Friday, January 05, 2018

Objectivism: An Autopsy, Part 3

In some respects, Rand's ideology of Objectivism can be seen as an over-reaction to the Marxist left. Rand lived through the Russian Revolution and experienced communism first hand. She despised the Marxian creed with every fiber of her being, and in her philosophy of Objectivism she sought to fashion a doctrine diametrically opposed to the collectivist and anti-capitalist dogmas of Soviet communism. Thus Rand wound up advocating a pure (some might say "extreme") form of individualism and capitalism as a way to oppose the murderous collectivism of Marxist-Leninism.

Rand began formulating these doctrines more than seventy years ago. The ideological landscape has undergone significant changes during this time. After the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archepelago, the Soviet version of Marxism became thoroughly discredited in the West, even among radical leftists. But the pathological urge to impose equity fairness on modern society has persisted among our civilizations' left-leaning discontents. To scratch the equity fairness itch, a new type of Marxism needed to be formulated. Thus was born Post-Modernism and Identity Politics, which replaced the class conflict paradigm of the old Marxism with a new paradigm based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. This constituted a real improvement over traditional Marxism in that it justified and nurtured a powerful political coalition between white progressives and non-whites. Demographic changes caused by declining birth rates among whites and increased immigration of non-whites will increase the chances that the left, and quite possibly the radical left, enjoys a permanent electoral majority in the United States in future decades.
In the face of this (seemingly) impending dominance of the left, the right has begun to fragment and fall apart. No broad consensus has been reached regarding what should be done. Mainstream conservatives have merely buried their heads in the sand and pretended they are still living in the 1980s. Another faction on the right, along with much of the conservative base, has embraced an anti-immigration form of civic nationalism. A much smaller but noisier faction has jumped the shark and decided to embrace the identity politics of the left, applying similar ideological rationalizations to what they conceive as "white" interests (whatever those might be). In this shifting and jostling of ideological paradigms, the libertarian side of the right has become somewhat lost in the shuffle. That's not to say libertarians have disappeared completely. One still hears of conferences, books, speeches, even YouTube videos. But somehow the flame of Libertarianism, which seemed to flareup around the Tea Party movement in 2010 and Ron Paul in 2012, has in just four years been greatly dimmed. The enthusiasm has abated. Political energies, particularly on the right among the young, seemed to shift from concerns about the size government to issues involving immigration, changing demographics, and threats to Western Civilization.

Michael Lind has argued that America is undergoing a political realignment:

The partisan coalitions that defined the Democratic and Republican parties for decades in the middle of the twentieth century broke apart long ago; over the past half century, their component voting blocs — ideological, demographic, economic, geographic, cultural — have reshuffled. The reassembling of new Democratic and Republican coalitions is nearly finished.... 
Why is this all happening now? ... The culture war and partisan realignment are over; the policy realignment and “border war” — a clash between nationalists, mostly on the right, and multicultural globalists, mostly on the left — have just begun. 
For the nationalists, the most important dividing line is that between American citizens and everyone else—symbolized by Trump’s proposal for a Mexican border wall. On the right, American nationalism is tainted by strains of white racial and religious nationalism and nativism, reinforced by Trump’s incendiary language about Mexicans and his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.... 
The rise of populist nationalism on the right is paralleled by the rise of multicultural globalism on the center-left. 
For multicultural globalists, national boundaries are increasingly obsolete and perhaps even immoral. According to the emerging progressive orthodoxy, the identities that count are subnational (race, gender, orientation) and supranational (citizenship of the world). While not necessarily representative of Democratic voters, progressive pundits and journalists increasingly speak a dialect of ethical cosmopolitanism or globalism — the idea that it is unjust to discriminate in favor of one’s fellow nationals against citizens of foreign countries.

There is obviously a great deal more to the realignment than just nationalism versus globalism. The radical left, through its infiltration of cultural and political institutions, wields an influence that far outstrips its numbers. Meanwhile, on the right, we find a small but noisy confederacy of racial nationalists busy stirring up trouble on the internet. Among all this reshuffling, libertarian creeds, including Objectivism, are struggling to extend their respective brands. In the second half of the Twentieth Century, conservatism in America was made up of a coalition of economic libertarians, anti-communists, and social conservatives. Now that civic nationalism is becoming the dominant ideology on the right, libertarians are increasingly going to find themselves the odd man out.

Evidence of this can be gleaned by taking note of a number of influential nationalists, both civic and racial, on YouTube. A surprising number of them started out as Libertarians (or at least libertarian sympathizers — e.g., Stefan Molyneux, Milo Yiannopolous, Richard Spencer, Gavin McInnis, Laura Southern, and Theodore Beale among others). Essentially, all these people fell under the spell of Ann Coulter's book Adios America, which sent shock waves through the right upon its publication in 2015. Coulter argued that the overwhelming majority of Third World immigrants would always support the Big Government policies of the left, and that if immigration is allowed to persist unchecked, the left, and quite possibly the radical left, would gain a permanent majority in America.

Orthodox Objectivism has, for the most part, remained immune to Coulter's thesis. Leonard Peikoff, toward the end of his career as a podcaster, briefly flirted with the notion. But Yaron Brook staged
a quick intervention and brought Peikoff back to the pro-immigrationist fold. While this may have preserved ARI from further Peikoff-inspired embarrassment, it hardly serves to make the Objectivist creed more attractive to young people on the right. Indeed, it would seem that young people with conservative and libertarian leanings are quickly losing faith in the do-nothing creed of Objectivist inspired laissez-faire politics. Objectivism and libertarianism having been trying to convert people to their respective creeds for over sixty years, and they have little to show for it. With the surge of the radical left (at least terms of social and cultural influence) in recent years, the right is beginning to retrench into old forms of nationalism, both civic and, sometimes, in extreme cases, even racial. As the right-left ideological paradigm shifts and new factions on the right form to challenge globalism and non-white identitarianism, it's not clear how Objectivism and Rand-inspired libertarianism are going to maintain even a small sliver of relevance.




