Bono's BS

Since you ask, Dan, I’ll tell you what I think about you. I think you’re a white supremacist in the North American 20th century sense. By this I mean that you believe the white race is superior (and there is no need to qualify this term, superior means superior) to the black race. I believe this because this is what you have said here and as a result of my analysis of your statements. I do not know whether you ‘hate’ blacks or not. I believe you have somehow developed the mistaken notion that an individual’s rights are trumped by statistical measures of variables within the racial group to which that individual belongs. This is a fallacy; the ideal of freedom requires us to work the other way; from an assumption of universal, inalienable rights which accrue to all humans by virtue of their humanness. I believe that you are anachronistically fighting a battle against immigration, when the movements of populations will inevitably be defined in economic, not racial terms, and when the far future of the human race will involve the virtual dissolution of national boundaries, and the emergence of three or four ‘super-trade’ entities, which will all be racially diverse. I believe that you, Pabst, and others like the two of you overemphasize innate black criminality in your attempts to explain the prevalence of blacks in the criminal world. I will not spend time here reiterating my belief about the personal responsibilities borne by blacks themselves and black leaders in their quest for equality. My whole personal philosophy is based on a steadfast belief in personal responsibility and a hatred for the culture of victimization, the race/gender politic which blames the white male for all of the problems faced by supposedly ‘disenfranchised’ segments of society. I will say this; it is not ironic that the one argument the black leaders do have, that is, that blacks are still discriminated against purely on the basis of the colour of their skin by some, and that that discrimination sets up in many young black people a sense of frustration and anger and hurts them psychologically, and that economic disadvantages which are a direct result of the (very, very recent) institutionalization of racism in America make it harder for some black kids to get a good start in life, that this argument is attacked by people like you and Pabst, who have stated that they feel blacks are inferior to whites. I mean, you have to admit – there is no big surprise there.

The overriding impression that I have of you is of a person who finds it necessary to describe his beliefs using language that leaves the door open to the possibility that you are really just an average person looking to solve what you see as the biggest problems we face in a rational way. I suppose that there’s a chance that this is actually the case, although what appear to me to be the strange omissions/contradictions in your positions, a few of which I have pointed out here, seem to indicate that your views may be a bit more virulent than you make them appear. Again, if I am wrong, I will suffer the consequences. I am not a religious person, but I do have certain beliefs about ‘what goes around comes around’.

I try hard not to engage you guys anymore. I do a lot less of it than I used to. I hope your efforts on this site and the other sites which you mentioned you post at are providing you with whatever return is necessary for you to keep doing those actions. Clearly we all post here for a reason, myself included.

 

I know a lot of "solid-state physicists." They are all liberals...

 

Firstly, that's hardly surprising. Physics specialists tend to spend most of their time engaged in "doing physics", not in analyzing social policy. Their lives being closely linked to universities, they are probably most influenced by their intellectual peers in the social science departments--especially since liberal views on reality are what virutally everyone wants to believe anyway.

Secondly, give me a society filled to the brim with solid-state physicist potential people and I wouldn't care if they were all ideological communists--a society of people of that calibre would probably make it work.

Now, on to Nik...

 

sometimes even honesty can be disgusting.

 

let me see if i get that right. physicists are very bright
until it comes to social policy. then they somehow fail.
but if there were enough of them "it" would work, even
if it was a left society.

ah, very conclusive.

 

Nik, thank you for the taking the time to write that lengthy reply. I understand very well that my views seem outrageous and extreme to most people. I'm attacking what are, in many ways, the bedrock assumptions that multiple generations in the west have now grown up with, so it's quite natural that people should want to lash out and resort to whatever language (on the internet, other means in 'real life') necessary to shut down voices like mine. However, rational people, if they are to be considered rational people, should want to see their assumptions challenged, and if they are found wanting, should want to ammend them. It's in that spirit and that spirit alone that I ask you to consider the position I advance, and in particular the facts I summon in support of it.

I said "point-blank" to forestall any example up you might have had up your sleeve where I had "suggested" it or implied it indirectly. (I mean, come on, you have in the past seriously distorted my words, so it shouldn't surprise you I would be wary.) The fact is I have never suggested it any way, and if you re-read the paragraph you quoted, you'd see that I said I thought everyone should have the opportunity to procreate (except the obvious cases of mental illness, mental retardation etc--the kind of people who don't readily find willing partners anyway, so it's a bit beside the point).

Regarding the last sentence in the above paragraph, if society was going to sterilize crack-whores, then yes, crack-whores of all races should be sterilized, certainly.

Since I am not actually advocating sterilization, per se, that largely makes your subsequent paragraph superfluous. Nevertheless, I would point out that if society wished to introduce to a sterilization program, there is no reason at all it couldn't be done democratically and objectively.

Just as the feelings of those in power today affect the decisions they make. It's interesting, though, isn't it, that, for a democratic society, my benighted and despicable views on immigration would actually be much more in accord with the views of the majority of the population than today's enlightened bureaucrats. Since a country's immigration policies will have an irreversible effect on the character of that country, and a greater long-term impact on the people of that country's lives than the great majority of policy decisions, why not have a referendum on immigration? Can any country that doesn't have such referendum, at least on being made aware of the pressing need for one, really call itself democratic?

You're right. My views would be based on reality, not simply ideals. I don't see why you invoke liberty, however. There is nothing in the view that people are inherently unequal that would compel one to deny liberty to another; said differently, liberty does not require the assumption of equality.

