Going My Way, Sailer?
Speaeking of Ricci, anybody else been following the three-sided argument between Will Saletan, John McWhorter, and Steve Sailer about the persistence of the racial gap in test performance in the face of No Child Left Behind? No? Well, check it out:
Saletan
McWhorter
Saletan
McWhorter
Saletan
McWhorter
I think McWhorter gets much the best of this whole exchange, but I would put to both him and Saletan the following.
The various racial gaps in American society – in wealth, in health, in educational achievement – are facts. Are they facts that command attention and demand action? For moral reasons (because America’s legacy of slavery and segregation imposes permanent obligations on the American polity with regard to the consequences of that legacy)? For pragmatic reasons (because these kinds of gaps within a polity between communities that consider themselves to have to one or another extent distinct identities pose a persistent threat to social harmony)?
If, for whatever reason, they command attention and demand action, how is that attention to be paid and that action to be taken without racial categorization? To be clear: whatever you think of the Ricci case, or affirmative action generally, I don’t see how you can make race go away as a political category (which seems to be what Saletan wants) if its salience as such hasn’t gone away. And if such categorization is to persist, how are we to have a dialogue that excludes neither uncomfortable data nor any member of the polity from the conversation?
The last relates to the Steve Sailer “problem.” I didn’t link in the above to Sailer’s contributions to the dialogue because, upon re-reading, his contributions were overwhelmingly focused on his own place in the dialogue, or lack thereof. (And they are easy enough for anyone to find who’s interested; just go to his site.) Sailer should recognize by now that, by writing for an implied reader who is already sympathetic to him and to his view of himself, and in particular by evidencing no concern for how an African-American reader might receive his writing, Sailer has effectively excluded himself from most conversations. Given that I still think he has interesting things to say, and is worth reading for those things, this poses a peculiar burden on me, and other readers (like Saletan) who apparently feel the same way, in how we treat him. The general approach (preferred by Saletan) is to telegraph repeatedly one’s basic distaste for disrespectable characters like Sailer, which gives Sailer the opportunity to wave his hands and say, “see: even when they agree with me they exclude me because they can’t handle the truth!” I’m unsatisfied with that approach myself, which is why I don’t follow it, but I don’t know what a better approach is given that Sailer himself is, plainly, not going to change on this score.
Finally, I want to ask a question with more complex ramifications. How committed should we be, as a society, to the identification of fairness with meritocracy? “Fairness” is a bedrock principle for a healthy society; a society that abandons any pretense at treating members fairly won’t be a society at all for very long. But “meritocracy” means much more than this: it specifies how rulers are to be chosen, and how goods are to be distributed, and, in our society, says that it is right and fair for rulers to be chosen and goods to be distributed according to a scale in which talent, and particularly talent at passing tests, predominates. And there are social systems that work differently – that distribute goods and power based on seniority, or brute strength, or social position, or deeds of honor, or demonstrated piety, or, for that matter, from each according to his ability to each according to his need. I’m not arguing here for any of these alternatives, or for any other one that I haven’t mentioned. I’m merely pointing out that both McWhorter and Saletan implicitly endorse that identification of “fairness” with “meritocracy” and that, if the problems they are both concerned with prove to be as persistent and difficult as they both fear, that identification will probably need to be questioned.
Umm…thorny topic.
I like Ta-Nehisi’s take on Ricci.
Here is some hilarious comic relief from Heather MacDonald at the Secular Right, who is congruent with Sailer’s gay’d-up-marriage-will-run-black-babydaddies-off theory.
Who Farted?
Is it just me or is the Secular Right Blog getting really, really sillie?
— matoko_chan · May 7, 05:06 PM · #
Well punned, Noah!
— Tony Comstock · May 7, 05:28 PM · #
Okfine…we can run with Sailers arguments if we do genome profiles on all kids before they check the race box.
Otherwise this is nonsensical.
One black ancestor makes you black? Or what percentage black qualifies as black?
Are the children of mixed race marriages black or white in the box?
Does the mean IQ of mixed race kids change?
Classification by race is not terribly useful anymore as we outcross a lot..im a mongrel myself.
Assortative mating for IQ is probably a stronger component than racial identification anymore.
And NCLB is a crap law.
— matoko_chan · May 7, 05:40 PM · #
Note: I am not expressing any opinion below about the existence, if any, of genetic or environmental differences that are clustered by race.
Matoko, the problem is that society views different average outcomes by race as prima facie evidence of discrimination. That necessarily requires the question of whether there are different inputs on average by race, which is where the fight comes from.
Let’s say there were a wide public outcry about the disproportionate number of black tailbacks in the NFL, and it was viewed as a result of a racist belief by coaches and recruiters that blacks have, on average, more relevant speed than whites. Coaches and recuiters might say: “We select based on each individual’s speed, and don’t stereotype. We ended up with a disproportionately black tailback mix because of the entering pool, the most qualified candidates were disproportionately black.” At which point:
1) Saletan says that we should stop analyzing tailback placement by race, because we might learn that blacks actually are relevantly faster on average than non-blacks, and that this fact, once learned, might contribute to racism.
2) McWhorter says that the chance of a significant genetic difference is vanishingly small, and that the disproportionate outcome must either be the result of (a) discrimination or (b) environmental differences, and that we should find out which so that we know how to fix it.
3) Sailer says “See! I told you so!”
