it not for the intensely political nature of this stuff, I would suspect it was a posturing thing. Truth doesn’t matter when all you’re doing is showing off your verbal skills and/or ingroup commitment. Truth might actually be a bad thing in those cases. Maybe Trivers’ The Folly of Fools is relevant here.
Well its definately true that valueing the truth is a very Western trait. Middle Eastern civilizations since the very beginning valued whether a story was useful rather than whether or not it was true.
I wonder if it has to do with individualism. Dr. Cochran, Trivers, and others have mentioned how shared delusions are useful for building ingroup identity, because there’s no way you would ever believe them if you weren’t committed to the group.
The West wasn’t selected to have that sort of tribalism, perhaps.
Yes, it seems to me that some people hardly even have any notion of objective truth as differing from their egocentric wishes. If they want to believe something that’s enough for them. In the case of Howard Gardner he seems to adopt egalitarianism as a fundamental principal overriding any evidence whatsoever. To me that’s very similar to taking the position that say any statement in the Bible must be held true regardless of any contrary evidence.
Everybody has the notion of objective truth when he’s looking for his keys, though.
Behavior like looking for the car keys is not intellectual behavior. It is more like animal behavior in general in that it does not involve much in the way of internal conceptualization. It is like driving a car in which people perform fairly complicated motor behavior without much conscious thought and perhaps while engaged in an animated conversation on a topic totally unrelated to the driving.
Driving a car or riding a horse successfully requires behavior adapted to the laws of physics and of horse biology in the case of a horse. But such behavior does not involve any theoretical internal model of physics or biology so such behavior is not comparable to scientific research.
Also one thing I’ve noticed is that for many people failure to conform to a common belief in a group is a sin like failing to conform to the behavioral norms of the group. For many people a lack of intellectual conformity is morally no different than say breaking into people’s homes to rob them. They simply find it morally wrong to dissent from what most people in a society believe or are supposed to believe about some factual aspect of the universe even if such dissent is well-grounded objectively.
The ultra-Orthodox Jews puzzle me. I assume they’re all Ashkenazi because of the way they dress. That’s one thing that puzzles me: how logical is it to dress for the much climate of northern Europe when you’re now living is a much, much warmer area?
Are they the lower IQ segment of the Ashkenazi? They seem even crazier than fundamentalist Christians.
Robert Sapolsky had the guts to point out in his recent book, Behave, that human evolution deniers are typically Jewish. Especially curious when you consider that, a tribesman himself, he had a pretty weaksauce analysis of human genetics and evolution in Behave. He’s got a foot in both worlds. I wonder what that must be like. I suspect he really wants certain things to be true, but won’t scrap all credibility for those ideas like Gould did.
As soon as I see people blaming Jews for everything I get skeptical fast.
I read Steve Sailer because is clearly a nice guy. He’s far more polite that Greg.
So the mild anti-Semitism of Sailer I can put up with.
I don’t think Greg is basically a nice guy.
Greg might be a tad curmudgeonly, but seems like a fair and decent fello – and I’ve never noted any anti-semitism at all.
I agree, and in fact, we would not necessarily want a “nice guy” anyway, in this inevitably nasty business.
However, I am noticing something on YouTube. Their best “race realist” is a guy counselling the alt-right who to exclude in their “ethnostate”. Doesn’t like Greeks or Romanians and no Jews of course. He was showing they could be detected genetically.
But what really bothered me was he seems sleazy compared to Greg. I hope Greg would not advise the alt-right. I also he would not seduce a young autistic woman.
Let people exclude who they want. The Greeks, Romanians, Jews can all have their own ethno-states and I can’t even say for sure whether the success of those states would mean he was wrong to exclude them. I dislike people who tell me who should be in my country far more than those who tell me my people should not be in theirs.
There is a book about Jewish Eugenetics by John Glad:
How about a labor camp for dishonest top tier intellectuals. It’ll be well funded and we’ll call it the Manhattan Infinity Project.
We already have them.
They’re called “universities”.
Here is Chomsky:
” As to social importance, a correlation between race and mean I.Q. (were this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this category … In a non-racist society, the category of race would be of no greater significance [than height]. The mean I.Q. of individuals of a certain racial background is irrelevant to the situation of a particular individual, who is what he is.”
On the most charitable reading, one could say that he is essentially taking the same position that Charles Murray advocates: it’s fine if black people are over represented among toilet-cleaners and underrepresented among physicists, as long as everyone is treated as an individual. But then he goes and ruins it:
“Recognizing this perfectly obvious fact, we are left with little, if any, plausible justification for an interest in the relation between mean I.Q. and race, apart from the ‘justification’ provided by the existence of racial discrimination.”
http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/chomsky-on-iq-and-inequality
People say Chomsky is really smart, but he sure sounds dumb, a lot. He got his big break because the behaviorism of the academy in the 1950s was so deranged in its extremism that saying almost anything about the brain would sound sensible in comparison.