109 comments:

Lloyd Flack said...

Rand's continued influence is more as a myth maker than as a philosopher. Her remaining philosophical influence is through being called in as an advocate for Libertarianism's non aggression principle. But she was not the only philosopher advocating this, nor the first and I think not even the craziest.
Libertarianism does follow her example of using definitions of words that are at variance with everyone else's. They tend to try to win arguments by semantic games in the same way that she did. The most important example of this is using a definition of coercion that is much narrower than everyone else's.
Her epistemology has little influence and even among objectivists her aesthetics has little influence that I can see.

Anonymous said...


Don't forget the factor of assimilation.

Today's immigrant might be tomorrow's nativist!

gregnyquist said...

Rand's continued influence is more as a myth maker than as a philosopher.

There definitely is the Objectivism as myth aspect. Even the non-aggression principle, despite its philosophical trappings, has a mythical aspect around it. After all, political systems are not founded exclusively or even largely on philosophical principles. They are arrangements that grow out of the interplay of various factions driven primarily by sentiments and interests. The trouble for Objectivism is it features a series of myths (along with philosophical rationalizations) fabricated seventy years ago to meet the issues facing the individualistic-secular orientated right in that era. Back in the forties and fifties, the right was chiefly concerned with the spread of communism/socialism. Now the chief concern is the rising influence in the culture of a radical left openly hostile to Western Civilization and immigrants from the Third World who don't appear to be assimilating.

A quick glance at Yaron Brook's YouTube page gives an indication of the diminishing interest in Objectivism. Brook has a Q&A live stream going on with 75 watching. None of the posted videos on his page have more than a thousand views. Meanwhile, a debate a few days ago between Richard Spencer and an English classical liberal has garnered nearly a quarter million views.

madmax said...

Greg, I agree with your main points as always but you say this:

"A much smaller but noisier faction has jumped the shark and decided to embrace the identity politics of the left, applying similar ideological rationalizations to what they conceive as "white" interests (whatever those might be)."

How do you not see what white interests are? I ask that as someone who still has a strong strain of libertarian ideas but has nevertheless tempered them with an understanding of racial hereditarianism and its implications. If white people become the minority in this country and lose power to a coalition of the left and non-whites, things will get *very* ugly. I don't think it is hyperbole to think that ethnic violence would be directed against whites. Look at South Africa. And that has come to be my biggest problem with the hyper-individualist libertarians like the Objectivists. They act as if all the world were European with the same IQ distributions and the same sexual fertility patterns and reproductive strategies (K selected). The problem is the difference in cognitive differences that exist amongst the racial groups due to what seems to be divergent evolution. There is not neurological uniformity in the world which Rand's system is based on. The best of the libertarian thinkers right now is Hans Herman Hoppe. He does not require the same metaphysical foundation that O'ists insist on and he is aware of the North / South IQ gradient. Like all Paleo Libertarians, he has a much better understanding of human sociality than the Randians. But even then, it doesn't seem that the multi-racialism of the current Western world could ever lead to a minimalist state let alone an anarcho-capitalist one.

I guess what I am asking is that with all that you have read about the social sciences I can't understand how you aren't more sympathetic with the European identity movements (Nazis excepted). It was the racialist writers and bloggers that shook me from my Randroidism; not you interestingly enough. I only came to appreciate you after having gone through about 7 years of intense reading and thinking on the related hereditarian subjects (race and sex realism). My gateway was Larry Auster who you know of as you used to comment on his site. That's something I don't understand about you. I'm not saying you should be an alt-right fan boy, but at least understand that white identarianism is based on a self-preservation instinct. Its not crazy as you seem to suggest.

Gordon Burkowski said...

@DB/GW:

As far as I know, neither of you has ever commented on Rand's critique of racism - or stated your own views on the matter. To judge from some recent posts, I think it's time that you did.

Lloyd Flack said...

Hoppe, like Rothbard before him, is worse than Rand. They are responsible for the obsession with property that is the bane of libertarianism. They try to put all moral questions in terms of property rights. They are the mirror image of communists. Where communists seek a world in which all individual aspirations are subordinated to communal goals they seek a world in which the communitarian aims or people are trivialized and individual goals are all that remains. Most people want a balance between communal and individual goals.

Anonymous said...

Rands essay Racism came out in 1964. She denied that group differences in intelligence have a genetic component. Thanks to Jensen, Murrwy, Hernstein etc we now know that Rand was wrong.

What policy conclusions should be drawn from that is complicated but there is no doubt racial egalitarianism os false


Anonymouse

Anonymous said...

Detroit is 83 percent black. The black IQ is 85. If Detroit were populated by whites with an average IQ of 85 it would look like the Detroit of today.

It is too bad but we dont know how to raise IQ 15 points.

This isn't racism it's a fact.

Anonymouse

Lloyd Flack said...

She would have said it was irrelevant if true since she was only concerned with individuals.

Daniel Barnes said...

@Gordon, Rand on racism is about as sensible as Rand on anything else. There's the verbal blithering, both-sides blaming, the inevitable summoning of Objectivist Fantasy Capitalism as the universal cure for every ill. And of course, who cares what she says in posturing moral think pieces, how did she act in reality? Looking at who she surrounded herself with, I suspect that Rand was as unconsciously tribal as anyone else.
As to the issues of genetic differences in IQ and the like, the reality is that *no-one knows*. We *do know*, however, that people have inherently tribal prejudices and suffer from confirmation biases that will reinforce those prejudices. So my policy is to assume equality, as there is no compelling evidence to the contrary and at the very least this assumption will offset what are sure to be my own biases.

Anonymous said...

@db

Ashkenazi Jews have an IQ of 115 and get twenty percent of the Noble prizes in science. Even though ashkenazi and oriental jews go to tbe same schools i. Israel no oriental jew has wona Noble prize in science.

And there is a correllation between brain size and intlligence. East asians have larger brains than whites who havr larger brains than blacks.

Oh and whites do better than blacks on revwrse digit span and reaction time tests both of which are correlatef with lower Iq.