— J Mann · May 7, 06:01 PM · #
Think about it: our public discourse is at a point where when Saletan even entertains the data that makes us so uncomfortable he is excoriated endlessly. Where is the space in this discourse for people like Sailer to acquire any kind of meaningful influence?
People like Sailer, and apparently Heather MacDonald will simply get less and less credibility. Consider Heather’s post that I linked on the unintended consequences of legalizing SSM, also known as the Steve Sailer Theory of gay’d-up-marriage-will-run-off-black-babydaddies.
Pretty universal mockery and scorn from the commenters….because this is not fair. Denying rights to one minority to teach another minority a lesson simply isn’t fair.
McWhorter is correct…poor is the operative classification. Poor parent or parents means inferior nutrition and nuture, impoverished environment like no books in the house (but a tv) and…..lack of the most critical variable, parental involvement.
Because poor parents tend to spend less time with their kids.
— matoko_chan · May 7, 06:04 PM · #
J Mann…..
…so what if there is some between group difference in mean IQ that is statistically significant?
NCLB can’t fix it…NCLB is a standardized testing program designed to reveal low-acheivers and improve their test scores with conventional educational tools towards the basically impossible goal of making all students better than average by 2012.
Identifying the most significant component in student achievement is the single most important thing we can do.
Current studies point to parental involvement as that component.
So simulating increased parental involvement should be the goal.
NCLB is useless for accomplishing this.
— matoko_chan · May 7, 06:16 PM · #
Dear Noah:
I would appreciate it if you would reread the three-way debate and see if your characterization of it is fair.
First, and less importantly, to say that my “contributions were overwhelmingly focused on his own place in the dialogue, or lack thereof” is misleading. My place in the dialogue in the other two participants dialogue is quite prominent enough. Rather, my contributions were focused on providing relevant data and analysis to two pundits who haven’t studied these questions as much as I have, and thus come to them with assumptions derived from the conventional wisdom of polite society.
Second, at least two of my contributions to the discussion led Saletan to change his stance sharply, from arguing that race is a less relevant way to categorize data to that it’s too relevant a way to categorize data.
A. Saletan, who had long dismissed the conceptual importance of racial groups because they don’t match up one to one to gene variants, finally conceded the power of my simple explanation of why the human race repeatedly thinks in terms of racial group: “A racial group is a partly inbred extended family.”
Saletan wrote in Slate:
“ On Friday, Steve Sailer, the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, responded to my question. He argued that I was wrong to propose to “stop counting” scores by race:
“ “The reason people all over the world and of all different ideologies can’t help but be interested in race is [that] a racial group is, fundamentally, an extended family. So, race is about who your relatives are, which is an inherently interesting topic.
“ “Saletan has been arguing that we should just group people by looking at one gene at a time. (Of course, on average, individual gene differences will tend to follow racial lines.) But, more fundamentally, what he doesn’t get is that racial groups have an existence independent of genetics. They are fundamentally genealogical entities—who begat whom. Unsurprisingly, when you stop and think about it, the genes tag along with the begats.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2217571/
In his next article, Saletan conceded that his earlier assumption (which is, more or less, McWhorter’s as well) that income mattered more than race in test scores was dubious. Saletan wrote in Slate:
“ McWhorter casually dismisses the less-intelligence theory and its blogger-advocate Steve Sailer, with whom I tangled yesterday. Why? Because McWhorter is confident that his alternative theory, based on language, can explain racial gaps in test scores. In his commentary on the New Haven case, McWhorter lays out the theory: Working-class blacks and whites communicate orally rather than in writing, and they’re unfamiliar with the art of answering direct questions. I’m sure there’s truth in this theory. But McWhorter offers no quantitative evidence for it. Nor does it address some of the most difficult evidence presented by proponents of the genetic theory: whites outscoring blacks even when the class factor skews the other way. In his rebuttal to my original article on the NAEP data, for instance, Sailer notes:
“ “Here’s the 2007 8th grade Reading scores broken down by race and income. White kids whose parents are so poor that they are eligible for the National School Lunch Program outscore affluent black kids by four points and affluent Hispanic kids by one point. The gap between poor whites and poor blacks is 19 points, and the gap among not poor whites and not poor blacks is 21 points. That’s what you normally get—sizable racial gaps anyway you slice it.”“
http://www.slate.com/id/2217681/pagenum/all/#p2
These are major intellectual concessions by Saletan to my position.
McWhorter, who is a words guy, not a numbers guy, doesn’t have any substantive response and simply reiterates his exploded “oral culture” theory to explain racial gaps among “unaffluent blacks:”
“Of course, the question we are not supposed to ask is whether the failure rate suggests that black people are less intelligent. However, there is no need to fear here. The reason black people of unaffluent origin tend not to do well on standardized tests is a matter of language and how it’s used—and the issue is less about color than class, and in the global sense, about what it is to be human.”
This, of course, doesn’t explain much about the racial gap among affluent people that Saletan noted.
Then, Saletan and McWhorter return to their original policy prescriptions: Saletan endorses banning the state from collecting data by race (which I, too, publicly endorsed early in this decade when Ward Connerly put an initiative to that effect on the California ballot — it lost, badly).
McWhorter returns to calling for the government to collect and publish data by race. (Heck, he’s not going look deeply into a bunch of numbers …”
They both find common ground, however, by denouncing me ad hominem. Saletan says I’m not a nice guy. McWhorter makes up a bunch of lies about what I stand for.
