The uproar around John Derbyshire's controversial column has subsided a tad for the opening of the weekly news cycle. Liberals have successfully mounted a conservative head over their mantle, and would now like the conversation to move on. But I still believe it needs a little more talking out.
Nothing I write on this blog ever takes me more than about 45 minutes. It's more a free flow of consciousness than you would expect. Sometimes that yields great results (by my own assessment anyway) and sometimes it's leaves things a confusing jumble. In this case I'm getting more of the latter then the former.
I spent about 2 hours yesterday working on three different versions of something on this topic, but I was so upset that I found I couldn't finish anything. I'm not upset about John's fate, he's a big boy and can take care of himself. I'm upset that the America I live in is so quick to reject cold empiricism in deference to a completely imaginary worldview.
Here then is a fact.
Blacks score lower on standardized tests of intelligence than Whites. Whites score lower than Asians. This is as close as any human will ever get to accurately describing people in aggregate. As I said, this is a fact. It is an objective and rationally determined piece of evidence. It is not a reflection of school funding algorithms, or denial of social services. It's not caused by 'bias' in the tests or some other statistical anomaly. It is not "an error". Based on all the available evidence gathered by people of any race and in any circumstance. It is not caused by outside forces of any kind, but is an actual and accurate reflection of a base potentiality of intelligence, classified by race.
There is a HUGE amount of data which has been gathered in this area - far FAR too much to be dismissed in so cavalier a way. To put it plainly, rejecting this evidence is to embrace stupidity over that which will inevitably bring wisdom. But to be acceptable to our political classes, you must never admit this to yourself. We must pretend that the cause of this anomaly is still an open question. In reality however, it isn't. This is not social policy, it's math. And the fact that America is unable to face this evidence as it stands has left me thoroughly disheartened.
I was raised in a environment where, in an effort to instill in me a desire for self improvement, I was taught that I was the worst thing a human being can be. This changed how I viewed myself in a number of ways but since we're on the topic of intelligence testing, lets talk about that.
When my IQ was last tested it was 186, and all available evidence would suggest that it has been something close to that since my early childhood. But by the time I was 16 I was convinced through constant repetition that I was 'stupid' and 'worthless'. This didn't hurt my feelings as much as it convinced me that I was wrong about who I was. It wasn't intended this way, but it ended up being a kind of brainwashing that had teenage me convinced at some level that I really was stupid and worthless.
But in 'reality' this wasn't actually the case. In 'reality' I was actually much smarter than average, even though I had been convinced otherwise. So the best day of my life was not actually my wedding day or the day my daughter was born (although that comes pretty close). The best day of my life was the day in my early 20's when I realized that I was lied to about who and what I was. It literally came to me as an epiphany. And on that day I tossed aside all the things I had been convinced of about myself and the world in general, and started building a worldview from scratch.
That realization changed something important about how I think. As I rebounded from my "Great Santini" style upbringing, I developed a dependency on objectivity.
Most people don't have any trouble reconciling their subjective view of the world with the objective evidence around them. But I knew that my subjective view - my biases about the world - could not be trusted. To this day I require external verification of my every judgement before I'll trust it. If I can't find external evidence to support my position, I feel the need to treat it as 'untrue' until otherwise demonstrated. And this has effected everything in my life from the career I chose, to my relationships, to how I see myself.
Liberal America takes the opposite view. They have declared that if the objective evidence cannot be reconciled with the story that they've told themselves, then it's the objective evidence that must be ignored. They are quite literally a 'flat earth' society - ignoring empirical reality in deference to the 'old wives tales' of modern liberalism.
And that's the thing that has me really upset. I hadn't realized what a medieval period we're living in with regard to our discussions on race. I hadn't realized how far that intentionally dogmatic ignorance has reached into what I would call 'conservative' America. We are not empiricists in this regard. We are still hopelessly enraptured in the demonstrably false fantasies of the progressives. The sun still revolves around the earth in their universe, and no further discussion of the topic shall be allowed.
Anyway, that's it. I'd like to talk about the substance of the whole thing, but at the moment I'm still too upset to talk about anything but my feelings on the topic. I'll come back to it again later when I've calmed down.
10 comments:
tom.all your pieces are well written and well thought out and the discussion needs to be there. but you are like the dude in greek myth that pushed the boulder up the hill all day just to have it roll back down at dark. he got up and pushed it back up again and again and again......libtards will never engage in a real discussion of this so theyl jus let you go for eternity.if they ever did engage it would be a "hot" breakfast(i dont have a problem with that) and lots more $$$$...unfortunately their answer is like the phrase for insanity.." doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result...very frustrating.. .. i think "our game" is over. may take 5 yrs or 20 but its over...sad
I have no evidence of this, but I disagree about Sisyphus. I think the transcendence of the progressive view is a generational phenomenon, and will revert to the mean after we're rid of the boomers.
On the contrary, I think this may be the kicking off point of a sincere 'counter-revolution' of sorts. All fantasy's will yield to reality eventually... all of them. This particular myth will just take a little longer.