I could go on and on


Can you give one good reason to think that Australian aborigines are *really* just as smart as Ashkenazi jews ?

Anonymous said...

@db

First cousin marriages redice IQ 15 points. 80 percent of Pakistanis have first cousin marriages. Are you arguing that this hasnt reduced the pakistani IQ?

Anonymouse

Lloyd Flack said...

We don't know about racial differences in average intelligence but the claimed ones are suspiciously large. The are so large that I would need to thoroughly look at the methodology or have someone that I trust do this. And that means someone that I believe is willing to sacrifice dearly beloved ideology on the altar of curiousity.
After all we do not need differences in average intelligence to explain differences between populations in how well off they are.
And it is difficult to separatr genetic effects from those of early upbringing.

Lloyd Flack said...

Also some of the heritable differences could be epigenetic rather than genetic effects.

Daniel Barnes said...

Anonymous asks:
>Can you give one good reason to think that Australian aborigines are *really* just as smart as Ashkenazi jews ?

Let's put an Ashkenazi Jew with a "primitive" Aborigine, both naked, in the Australian Outback and see which one survives longest.

Which is another way of saying "intelligence" has got a lot of unspoken contextual and cultural assumptions baked into it as Any Fule Kno.

Daniel Barnes said...

Also pointless having a discussion about genetics without a discussion about expression.

gregnyquist said...

How do you not see what white interests are?

White people are not a homogeneous group. There exists an enormous amount of diversity of temperament, personality, ideological allegiances, etc. among white people. Out of all that disagreement, I'm not sure how you come up with anything that was specifically and exclusively a "white" interest. And indeed, despite the alt-right's presumed championship of these so-called white interests, nevertheless, most white people don't want anything to do with the alt-right. Nor is it just a radical leftist thing. The alt-right has been denounced by mainstream conservatives and, increasingly, by the so-called "alt-lite" (i.e., civic nationalists). The alt-right has responded in kind. They have branded conservatives and even civic nationalists as "cucks." Which leads to the rather ironic state of affairs wherein a movement allegedly brought about on behalf of white interests is made up of people who don't seem to like many actual white people.

If white people become the minority in this country and lose power to a coalition of the left and non-whites, things will get *very* ugly.

If true, how on earth is the alt-right going to do anything about this? If you want to stop the left, you need to build a coalition against it, and in a racially diverse country like America, that can't be done by alienating all your potential allies among both whites and non-whites.

I'm not saying you should be an alt-right fan boy, but at least understand that white identarianism is based on a self-preservation instinct. Its not crazy as you seem to suggest.

I don't think it's necessarily crazy, just deeply misguided. White identitarianism is not a path to self-preservation; rather it's a path to social isolation, which would seem to go against self-preservation.

Daniel Barnes said...

Anonymouse:
>First cousin marriages redice[sic] IQ 15 points. 80 percent of Pakistanis have first cousin marriages.

So now Anonymouse seems to have discovered that certain cultural practices can significantly affect IQ results in Pakistan, he will have to a accept that cultural practices may also be significantly affecting IQ results in the US and elsewhere...;-)

Lloyd Flack said...

Australian Aborigines were a small scattered isolated population in a continent that had little in the way of the resources required for an early civilization. A difference in intelligence is not necessary for them to have not developed civilization before they were conquered. Read Gunpowder, Germs and Steel by Jarred Diamond for explanations of what was needed to develop a civilization.

Anonymous said...

Lloyd -

How does that change the fact that groups have different IQs and this likely has a strong genetic component? It's not as if Aborigines have caught in the last three hundred years. In spite of the billions the Australia has spent on education and social programs they are still poor and have low IQs.

To take another example, there is genetic data on all the provinces in Latin America. The more European an province is (in other words less Native American and Africa) the higher its income and the better students do on standardized tests. Maybe there is a cultural explanation for this but Occam tells me there is a simpler explanation.

Anonymouse

Anonymous said...

I believe it was Arthur Jensen who said that the dwfault hypothesis is that what causes the differenced within groups is what most likely caused the differences between groups. Since intelligence is mostly genetic then differences between groups are most likely genetic.

From an evolutionary perspective its highly unlikely that all groups woind ip with the same IQ. The genes for btain devlopmemt have been identified and they vary from race to race

madmax said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
madmax said...

Part 2

America has become a pan-European civilization (at least prior to 1965 and excepting the 10% African subpopulation which was partially hybridized which while still disruptive is better than having full Africans). Europeans exist within a similar range of cognitive abilities and sexual aesthetic. Europeans also have significant genetic relatedness; We are in essence an extended family. That's what races are. Euros also share so many cultural foundations the most important being Christianity which is a de facto ethno-religion (all religions are de facto ethno-religions). There is nothing crazy about fighting for a pan-European civilization that organizes itself around the general genetic infrastructure of what can be thought of as the white race. In fact, thats basically what it was organized around prior to the 1960s. America was founded as what was in fact an ethno-state. "White persons of good character." You've read those words haven't you? You have to know where they come from.

Most alr-righters understand that North America is different than Europe in this regard. Europe has evolved its tribalism over millennium and its proper that Europeans act to preserve their own European ethnicities (or do you think that Poland should become the next Brazil?) In North America we've become hybridized; ie "white Americans". If you can't see that African, Mestizo or Arabic incursions into a formerly European space doesn't represent potential danger, then I question the state of your amygdala. (I hope you get the reference. You should.)

"Which leads to the rather ironic state of affairs wherein a movement allegedly brought about on behalf of white interests is made up of people who don't seem to like many actual white people."

They don't like Leftists or mainstream Conservatives or mainstream libertarians. But then again those movements are losing power. And yet they think they can win over many of the male white liberals, especially as the left becomes an explicit anti-white movement. Or do you not see that about the left? And since they push a welfare state economics (which I don't like), they may be right. Many blue class white liberals may come to realize that the Left of the SJW's is hostile to their interests. Again, not crazy.

"If true, how on earth is the alt-right going to do anything about this? If you want to stop the left, you need to build a coalition against it, and in a racially diverse country like America, that can't be done by alienating all your potential allies among both whites and non-whites."