“Recognizing this perfectly obvious fact, we are left with little, if any, plausible justification for an interest in the relation between mean I.Q. and race, apart from the ‘justification’ provided by the existence of racial discrimination.”
I guess ol’ Noam hasn’t heard of “disparate impact”. When you take it as a given that all races have the same distribution of intelligence/talent/whatever, any deviation from that is prima facie evidence of discrimination, even if no individual has actually been discriminated against because of his race. So it is in fact quite plausibly justifiable to be interested in the relation between mean I.Q. and race.
People like Chomsky never have to live in poor, crime filled neighborhoods, and never get disadvantaged by affirmative action. So how could they see why IQ matters? To them it is just a bunch of statistics. But that is changing.
Hi. Long time lurker, first time poster.
A longer explanation by Chomsky on the same matter is given here, written in 1978 (https://chomsky.info/1978____/#29). Here are the two operative paragraphs, to my mind:
“Inquiry into specific cognitive capacities such as the language faculty leads to specific and I think significant hypotheses concerning the genetically programmed schematism for language, but gives us no significant evidence concerning variability. Perhaps this is a result of the inadequacy of our analytic tools. Or it may be that the basic capacities are truly invariant, apart from gross pathology. We find that over a very broad range, at least, there are no differences in the ability to acquire and make effective use of a human language; at some level of detail, it may be differences in what is acquired, as there are evidently differences in facility of use. I see no reason for dogmatism on this score. So little is known concerning other cognitive capacities that we can hardly even speculate. Experience seems to support the belief that people do vary in their intellectual capacities and their specialization. It would hardly come as a surprise if this were so, assuming that we are dealing with biological structures, however intricate and remarkable, of known sorts.
Many people, particularly those who regard themselves as within the left-liberal political spectrum, find such conclusions repugnant. It may be that the empty organism hypothesis is so attractive to the left in part because it precludes these possibilities; there is no variability on a null endowment. But I find it difficult to understand why conclusions of this sort should be at all disturbing. I am personally quite convinced that no matter what training or education I might have received, I could never have run a four-minute mile, discovered Godel’s theorems, composed a Beethoven quartet, or risen to any of innumerable other heights of human achievement. I feel in no way demeaned by these inadequacies. It is quite enough that I am capable, as I think any person of normal endowments probably is, of appreciating and in part understanding what others have accomplished, while making my own personal contributions in whatever measure and manner I am able to do. Human talents vary considerably, within a fixed framework that is characteristic of the species and that permits ample scope for creative work, including the creative work of appreciating the achievements of others. This should be a matter for delight rather than a condition to be abhorred. Those who assume otherwise must be adopting the tacit premise that a person’s rights or social reward are somehow contingent on his abilities. As for his rights, there is an element of plausibility in this assumption in the single respect already noted: in a decent society opportunities should confirm as far as possible to personal needs, and such needs may be specialized and related to particular talents and capacities. My pleasure in life is enhanced by the fact that others can do many things that I cannot, and I see no reason to deny these people the opportunity to cultivate their talents, consistent with general social needs. Difficult questions of practice are sure to arise in any functioning social group, but I see no problem of principle.”
A couple of paragraphs below he says:
“Suppose that inquiry into human nature reveals that human cognitive capacities are highly structured by our genetic program and that there are variations among individuals within a shared framework. This seems to me an entirely reasonable expectation, and a situation much to be desired. It has no implications with regard to equality of rights or condition, so far as I can see, beyond those already sketched.”
As far as I can see, Chomsky’s position is that of course talents (including intellectual talents) vary, and to deny it is ridiculous. He says that the attitude of some on the “left-liberal” end of the spectrum that this conclusion is “repugnant” has no justification, because individuals should be treated as individuals and not as part of a race and does not bear upon their rights. He says that the “blank slate” hypothesis is nonsense and he discusses why it’s appealing to certain “left-liberal” people — because if everyone starts with zero, there’s no variability.
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There’s a separate argument in the second half of the article about the political consequences of investigation between race and IQ. Chomsky makes two points here:
The first point that “race” and “IQ” are both “amalgams of complex properties”. I don’t know exactly what he means, but I’m guessing that he means that IQ is polygenic (elsewhere he compares IQ to height). He says the genetic influences would, therefore, be better studied using simpler constructs.