In summary, just as other pundits specialize in economics or foreign policy, I’ve chosen to make my market niche the obviously important and widely interesting (but underserved by intelligent discourse) topic of race. Second, I’ve chosen a simple policy for myself: tell the truth.
Personally, I believe that the truth is better for humanity than lies, ignorance, or wishful thinking. I am, however, aware that many people disagree with me on this.
— Steve Sailer · May 7, 09:13 PM · #
Noah,
This and the last post are just wonderful, and I’m remember the first time I took notice of your writing. I had a couple of glasses of wine down my gullet and was reading something you wrote on here about the simple fact that nine out of twenty people didn’t vote for Obama and that policies that tended to radicalize of that 45% probably weren’t a good idea. I remember thinking “who is this Noah Millman guy?” and doing a solid 45 minute google stalk. Just seeing your name I know I’m in for a good read, plus you write about stuff that I haven’t got a fucking clue about, but do it in a way that by the time I get to the end I feel like I know something.
Steve S,
I go and confess my self-improvement project, and then you have to go and test me. Oh well, here it goes:
Lonely, ain’t it? Devoting your time and talent to something most people find (at best) a curious obsession. I often remind myself that it took James Harrison 20 years to produce H4, and pray (in as much as an atheist can pray) that my purpose is wholesome.
— Tony Comstock · May 7, 09:42 PM · #
Great post, Noah. Glad Mr. Sailer is here, too. And Tony, who managed to use the word ‘hump’ two times this week.
A question: isn’t it possible that race might be substituting for some other concealed factor? — i.e., isn’t it possible that race, though strongly correlated to this unknown “deeper factor X,” is purely or mostly incidental, a cosmetic explanation for the distribution in test scores, one that covers up the real cause we’re looking for?
Let me give an example. On test scores, the races go from high to low: Asians, Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, with Jews on top or considered White, Native Americans somewhere near the bottom. And these are US data, right?
Well, what might we say about races residing in the US? Firstly, that almost everyone came to this continent from somewhere else. Secondly, that out of this set of migrators, everyone but blacks came here by choice.
Mightn’t the very act of “choice-migration” select for a more intelligent individual? Mightn’t the characteristics of the journey — over ocean or over land, distance traveled, uncertainty of success — explain why Asians are top, Whites second, Hispanics third?
It makes sense that something about a man willing to uproot his stable existence, strap his stuff on his back and jump into the unknown on the chance at a better life — that something about this is exceptional, correlated to intelligence and as such, hereditary. I mean, right? (Think about the Jung Myers-Briggs personality test, and how those traits can be passed on to children.)
So my question, as a null hypothesis: is it possible that “coming to America by choice vs. forced to come to America in a way that doesn’t select for intelligence” be the explanation for the disparities in test scores?
If so, that would really, really affect what you guys would call “our moral responsibilities.”
— Sargent · May 7, 10:08 PM · #
Noah,
I read through all of the links before I came back to your post. Something a little more fundamental struck me when I read McWhother’s last entry. I was hoping you would make that move, at least a little more muscularly, with your addition to the debate. I hope John Schwenkler can contribute to the discussion because I think he’d likely dissolve many of the intellectual contortions that are tying us in knots and leading to some pretty unsavory implications.
First, addressing Sailer. He has already settled on a position, and, presently, there is a growing amount of data to confirm his bias. Call it cognitive capture. I doubt that spell will ever be broken. Yet I think Saletan has it right when he talks about “framing”.
The move that I want to make is epistemological. We have a body of knowledge, not disinterestedly acquired, and we operate on its assumptions. Given that genetic variability can explain racial differences, what do those explanations mean to racial difference? My initial impulse is to say that they mean nothing, but obviously I’m not being serious. The more reasonable answer would be to say that they mean a lot of different things, perhaps too many. That they should be adopted as explicit political positions would be an absurd proposition. And yet this is exactly the move that we make. When I hear the word “intelligence” thrown around as some type of axiomatic measure, it seems to reinforce this fact.
When we collect the data we construct it into the body of a narrative. Sailer’s narrative is “sinister” because it aims to undermine any attempts at procedural or civic equality. And McWhother is correct when he notes that Sailer isn’t likely to have any meaningful influence.
Ultimately what you’re getting at with the “identification of fairness with meritocracy” is part of the epistemological problem. It’s Dworkin’s infinite regress problem, the Rawlisan flaw of subject-position. Where do we begin and how do we operate from this position? Supposing that the only real science is history, and that there are disputes as to what we make of the data, the next move is strictly political.
— ron · May 8, 01:44 AM · #
Guys, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, because I’ve hardly investigated this issue thoroughly. But is it not true that we have already sequenced the entire human genome? And is it not true that has, in fact, the genetic differences between the races was found to be entirely negligible? And doesn’t that decisively refute the argument propagated by the odious racist Steve Sailer and his ilk?
Should this his whole debate not be dead as a dodo in light of the empirical facts.
— raft · May 8, 01:46 AM · #
raft: I’m no Sailerite, but from what I understand that wouldn’t “definitively refute” anything unless genomic characteristics were precisely isomorphic to mature features, such that negligible differences in genes could only make for equally negligible differences in IQ (or whatever). But there’s no good reason to think that’s true, is there?