Their view is that the future is going to bring chaos and fracture. Couple that with young whites especially young white males growing up in a climate which despises and demonizes them (have you seen the recent Star Wars movies?) and you are going to see white identarianism explode in the coming decades. I don't see that as unrealistic. Do you deny that Leftism is heading towards some violent attack on white Conservatives (Conservative basically meaning anyone one inch to the right of the NeoCons)? Do you not think we are heading for civil breakdown and social fragmentation? Have you not been watching the Antifa phenomenon? The violence being directed towards right-wingers (even the moderate types) is a growing phenomenon. Hell, leftists tried to KILL Republican senators in broad daylight. And look at what happened to Rand Paul. Hardly a "far right wing" guy. I don't see how you think forecasting growing white identity movements is bizarre. Do you think Leftists are going to stop trying to tear down white historical statues?

madmax said...

Part 3

Look I would love to live in a limited government society that really did believe in the "sanctity of the individual". I'm still a Randian at heart. It would be so nice if that really was the ultimate solution to all our problems. But racial tribalism is a real human phenomenon. And whether for biological or philosophical reasons (or both), right now the entire world is tribal while whites are engaging in racial suicide being led on by a variety of intellectual movements that either stress universalist egalitarianism (the left), universalist liberal propositionalism (the NeoCons and mainstream right) or universalist individualism (the libertarians). This can't go on indefinitely. We're witnessing a paradigm shift.

"White identitarianism is not a path to self-preservation; rather it's a path to social isolation, which would seem to go against self-preservation."

The younger generations don't see it that way. I think you are stuck in the 80s and 90s; the last hurrah of white America.

Greg, as much as you think you are being edgy, challenging Rand and the libertarians at their weak points, the growing hereditarian and identarian movements would consider you barely better than the Cato Institute or Sean Hannity. I have differences with Richard Spencer and he does often give dumbed down speeches for public consumption (he does that on purpose). But listen to any of his podcasts and he comes across as very well read and reasonable in his cultural analysis. He recently destroyed Sargon of Akkad in a debate.

I really can't judge your intellectual prowess from your blog posts (although you seem smart enough). I'd have to hear you discuss these ideas with someone like Spencer or MacDonald, the TRS guys, Christofer Cantwell (there's an interview you should do), etc. But from what I have seen, you are still stuck in the multi-racial civic nationalist paradigm that everyone on the right currently accepts. In that way, you are not that different from the Randians that you dedicated *over a decade* to discrediting. Think about that.

madmax said...

Part 1

Replies to various comments.

"Where communists seek a world in which all individual aspirations are subordinated to communal goals they seek a world in which the communitarian aims or people are trivialized and individual goals are all that remains."

You haven't read Hoppe or at least you don't understand him. The reality of what the more traditionalist friendly Rothbardians argue for (which is what Hoppe represents) is the exact opposite of what you wrote. Your criticism of the property obsession with libertarians has some merit but is overstated. IMO, the Misesians are much better in that regard. They understand that there is more to humanity than property rights. But property rights is an indispensable means of organizing society and optimizing it. Re Rand, she was not better than Rothbard in total. She did stress certain things which I think Rothbard was weaker on (namely the influence of moral theory on political development) but she had none of Rothbard's intellectual curiosity. He was a true polymath. He was not perfect but who is. His thought provides a good base for expanding libertarian theory. Your criticisms strike me as petty and uninformed. Are you a leftist? Mainstream Right? You don't come across as a non-mainstream Right guy. What with all the race denial stuff and all... (And I am speaking as what I would call a racialist right wing libertarian; a designation that really doesn't exist yet.)

"As to the issues of genetic differences in IQ and the like, the reality is that *no-one knows*."

You're more ignorant about hereditarianism than you are about Hoppe. I don't know where you come off being so arrogant and righteous about this. The data and world experience is not on your side. Drive through any black or brown area. Or country. "No one knows"? Jesus Christ. Talk about putting ideology over reality. lol

"Let's put an Ashkenazi Jew with a "primitive" Aborigine, both naked, in the Australian Outback and see which one survives longest.""

Silly argument. We don't live naked in the Australian Outback. We now live in an industrial civilization that rewards cognitive skills. High IQ populations have demonstrated advantages in such a civilization. Look anywhere. My god. Arguments like these are made fun of in alt-right and hereditarian circles. There is a north / south IQ gradient, *everywhere*. Do you see no real world evidence of this?

"Read Gunpowder, Germs and Steel by Jarred Diamond for explanations of what was needed to develop a civilization."

Or you could read Rushton and Lynn, etc and about the Cold Weather Hypothesis and bypass Diamond's Cultural Marxism totally. (Not that there aren't interesting facts in that book. But Diamond is an environmentalist just like those Randians that you love so much. I thought we opposed such silly things...)

"There exists an enormous amount of diversity of temperament, personality, ideological allegiances, etc. among white people"

How does that affect white interests? Have you read the mountains of empirical data regarding this? Just take a city like NYC. If it were all white it would have basically no violent crime. For four and a half million white people! Tokyo levels there. Almost makes you think that Rothbard's private defense agency scheme could work. Throw in African and Mesp-American DNA and everything changes. Now you can't cross 96th street after dark. Compare New Orleans with Fukushima. Gun crime? Switzerland's got more guns and less crime. It also has no blacks. Get the point. Really Greg. I'm not trying to be a dick, but just understand that the hereditarians / HBDers can do to you what you did to the Randians. Yes, that bad. And you seem to be just as blissfully unaware as the O'ists.

Lloyd Flack said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lloyd Flack said...

Anononymouse and Madmax, why are you trying to make race a focus of loyalty? I think, for different reasons, neither race nor political movement is a suitable object for feelings of loyalty and making them into such a focus is harmful to the broader society. Note that there is a difference between supporting a political movement and making it a focus of loyalty.
Some far more suitable objects of loyalty are nation, culture and way of life and even the human race as a whole. So long as my culture continues what difference does it make what the racial mix of its adherents is?

