Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Commissar


Jason Richwine recently put up a rather good post over at Politico.  Why can't we talk about IQ should really be titled Why cant we talk about certain things?

In my mind, the IQ debate is settled. Overwhelming scientific evidence validates the concept, as does personal experience.  Only those who deliberately turn a blind eye to the data can assert that there isn't a genetic component.  Environment does play a role, though you can't put in what God's left out. Still, I'm not a IQ Calvinist who believes in genetic predestination, there are ways to by-pass innate stupidity but that is for a different post.

What struck me about Richwine's piece was it's explicit, but confused, attack on The Cathedral.
At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help.

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand[ED], is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.
Here is where I think he starts to go wrong. Richwine seems to be running on the assumption that science hasn't done enough to convince journalists about the truth of their claims, or, that there is an onus on scientists to convince journalists. Richwine doesn't seem to realise that the role of journalists has changed. Whilst the traditional role of journalists was to objectively report the facts, the role of the modern journalist is to police "approved" culture. He seems to be running on the assumption that "more convincing" or communication is required by the scientists. This a typical victim response. Most good natured people, when involved unexpectedly in a conflict, tend to rationalise the event by blaming themselves, in someway, for the events. He doesn't seem to realise that he is up against a malevolent beast.
Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded.
Now, most of the people that I know who became journalists weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and given their limited cognitive powers it's to be expected that some of them would get things wrong. However, the systemic nature of their misrepresentation is not an act of isolated stupidity but of systemic disinformation. i.e. they're lying. The same could be said for discussion on issues such as gay marriage, immigration and crime. 
For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason. Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom — people who don’t like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.
Here we come to the crux of the matter. As Ortega y Gasset argued most professionals are really noting more than mass-men, i.e cognitive misers. The liberal cognitive miser has a mind hermetically sealed to facts or opinions which contradicts their world view.[Ed: As does the conservative cognitive miser] Emotion, rather than logic, is the method of discourse amongst the hive mind. Nice and good are conflated as are uncomfortable and evil.  
What causes so many in the media to react emotionally when it comes to IQ? Snyderman and Rothman believe it is a naturally uncomfortable topic in modern liberal democracies. The possibility of intractable differences among people does not fit easily into the worldview of journalists and other members of the intellectual class who have an aversion to inequality. The unfortunate — but all too human — reaction is to avoid seriously grappling with inconvenient truths. And I suspect the people who lash out in anger are the ones who are most internally conflicted.

But I see little value in speculating further about causes. Change is what’s needed. And the first thing for reporters, commentators, and non-experts to do is to stop demonizing public discussion of IQ differences. Stop calling names. Stop trying to get people fired. Most of all, stop making pronouncements about research without first reading the literature or consulting people who have.
The role of The Cathedral is to police the prevailing culture and punish dissent, particularly through putting pressure on employers to rid themselves of those who upset the culture.  Given the moral cowardice that comes part and parcel with modern corporate and academic culture employment for influential academics who buck the system becomes impossible. They become culturally neurtralised.

The internet is the enemy of the media. Traditional media structures involved a centralised collecting agency, filtration of the news and dissemination to a public which had no other sources of information. A man's weltanshcauung was thus powerfully shaped by the titans of media. The internet  bypasses the Cathedral's power.  Cue Washington Post.

It's interesting the Richwine recognises this as well.
Not all the media coverage was divorced from real science. Journalists such as Robert VerBruggen and Michael Barone wrote insightful reaction pieces. And the science-oriented blogosphere, which is increasingly the go-to place for expert commentary[Ed], provided some of the best coverage.
I suppose that the most important take home message from Richwine's post is that engagement with the media is going to be counterproductive, especially to those of the right.  Some blog commentator seem keen for media attention but I think that this desire is unwise.  I think its important for the nascent New Right/ Dark Enlightenment/Neo Reactionaries not to worry about sudden media exposure and the publicity it brings. The movement needs to establish roots which are deep, wide and strong. Just like undergound movements in occupied countries, we need to establish our bona fides by personal contact through person to person spread. Anyone who embraces the media is likely to end up as its lunch.