— John Schwenkler · May 8, 02:34 AM · #
John: I guess that’s right. Has anybody figured out what specific genes cause intelligence and how they differ among various populations, etc.? I did a little google searching but didn’t see anything definitive—just a lot of speculation. I guess that means we need to do more research.
Thinking about it a little more, I suppose I wouldn’t be too surprised to see if in fact real innate differences between ethnic groups (in intelligence and other areas) turned out to really exist. It’s not a proven hypothesis, but at least a plausible one. However, I WOULD be very surprised if those hypothesized differences turn out to be as significant and important as people like Steve Sailer fantasize they are. Take the current black/white gap in education. It is totally undeniable even by the hardcore eugenicist that a huge percentage of that gap is directly a result of environmental factors, i.e. discrimination, lack of resources, broken homes, diseased cultures. Once we control for that hugely unequal environment, how much could possibly be left for genes to explain really? At best a few IQ points or whatever.
And why would be a few IQ points cause us to abandon our most deeply held beliefs about human equality and dignity and equal opportunity? It wouldn’t. This is the fundamental fallacy in the thinking of racists like Sailer, they think that if they can just prove that black americans have 5 less genetic IQ points than white americans, then somehow that will persuade us that it is okay for millions of our fellow citizens to grow up in crumbling crime-and-drug infested slums and struggle through inferior schools and face the unthinking prejudices of the dominant ethnic group, because doggonit they deserve it or something. But the racists could not be more wrong. We’ve been pushing back their primitive barbarism for centuries and we’re not sure as heck not gonna stop now. Suck on the words President_Barack_Hussein_Obama, you racist fucks.
— raft · May 8, 04:26 AM · #
Not to sound like one of Sailer’s legions of devotees (of which I am), but he has explicitly come out in favor of policies which would benefit Blacks; namely, immigration restrictions. Since a large influx of Hispanics would constitute an increase in the supply of labor (i.e. unskilled, manual labor), the price for labor would therefore drop. Since Blacks are more likely to compete with Hispanics for unskilled, manual labor jobs, Blacks would be hurt most by our liberal immigration policies. Controlling our borders and restricting the number of people able to immigrate to the United States would go a long way in improving the economic condition of the Black community.
Sailer has also noticed, to the chagrin of many, that Blacks tend to not breast feed as often as Whites. Since properly breast feeding a child could mean an increase in seven IQ points for the child, it would make sense to encourage Black mothers to breast feed their children (Granted, unless the baby has the FADS2 gene, it wouldn’t matter either way. But breast feeding does demonstrate the mother’s committment to her child).
Sailer doesn’t need my help to defend him. God knows he can defend himself, and there are others better capable of putting in a good word for him than me. I’ve been reading his blog for years, his articles too. Not once have I detected a whiff of “racism” (whatever that means). I do, however, detect from him a strong committment to the truth and a realization that reality is far from comforting.
(Before some of you jump on me for being just another white guy supporting Sailer’s racist views, I happen to be of mixed race origin, mostly Polish, Mexican, Scots-Irish, and a little of this and that. That in no way proves or disproves Sailer’s “racism.” It could simply mean that I’m a mixed race guy that happens to agree with a lot of Sailer’s racist views. I think it does illustrate that Sailer has an expansive readership that reaches beyond the disaffected White guy group)
— Cody · May 8, 05:21 AM · #
Thanks, Cody. I agree entirely that a lot of what’s been said about Sailer above has been uncalled-for.
— John Schwenkler · May 8, 05:22 AM · #
Steve isn’t rascist….he’s partisan.
The goofy “traditional wisdom” argument is evidence of that.
CIP, if “traditional wisdom” is so valuable, then Sailer and Razib Khan should be fervent supporters of religious belief and creationism. Religion is a fierce cultural fitness enhancer for the left half of the bellcurve. Most Americans believe in creationism…it is the traditional model.
How about….instead of devoting so much time and effort to analyzing black IQs….Steve might devote a little time to analyzing conservative IQ and the biological basis of political affiliation? hint, hint….Dr. Lynn’s work on negative correlation of IQ and religious belief.
Alas, I don’t think that will happen anytime soon……conservatism kills brain cells, dooontcha know.
— matoko_chan · May 8, 05:48 AM · #
Various commenters have asked various questions and engaged in various speculations.
What the commenters don’t realize is that all of the questions they’ve asked have been studied in great detail and empirical answers have been arrived at.
It’s easy to look up the facts using Google.
But, here’s the rub:
Knowing the facts is uncool.
It’s much more fashionable to speculate ignorantly about questions that have already been answered conclusively. That shows you are a good person whose mind hasn’t been polluted by a lot of facts and logic.
— Steve Sailer · May 8, 07:54 AM · #
I’m pure, Steve.
Can you please explain why “traditional wisdom” doesn’t apply to creationism belief, but does somehow apply to opposition to same sex marriage?
— matoko_chan · May 8, 01:23 PM · #
Steve: I re-read the three-way debate to see if I was mischaracterizing your contribution. You’re right that you are contributing to the conversation – and that Saletan is paying attention to you. So I did mischaracterize by saying that you were “overwhelmingly focused” on your place in the dialogue.
I can best illustrate what I was trying to get at by reference to the titles of a few of your posts from the sequence:
“Slate on Sailer”
“Sailer Probably Right, But Still Evil”
“Slate Cuts to the Heart of the Question: Is Sailer a Nice Guy?”