Daniel Barnes said...

I wrote:
>As to the issues of genetic differences in IQ and the like, the reality is that *no-one knows*."

madmax responded:
>You're more ignorant about hereditarianism than you are about Hoppe.

You do not seem to know who you are responding to. I wrote nothing about Hoppe?

I wrote:
>Let's put an Ashkenazi Jew with a "primitive" Aborigine, both naked, in the Australian Outback and see which one survives longest.

madmax responded:
>Silly argument. We don't live naked in the Australian Outback.

You do not seem to understand the discussion. I was responding to anonymouse's "Can you give one good reason to think that Australian aborigines are *really* just as smart as Ashkenazi jews ?"

I then gave one good reason, which obviously makes a wider point too.

As always, it seems the self-appointed members of the Master Race struggle with basic reading and comprehension...;-)

Lloyd Flack said...

And why should anyone expect the proportion of the variation between individuals within a race that is explained by heredity to be the same as the proportion of the variation between races explained by heredity?
To point out a couple of obvious things, the individual level variation will have a negligible effect on the variation between populations in their mean values. And the proportion of variation explained by heredity depends on how variable the environmental effects are. Increase environmental variation while keeping hereditary variation the same and you will decrease the proportion of variation explained by heredity.
The environmental differences between races are far from negligible and can explain a lot. The size of differences in racial means is poorly known despite your claims. Oh, they will exist but will they be large enough to matter?

Lloyd Flack said...

If there are negligible differences in intelligence between races and we believe that the differences are large then we will waste the potential of many people and damage social cohesion. If the differences are considerable and we treat them as negligible again there will be a waste of human potential but less than in the opposite case and there will be less damage to social cohesion.
Thus I think that for purposes of policy we need a stronger level of proof for differences between races than we would simply to satisfy our curiosity.

madmax said...

Regarding Ashkenazi intelligence,

Jews and Aborigines evolved in different areas which had different selection pressures. If true that the Aborigines would survive longest in the Outback it would prove only that Aborigines are better adapted to their environment. Jews obtained their high IQs most likely because they began assortive mating of the smart with the smart in more cognitively demanding Europe. (They also are European hybrids as all of today's Ashkenazis trace back to 4 Italian women dating from roughly 700 AD.) So if by intelligent you mean (among other things) "better able to prosper in a cognitively demanding society" then it's clear that Jews are more intelligent than Aborigines and this difference is largely down to genetics.

The easiest way to study this would be to do genetic testing of Aborigines to determine their percentage of European genes, measure their IQs, and see if there is a correlation. Of course, we know that such a study would never be done. Think of all those delicate leftist psychologies that would crush. In fact, a few years ago Charles Murray proposed such a study with African-Americans (who average 20% European ancestry) and no one of the "culture only" side of things would take part in the study. If you think about this, it's truly incredible. Imagine resolving a question of significant social concern (the black/white IQ gap) with a simple study, yet no one wants to do it or fund it. Imagine if you could resolve the question of whether raising the minimum wage increases unemployment - both right wing and left wing economists would do the study in a minute.

That's but one of many ways to respond to such a sily argument though. If anyone really thinks that aborigines are really as smart as Jews or North East Asians then your power of critical thinking is non-existent and you really have no business dealing with these subjects. In the end Leftism, ie egalitarianism, makes you stupid. Or stated another way, it prevents you from seeing the world as it is. And that could be very dangerous, especially when the subject is assessing dangers coming from your environment (and the presence of low IQ alien populations within your ancestral territory is certainly a danger). Incidentally, the amygdala threat response mechanism has been shown to be biologically different between leftists and conservatives. (I'm sure Greg knows this.) I would bet it factors heavily in the race and IQ debate.

You race and IQ deniers probably have damaged brains. And god only knows what the amygdala of an SJW looks like. lol

Anonymous said...

Lloyd. What are you talking about? Tens of millions of IQ or IQ equivent tests are given even year. They never give results inconsistent racial hereditarianidm. There are 40000 school ditticts in the US. Find one where blacks do as well as whites or even substantially above IQ 85.

Anonymouse

Gordon Burkowski said...

@ Anonymous:

What IQ do you need to correctly spell "equivalent" or "district"? And what exactly is "hereditarianidm"? Maybe you can find it in the same dictionary as "covfefe". I guess members of the master race have incorrectly inferred that they can do without a spellcheck.

p.s. The grammar's not so hot either.

Lloyd Flack said...

Be fair Gordon, anyone can make typos. There are much better things to criticize these two over.
For starters why the attempt to identify a nation with its racial make up? I think it has more to do with the culture and attendant values. I am in fact quite critical of the excesses of multi culturalism when it goes beyond necessary tollerance. While I am willing to accept that there might be differences in racial averages on mental attributes I am suspicious of the claims that have been made here. Those making the claims have too much to gain for me to trust them. The gain is mostly in self image.
And since I only deal with individuls of another race what matters is that I treat them fairly. Generalizations about race are irrelevant here and a foolish short cut.

Gordon Burkowski said...

@Lloyd:

Okay, anyone can make typos. But I hold people who implicitly claim superiority by reason of birth and skin colour to a higher standard.

Yes, there is a lot more to criticise, but why bother? The stuff being trotted out here doesn't exactly feel like it comes from learned journals subject to a peer review.

It would be more interesting if these people stopped hiding behind the statistics and stated clearly what laws or social objectives they're advocating. I sense that there is something being hidden here. And I guess everyone knows what it is. Thank heaven for the Fourteenth Amendment.

Lloyd Flack said...

I agree on what is being hidden. I asked about it when I asked why they were making biological race such a major aspect of their identity.

gregnyquist said...

Do you deny that Leftism is heading towards some violent attack on white Conservatives (Conservative basically meaning anyone one inch to the right of the NeoCons)?

