Desperation

It's closing in on Kristof, and he's panicking. His latest column, #1 on nytimes.com, is total drivel and bs.


A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.

The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.


But what happens when a culture values intelligence? The intelligent procreate more.



Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”



Damaging to public policy. Another generation of college dropouts that would have made decent mechanics, police officers, or army platoon leaders.

Race...IQ...Yawn

I don't know, maybe Brooks was reading Saletan and was starting to get scared. After all, there aren't really too many non partisan columnists who try to challenge mainstream wisdom and avoid being pigeonholed. Brooks is one of them. So he saw a challenge when he read those Saletan columns.

So, in response to Saletan's agonizing over racial gaps, Brooks pens the The Harlem miracle essay.

Here's his point:


They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.


Great!

Oh, wait, there's a problems. Though refuted by Half Sigma and Steve Sailer I wanted to add some of my own points:


In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap.


Did you see how sly that is? Basically, he claims that when black students in a highly rigorous, self selective, intensively studied program equal the average white students in an average academic program, that's eliminating the achievement gap.

What? Brooks himself even details what the black students have to go through:


Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.


Increase by 50-100% time spent in class, and teach to the test, and you call it a miracle when these students equal non-advantaged white students? This is absurd. Like HS and Sailer said, there was no control group. The gap between black and white exists because given the same resources and opportunities white students will perform better than black students due to innate differences in intelligence.

That's it.

The desperation of Brook's columns and his previous ones such as:

The waning of IQ which is filled with rubbish

and

Genius: The Modern View which is well written but ignores the genetic basis of personality and the ability of people to have easy success with certain fields while others toil.

These columns are in response to his astute observations in The Cognitive Age where he writes:


The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?



How can he write this and also claim IQ is losing its relevance? There is some serious intellectual dishonesty going on with Brooks. On the one hand, he espouses relative conservative views and astute observations about human nature and the economy.

But challenge the notion that all humans are exactly the same, and he shrivels.

He isn't alone.

Woah!

So Saletan pulls a fast one on us.

In a recent post he criticizes categorizing test scores by race.

Why?


Liberal creationists—people who think no genetically based difference can be admitted in average ability between populations—are mistaken. But that doesn't make race a useful or socially healthy way of categorizing people.


Damn. I didn't think he'd come out and say it. But yeah, NCLB is a failure.

Recently he asked himself what the solution to the problem of egalitarianism was. In a well written deliberation he comes to the conclusion:

In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn't mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals.


I wholeheartedly agree. However, we have 2 serious problems:

1) All of international economic development theory is predicated on the idea that all races have equal intelligence. If this is not true, then institutions will fail. The idea that there are simply not enough smart people in Africa to lead to advanced development will be devastating on multiple levels.

2) The idea of human equality is fundamentally predicated on equality of intelligence between races. Our subjugation of animals is predicated on the idea that it is "natural" and that animals are inferior due to their lower intelligence.

But guess what? Slavery existed in human society just as long as animal domestication. Slavery still exists in some ant societies.

And if it is ok to slaughter animals due to their inferior intelligence, what about humans? Can we enslave them?


To the 1 or 2 people reading this, pay attention. This issue of racial differences in intelligence is a serious problem that our current worldview is totally UNABLE to answer. In an age of massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, widespread genocide, and political unrest, what is the future of humanity when confronted with this disturbing truth?

All humans are not equal.

Really. Let that sink in for awhile. And now think about how that tears down all our cherished beliefs, institutions, assumptions, and dreams for a better world.

The road ahead is perilous.

Kristof vs. Reality 2

So, you may ask: what the hell is Nick Kristof doing writing about intelligence?
This article has jumped to #1 on the nytimes emailed list so obviously people are interested in it.

Let me tell you:

The field of statistics has advanced significantly. In the previous ages, people could claim a correlation out of thin air and we'd have to take them at their word. But now, with the use of regression analysis through easily accessible computers, people can ask which numbers correlate with which.

So, people naturally asked the same question of IQ. And guess what? Independent of income, race, gender, etc, IQ has tremendous predictive power. And there's only so long that people can go on denying it. Even Kristof.

But then we look at what Kristof says about the third world. Every week he writes a column guilt tripping us about how the US is responsible for the problems of the third world and that capitalism is flawed. We have to do more to help them. We should throw money at Darfur and Congo.

