What do you consider a reliable indicator? Tests are very good at measuring generic “g factor” intelligence, and the data is what it is.
I honestly do not see why the thesis that individuals of different races, should they differ in physical characteristics, should also differ in mental characteristics is so controversial - as if evolution would not act upon traits such as intelligence. It isn’t polylogism even. I haven’t looked into the research or controversies over the matter - but given that no anarchist advocates policies based on intelligence, I am not sure I see what the big problem is. Much ado about nothing.
-Jon
I do not think there is a reliable indiciator nor measure of intelligence, currently. I would think such arrogance might be evidence of such.
Data can & will always be interrepted differently, and can easily lie in the same manner as statistics.
It is used in the attempt to prove racial polylogism by white nationalists. The individual is ignored and conclusions are reached from the data that are the mere superimposition of biases. It is used as a way to fallaciously argue that it’s purely “nature” when even if one accepts the data there is no reason to assume that there are not nurture factors playing a big role. What’s closer to the truth is that individuals, period, have variation between eachother.
Here’s the nub of the problem: African people of high intelligence are a lot scarcer in their homelands than, say, Swedes of high intelligence or Japanese of high intelligence. Think about the protagonist in “Idiocracy.” They correctly conclude that it’s a harder row to hoe where the majority of people have 11-year old mentation and impulse control than it is to move to a place where there’s a lot more people with your level of intelligence. The latter locale will be less violent and have a broader distribution along the bell-shaped curve, enabling more division of labor and thus higher living standards.
The highly dangerous and unlibertarian conclusion being moved towards here is the notion of artificially restricting immigration to keep the allegedly violent, lazy and uncultured “dum dums” out. All in the name of dubious inferences made from incomplete and flawed statistical data.
Then they’re idiots, as IQ =/= the logical structure of the mind. No polylogist has ever demonstrated how different logics could apply to different races/classes (i.e. one where inferences from true premises was not truth-preserving &c.), and IQ differences will definitely not prove even that much.
True, but nonetheless insurance agencies for example are able to estimate risk based on one’s membership to a certain class of individuals. There may be salient differentiating and integrating characteristics in terms of genetics beyond physical characteristics, but as I said I’m not familiar enough with the relevant literature to say.
-Jon
Actually, it is the politically correct Left that is arguing for human biouniformity in the face of science that shows human biodiversity. Human biouniformity is the premise for every social engineering scheme out there, most notably public education.
I don’t think the movie Idiocracy is an entirley reliable source to base assumptions & views upon.
And that’s a very nice straw man you’ve erected, sir. Notwithstanding that, the movie is an accurate metaphor for what a Kenyan with an IQ of 120 is confronted with in Kenya which, again, is why most Kenyans with that level of IQ emigrate to the West.
Would not white nationalists, propnents of ethnic cleansing, various religious organizations & fundamenalists, social scientists with their own agenda, not also want to advocate such? I don’t think this is exclusive to the politically correct Left (which I’m assuming you also mean the Statist Left).
There is absolutely nothing unlibertarian about discrimination based on looks, gender, race, IQ, or any other number of immutable characteristics. In fact, the whole point of libertarianism is to allow people to act on their preferences so long as they do not offload the cost of their preferences on others.
It’s not, but it’s most operative in the secular State, the very existence of which is premised on human biouniformity and the denial of racial, sub-racial, and even familial and gender differences.
Yeah, I mean it’s pretty hard to deny the influence of the Left in academia, and in providing the State fodder for its various schemes to tackle the “issues” (such as anti-discrimination laws, public education to increase intelligence &c.)
-Jon
Not everything that disagrees with your biological determinist conservative views is “the politically correct left” or political correctness. And actually my argument is for extreme human diversity - which breaks down within each respective group to the individual, hence invalidating your kind’s assumptions about biouniformity within each respective group. The error of polylogism is blatantly at work here, as within the group you refuse to see diversity while you pit foreward the relation between entire collective groups as being diametrically opposed or somehow uniformly different. So actually I’m suggesting far more variation between humans than you are. I see your position as anthropromorphizing entire groups as collective abstractions and trying to use statistical data to back up such conclusions.
The state doesn’t have a right to discriminate, since it is not a legitimate private property owner. State discrimination is highly unlibertarian and constitutes institutional segregation. Institutional segregation is not a solution to institutional integration. The very nature of the discrimination by state institutions would offload the cost of such preferances onto others, since the discrimination is using other people’s money and essentially dictating how they use their own property, having the effect of making discrimination mandatory with respect to 3rd parties. You have a right to exclude people from your property, but not from someone else’s property. So your position entirely crumbles.
I find it funny that you use terms like “secular state”. Would you prefer theocracy?
To steer things a bit back to the original topic: quite obviously the people in many of the African countries are effected by political and economic conditions imposed by their own totally inept governments as well as negative effects from the corporatist policies of western nations. They are rich in resources and yet simultaneously unable to adequately access and productively make use of them precisely as a result of a whole plethora of economic controls and the fact that many of them more or less still live in stagnated caste societies, with no real mobility. These are the vital environmental factors that byzantine is overlooking only to jump to a strictly nature-based explaination.
Depends. Amish village? Hasidic township? Byzantium? I’ll take any of those over Washington D.C.
I would agree that politics has become a supplement to and/or in place of religion, so in some ways we already are in a theocracy. That’s a bit of a tangent on my part, though.