We are the new rebels.

18 comments:

Sid said...

I don't really know how we can spread the truth about IQ at this point. As I wrote on Half Sigma's blog (http://www.halfsigma.com/2012/12/hbd-has-no-future.html), the strictures against speaking about IQ and HBD only seem to tighten every year. In 1994, the Bell Curve could be published and garner national debate. Now if such a book were managed to be published, it would be ignored. The people who filter information realized that they could win the intellectual debate in 1994, so they turned against even mentioning IQ or HBD.

In 2002, Steven Pinker could write extensively about sex differences in cognition and not raise an eyebrow. In 2012, the Blank Slate would have been derided by the Jiang Qings of our day as being part of the "War on Women." So it's foolhardy to talk about how Australian Aborigines and Finns differ - sex differences, which everyone understands exist and are important, are now haram to even discuss.

With the internet, it's no problem to find out who has ever written down a crimethought.

I am perfectly willing to let someone put a dunce cap on my head, who discovers a way to persuade others that IQ exists, is important, and needs to be considered to form sound public policy. If anyone has ideas, I'm ears.

Sid said...

Typo on my part, very sorry:

"The people who filter information realized that they could NOT win the intellectual debate..."

ElectricAngel said...

Just like undergound movements in occupied countries, we need to establish our bona fides by personal contact through person to person spread.

Not easy to do when some of us live 14,000 miles from Civilisation!

But then, this is the fundamental role of the city, uncontrolled personal exchange. It's why the controllers in the USA created suburbia (a theme Will S. and I are exploring at PAtriactionary), so that random encounters of walking people or people riding trains or trolleys could not occur, so that everyone would be forced to unite through the great, glowing eye in the living room.

That model is breaking down everywhere, and it will be pleasant cities like Melbourne that provide the new structure and "cafe" society where the Dark Enlightenment can meet.

Tom said...

The trouble is that such debates lead to the awkward questions: given the genetic inferiority of whites compared to Asians, surely it makes sense to try and discourage inferior races from breeding, encourage Asian immigration, perhaps import an Asian elite, etc.

Instead talk of IQ simply makes whites sullen and even less likely to approach these things rationally, even when it's made clear that it's not their fault.

Also, we can be fairly certain that once white intellectual inferiority becomes widely accepted in society, it may become hard for whites to obtain leadership positions in companies, as they'll generally not want to waste resources grooming those who are statistically not up to the job, even when their might be isolated individuals who are actually capable of performing at Asian levels.

Tom said...

(And yes, there might be a just a hint of sarcasm in the previous response...)

The Social Pathologist said...

@Sid.

No problem.

@EA

No one lives miles away from civilisation anymore. I feel closer to some of the people in the U.S than I do to some of my next door neighbours. That's the great thing about the net.

Prior to the widespread use of the net, the effect of the media was "cognitively isolate" people who dissent with its views; paint them as people out of step with groupthink. It could pick a target and then destroy it, but thing is now its far harder for it to do.

Take Richwine for instance. Years ago he would have been booted from his job and no one in the mainstream press would have given him the time of day. His friends may have given some support but he would have been isolated from large groups of people who would have supported him. It really does help a man knowing that he is not alone in this fight. This physcholgical benefit is invaluable More so, he knows he has allies who are prepared to help.

BTW with regard to suburbia. I think that was classic case of people getting what they wanted and then wondering why they are unhappy. Subject for another post.

Tom.

One of the terrible problems with some these debates is the issues aren't properly considered.

Take IQ for example. Mean IQ for blacks is lower than whites and so on, but populations are heterogenous and therefore there will be individuals who's IQ is greater than the mean. The problem is though, people tend to be cognitive misers and simplify an issue more than they should. Being Black individual is not logically correlated to having a lower IQ, only except when considering means

Statistically there are high IQ blacks. But if we assume that IQ is a proxy for competence, then perhaps in countries such as Kenya we should be supporting policies which give more power to high IQ blacks and less to lower. You could see how those reflexively committed to democracy would oppose this and make Kenyan governance worse.

