Saletan's revenge

In response to the finding on racial differences in responses to heart medication at the nytimes he writes in his weekly column in Slate.

Or maybe not as caustic as I was hoping. Check it out here .

Honestly, I have no idea what he is trying to get across in this article. I'm guessing he's just trying to cover his ass for what he said, but NOT recant what he said. Basically, he wants to say "Yeah I guess there may be racial gaps in IQ or whatever, but why the hell are you looking at race to begin with?"


Even if hereditary inequality among racial averages is a truth, it's less true, more unjust, and more pernicious than framing the same difference in nonracial terms. "The truth," as I accepted and framed it, was itself half-formed. It was, in that sense, a half-truth. And it flunked the practical test I had assigned it: To the extent that a social problem is genetic, you can't ultimately solve it by understanding it in racial terms.


Ok, sure I guess looking at genetics is more important than race. But even in his original column, he said that we should look at people as individuals, not as members of a race. Nothing new here.


In a similar way, policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can't find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you're a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks.


Ok sure. But what most HBD people believe is that genetic testing will further confirm race differences in intelligence.


We're going to find many more genetic and trait differences among populations. You can't meaningfully denounce every such finding or theory as racist. Racism has to mean something else. I think it should mean looking and settling for racial analysis when some other combination of categories—economics, culture, genetics—more accurately fits the data. It's easy to group people by race and compare averages. But it's pernicious.


I think this is the ultimate of pussy cop outs. Basically, you're setting up 'race realists' as straw men that look at only race when they analyze public policy. We don't do that. We only look at race when ALL OTHER sociological explanations have been exhausted.

Hello? Have you looked at the hand wringing in the economic development literature surrounding hell in Africa? How many people have mentioned race? Have you ever heard Jeffrey Sachs mention genetics?




On the left, it raises the question of whether any policy, including affirmative action, should be based on race. I don't know where those questions will lead. But I'm pretty sure drawing this line is the right first step.



This is by far the most important passage of his article. Sure, we shouldn't look at every single social issue (education, income, crime) through race.

HOWEVER,

if there are racial disparities in any of these fields, Saletan should say that we can't attribute it to racism. What he says is that we should stop worrying about racial disparities in anything in the first place.


All right, for people on planet earth and not on planet think tank, it's pretty hard to ignore race disparities in anything. And self gene theory will imply that we'll look out for our own. So, Saletan again fails to come up with a grand sociological theory to deal with race differences in intelligence. Until people are willing to read Animal Liberation, Saletan:

TRY AGAIN

NYT and IQ

Well, I guess some convoluted definitions have been created to use instead of IQ, and Brooks has written a column about it here


Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few decades. Capital does indeed flow around the world. But as Pankaj Ghemawat of the Harvard Business School has observed, 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.


I'm still pretty pro free trade. If you look at the records of countries declining, it usually happens after they close themselves off from the world.


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?


This basically means that we should have an immigration policy in tune with the new age. People who can mow lawns or pick crops aren't exactly going to supercharge the American economy.

What's no one talking about

So, after this whole Wright scandal we of course had the PC left wing crowd whine about the right wing pastors that no one was criticizing, like Robertson and Falwell. However, McCain never had a long standing relationship with them, and we know that McCain is deeply patriotic and has been around DC for decades.

However, we know very little about Obama, and his pastor fills in the blanks.

But either way, I think this whole episode should highlight flaws in how our country gives moral authority to absolutely ridiculous individuals. This post editorial has the same critiques of black and white pastors, but never addresses the fundamental issue.

Why the hell do we listen to these guys?

Both the black AND the white pastors attempted to place the blame for 9/11 on the United States, whether it was our terrorism abroad or our increased secularism.

Both charges are retarded, and deeply offensive to New Yorkers like me who know people who lost others in the attacks.

No, the problem is that Islam is a violent and intolerant religion and we were stupid to let Muslims into the US, and Bush dropped the ball on looking out for attacks. And the fringe population believes that it was an inside job.