It just feels like there’s a whole lot of “you” in the argument.
Now, I don’t begrudge you that choice, and I don’t begrudge you in particular because you are responding to pieces that call you out by name as basically not a respectable contributor to the dialogue.
But I do think it’s kind of a turn-off.
Anyway, for those who are interested, here’s the same list of links with Sailer’s contributions interwoven:
Saletan
Sailer
McWhorter
Saletan
Sailer
McWhorter
Sailer
Saletan
Sailer
McWhorter
Sailer
— Noah Millman · May 8, 02:04 PM · #
“What the commenters don’t realize is that all of the questions they’ve asked have been studied in great detail and empirical answers have been arrived …
It’s much more fashionable to speculate ignorantly about questions that have already been answered conclusively.”
Steve, you need to say what questions have already been settled. You might lead the reader new to this to think that it is settled that there is a genetic basis for differences in IQ between the race. That very definitely has not been settled.
This is my biggest problem with your crusade, you talk as if this question has been settled.
About the racism charge, there is plenty of evidence out there that Steve doesn’t like black people. Things he has written (there was one piece on Katrina that was especially revealing), the company he keeps, the depth of his obsession…
— cw · May 8, 02:36 PM · #
Okay, so Cody’s post made me think maybe I was being unfairly harsh on Sailer. I admit I hadn’t paid that much attention to the man except to the extent that he trolled Yglesias/Douthat/American Scene and some other places. So I just spent a couple of hours digging around through Steve Sailer’s blog and the rest of the “Human Biodiversity” scene. From what I read he doesn’t seem to be a racist in the sense that he advocates discrimination or eugenics against blacks and hispanics, so I take back that part of my attack. He also appears to be a more formidable and interesting figure than I realized. In particular I thought this was the most elegant description of race I’ve yet encountered:
This is a wonderful account of the concept of race (though way too generalized: a lot of blacks are far more closely related to whites than to other blacks, for example). I would very much like to believe that someone who writes and thinks with that level of insight is really someone who, like Cody says, is just committed to the search for truth and not motivated by prejudice. And let me emphasize that I’m not objecting to the raising of the question of whether there are innate genetic differences between races. That’s totally legit. I don’t think that just because you believe that whites have a higher IQ than blacks that you’re a racist. BUT if you believe that whites are SUPERIOR to blacks—that is, if you go beyond the empirical facts to elevate race to the level of ethical and moral imperatives—then you are a racist. In others words, racism is just a form of prejudice and bigotry like any other, whether it’s based on class or religion or geography or whatever. Racists divide people into “in-group” races that are more “human” or “advanced” in some essentialist way, and “out-group” races that are essentially sub-human. The sub-humans are to be feared as dangerous and a threat to the in-group because they are primitive, strange, diseased, unclean, contaminated, different, alien, other.
Now you read “this review of Barack Obama’s autobiography by Steve Sailer”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2007/mar/26/00014/:
Or how about this:
Or this:
There’s more:
http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_04/011199.php
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/070325_obama.htm
http://www.vdare.com/pb/081029_foreword_prince.htm
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070102_obamania.htm
http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/03/barack_obama_african_warlord/
So far I haven’t found anything which suggests that Sailer ever explicitly comes right out and calls black people disturbing and repulsive. But I am very sorry to say that a lot of the things implicitly suggest it. “America’s Half-Blood Prince”? “Tend to possess poorer native judgment”? Sailer’s review of Barack Obama’s book is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever read. I want to associate myself with “Matt Yglesias’s remarks”: http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/03/barack_obama_african_warlord/: “Sailer’s explanation for his idiosyncratic reading of the book is that few have “grasped the book’s essence” because “so few of the many who have purchased it following his famous keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention appear to have read much of it.” The alternative explanation would, of course, be that Sailer’s race hang-ups are leading him to see things that nobody else sees because they’re not really there.”
I am not prepared at this time to charge Sailer with racism, at least not outright racism, and I apologize for being rash and calling him one. But it’s undeniably clear the man has a lot of deep psychological hang-ups around race. He is obsessed with race, he thinks about it all the time and frames everything in terms of race. Blacks and hispanics are, if not dangerous and unclean, at least helpless and to be pitied.
Even is Sailer is not himself a racist and eugenist, he without doubt attracts a huge flock of people who are. The kind of people who follow his work and accumulate around him are, I think, extremely revealing about what “Human Biodiversity” is all about. They fear and hate blacks and hispanics and trace all the problems of the world to them. Interestingly, however, this may not be the most salient feature of the HBD movement. They actually seem most driven by a deep rage and resentment against a white liberal elite, who’ve brainwashed the masses into thinking that race shouldn’t be important. Only the HBDers, of course, know the real truth about race. Sailer has never repudiated these odious moral lepers. For example, Sailer approving links to his buddy Half-Sigma:
A comment on that same post:
Of course Sailer’s own blog is swarming with people who openly flaunt their horrifying bigotries and eugenic dreams. Like moths to a flame. Or the KKK to a burning cross:
Another comment from the same post:
There are a lot more where these came from. Steve Sailer wants to style himself a scientist, and perhaps he is. He is also a draining pipe for the collective filth of civilization. The sewage will drain out the ocean and never be seen again.