Yes, I do deny it. The best measurable predictor of ideological outlook is personality. Now it just so happens that the personality type that is predisposed to leftist ideology is low in conscientiousness (one of the Big Five Personality traits) and weak in authority and loyalty (from the Moral Foundations Theory). To be effective at violence requires discipline, submission to authority, and recognition and respect for hierarchical structures. Generally speaking, people on the left don't have personality types that make for good warriors. Pareto would call them foxes rather than lions. Sure, they can engage in desultory violence if they have over-whelming numbers, or they're attacking women or old men, or engaging in a sneak attack with a bike lock. The whole point of Antifa and so-called left-wing violence is to try to provoke the right into committing atrocities in order to garner public support for laws aimed at suppressing the right.

How does [diversity among white people] affect white interests?

For the very simple reason that you can't have any common interests among people who think very differently. You can talk about "white interests" all you like, but most white people don't think in those terms. Their "whiteness" is more often regarded as an adventitious characteristic, something they really don't think much about. People tend to see the world through the prism of their personalities, and not all people, and certainly not all white people, have the same personality. It's the primary reason why it can be so difficult to get people to change their minds about their ideological convictions. One of the chief fallacies of ideologues is the tacit assumption that at bottom all reasonably intelligent people would accept the idealogue's political ideals if you could only expose them all to the right ideas, the right arguments, the right experiences, etc. etc. But that's not true in the least. Differences in ideology are at least partially based in hard-wired (i.e., genetic) differences in personality. That's why this notion that any specific ideology can become predominant evinces a failure to appreciate the diversity of human nature.

Daniel Barnes said...

Madmax's premises seem to boil down to:

1) IQ, as currently measured, is the only thing that matters.
2) It is also intractably fixed along racial lines.

For the sake of argument, let's assume both these premises are true.
Let's hear what specific social policies madmax proposes as a result. madmax, over to you.

gregnyquist said...

There is nothing crazy about fighting for a pan-European civilization that organizes itself around the general genetic infrastructure of what can be thought of as the white race.

The alt-right wishes for these so-called white ethno-states. Whether crazy or not, it's definitely problematic. In the first place, there's the insurmountable problem of forming the political will to do it. Non-Hispanic whites make up only 63% of the U.S. population. To create an ethnostate would require changing the constitution, but even if, per impossible, you could convince every white person in the country to support such a change, that would not be enough to create majorities in Congress and the States to amend the constitution.

Nor can you create your ethnostate through violence. The major forces of organized force in America, the police, the national guard, and the U.S. military, are all racially integrated. Those organizations are never going to support the alt-right.

What about social breakdown? Well, possibly, but be very careful what you wish for. If an ethnostate arose out of social collapse in America, there's no guarantee it would be a white ethnostate. More likely it would be a Chinese ethnostate. Because if America collapsed then China would become the world's leading power, and if the American continent was engulfed in racial warfare, China would likely intervene to protect Chinese nationals.

Just take a city like NYC. If it were all white it would have basically no violent crime.

The problem here is the cure you're proposing for NYC is worse than the disease. Even if, per impossible, you could get the political will to remove all non-whites from NYC, moving so many people against their will would almost certainly lead to enormous atrocities. You present Poland as an ideal ethnostate, but on conventional alt-right standards, Poland would not qualify as an ethnostate before 1939 because of its Jewish population. Jews, according to Richard Spencer, don't qualify as white people. So if the Nazis hadn't murdered most of the Jews in Poland, Poland would not today be regarded by the alt-right as a white ethnostate. In short, Poland's status as an ethnostate rests on mass murder.

Forcibly moving large populations rarely ends well. Not all the Nazis wanted the Final Solution for the Jews. Some Nazis wanted to move the Jews to Palestine, or even to Madagascar. But since it turned out to be easier to kill the Jews than to move them to another country, that's what the Nazis wound up doing. The ethnostate, like the Communist state, is a utopian ideal which, when put in practice, inevitably leads to atrocities. To create the political will to forcibly move a people, you would have to drum up hatred for that people to a fever pitch. Combine this with the fact that most people don't be like being forcibly removed and will often fight to remain, and you have all the elements for genocide/ethic cleansing.

Lloyd Flack said...

And how much of identity politics on the part of blacks etc. is a defensive reaction against discrimination? Not all of it but, I venture, much of it. Yes I am opposed to the posturing by the left on this but they do have a point. There is unjustified discrimination and it has to be opposed without seeing more discrimination than is actually there. That is, do not make opposition to discrimination central to your self image.

Anonymous said...

It should be noted that whether or not Spencer "won" the debate with Sargon seems to depend on how invested in the alt-right/white supremacy ideology the person making the judgement is. Some say Spencer was simply able to verbally side-step Sargon - not actually making a convincing case for the rightness of his cause, but instead deflecting many of the issues.

Xtra Laj said...

I think too many people who believe in hereditarianism want to draw too many consequences that clearly do not follow. A lot of what you think follows from the consequences or hereditarianism says more about your personality than the objective consequences of hereditarianism as those are features of the world we live in already if true.

Gordon Burkowski said...

"Let's hear what specific social policies madmax proposes as a result. madmax, over to you."

The least surprising result in the world: madmax did not answer. Because he could not answer. There are maybe 150 million Americans out there that he obviously doesn't like. And no matter how much junk science he trots out, those 150 million Americans aren't going to go away.

That's reality. Try dealing with it.

Anonymous said...

@gb

Is it your contention that racial hereditariansm is junk science? If so please provide a single piece of evidence that all population groups have the same or roughly the same intelligence

Anonymouse

madmax said...
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madmax said...
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madmax said...

The responses again are not impressive. I don't have time to go through every one of them because its been done over and over and over and over elsewhere (consult alt-right literature or even TradCons like Larry Auster). You people are the equivalent of Creationists when it comes to race. You are denying divergent evolution. Its funny, all of you attack Objectivists for being against "human nature" and then you sound JUST LIKE THEM. lol

A few things though.

"Generally speaking, people on the left don't have personality types that make for good warriors."