But either way, what defines us as Americans is that we believe we can control our destiny, that God isn't constantly meting out judgment on us based on the lunatic ravings of loud preachers.

So, we have to ask why did Barack Obama need a stupid black pastor to gain legitimacy with the black population on South Side Chicago?

And why did Republicans need to accept the endorsement of stupid white pastors to gain legitimacy with the Christian right?

Let's not award authority where it isn't due.

Not sure what to make of this

Well, Hillary did ok on O'Reilly, but how is she going to respond to this?


Thus began a three-year effort by a notable American to convince your husband to essentially be the "Disclosure President" and end a then 46-year truth embargo on providing the full facts to the American people regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race....Senator, it is your ambition to reach a significant milestone in American history by becoming the first President of the United States who happens to be a woman, or put another way, the 49th female head of state. While this would be an admirable legacy, what the American people need is less legacy and more truth. The people have lost patience with "in loco parentis" government that treats them like children and candidates with long lists of issues they can't discuss because it is not convenient to their campaign or the people "can't handle the truth."


ok...?

The analogy is there

Kinda random video, but I was reading about the premiere of This American Life a phenomenal podcast (who says the US doesn't produce anything great?)

And I ran into this video of the host, Ira Glass.

Describing a chicken farm (3:40), he compared the saving of the chicken to the underground railroad.

See, people? The analogy is there. The use of African Americans as slaves requires a similar pattern of thought as using animals as food. And the longer we persist as meat eaters with the shadow of race based IQ gaps, the more we damn ourselves.

I wrote a detailed post here on the intellectual steps needed to prepare for race differences in intelligence. First on the list? Animal rights.




And by the way, this reverend wright guy is a serious problem. Steve Sailer has written enough about him that I don't have to comment, but I was pleasantly surprised with the balanced treatment the issue received in Bob Herbert's nytimes column


This whole story is about Senator Obama’s run for the White House and absolutely nothing else. Barack Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church as a young man and was blessed with the Christian bona fides that would be absolutely essential for a high-profile political career.
...
My guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to his former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.
...
Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.

Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Rev. Wright is absolutely the wrong medicine for those concerns.


Sucks for you Obama. But then again, this is the flaw in the primary system. We got Bush instead of McCain in 2000, and we get Obama/Clinton instead of Biden in 2008.

Either way, racial reconciliation is never coming. Get used to it. Become a singularitarian.

Hope for vegetarians

So, two interesting developments for those interested in vegetarianism:

1) We have notice from PETA that an offer is being made to create commercially viable meat.

People, THIS is why I want the singularity to happen. Until we use technology to improve our lives, continued suffering of third parties will be the norm in order to satiate our senses. This will be a needed first step towards preparing the liberal intelligensia for race differences in intelligence.

2) And Food shortages.

Again due to eating meat. Instead of being efficient and using grain products to feed people, we use it to feed animals with a 10% efficiency. Congrats, the beef you eat is leading to riots in the third world.

China and biological realities

Unless you have your head stuck in the sand, you would have heard about the various Chinese abuses in Tibet. I hesitate to condemn the Chinese. They have different values than us, as a civilization. They stood by when ethnic Chinese were slaughtered in Khmer Rouge. Mao didn't mind starving 50 million people for ideology, and China regards the Darfur genocide as mildly annoying, but not worth giving up the country's resources.

Anyway, the repression of Tibetans doesn't strike me as out of character, and it's hard to get really upset over what's going on there compared with the brutality occurring in Africa that we're not worried about.

What's fascinating is an editorial in the times where Kristof acknowledges that Han Chinese don't mind the Tibetan repression:

It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, and many ordinary Chinese think the government acted too wimpishly, showing far too much restraint toward “thugs” and “rioters.”


I wish he would reconsider his multiculturalism, but I'll settle for same old anti-China rhetoric while he remains an apologist for the arm chopping barbarians in African ethnic conflicts.