— raft · May 8, 03:30 PM · #
I read Steve Sailer regularly, and I do kinda know what Noah was getting at with the “overwhelmingly focused on himself” bit. Sailer loves to talk about more-famous writers whom he believes read his work, speculate about who ran across his articles on the Internet and used them without attribution, loves to point out when he’s being trashed by aghast liberals, etc. Overall, I don’t think we can hold too much of this against him—he’s a professional writer doing interesting work that doesn’t get recognized enough, he personally gets marginalized and often talked about in hushed tones out of fear, and he regularly gets unfairly attacked with some nasty charges. Given all that, I can see how some self-promotion (to say nothing of self-defense) is necessary.
At the same time, somehow the tone of Sailer’s self-promotion comes off as self-obsessed and self-congratulatory. In any other journalist, I would find it much more off-putting. I cut Steve some slack, as a reader, given his rather unique position in the commentariat.
— Chris Floyd · May 8, 03:42 PM · #
Well…as a scientist, I object to Sailer’s craven partisanship.
He wrote an excellent piece on the 2004 election, the Baby Gap, statistically illustrating GW’s appeal to white mothers with children which very probably led to his win.
In this election, he could have applied the same methodology to white childbearing women fearing the risk of Sarah Palin, while she continued to appeal to white males as an attractive breeder.
He pimps “traditional wisdom” while totally ignoring the traditional wisdom of religious belief, a powerful evolutionary fitness enhancer for the left side of the bellcurve.
I have to wonder…if blacks suddenly voted Republican if Sailer would find traits to praise?
lol
— matoko_chan · May 8, 04:01 PM · #
Considering the firepower brought to this thread, I’m surprised everybody let this one go:
“But “meritocracy” means much more than this: it specifies how rulers are to be chosen, and how goods are to be distributed, and, in our society, says that it is right and fair for rulers to be chosen and goods to be distributed according to a scale in which talent, and particularly talent at passing tests, predominates.”
Um . . . no. Nobody administers tests because we wish to distribute wealth and power to people who are good at tests. They issue tests because the tests predict outcomes that matter in the real world. IQ tests like the SAT predict academic performance and (it is believed) the ability to create social value in a market economy. The New Haven Fire Department administered its test because it sought to predict which firemen would better lead other firemen in the task of putting out fires without loss of life.
Impeach this predictive power if you can. But understand what the issue actually is.
— Φ · May 8, 04:53 PM · #
Φ: You are actually proving my point. You are conflating “who is most capable of doing a given job” with “who deserves to reap the bulk of society’s rewards.” The more we come to conclude that our success is due the good luck in the genetic lottery, the less plausible that seems.
Relatedly, the idea of “the dignity of labor” has kind of gone out the window in large part because we do measure “worth” to such a great extent by how one does on tests. The tests may be good predictors (and in some ways, they clearly are) but they are not only that: they also shape our society, our culture, in wide-ranging ways.
— Noah Millman · May 8, 05:26 PM · #
What the commenters don’t realize is that all of the questions they’ve asked have been studied in great detail and empirical answers have been arrived at.
Okay, how does emigration to the US affect mean intelligence in particular racial populations? If one mechanism for producing populations on this continent — choice migration — selects for intelligence more than another mechanism — slave trade, which did not — then it stands to reason that the mean intelligence of the former
populations would be higher than the latter populations. No?
This is not my area, you’re the guru, yada yada.
— Sargent · May 8, 05:28 PM · #
_You are conflating “who is most capable of doing a given job” with “who deserves to reap the bulk of society’s rewards.” _
Well, actually, my comment really didn’t address the issue of who among us is more deserving. And I agree with you that genetic diversity (read “inequality”) drains capability of its force as a moral category. (I believe that Steve Sailer himself has made this point.)
But I did imply, and I will now state explicitly, that the creation of social value, as particularly (though not exclusively) measured by the price it commands in a free market, ought to serve as a starting point for determining how to distribute “the bulk of society’s rewards.”
Of course, there are alternative starting points, as you yourself enumerate. But our experience teaches us that these alternatives face insurmountable practical and/or moral difficulties.
Relatedly, the idea of “the dignity of labor” has kind of gone out the window in large part because we do measure “worth” to such a great extent by how one does on tests.
Depending on what you mean, this is undoubtedly true. Certainly our society has conferred higher status on cognitively demanding work to the point where doctors, for instance, can whine about a “nursing shortage” without, you know, raising nurses’ wages. But I would like to hear you explain exactly what you have in mind.
— Φ · May 8, 07:29 PM · #
As someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight, I would suggest that the various commentators are engaging in the same puerile ad hominem attacks Sailor himself sometimes makes. Look, stop talking about whether Sailor is a decent human being or not. It’s irrelevant. Stop talking about whether he’s written decent, uplifting things. It’s irrelevant. Someone with adequately knowledge to answer this, people simply and succinctly take on the following two assertions and prove them to be wrong / explain them.
1) poor whites still outscored affluent blacks on the 8th grade national report card tests
2) affluent blacks did so incredibly poorly against whites and asians on graduate entrance exams. (18% vs 50% or 55%)
This should not be a matter of whether people say nice sounding things. It is a matter of finding the correct public policies to try to help people. And we need information on facts, not name-calling.
— a · May 8, 07:59 PM · #
Φ: says:
“The New Haven Fire Department administered its test because it sought to predict which firemen would better lead other firemen in the task of putting out fires without loss of life.”