Irrelevant. Leftists have been committing atrocities against non-leftists for centuries all over the world. I could write pages on this. If they get power which they will when whites become a minority, they will attempt to commit atrocities again. Was Pol Pot a good warrior? Stalin? The Jacobins? Castro? lol

"Their "whiteness" is more often regarded as an adventitious characteristic, something they really don't think much about"

You say this as someone locked within your own time frame. Spencer and the rest of the alt-right are looking ahead. When whites become a minority in their former countries and SUFFER as a minority at the hand of white leftists (including NeoCons) and non-whites the Overton Window will shift. And it will shift as part of whites experiencing a survival instinct. Look at the situation now. Politics has become almost completely racialized. What do you think it will look like in 50 years?

"For the sake of argument, let's assume both these premises are true.
Let's hear what specific social policies madmax proposes as a result. madmax, over to you."

Different solutions have been offered. IMO, the best so far has been the idea of the dissolution and partition of the United States. Territories will be formed along racial, linguistic and ideological lines. And population transfers would occur. A high percentage of US citizens relocate annually anyway. There is also historical precedent for this; ie Hapsburg empire.

madmax said...

"Madmax's premises seem to boil down to:

1) IQ, as currently measured, is the only thing that matters.
2) It is also intractably fixed along racial lines."

Strawman. High school leftist debate tactics.

"There are maybe 150 million Americans out there that he obviously doesn't like."

Oh please Mr. "Bukoswki". You sound like a nitwit leftist with this crap. Yeah, that's all I have going on is that "I don't like them.". And there is nothing else about human nature that I am observing like ethnic tensions, African territories in North America that are no longer civilized (in Europe as well now), differential rates of welfare usage, racial block voting patterns, growing ethnic tensions and so much more.

Its *irrelevant* what I like. What I'd like is some minarchist utopia. I'm not going to get it. What I see WITH MY OWN TWO EYES is tensions escalating along racial lines while being driven by the ideological war between whites which can be likened to a continuation of the intra-Christian wars of past centuries. Ethnic conflict (in fact ethnic violence) ALWAYS erupts. PROXIMITY + DIVERSITY = WAR. Libertarianism was an attempt to prevent this. But it doesn't look like you can get the consensus on deep principles among enough people to make that work. IOW, racial tribalism is a thing.

"That's why this notion that any specific ideology can become predominant evinces a failure to appreciate the diversity of human nature."

I get your Shtick Greg. In your own mind, you've play acting as Jordan Peterson. You've read the literature coming out of the various social science fields and you think that you've got "human nature" figured out. But like Peterson, you're omitting race because in your opinion personality tests out weigh it. Good luck with that.

The irony of it all: You are closer to the blank slate Objectivists than you are to a racially aware right wing movement. On the most important set of issues, you are basically a leftist. Jesus, look at the people who comment here.

Rand had her individualist utopia as a final ideal. Spencer and the alt-right have their white nation and its Aryan soul as theirs. What do have as yours Greg? or Barnes? Or "Bukowski"? Some multi-racial welfare / regulatory state with its egalitarian ethos, its imperial foreign policy, its inflationary banking and its Jewish led cultural depravity lasting forever?

A Chinese ethno-state would be an improvement over that. In fact, if white people do go the way of the DoDo, I root for the North East Asian domination of the entire world. Let them be the gateway to the future. Yeah, the group that is the most racially tribalistic of all. Think on that...

Anonymous said...

The thing is, should this "partitioning" happen, there'd be no end to it. If you could divide whites from non-whites, and non-whites into various ethnicities, and make the ideological case that that was the best way to do things, then why would it stop there? People of African descent could further partition according to regions, countries and tribes from which they derive. But moreover, "whites" would have no reason to not themselves divide and discriminate further. Get set for the Polish/Irish wars, or something.

Madmax tries to spin things to establishing others' utopian ideals. But no utopia can exist, and each such vision fails to account for some aspect of human nature. Collectivism fails to account for human individualism. Rand's utopia fails to account for other aspects of human nature. The ethnocentric utopia fails to account for humans who simply can't sustain the necessary level of hate and prejudice. Is it too impossible to believe that some do not try to hold utopian ideals, for that very reason?

Lloyd Flack said...

Jewish led cultural depravity? Well, we know where you are coming from now.

Gordon Burkowski said...

@ Lloyd Flack:

Yeah, it pretty much says it all,
doesn't it?

@ Madmax: Burkowski, not Bukowski. Use some of that racially superior IQ and spell people's names right.

Daniel Barnes said...

Madmax still won't propose what racial policies he'd like to see in place. I wonder why.

Daniel Barnes said...

Xtralaj! Nice to see your handle again...;-)

Gordon Burkowski said...


"Madmax still won't propose what racial policies he'd like to see in place"

Actually, I think he did: "the dissolution and partition of the United States" with territories "formed along racial, linguistic and ideological lines." All of this to happen once we get past our "Jewish led cultural depravity".

A neo-nazi wet dream, in short. My congratulations: you succeeded in baiting him into spelling it out. I didn't think he would.

gregnyquist said...

Irrelevant. Leftists have been committing atrocities against non-leftists for centuries all over the world. I could write pages on this. If they get power which they will when whites become a minority, they will attempt to commit atrocities again. Was Pol Pot a good warrior? Stalin? The Jacobins? Castro? lol

You are missing what's important here. There's a reason why communism has struggled to gain any kind of effective dominance in the West. For communism to succeed, communist elites need to mobilize armies, and that's impossible in Western nations because (1) the general individualistic orientation of Western culture (see Victor Davis Hanson) and (2) the weath and comfort of the west (wealth softens people, makes them less prone, and not as good at, violence). Communism requires large groups of destitute people, along with a failing and decadent ruling elite, to have any kind of chance of seizing power through violent means. In the West, ambitious status seeking leftist elites have followed the Gramscian model of trying to infiltrate institutions. In short, they're trying to seize power through chicanery rather than force. In Paretian terms, they're foxes rather than lions.

Madmax seems to regard ideology as an active force. In that sense, he is still remains in accord with Objectivism. I regard ideology as far more a symptom than a cause. It is character, personality, sentiments and interests that drive people. Ideology is largely just a rationalization for these non-rational drives.

gregnyquist said...