What's interesting is, that if you are a person who subscribes to a traditional christian morality, then you don't think someone is 'inferior' simply because they're less intelligent. Only those who abandon that view (like liberals) really feel that way.
i wish i was more enthusiastic or more hopeful.i was raised by 1 parent and lived on fed welfare for 2 yrs while my mother get her ged and then her lpn in nursing.. what a sight for a 16 yo kid teaching his mom fractions..we used the safety net for exactly what it shud be. a net. not an entitltement...then i went to school for 13 yrs after high school to look up and see baseballs players making more in a weekend series than i did in a year.and none of em ever could be litigated into bankruptcy for going o for 5 at the plate.so one day at 2 am they brought me a 30 ounce premee and when that case was finished i quit. fini. nadda..i beleive this country has 1 shot. if romney gets it i think we can come back some. if fomo then we are toast. you will have piled on another 5 tril in debt .sad
Your IQ puts you up with this guy:
http://youtu.be/-ak5Lr3qkW0
20 years ago in college, some of my fellow students were in the 0.001% of the super-intelligent: Guys with perfect or near perfect SAT scores (my roommate missed a 1600 by ten points on the verbal). This one Chinese guy I knew never went to class. He was able to read the book the night before an exam and score near 100% while the class average was in the 60% range (open book tests graded on a curve). I was in awe of these guys, with a little bit of envy thrown in (I struggled with higher order math. Laplace transforms made me want to scream). The super-IQ crowd was 100% Caucasian or Asian, and 100% male.
Yet on graduation, I shared one thing in common with them. We all had a hell of time finding work (graduated during a recession). None of us belonged to a protected class, so we were the last to be considered for the job openings that were out there. Your resume' wouldn't make it through an HR department that had another agenda besides finding really smart and capable people.
Tom, this nonsense has to end. As events have shown, the tyranny has spread to all aspects of public and private life; where expressing the "wrong idea", no matter how correct factually, will destroy your career (and possible your life).
Maybe what happened to Derb will finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Maybe people who have suffered through this pretense will finally have enough and revolt in mass?
As you pointed out, this may die off with the Baby-boomers. However, academia appears to have trained the next two generations. Part of the week, I work at a major academic institution. I pass by posters stating "Marx was Right" and booths for the various Marxist orientated student organizations. Seeing that makes me despair.
"What's interesting is, that if you are a person who subscribes to a traditional christian morality, then you don't think someone is 'inferior' simply because they're less intelligent. Only those who abandon that view (like liberals) really feel that way."
Amen.
My concern is that due to the ongoing move away from our Judeo-Chritian roots, substituted by moral relativism, loss of collective consensus and a substitution for these things with the Flavor of the Day, we can expect to see the downward spiral continue. This trend is in keeping with the rise and fall of civilizations. Our fall, already perceptible against the standards achieved and expected in the mid-20th century, is, I think, exacerbated by the parity that has been achieved by other nations in production, infrastructure and political stabilization i.e. The East.
The ideological fault lines really manifested in the 1920's, re-surfaced for good with the Beats and then tipped the scales in the 1960's which I believe, was the beginning of the end.
In my interaction with university students here in the US I don't see too much cognition going on, just memorization by rote and spitting it back out.
The issue isn't so much the legacy of the Boomers. They may have been the first "Me" generation but we are in a twilight... coasting on the successes of the past. The entitlement complex that I see in the up and coming crowd today is amazing and indicative of the tail end of a civilization that has had it too good for too long.
The coup de grâce is the inability to discern facts, volition rather than emotion, fluff rather than substance.
We are one SCOTUS appointee away from autocracy, the kids are getting high on technology and no one's minding the store.
Maybe we need another RFNJ entry on "prepping".
Correction to previous: emotion rather than volition. My bad.
The rest was so well I said I think most here knew what you meant.
Thank you.
As an NJ small government conservative bordering on libertarianism, I'm utterly repulsed that what it means to be a conservative today is to believe, as part of the conservative ideology, that the African race is genetically less intelligent than the others.
Yes, Africans at large have a lower group IQ, but why do you jump the gun so fast and assume it's their race responsible for it? The truth is, most Africans (both American Africans and pure Africans) live in squalor. If one knows anything about nutrition, one would realize the lack of breast feeding, high rate of disease, lack of iodine, diet empty in meat and fish, lack of vitamin D, drug use, prenatal alcohol use, etc significantly hinders IQ ... both in the womb and in childhood. All these negative factors are disproportionately prevalent in the African populations.
As a resident of an upper class NJ town in Bergen County, I have witnessed no such performance deficit in my African peers. As a matter of fact, 4 out of 5 whom I know were in my honors classes with me doing well. When the standard of living is high, as in to the degree of white and East Asian societies, their genetic potential is more accurately depicted and when this occurs, they are at the same 'level' as whites and Asians. Just look at the IQs in Africa rising as it continues to develop. What do we get? We get a productive society rich in engineers, doctors, psychologists, scientists, businessmen and all of them are pure Negroids. There are even Africans scoring 140 on IQ tests. Clearly there is nothing in African genes precluding high functioning if nurtured properly.
I'm hoping people will realize innate genetic potential is separate of expressed performance and much of our potential is stifled in some way, especially in Africans due to effects on genetics from negative environmental interaction. Unfortunately, as you say, we are still in the Dark Ages. Hopefully epigenetic theory will prevail and if not, biohacking technology will be our equalizer. I eagerly await both of these days to come
Ever heard of self selection bias?
Post a Comment