I think you're putting words into my mouth again. Whatever I might have said about hierarchies, it was in direct response to a question or statement you put to me. I'm really not interested in developing intricate hierarchies that account precisely for different groups'abilities or 'worth'.

What I have said is that IQ is predictive of life results. Highly predictive. So predictive that a five year old child's IQ score can predict with impressive accuracy the grades such a child will achieve, the kind of careers that will open to it and even the likelihood of that child engaging in criminal activity. No, as you point out, none of this determines what any one such child will accomplish in life, however, what any one particular child does is hardly going to be of great interest to society. It's what large numbers of children (and adolescents and adults) do that will impact society. And IQ is highly predictive of the life results that people of various IQ levels will do. In a word, it is important.

Now, it just so happens that groups of different races, don't all have the same IQ distributions. Therefore, there is going to be a disparity in what members of different racial groups are going to achieve in life. The larger the disparity in IQ (and other inherited mental and behavioral traits), the larger the disparity in life results. Therefore, since the mean African-American IQ level is ~85, compared to a mean white American score of 100, life results achieved by members of these two groups are going to differ. They are especially going to differ at the tails. Given the 'bell' distribution of IQs, only some 15% of African-Americans have IQs above 100, whereas 50% of whites do. I don't have the figures of the top of my head, but I think it's something like 35% of whites being above 110-115, the minimum level typically required for a university education, while only something like 5% of African-Americans have IQs that high. Therefore, by merit alone, you would hardly expect to see any blacks at the highest positions in society. Similarly, at the other end, 50% of blacks have IQs lower than 85, while only some 30% of whites do. Some 30% of blacks have IQs lower than 75, while only some 5% of whites do. Therefore, you would expect to see blacks overrepresented in the kind of delinquency typically associated with such low IQs--which is precisely what you observe.

The liberal response to this is to: (a) claim IQ tests are culturally biased (bi) claim they don't really measure intelligence (bii) claim that intelligence doesn't really exist, or is impossible to define, therefore cannot be measured and, above all, (c) claim IQ differences are the result of environmental not genetic differences.

Unfortunately, the existing evidence rules out all of these possibilites. (a) Asians outscore whites on the very tests that are supposed to be culturally biased towards whites (bi) whatever they do measure is predictive of life results (bii) high IQ scores correlate well with the popular understanding of "bright" or "talented" and low scores correlate well with popular understanding of "stupid" or "dumb" (c) requires the most evidence, but some of the most compelling is: studies of identical twins raised in separate households showed that the twins had virtually identical IQs despite being raised in different environments; siblings growing up in the same household can have greatly differing IQs; at a group level, black children adopted into white families still have IQs closer to (or right at) the black mean, not the white.

(Believe me, I really don't like harping on about this, and I understand very well that what I say readily gives itself to hurting people, and yes, 'certain groups' readily employ it for precisely that purpose, but again, it's because it's so important that it cannot be ignored that I must say it.)

 

(My reply is getting long, and I'm running out of time, so I'll be brief for the remainder.)

"Legislate based on knowledge about IQ scores" can mean many things.

Allow me to outline my way of taking our knowledge about IQ into account when formulating social policy.

Let me summarise what I think we know: the level of civilization depends on intelligence--the more intelligent a society, the more civilized; the results in life that any one person can potentially attain are capped, in large part, by that person's intelligence; a person with low intelligence is far more likely than a person with high intelligence to live in poverty and/or to engage in criminal activity; intelligence is largely genetically inherited; intelligence can be imperfectly but reliably measured by IQ tests.

Here is how I propose we take the above into account: encourage the procreation of people with high intelligence and discourage the procreation of people with low intelligence.

How can this be done? Probably the most humane way is financial incentives. Since the lowest IQ people are most likely to live in poverty, simply stop paying them to have kids. Pay them to voluntarily sterilize themselves.

Is this moral? Since the choice is ultimately up to them, I can't see how not. Society is simply saying that people who can't afford to feed themselves or their existing families should not be starting families or expanding them and expecting other people to foot the bill. Although some feelings may be hurt, ultimately these people will actually be far better off; money not spent feeding hungry mouths--hungry mouths which, many times, these people quickly come to resenting, abusing or abandoning--is money they can spend on themselves.

I have much more to expand on, but I'm out of time. Just one more point, though, any society--monoracial, multiracial, whatever--would stand to benefit from such policies. My views on the desirability of snuffing out the founding peoples of white (or any) countries by overwhelming them with racially alien immigrants is entirely another matter (my view: it's not something I think they should be subjected to).

 

They don't "fail", they just don't bother to inform themselves about it to the extent necessary; they leave it up to their social sciences counterparts.

If people with the potential to be physicists turned their attention to social policy instead of physics, they would clearly be smart enough to "get it". And yes, a hypothetical society full of people with just such potential would do a much better job of managing a commmunist system than previous attempts made by real societies, whose people, on average, were not of such calibre.

 

Racist, elitist, supremecist...

What others words apply to well to your thought process and the way in which you value human life in any particular society?

Arguments from ignorance, obsession with race, generalization fallacies, and appeals to shoddy reasoning process is something you are adept in.

 

I do have one question about engineering society.

If you set it up so that everyone is smarter --- won't there still be a problematic group of relatively dumb people who can't function well.