But then someone asked: what more can we do? After trillions in aid to Africa, what development has there been? Mexico has spent a century next to the most prosperous nation in world history, with export, remissions, and immigration benefits, and they can barely muster a per capita GDP around the world average. What gives? Could it be that they're just dumber than we are?

So he sees this and he gets nervous. His message goes down the tube if people start thinking that biology is destiny. So he pre empts them saying: "sure, IQ matters. But since it's not genetic, there is still a chance for Africa."

The sad truth is that there is no hope. Africa had a higher per capita GDP during colonial white rule. Recently, a poll found that South Africans are less optimistic about their country than when apartheid ended, and they are about the elect a homophobic, rapist, polygamist, AIDS denying future president.

Zimbabwe's economy collapsed when land was taken away from White farmers.

Kenya endured a bloodbath after an election because the tribes couldn't agree who won, while the United States elected it's first minority president.

Somalia's largest source of income is foreign aid and hostage ransoms.


It's a very basic question. If human civilization has collectively abused, mistreated, and slaughtered animals because it is in our benefit, why should we sacrifice our money and time to save Africa? Shouldn't we just let Darfur burn and allow Rwanda to repeat?

Why should species membership alone qualify someone for the collective sympathy and charity of the developed world? If sentient beings perish daily due to the harsh reality of nature, should barbaric humans be the exception?

Kristof says yes because we're all equal.

Unfortunately, he is wrong.

Darfur burns.

Kristof vs. Reality

So today in the New York Times there is an editorial by Nick Kristof on the role of intelligence. He basically tries to shoot down the notion that intelligence in inherited. Here are some of his arguments:


One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.



Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.


Flynn Effect



Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades.



He has some interesting points. However, the report entitled Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns showcases a basic fact:

"Recent twin and adoption studies suggest that while the effect of the family environment is substantial in early childhood, it becomes quite small by late adolescence. These findings suggest that differences in the life styles of families whatever their importance may be for many aspects of children's lives make little long-term difference for the skills measured by intelligence tests."


So we can dispute statistics and tests. Every liberal commentator can easily cherry pick a few tests that show that in certain circumstance, stupid people will do better than usual with certain environments. But he never addressed the deep structural contradictions with claiming that everyone has equal IQ. On the surface, you know that's absurd-families raising non-twin siblings easily see the differences in intelligence between them.

What they key is, is that brain structure matters. It's what makes humans more intelligent than animals, and it gives us our own personalities


The researchers said the brain differences are structural and can be measured as variations in the size of specific regions of the brain that appear to be linked with each of the four personality types.



And even just a few years ago the NY Times reported that intelligence was genetic.


The researchers found that average children (I.Q. scores 83 to 108) reached a peak of cortical thickness at age 7 or 8. Highly intelligent children (121 to 149 in I.Q.) reached a peak thickness much later, at 13, followed by a more dynamic pruning process.

One interpretation, Dr. Rapoport said, is that the brains of highly intelligent children are more plastic or changeable, swinging through a higher trajectory of cortical thickening and thinning than occurs in average children. The scans show the "sculpturing or fine tuning of parts of the cortex which support higher level thought, and maybe this is happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children," Dr. Shaw said.



So Part I addressed why the basic science of Kristof is wrong. Part II will address the implications.

Hey

So after taking some time off, I've come to some conclusions:

1) All people are all equal-not just in their rights, but in intelligence, athletic ability, and attractiveness. Actually, the oppressed groups are probably more equal than everyone else.

2) We should eat meat, since animals were created by a benevolent overlord to be eaten by humans, who were created in his image.

3) Islam is actually a quite beautiful religion once you take everything into account

4) The main purpose of life is to buy stuff to show to others and impress them. Thank God for marketers! If not for them we wouldn't know what to spend on to max out our credit cards!

5) People are usually rational and all their decisions make sense.

6) There is a meaning to our existence

7) Sex outside of holy matrimony is one of the worst sins possible

8) Beware of those advocating using technology to improve the human condition. Natural is the way to go

9) All economic differences between countries are caused by oppression by the Western world.

10) We should let as many unskilled immigrants in as possible, so that we can repay them for holding down their countries.

11) Don't pay attention to the 25K children who will die tonight because of hunger or genocide, and don't let that fact question the previous statements.

Automation is liberation

How do you end slavery in the world?

How do you end the sexual exploitation of women?

Answer? automation .

But once someone no longer is forced to work because their labor is no longer needed, will they be able to sell it?