The second point he makes is that people often defer to “technical experts” in matters of human and social importance. A representative quote: “Given such concepts as “race” and “IQ,” it is to be expected that the results of any inquiry will be obscure and conflicting, the arguments complex and difficult for the layman to follow. For the racist, the judgment “not proven” will be read “probably so.” There will be ample scope for the racist to wallow in his prejudices.”
Since this was written in 1978, only a few years after the Vietnam war, he then makes the point that many “technical experts” are really “experts in legitimation” of power and wealth.
Here, I see Chomsky to be saying that such research could be used in a racist society for bad ends, therefore, a scientists should be mindful of the consequences of their actions. He says that these are hard problems and there is no easy answer:
“We exist and work in given historical conditions. We may try to change them, but cannot ignore them, in the work we undertake, the strategies for social change that we advocate, or the direct action in which we engage or from which we abstain. In discussion of freedom and equality, it is very difficult to disentangle questions of fact from judgments of value. We should try to do so, pursuing factual inquiry where it may lead without dogmatic preconception, but not ignoring the consequences of what we do. We must never forget that what we do is tainted and distorted, inevitably by the awe of expertise that is induced by social institutions as one device for imposing passivity and obedience. What we do as scientists, as scholars, as advocates, has consequences. We cannot escape this condition in a society based on concentration of power and privilege. This is a heavy responsibility that a scientist or scholar would not have to bear in a decent society, one in which individuals would not relegate to authorities decisions over their lives or their beliefs. We may and should recommend the simple virtues: honesty and truthfulness, responsibility and concern. But to live by these principles is often no simple matter.”
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My own viewpoint is that the second half of the document is less clear/reasonable than the first part, but the problems are hard and politics often has no clear answers.
I wouldn’t go to much by Chomsky. He’s unreliable. I read a takedown of him by another Jew (not well known). He established that Chomsky was plain lying in his attempt to minimize the behaviour of the Khmer Rouge. He had it all laid out, clearly. Chomsky isn’t worth reading. (Maybe he is on linguistics, I wouldn’t know. But outside that area he’s completely unreliable.)
This was back in the early 2000s but I could likely find it if you’re interested. The other man now writes editorials for The Times (based in London),
Summary here by Oliver Kamm “Chomsky’s Dismal Record”. He has the details in other blog posts.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/17272
Here’s more, from Kamm’s blog. Just search on >>kamm chomsky<<
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/chomsky_and_sou.html
I think only Skolem was even remotely close to Goedel’s discoveries and even Skolem wasn’t that close. Skolem though probably had the best immediate understanding of Goedel’s results and promptly followed them up by establishing the field of non-standard arithmetic.
Wikipedia makes you declare any conflicts of interest before you can edit articles. For example, if you are a Cyberdyne Systems employee, you would need to state this before making changes to their Skynet page.
Imagine an intellectual conflict of interest declaration for scientists. Some scientists so fervently believe they’re on “the side of the angels” (as Richard Milner famously said when defending Gould) that their integrity is suspect. They might as well be on the payroll of a major company. So why not make them admit their biases?
This declaration doesn’t have to affect anything. You could still do science and such. But you’d first have to put your hand on a stack of Bibles and say “I believe passionately in [fart noises]. Let he who has ears, let him hear.”
Would they do it? Maybe. Haldane might have been shy in declaring himself a communist to the government in the 1950s. I don’t know, it might have gotten him in trouble. But few scientists would need much prompting to declare themselves anti-racist today. 140+ of them basically signed such a declaration when Nicholas Wade wrote a book. On this topic, and many others, they’d trip over each other in their haste to tell you how biased they are.
They maintain that anti-racism is normal human condition rather than ideology. Why do you think it will ever work?
Try turning this problem on its head. What is the evidence that after tens of thousands of years of human evolution, in all sorts of dramatically varying environments, all the worlds different populations have ended up with exactly the same mean IQ? Anyone care to offer a cash prize for the first scientifically sound proof?
Not only the same means, but also the same standard deviations!
I think the term is I.i.d.
“So what must be done?”
Helicopters. Lots of them. Preferably with speakers blasting squad anthem Sympathy for the Devil (though Wagner will do in a pinch).
I discussed the Cofnas paper in my 200th post:
200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) | JayMan’s Blog (section The Taboo Future)
I suppose that all these skewed and hypocritical “scientists” will loudly denounce the evil that meant that the Church locked Galileo in his house until his death for having questioned the prevailing ideological dogma, at the same time calling for the suppression of any study about race and intelligence, if not do not ask to criminalize the author directly. It is a shame that science is being used by propagandists in such a miserable way.