Interesting though. The "White Australia" policy was formulated with precisely this type of informed logic. The Anglo Saxon forebears of this country saw the Asians as a superior and more productive workforce who would take over if unrestricted immigration was allowed. They valued their cultural heritage and wanted to preserve it, hence the policy. Now the rights and wrongs of this policy are for another time and place, but let's just say their policy wasn't based on reflexive racism.

Oh, and by the way. I'm not a big believer in IQ as the cure all for social ills. Low IQ people who avoid thinking and take live by simple rules (on the grounds of authority) are capable of superior performance than high IQ people living stupidly. Cue the Ten Commandments.

The Social Pathologist said...

Typo

Low IQ people who avoid thinking and take live by simple rules

Should be

Low IQ people who avoid thinking and live life by simple rules.

Tom said...

SP, we both know exactly where the group differences in IQ will go for most of the population. I have yet to see any society that believed in various racial superiority/inferiority prosper more than the American model of a general gross assumption of equality.

Simply speaking, we're not intelligent enough to be able to handle discussions of IQ, especially when about 2/3rd of the participants are insecure people who need someone to feel superior to.

We're just incapable of not generalizing group differences to individuals, with all the injustice and pain that brings.

(Bringing up Asians tends to kill the discussion as they're not getting psychological boost they seek from these discussions.)

So, in my mind, we don't discuss IQ because there's almost nothing to be gained by it. It's like trying to constantly bring up that old affair between a couple that's tentatively reconciled. It can cause nothing but harm.

Unknown said...

A few things;

#1: Tom, those societies, such as early 20th century Germany and Japan, where destroyed by qualitatively inferior countries such as Britain, USA, or the Anglo-American Global NWO, which at that time included the Soviet Union. The potential of those societies was erased before their quantitative potential was solved/realized - thus the situation we have today - civilizational suicide. Our society is based on the concept of let the weaker win, the craven rule, and the immoral dictate.

2# I see no discussion on the relative idiocy of standardized IQ tests as they are constructed and used today. On how they are biased towards identifying intellectual strengths in synthetic terms, or in terms of a industrial or managerial perspective of what intelligence is, (ever wonder why Asians score so high? Because they do what they are told without thinking, and do it very diligently, without thinking.) A autonomous thinking person would tell you to ram your IQ tests.
It’s a GIGO, as we have a garbage in, garbage out civilization. An intelligent society does not need IQ tests. Intelligence is not an invisible ray we need to employ clinicians to ‘empirically’ test for. If a society cannot recognize intelligence, it is too late for some geek soduko puzzles.

I suggest even if society did start accepting and implementing the implications of IQ research, the result would just be a more intense flame-out into continentally dispersed radio-active dust piles.

3# As in the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, which many interpret as meaning realizing the folly of various Enlightenment tropes, etc. and a return to reactionary values. --Wrong-- Republican/Conservative/Reactionary modes of socialpolitcal theory failed and failed miserably for a reason, and laid firm foundations to bring down the civilization and possibly the entire world. It fared as well as a Cocker-spaniel fighting a pack of wild hyaenas at the goals you assume of it.
What the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ is , (which btw. is not a concept coined by Land or MM,) means: it is the realization that ‘everything is a lie’... it might surprise you to learn this was a traditional working hypothesis before your reactionary tradition. And is in fact the bedrock and working assumption and key to Anglo-American society.
It’s interesting how none of you get that.

The Social Pathologist said...

@ Unknown

it might surprise you to learn this was a traditional working hypothesis before your reactionary tradition


Care to elaborate?

etype (unknown) said...