Noah Millman responds:
“You are actually proving my point. You are conflating “who is most capable of doing a given job” with “who deserves to reap the bulk of society’s rewards.” The more we come to conclude that our success is due the good luck in the genetic lottery, the less plausible that seems.”
Personally, I don’t think the issue in Ricci v. DiStefano is as complicated as Noah is making it appear. I think the individuals who should be put in charge of saving people from dying horrible flaming deaths are the individuals who are better at being in charge of saving people from dying horrible flaming deaths. Mayor DiStefano of New Haven and at least three or four members of the Supreme Court, however, appear to disagree with me, so what do I know?
— Steve Sailer · May 9, 06:07 AM · #
What the commenters don’t realize is that all of the questions they’ve asked have been studied in great detail and empirical answers have been arrived at.
Well Okfine, Sailer, its settled! …lets move on then.
Why is it fine and good to investigate between group differences in RACIAL IQ, but not between group differences in POLITICAL IQ? I haven’t seen any work on this …..its a whole new field of exploration! Just think, you could actually explore motivations for some thorny culture war problems, like opposition to SSM and belief in human-life-at-conception?
There is tons of data on the negative correlation of dogmatic religious belief and IQ. Like this—
“The present study examined whether IQ relates systematically to denomination and income within the framework of the g nexus, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97). Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. Denominations differ significantly in IQ and income. Religiosity declines between ages 12 to 17. It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity. Ontogenetically speaking this means that contemporary denominations are rank ordered by largely hereditary variations in brain efficiency (i.e. IQ). In terms of evolution, modern Atheists are reacting rationally to cognitive and emotional challenges, whereas Liberals and, in particular Dogmatics, still rely on ancient, pre-rational, supernatural and wishful thinking.”
— matoko_chan · May 9, 01:39 PM · #
Re: meritocracy in a democracy Noah mentions the idea of choosing our “ruling class” on the basis of written examinations vs. a number of other alternatives. What he does not mention is the possibility of a metritocracy that is also representative of the various population groups that make up our democratic polity. Currently we have a hybrid system: affirmative action for a couple of under-represented minorities, a free-for-all (or whatever you call it) for everybody else. Without trying to prove it, I would argue that a system of affirmative action for all would work best: affirmative action for every metropolitan and metropolitan area in America in proportion to the number of the various identifiable ethnic groups (including, yes, Ashkenazie-Americans) who live within them. That way our “ruling class” whould be chosen on the basis of test-taking ablility yet at the same time would be representative of the American people as a whole, not only ethnically but geographically as well. The geographical part, I would submit, is just as important as the ethnic part. Just as Congress represents a cross-section of the American people, so should the student bodies at places like Harvard and Yale. Else you are going to have a lot of unnecessary ethnic tension. But with it you still get the absolutely best test-takers throughout the land from every group — indeed, from every state and community. That is the way we need to go, or at least think about. It hasn’t been up til now.
— Luke Lea · May 9, 03:26 PM · #
Noah,
Sitting here evacuated miles from my home due to the big fire in Santa Barbara while thousands of firemen battle the blaze I do not see those firemen as busy reaping the bulk of society’s rewards. Rather, I see them as trying to prevent thousands of homes from burning down. I’m old school that way. I see that getting work done in the best way possible as most important.
You seem to lose sight of the value of high competence in jobs such a fireman. I can tell you that their ability to make wise decisions about when to pull themselves out of an area, where to build a fire line, which fire hot spots to hit, and many other actions require lots of knowledge and smart thinking. I want them to be highly competent and not chosen by political formulas aimed at achieving social engineering goals.
The whole racial preferences racket ignores the need for competence.
— Randall Parker · May 9, 05:52 PM · #
Give it a rest, matoko, atheism, schmatheism. We get it — atheists are the smartest of the lot. Or maybe conservatives who happen to be atheists don’t really see the harm in religious belief, at least as it’s practiced in the U.S. And maybe religious conservatives who are smart just haven’t thought about it so much and won’t do so in the future because you and folks like Dawkins are just so damn obnoxious. And maybe you liberal atheists are really the most religious of all, what with your secular universalist outlook and imperviousness to the facts, logic and reason when it comes to human biodiversity.
— DiverCity · May 9, 06:10 PM · #
Matoko writes:
“Why is it fine and good to investigate between group differences in RACIAL IQ, but not between group differences in POLITICAL IQ? I haven’t seen any work on this …..its a whole new field of exploration! Just think, you could actually explore motivations for some thorny culture war problems, like opposition to SSM and belief in human-life-at-conception?”
I have written at considerable length on IQ differences among voters by party and among blue states v. red states, especially in deflating a hugely popular hoax claiming to show that states that voted or Gore (or Kerry) was so widely promoted by Democrats (including Matt Yglesias) that it wound up in the Economist:
http://www.isteve.com/iqhoax.htm
— Steve Sailer · May 9, 06:34 PM · #
Thank you, “a” at 3:59 PM, for the reminder that it is the issues rather than perceptions of the personalities of the debaters that is important. “No Child Left Behind” and Ricci vs. DeStefano are two flashpoints about a continuing series of decisions that our society is making—has to make—about race. Whether Steve Sailer or John McWhorter would be the more agreeable dinner party guest has nothing to do with the arguments they make. More important are the quality and completeness of the evidence they cite, the rigor of their reasoning, and the like.