“I think it is a tragedy and a catastrophe that the left has accepted the idea of humans as historical products —simply reflections of their environment — because what follows from that of course is that there is no moral barrier to modeling them however you like.” Noam Chomsky
Where is this from? I have read Chomsky’s criticisms of behaviorism in somewhat those terms, but I haven’t seen this exact statement anywhere.
The video starts at the beginning of the sentence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gS6g41m_NU
In “The Mismeasure of Man,” Gould went so far as to argue (in regards to skull volume comparisons) that tests of the differences between means should be run using the sample standard deviation rather than the standard error of the means.
Be fair: that was because he was stupid.
Oh boy. Did he explicitly argue for that, or was he just innumerate and didn’t understand he was using the wrong quantity in the calculations?
The most sophisticated lies are told with numbers. The only way to make it more confounding and less about observation to is take it down to the molecular level like Lewontin did.
What needs to be done? Race denialism is high IQ disease. I guess you have to make more high IQ babies who are not race denialist. Show how would you live without these good-doers
Of course Jews won’t like to talk about racial differences. They were genocided because of a racial difference. On this issue, blame the Nazi insanity. (and whoever influenced them, racist Brits, White Americans of the time) Ashkenazi thinkers’ subtle/sneaky defense of Israel is probably more harmful for the world and it is caused by Nazis too.
Surely we can keep going down the chain of causality until the Ashkenazim are no longer accountable for their own actions.
I’m sure that mass immigration from 3rd world to 1st world, denial of certain scientific facts about race, blank-slate-ism, and so forth, are the result of the pendulum swinging as far away from Hitler as it can get. But it is beyond reason. Three generations ago some Germans murdered a lot of high IQ Jews. Does the current generation think importing a lot of low IQ Muslims with criminal tendencies is some sort of penance for what their grandparents did? Or perhaps they are trying to show the world how virtuous and non-Nazi they are.
Jewish political and intellectual radicalism precedes the Nazis. (Jewish support for Zionism precedes the Nazis, too.) It’s also not explained by anti-semitism – at least in the case of the United States.
One shouldn’t need to reach for bad theory, as I think Kevin MacDonald does, to explain this fact. Nor should one have to cover up the evidence shown by one’s own lying eyes, as I think most of the rest of the intellectual world does, by claiming that Jews are really not much different than anyone else in their ideas and politics.
European Jews obviously have had a long-standing inclination towards radicalism and exceptionalism. It’s not explained by the Nazis. It’s not explained by anti-semitism. And many of the best explicators of this Jewish inclination have been written by Jews. For a recent example of this, see David Verbeeten’s The Politics of Nonassimilation: The American Jewish Left in the Twentieth Century.
My best guess is that as Jews integrated into European countries many of them immediately became enamored with certain radical ideas of their gentile counterparts. Why? Who knows. But they found those ideas congenial to their own outlook and temperament. They then gradually added their disproportionate intellectual and financial weight to advancing those ideas in secular society.
But those ideas preceded the Jews. If you look at the Radical Republicans, for example, a group obviously not influenced by Jewish money and ideas, you can see a modern American political and intellectual approach toward both race and immigration. Some Radical Republicans believed in the equality of races and open immigration. They opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Look at this 1869 Thomas Nast cartoon in which many of the various races sit at an “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” eating with equality and dignity.
In a later 20th-century context, one with Jews participating in the debates, someone like MacDonald might claim that those Radical Republican ideas were somehow the result of Jewish ethnic lobbying. I think that’s silly. But it’s equally silly to claim that Jews as a group don’t lean heavily to the left and that this fact affects public debate in important ways because of the Jewish disproportionate representation in universities, the courts, and political organizations.
That’s been around for a long time: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. This is erudite-sounding pseudoscience. First, it drifts off into the subjective – who decides what is and isn’t an “extraordinary” claim? Based on what standard? And who decides what is and isn’t “extraordinary” evidence? Next, it denies that there is a single standard which evidence must meet to constitute proof for any claim. If we say that some claims require more evidence than the scientific method would normally need in order to be accepted as proven, then why can’t we say that other claims can require less than that standard? Lysenkoism, here we come.
The fact that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” has often been used as a rhetorical cudgel against the likes of Young Earth creationists doesn’t make it any better science than Young Earth creationism is.
The equality of the average cognitive level of the more than 6500 ethnic groups on this planet would be far more extraordinary than there being differences. In the case of any other natural/biological traits it would be expected that of course differences would exist in population means of just about anything.
