Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Comment On Race/IQ That Grew Too Long

Obsidian asked a few questions about the race/IQ thing, and I figured it would be fun to answer even though I don't think I fit the 'HBD true believer' category, but it appears I hit the word count limit or something, so I post it here. You'll have to saunter on over to his blog for the questions- if I put them here it would be a very long post.

1. End Affirmative Action and the entire educational system. We need free markets, not just so those with high I.Q.s can get the sort of education they need, but so that the less intelligent can get skills too. The education system is a scam, turning out a whole lot of us who can’t do much more than push paper around. They put a bright red rope around ‘education’ and claim it’s the only game in town; it’s not, and we’d start getting better options if we made these institutions stand on their own. Let the institutions stand or fall based on profit; either they are selling something we need, or they are not.
You are right about women being the big beneficiaries , and from a social standpoint, this is terrible. Higher education happens right about the time women are most fertile, so when biologically they should be reproducing, we tell them the best thing they could be doing is getting a degree? I think we’ve only seen the very tip of the iceberg in terms of social problems caused by this sort of myopia.

2. The Ivy League is chockfull of mediocre kids because rich people can always pay to get their kids in, and the rich aren’t particularly smarter than anyone else. There is a biological component to intelligence, so it is certainly worth trying to find an intelligent mate. You are right that the kids may not turn out to be smarter than the parents, but that why you have a lot of kids- and realize they don’t have to be smarter than Daddy to be smarter than average.
Yes, there are a whole lot of Dumb White People! I think difference in IQ between individuals ultimately means more than differences like race, creed, whatever. There are people I just can’t communicate with.

3. Under the current regime, school equals prison. If children were free (okay, parents would probably have the larger say here) to choose what they wanted to learn, maybe school would start to be about education, but right now public school is just daily incarceration. End the wars, end the schools, let people figure out what is important to them. It is amazing how children learn and behave when they actually want to.
4. We’ve got to end the dole period, but you’ve basically got this one right, especially under current conditions. For women, having children is a lot of work. Since society currently values education/career more, they go that route because it’s easier. Even among the less intelligent, it seems women will prefer a Walmart job, the pill, and an irresponsible lifestyle rather than the obligations that come with marriage and children.
5. Yes, there are a lot of drawbacks to being on the left side of the bell curve. When people get into discussions about it, it seems they assume some sort of hierarchy, with the really intelligent being on top, but it isn’t clear the intelligent do end up on top. There are some positive correlations statistically, but one can also end up dumpster diving for food and living in delusion.
6. I think police should basically leave people alone. I think their ability to stop people for suspected drunk driving gives them too much leeway; I certain don’t want them stopping anyone based on skin color. The police have always been a clean-up crew, the people you call after everything that has gone down went down. It’s we, the people, who should be well armed, educated about how to use those arms, and capable of dealing with criminals. Anything else is essentially “pre-crime” and therefore a violation of a person’s rights.
What is not seen, and not usually discussed, are the freedoms and the options that would be available if we weren’t wasting so many resources doing what is being done now. In some sense they can’t be discussed, because we don’t know exactly what they would be, but I bet the money I wasted going to college (not to mention a few million others) could have been put to better use!

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