What is heartening, though, is that in a new article, Foreign Affairs magazine is willing to talk about ethnic nationalism here

political identities often take ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power. The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation. In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.


cough cough Iraq? Look, it all comes down to SELFISH GENE THEORY. People think on a tribal, or at least racial level, when it's a matter of them and their gene holders vs. the other.

Now, ethnic problems suck. But, what's infinitely worse is when you combine ethnic issues w/ racial disparities in IQ. That really leads to headaches, also known as Market dominant minority.

Back to China. If you read the rest of Kristof's editorial, he mentions this:

Americans sometimes think that the Tibetan resentments are just about political and religious freedom. They’re much more complicated than that. Tibetan anger is also fueled by the success of Han Chinese shop owners, who are often better educated and more entrepreneurial. So Tibetans seek solace in monasteries or bars, and the economic gap widens and provokes even more frustration — which the spotlight of the Olympics gives them a chance to express.


Very juicy piece of news. Listed here we see something of note: the average IQ in Nepal is 78-75, contrasted with the PRC, which has 100/105. Now, assuming that the Tibetans have different blood, and isolation and poverty are a factor, we can see their IQ going up to 85-90 genetically. Still a huge difference, the difference between African Americans and whites in the US.

If you look at the difference in skin tone between the Dalai Llama and Hu Jintao,



you can see that the two probably belong to two different ethnic groups, especially after comparing the picture of an average Tibetan vs. Chinese (okay, maybe I like Asian girls and was a little bias)





So, just think about the mental differences that the Tibetans have from being a relatively isolated population over the course of thousands of years. If you don't think that is enough time to evolve, check out this

“The or­i­gin of mod­ern hu­mans was a mi­nor event com­pared to more re­cent ev­o­lu­tion­ary chang­es,” wrote the au­thors of the re­search, in a pre­sent­a­tion slated for Fri­day in Phi­l­a­del­phia at the an­nu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Phys­i­cal An­th­ro­po­l­o­g­ists.

Interesting stuff, huh?

Anyway, for another look at China we actually consider the Islamic world as well in a recent times article here. Usually I'd be the first to claim that Islam is responsible for all the problems. But I think biology also does, too. Look at this paragraph:

Like Tibetans in Tibet, Uighurs have historically been the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, indigenous groups have chafed at the arrival of large numbers of Han Chinese, the country’s predominant ethnic group, who have migrated to western regions with strong government support.

Uighurs, like Tibetans, have complained that recent Han arrivals now dominate their local economies, even as the Han-run local governments insert themselves deeper into schools and religious practices to weed out cultural practices that officials fear might reinforce a separate ethnic or religious identity.



Oh man. At the same time, though, these are Muslims. They generally want to be able to live under Sharia law without interference. A large Han presence threatens that, just as in Malaysia where they are dependent on the Chinese minority to keep the economy running.

Oh well.

Now, finally, we turn to the China-India relationship in this where India is painfully aware of their inability to control the Chinese giant.


But as the two emerging Asian giants engage in their own version of the Great Game, it is impossible for New Delhi to escape the reality that the playing field is badly skewed in China’s favor, and hence the need for caution.

The planned Africa summit meeting, for instance, only highlights the vast gap between Indian and Chinese ambitions on the continent. Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for commerce, pointed out that a $640 million line of credit to Ethiopia was India’s largest single loan to an African country; by comparison, he noted that China had extended a $13 billion line of credit to oil-rich Angola.

“We can’t race with them at all,” he said. “There’s no point. They have left us behind.”

That imbalance has forced New Delhi to walk a fine line between competing with China and challenging it.

China mostly buys iron ore from India and sells a variety of consumer goods and auto parts



Now, think about everything India has going for it: a better sex balance, a free government, a large English speaking population, ability to feed itself, a young population. And then think about the fact that India has never come close to catching China and never will.

IQ reality, people. It aint going away anytime soon.