AntiDem, the statement you quote is not pseudoscience – rather it is a very rational basis for revising beliefs. For example, a claim which up front looks quite unlikely – say, that the fellow five houses down can levitate cars with his mind – is going to require a lot more evidence to reach any given level of certainty than (say) the claim that there is a ceiling fan in his living room.
To be reasonably convinced of the latter, asking a visitor who just came out of his house would probably suffice. To be reasonably convinced of the former, most people (including I daresay you) would need much more than just a witness statement. The extraordinary (a priori unlikely) claim needs extraordinary evidence (where “extraordinary” here means “more convincing than an a priori likelier claim).
In probability theory, this notion (and more) is quantified and formalized as Bayes’ Theorem. You should read up on it.
But the a priori probability of differences in mean cognitive level between different populations is high not low. What biological or natural trait works like intelligence is supposed to? Considerable differences between the intelligence of different individuals in populations but supposedly a universal constant that the mean level must equal in all populations. Preposterous. Like thinking that although the height of trees in a forest differs considerably from tree to tree for some magical reason the average tree height of every forest in the world must equal a universal constant.
Jim, my reply was addressed specifically to AntiDem’s claim that the principle he quotes is pseudoscience, which it is not.
As for your claim, I don’t disagree with your conclusion as applied to cognitive ability of e.g. different traditional racial groups, but your general supporting argument could use fleshing out. In particular you need to say what kinds of populations it applies to (it doesn’t apply to all populations), and what kinds of traits (ditto).
What would be an example of a natural trait that works like intelligence is supposed to work? If one were to measure the average mass of the stars in the 200 or so globular clusters in the Milky Way and found that in each globular cluster although individual stars differed in mass the average mass in each cluster was invariably .72 solar masses one would be astonished.
Not really astonished, it would show that star formation parameters are globaly uniform. Or, if you find that sand grain sizes are normal distributed, but the average size is the same anywhere you measure it (on one given beach), it shows sand is well mixed and not size-sorted. Interresting but not astonishing.
What requires special explanation is why human population is not well mixed regarding a lot of physical traits (from skin color to skeletal features…In fact, all physical traits exhibit clustering afaik), but well mixed regarding IQ. That would require a very strong mixing/diffusion force depending only on IQ…
A very strange stuff, like clever and dumb people not standing the presence of other clever/dumb people…Maybe IQ smell funny when you are clever….
Jim, thanks for your skepticism. I now realize that my objection was not well expressed, and is perhaps of limited value besides. That said I’ll try to clarify it.
Do you remember a few posts back where Greg took the position that populations can be defined any which way, i.e. they can be arbitrary subsets of humanity? If we take this seriously, and define populations X and Y as two random subsets of n humans each, then every trait will behave in the way that you describe as astonishing, and will do so increasingly faithfully as n gets bigger and bigger. That is because X and Y essentially constitute 2 Gallup polls asking the same question (if you prefer math-ese, it’s due to the Central Limit Theorem).
The populations don’t have to be defined randomly, either. They can be defined by a deterministic rule that has no direct or indirect relation to the trait in question: E.g. if populations X and Y are defined as those adults 30-50 yrs old whose eyelash count when divided by 10 leaves a remainder of 5 and 8, respectively, I think you will find just as much within-group individual IQ variation as in the species as a whole, but that the group averages will be nearly identical.
So I think your general argument is only applicable when the populations in question are defined in a way that has some direct or indirect relation to the trait in question. But this makes the argument a tautology, which isn’t terribly enlightening.
Having thus muddied the (or at least my) waters, I’ll go silent, think about this some more, and see if you or others can help me sort this out.
Good points. Imho the key to “strangeness” is that population are not really arbitrary, they need to be somewhat sexually isolated: more reproduction within that with non-members. Then if some heritable traits of large variance have different means in two populations, while other heritable traits have the same mean, it’s strange.
If almost all variable traits have different means, except a very few, it’s very strange, and those few traits needs to be specially investigated.
“If a researcher is a liar and isn’t particularly interesting, sure, fire him. ” Yes, that would be just. But it would be much more amusing to keep them around and – when they want to publish, insist that they include references related to the overwhelming evidence for the classical view of g, with corresponding text in their introduction and discussion that explains why it’t totally irrelevant. That would be hilarious.
“But sometimes the liar is also a genius: what then?”
That’s an easy call. Public execution, on all licenced channels.
Talented liars are too dangerous to be left alive, or to be seen to be left alive.
My relative respect of Jews started after 9/11. I rarely thought about them earlier. There is not a lot of them here in B.C. Percentage-wise, they’re fewer in Canada than the US. Yet all the same idiot policies on immigration were taken up.