A proper elaboration would be quite an essay. Here is a elaboration in a nutshell. This assumption spans all western and near-asian cultures throughout history. Just to simplify; everything gets worse, people get 'stupider'. ie. the 'Kali Yuga' is a chronological example that is repeated throughout all mythos and cultures.
So, your suggestions regarding IQ in terms of immigration are well-considered in a technical sense. In a real world sense they are not - they will never be implemented. In case you haven’t been paying attention - the die is cast.
To effectively fight what might be termed the ‘Left’, or the swelling ‘Idiocracy’ you must become the ‘Left’ - there is no other way. The public wants jazzed-up idiocy. What the public wants, it gets (and I predict good and hard).
This is not an age of well considered assessments, reasonable solutions or sound principles. It is an age of dark craft, duplicity, conspiracy, hidden motives and subtle yet gross exploitation.... leading to full-on state oppression or anarchy. Anything less is nothing but a tea party. You might prefer Tea parties to Nazi parties - but preferences don’t come into it.

Sorry, short of time and unable to elaborate

The Social Pathologist said...

etype

I get your drift and think that you're wrong.

etype (unknown) said...


Sorry SP, my answer was diffuse. Let’s go back to the ‘the IQ debate is settled’. It really isn’t. In fact, you could say that debate has never been public beyond the technocracy guild. IQ tests are not science, they are sociology - the scientific equivalent of astrology. Yes, overwhelming scientific evidence ‘validates the concept’, because the parameters are set to affirm the obvious, as you say, of what we already know...’as does personal experience’, which is why so many are convinced by astrology and character assessments according to the birth signs of the zodiac. Do not discount that intelligence hasn’t been applied to get astrological results that confirm the inquisitors bias. (They also affirm here in the West, we at our personal best - would be Asians, strange?)
At any rate, the case for using the IQ test as a screen for suitability in terms of immigration applicants should also be obvious, whether sociology or science, but they are ignored by the media or ‘Cathedral’, (‘Circus’ is the term I prefer) because the term does not affirm their own personal bias. And it never will - resign yourself to this fact. (or face a flood of Asians)

The person who does infiltrate the Circus to the degree that they can influence their selection criteria - of suitable media, immigration, political pork, will be they who take what the Circus believes, or think they already know, or what they want you to believe, their bias, and uses it to affirm the result that ‘they’ want. That’s how the Circus works, It’s how the Circus was created, along with their web of influence and power. To encounter the Circus, you must become the Circus.

So protesting the obvious irresponsibility of disregarding empirical methods of assessing human resources in terms of whatever - is, to use a metaphor, taking a knife to a gun fight.

The Social Pathologist said...

etype.

The system is going to collapse. Look at Greece. When the maelstrom comes it will be important to have a crew ready.

Glen Filthie said...

The role of the journalist is to sell copy. The best way to do that, given the political demographics of north America - is to function as a leftwing troll. Such trolling has a shelf life; and as a result, the trolls in the media have migrated ever leftward until we find ourselves where we are now: even science is perverted by leftwing politics be it genetics, statistics, global warming, etc.

Low intellect and low info readers are bombarded by this stupidity and can easily accept it without question.

I recently saw a couple articles about gays in a political website run by socialists: they published bonafide studies that showed gay men were 33% more likely to attack children sexually, and that lesbians were 35% more likely to engage in spousal abuse. (There are liberals and lefties that seem to have an interest in objectivity too - which shocked the hell out of me). Long story short, the response from the readership was white hot rage - and the stories were quickly pulled from the website.

Anonymous said...

"The trouble is that such debates lead to the awkward questions: given the genetic inferiority of whites compared to Asians, surely it makes sense to try and discourage inferior races from breeding, encourage Asian immigration, perhaps import an Asian elite, etc.

Instead talk of IQ simply makes whites sullen and even less likely to approach these things rationally, even when it's made clear that it's not their fault.

Also, we can be fairly certain that once white intellectual inferiority becomes widely accepted in society, it may become hard for whites to obtain leadership positions in companies, as they'll generally not want to waste resources grooming those who are statistically not up to the job, even when their might be isolated individuals who are actually capable of performing at Asian levels."

5 points.

Wow.

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