“raft,” thanks for withdrawing the charge of Racist at 11:30 AM, at least to an extent. The word has become so debased in common internet usage that it has lost its dictionary meaning. These days, the accusation of “Racist!” seems to translate to “You have taken a position to my right on a matter pertaining to race relations, and I’d rather respond with indignation and ad hominem than frame a counter-argument.”
There’s no equivalent show-stopper for use with adversaries to one’s left. Given the general excellence of the people on that side of the spectrum, perhaps one isn’t needed.
This is, of course, the converse of the situation that obtained during the heyday of Joe McCarthy, when Commie! was the charge against which no defense was possible.
— AMac · May 9, 09:29 PM · #
“But “meritocracy” means much more than this: it specifies how rulers are to be chosen, and how goods are to be distributed, and, in our society,”
Wasn’t this the concern of Herrnstein & Murray in ‘The Bell Curve’? They outlined loads of data showing society becoming increasingly stratified on the basis of cognitive ability. They talked about the importance of ensuring everyone has a valued place in society.
— Brian · May 9, 11:47 PM · #
— DiverCity · May 9, 02:10 PM · #
I’m a practicing Sufi.
;)
— matoko_chan · May 10, 02:14 AM · #
“But “meritocracy” means much more than this: it specifies how rulers are to be chosen, and how goods are to be distributed, and, in our society, says that it is right and fair for rulers to be chosen and goods to be distributed according to a scale in which talent, and particularly talent at passing tests, predominates.”
Except that no one that I know of is proposing such a “meritocracy.” Your point would make sense if salary were directly determined by test scores, of if some central committee made decisions about what people in different professions were to be paid, based on how “meritorious” their job was considered to be.
As “phi” pointed out the importance of standardized tests: “Nobody administers tests because we wish to distribute wealth and power to people who are good at tests. They issue tests because the tests predict outcomes that matter in the real world. “
You responded to “phi” with:
“You are actually proving my point. You are conflating “who is most capable of doing a given job” with “who deserves to reap the bulk of society’s rewards.” The more we come to conclude that our success is due the good luck in the genetic lottery, the less plausible that seems.”
Except that no one has determined that those who are the most capable of doing a given job “deserve to reap the bulk of society’s rewards.” Rather, the people who do the best job are in the highest demand and therefore can command the highest prices. There is no way of excaping this short of central planning determining salaies to make the mmore “fair” or taxing heavily those who prosper in order to subsidize the non-prosperous. Both of these actions discourage those with talent from using it to excel; rather, they are encouraged to use it so that they can be mediocre with less effort than the less talented.
Also, you did not just refer to “rewards” in your original post. You talked about “choosing rulers.” Assume that “rulers” have actual duties to perform for those those they rule and are not simply tax parasite figureheads, you want the people most capable of doing the job of ruling to be the ones ruling.
However, as others on this thread have pointed out, figuring out what the less intellectually talented can do that makes them useful to others and able to achieve a rewarding productive life is very important.
— Glaivester · May 10, 02:17 AM · #
I have written at considerable length on IQ differences among voters by party
Relly? Could I have a link where you discuss Dr. Lynn’s work on the negative correlation of IQ and religious belief in the context of dogmatic religious conservatives and republican party affiliation?
I must have missed that one.
;)
— matoko_chan · May 10, 02:20 AM · #
And DiverCity…..I was once a co-blogger at GNXP.
Im a stone otaku of hbd.
;)
— matoko_chan · May 10, 06:40 AM · #
I’m not at all sure we can take it as read that meritocracy is even compatible with, never mind related to, fairness.
— Felix Grant · May 10, 02:39 PM · #
half my ancestors were peasant farmers and lumberjacks (in their new world incarnation) treated like dogs by those who felt that they were heritably superior to them (although their skin color was the same). the other half of my ancestry has been famously persecuted to the extent that they were on the receiving end of the 20th century’s most infamous act of depravity.
for all my ‘low breeding’, i can rest assured that i am superior to steve sailer in every way.
— joel · May 10, 05:01 PM · #
>I am not prepared at this time to charge Sailer with racism
Let me fix that for you:
“I don’t know the first thing about black folks or the subtle ways in which racists like Sailer have learned to phrase things.”
You people wonder why we refuse to let the stink be washed from this kind of research? It is used to damage blacks in ways the writer is apparently too thick headed to grasp and that is reason enough.
— Richard Bottoms · May 10, 07:41 PM · #
A Genetically Mediated Bias in Decision Making Driven by Failure of Amygdala Control. JP Roiser et al., J. Neurosci. 29 (May 6, 2009):5985.
The “ss group” refers to the tested individuals who carry the “s” allele on both of their copies of the 5-HTTLPR gene; similarly for the “lala group.”
Roiser is quoted in Science Daily (via GNXP): “This one gene cannot tell the whole story, however, as it only explains about 10% of the variability in susceptibility to the framing effect. What determines the other 90% of variability is unclear. It is probably a mixture of people’s life experience and other genetic influences.”
— AMac · May 11, 08:24 PM · #
Shame on you Noah for calling Steve a “disrespectable character”. As for how an African-American will “receive his writing”, this is an interesting question given that we know Steve has black readers and friends and if we believe Steve (I do) that he is interested in the truth, are you suggesting that in the immortal words of Col. Jessep, there are folks out there that “can’t handle the truth?”
— Jeff Singer · May 12, 12:56 AM · #