After 9/11 I begin to try to find out more about Islam. There wasn’t much in the immediate aftermath and it would take months for anything nuanced to come out. Of course, Islamic apologists emerged immediately.
The first person I found writing anything even mildly skeptical about Islam was Jewish Martin Kramer. From him I found Bernard Lewis, who was a Jewish academic and wrote unbiased history. I read him to get up to speed on background.
Kramer was concerned about Islam because he had sensed before 9/11 there was definitely a problem with standard Islamic beliefs that sanctioned violence in some cases. He didn’t seem surprised about 9/11.
I then quickly found Jewish David Horowitz, who had a stable of writers, some Jewish. Horowitz is less academic and more forthright. And definitely skeptical about Islam.
I thought it was somewhat odd that I was finding all these Jews.
Of course, I also found nutcases like Jew Noam Chomsky.
I continued to read, branching out into historical topics that were not related to Islam.
[I had the time to do this was that September of 2001 both my kids moved out, freeing up my time for more reading. I worked full time.]
I eventually discovered that in the rise of Communism, Jews were over represented. But they were also over represented on the other side, as businessmen and capitalists.
And so it would be with Islam. Jews on both sides, strongly disagreeing with each other.
Yes, one could say the same thing about Sweden, Germany, and other European countries with similarly crazy immigration and refugee policies. Not many Jews there, either.
There’s no shortage of non-Jewish fools.
I do agree that the Jewish more pronounced tendency towards becoming crazy commies, genetics being just one minor feature of such craziness, in comparison to “others”, is completely irrelevant to the current self-destruction of the western societies.
Sweden is the best clean room experiment where Jews do not possess any influence whatsoever, where mass media is controlled by Swedes. Likewise, for the Russian revolution where Russians do not have anybody but themselves to blame for their madness. Or even more conspicuously Chinese commies ( how many Jews made the Chinese’s experiment possible ?)
I agree with your general sentiment, but Jews have their fingerprints are all over the Russian Revolution and the early formative years of the Soviet Union. They’re not to blame for it, of course, but they certainly were eager participants in it and disproportionately represented in it.
Sure, we know that a certain group of people is more prone to commie craziness with all attendant sorts of sub craziness, but so what ? Again, consider two pure experiments: Sweden an China.
Parenthetically, I do not have reliable statistics of course, but in my circle of Jewish friends from the former SU, all vote republican almost as pavlovianly as local Jews democrat. Interestingly, their children relapsed to the usual lefty behavior with one exception only. That leads to some interesting dinner table conversations.
<a href=”Sure, we know that a certain group of people is more prone to commie craziness with all attendant sorts of sub craziness, but so what ?
Again, I agree with your general sentiment, but your example of the Soviet Union’s founding (as opposed to Sweden and China) does not support it.
Some other ethnicities show a similar pattern. Cubans and Vietnamese, for example. The immigrant generations which lived under communist rule were inclined to support the GOP. Their kids? They reverted back to typical American ethnic voting patterns.
Please tell that to my two great-granduncles who who were shot point blank by communists for being wealthy real estate developers in Odessa. Or to my great-grandfather on another family line whose career was destroyed post-revolution because he worked for a Tsarist-backed oil company and was a “White.” Or to my g-g-grandfather on yet another line whose massive land holdings and agricultural businesses were confiscated and spent the rest of his life in poverty.
Greg and others — I’ve thought about this question before and I’d love to hear your take. Is it possible there was sorting of the Russian-Jewish population in terms of those who immigrated to the US pre ~1920 and those who didn’t? From anecdotal / family evidence it seems like the poorer Jews (“labor”) were more prone to leave, while the richer Jews (“capital”) who did well under Tsarist rule were prone to stay.
I’m trying to understand why “American” Jews (vast majority from Russia) lean so hard left, while Russian Jews who immigrated post 1980s lean so far Tea Party. So is it possible there was real sorting, or is it better explained by the fact that newly-arrived Russian Jews actually lived under real communism?
From what I see it is true that these people’s kids raised/born in the US do somewhat revert to standard American Jewish leftism… but still not quite at the same levels as American Jews who have been here for a few generations… and a sizable chunk remain very conservative.
“poorer Jews (“labor”) were more prone to leave” – true I think. Russian Jews didn’t arrive in the US with much capital.
“newly-arrived Russian Jews actually lived under real communism?” Yep.
How do you know they weren’t sentenced to death, or even shot, by Jewish communists? It’s not inconceivable. There was Jew-on-Jew crime in the Soviet Union. Ever hear of Genrikh Yagoda?
And some of your family was killed in Odessa? Well, in Ukraine, Cheka was heavily, heavy, heavily Jewish. I’ve seen some stats that say as high as 80 percent Jewish.
In any case, I don’t think the personal tragedies in your family line, to the degree they can be verified at all, matter one whit to honestly answering this question.
I never argued that Jews weren’t overrepresented in early Soviet communism — of course they were. My point was that they were also overrepresented as victims, and more generally that they will be overrepresented in nearly any activity of consequence (including participating in conservative political movements, including reading “wrongthink” genetics blogs, etc…)
Sweden is the best clean room experiment where Jews do not possess any influence whatsoever, where mass media is controlled by Swedes.
You know the truth and deny it. There’s a word for people who do that. Anyway, a article about the Holocaust and antisemitism has just been published in the Guardian by a pro-refugee, pro-open-borders, pro-multi-culti Swedish Jew. Note the biographical information at the end of the article:
Europe’s past matters today. My grandma’s survival story tells us why
Having survived the Holocaust, fled Communism and lived in West Germany, Lusia saw how political institutions can serve both good and evil purposes […]
Peter Wolodarski is editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s leading daily newspaper
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/21/europe-grandmother-holocaust-russia-poland-germany
But according to you, Peter Wolodarski does “not possess any influence whatsoever” in Sweden. Then there’s the famous Barbara Lerner Spectre of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. She doesn’t agree with you about Jewish influence in Sweden and the rest of Europe: “Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive.”
There are plenty more examples.
You’re being silly. There are too few Jews in Sweden for them to be responsible for Swedish policy irrespective of the wishes of the rest of Sweden’s population. Naming a Jewish editor-in-chief and a Jewish academic doesn’t change that argument.
He is just being religious. In his mental universe a Jew possesses enough persuasive power to lead astray at least 600 innocent gentiles in Sweden. A Super-Jew in China has almost infinite power.
I wonder how many Jews were there in Cambodia that made Pol Pot possible?
You’re being silly. There are too few Jews in Sweden for them to be responsible for Swedish policy irrespective of the wishes of the rest of Sweden’s population.
You’re being dishonest.Surprise, surprise. If the majority are being manipulated, then what sort of people would you expect to find filling posts like “editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s leading daily newspaper”? And why is Barbara Lerner Specture, in Sweden, claiming that “Jews are going to be at the center of [the demographic transformation of Europe]”? Is she a secret fan of Kevin MacDonald?
Nomen Est Omen,
I suspect Barbara Lerner says the things you allege she says because she is every bit as loony as Kevin MacDonald. They both want to put Jews at the center of the universe.
Look, I think a very good case can be made that Jews in America (as opposed to elsewhere in the world) have influenced U.S. policy in numerous ways, for better and for worse. I’ll even go one further and say that their influence has been mostly for the worse in the last few decades. At least since the Civil Rights’ battles of the fifties and sixties.
But the strands of Progressivism that I see in American history date back before the Jews became numerous in the United States and can be found in mainline Protestant thought. Jews might’ve added their own fuel-injected power to that thought, but they didn’t invent it or even make it prominent. It was already there.
I’n pro-Jew (actually I am a Jew), but the argument that Sweden has few Jews is not exactly true. Sweden has the 18th highest Jewish per capita population in the world. It’s not impossible that this is factor in Sweden being more insane than Norway or Finland.
On the other hand, Hungary is no. 6 and it copes fine despite the Hungarian Jewish population leaning towards Left wing buffoonery. The Jewish Question is, I think, solvable on a case by case basis; no need to start rounding people up in cattle trucks or anything.
I doubt it. The percentage of Jews in Sweden’s population (0.15%) is almost identical to the percentage found in the world population (0.15%).
So what odds would you give on a Jew being “editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s leading daily newspaper”?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/21/europe-grandmother-holocaust-russia-poland-germany
Well, there are a few thousand Jews in Sweden and most of them have to find gainful employment, so I would say the odds are pretty good that Jews can be found in Swedish universities, law offices, government buildings, and the media. But it wont be anything like in the U.S., France, Canada, or even Australia and Argentina.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/second-jewish-building-in-sweden-attacked-in-attempted-firebombing/
‘Group Evolutionary Strategy’ working to a T.
With that said, as before, the balance of evidence suggests that all things being equal more Jews = more Leftism, hence more Leftism in Sweden than Norway.
The thing is that all other things are not equal. Hungary has more than three times as many Jews per capita as Sweden and they manage to avoid letting crazy Muslims go around raping everyone by the simple expedient of not being monumental faggots.
The JQ is solvable?
Things are often not how they seem from reading the news; speculating how they most likely could be should take this into account, especially when “cui bono” points the same way:
Mossad is quite competent, daring, and has a very strong interest in infiltrating Arab Muslim terrorist and militant groups, and that is far from the only point of contact between Israel and such groups. Jewish supporters of Israel in the diaspora are of course working closely with Mossad and other Israeli government groups conducting various sorts of non-publicized operations.
Some of the findings referenced here weren’t surprising to me:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/sons-well-off-black-families-not-well.html
But the logic that outcomes aren’t explicable by cognitive ability because males & females have different outcomes is new.
Yes, just dizzying feats of reasoning:
a) Black women, on average, not as dysfunctional as black me
b) ????
ergo: Discrimination!
Prison.
Egalitarianism is incendiary.
A year or so ago, I watched a German state news program. A woman interviewed an Afghani man who had been in Germany a year. It quickly was established he had never had a job the whole time he had been in Germany. By asking a leading question, the woman coached him gently but quite clearly to blame his failures on the racism of the German people. And the whole thing, from A to Z, was funded by the native German taxpayer, in the name of egalitarianism!
I’m afraid Europe, dreaming of equality, is sleepwalking to war.
More likely sleep-walking to becoming a minority in their countries.
War implies people willing to fight.
I don’t see them (or only a few) among indigenous Europeans. Too many of them live to travel and such adventures. Can’t do that with the nuisance of children.
I hope I’m wrong.
Almost everyone recoils from war. I think this allows us to delude ourselves into thinking it will never happen. Even the guy who killed Franz Ferdinand (evidently bloody-minded) never imagined the scale of the conflict he would spawn. And despite the most fervent hopes of Pinker, the essential nature of man hasn’t changed.
The only question for me is how disruptive technology is to this cycle. For the average person, living an average life, is it easier to control his information or harder? Easier to spy on him or harder? It is, I think, (for the average) much easier.
Then, of course, there are the bombs. If Al-Andalus had nukes like the UK and France do, it may never have been retaken.
I went through a “what caused WW I” phase. Entire libraries were written on the topic, but most disappeared after the horrors on WW II.
I read several sources on the Franz Ferdinand question. The most complete was written by a then-Yugoslavian who was fluent in the languages.
There was a group of several young people planning the hit. They were starry-eyed nationalists, and the Serbs did offer some assistance.
The first attempt on Franz failed. Then, unexpectedly, there was a second chance, and it was successful.
The killer was horrified to be blamed for WW I.
He wasn’t hanged because Austria-Hungary had passed laws on the minimum age for capital punishment and the guy was too young. He was imprisoned.
He died of tuberculosis either before or shortly after the war ended.
That is definitely the odd part of the story. I believe, he was sentenced to only 20 years, and, of course, he had murdered two people, including Ferdinand’s wife.
But, I suppose, it is true that many of the other men who were most responsible for the the war got off lightly and that is often true of large conflicts.
Yes, Princip died in jail before the war ended. But, it seems to me that blaming the WW I on him is preposterous. Austria and Serbia came to war, Austrian army invaded Serbia three times and was thrown out each time. If the great powers didn’t come to blows with each other, Austria and Serbia would probably fought to a draw, and that would have been all.
I understand that. I read lots of other books too. I got interested in pre-WW I period in general.
I had a bad experience in high school, Grade 12, History. We were assigned to pick a controversial topic to write a major essay on. This was 1969. I had already decided on majoring in Physics or Math by then.
I picked a book “Brighter than a Thousand Suns” that my Physics teacher recommended. It was about Germany and what effort they made towards a nuclear weapon in WW II. I didn’t know that book was seriously flawed. Indeed, five minutes of looking on the web tells you that. But how would I know that it 1969? I was going by the Physics teacher’s word.
The History teacher gave my essay a failing grade. I was too timid to tell her about the recommendation of the Physics teacher. I just lived with it,
The net effect was to put me off any of the Arts for years. How would I know what was accurate and what wasn’t?
So I had lots to catch up on.
He wasn’t the fundamental cause perhaps but he lit a match in a room full of gunpowder.
“Europe… is sleepwalking to war.”
“War implies people willing to fight.”
a war only needs one side willing to fight
True.
It needs one side willing to start fighting. Many people or groups are willing to fight, but will not initiate fighting.
Lying about the truth is morally defensible if the motivation is moral.
Moot point. Artificial Intelligence will make us all look like thumb sucking idiots in five years.
I don;t think it will live up to the imagination. The successes are in well-defined areas with known rules. What about the thunderbolt of creative inspiration? Will AI be able to combine disparate and unrelated experiences,, memories, and fond knowledge into a process like daydreaming?