Rand had her individualist utopia as a final ideal. Spencer and the alt-right have their white nation and its Aryan soul as theirs. What do have as yours Greg? or Barnes? Or "Bukowski"? Some multi-racial welfare / regulatory state with its egalitarian ethos, its imperial foreign policy, its inflationary banking and its Jewish led cultural depravity lasting forever?

I don't believe in utopias. I regard the political order as an "arrangement" created by an interplay of various socio-politico factions in society. The outcome of this interplay does not follow any ideological blueprint nor does it follow the will of any individual person. It's a separate reality, something that may be nudged and influenced by a handful of elites, but which no one person can control. Since I, as a non-elite, can neither control nor influence the direction of the social order, I don't have any strong personal interest in assuming an ideological stance. I'm more interested in trying to understand the social order. I know its pointless to try to change its course.

In your own mind, you've play acting as Jordan Peterson. You've read the literature coming out of the various social science fields and you think that you've got "human nature" figured out. But like Peterson, you're omitting race because in your opinion personality tests out weigh it.

I've essentially believed in what could be called the psychological theory of history (it's what Peikoff calls it) since my late teens. It's the principle reason why I became a critic of Objectivism. Initially, my views on these issues were based on my experiences. I had noticed how difficult it was to reason people out of non-rational/irrational religious and ideological opinions. They were emotionally attached to afactual views and no amount of evidence or logical argumentation could ever liberate them from their dogmatic prisons. Their personality, their character, their temperament, perhaps their interests and social influences as well, were the principle drivers behind their ideology, not the ideology itself (or the arguments and so-called "evidence" behind the ideology).

I find Jordan Peterson (along with Jonathan Haidt) of interest principally for the scientific evidence they provide for the view that character, personality are the primary determinants of religious/ideological commitments, and that how a person behaves in many instances tells us more about who he really is than what comes streaming out of his pie-hole.

Gordon Burkowski said...


The following just appeared in the nyt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/frederick-douglasss-scientific-racism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Unsurprisingly, the use of phony science to justify racial prejudice has been around for a very long time.


Eric said...

I reject the idea that race has a factor in IQ scores because I have yet to see any biological proof of this. Where is the gene that determines IQ score? Where is it? What I have seen is white people who are smart and black people who are just as smart. I know that Ben Carson is smart (the guy is a brain surgeon for crying out loud) just as Walter E. Williams or Justice Thomas.

My own personal idea is that it boils down to upbringing. Your skin color doesn't matter when it comes to intelligence, but what really matters is being raised in a household that gives a crap about your education. If you grow up in a household that doesn't give a flying crap about your education, then you are going to be poor and dumb. That is the bottom line. Period.

This shows why Asian households, where the culture places a very heavy burden on academic performance, have higher IQ scoring children than either the white or blacks. It also shows why the Asians perform better academically than white, despite Europe historically having more scientific discoveries than Asia.

I can only conclude that Race = IQ is false, until significantly proven otherwise.

Gordon Burkowski said...

Still worth reading is Jacques Barzun's book "Race: a Study in Superstition", which traces the racist lines of thought which grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, culminating in the bloodbaths of the 20th. Also noteworthy: the use of junk science to buttress animosities rooted in nothing but social and political animosities.

Barzun's book first came out in 1938. In its 1965 reissue, he located the appeal of racism in "the need to give body to vague hostility, to find excuses for what goes wrong, to fear aliens or neighbors and curse them, while enjoying self-approval from within the shelter of one's own group." Sound familiar? And that was written 53 years ago.

Eric said...

Tanks for the book recommendation, Gordon. I'll take a look at it when I get a chance. (Right now I have a lot in front of it though. "The Goal" and Lensman series are at the front of the line right now.)

Germany has an average IQ score of 107, yet Vermont(99% White) is on average 5 whole points lower. In the United States Whites have an average IQ of 100, while Asians have us crackers beat with a 101.6 yet somehow out perform white Americans in academic success despite an only 1 point variance.

Why does Denmark get a score of 98 while New Hampshire has 105? If race was the main factor in IQ, then it can be assumed that two white areas, in this case Denmark and New Hampshire, should have the same if not similar scores. As we can see, they don't.

Anonymous said...

Above Madmax suggested the possibility of a study that did genetic testing of African-Americans to see if there is a correlation between the amount of European ancestry and IQ. In fact, a study has been done and it shows that the higher the percentage of European ancestry for Blacks and Hispanics the higher the IQ.

Such a study has been done and the results are that the more European an African-American or Hispanic-American is the higher the IQ.

John Clarke

Anonymous said...

Sorry - here is the study,

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/10tnud1f23ZFVotNP186oZf0KLCMCB1bfEm4iYTzk0-k/edit

Anonymous said...

"Further research is needed to clarify whether this reflects genetic causation or genetic ancestry-related environmental confounders."

In other words, is this genetics, or is it tangentially related to genetics, such as non-white children being disproportionately raised in poorer neighborhoods, or some other such factor?

So while statistically race may be a "useful predictor", this study does NOT prove an actual direct causal link between race and IQ.

That's the problem with studies such as these - people with agendas tend to cherry pick a few points and extrapolate them far further than the studies actually go.

What's more, the real question still remains: even if it did, so what?

Anonymous said...

No one study proves that group differences in IQ have a genetic component. They are part of a number of lines of evidence that point to this as the most reasonable conclusion.

This article points to additional evidence:

http://quillette.com/2017/06/02/getting-voxed-charles-murray-ideology-science-iq/

JC

Anonymous said...

The problem is, "the most reasonable conclusion" is not an objective standard. If one has an emotional bias against non-white races, and/or race mixing, then it would be very easy to fall into the old confirmation bias trap.

The article linked above does make a good point in that one should not simply dismiss actual science because it disagrees with one's own moral outlook; but by the same token one should be careful of embracing unquestionably any such science simply because it reinforces one's preferred narrative. (In fact, one might say that if a supposed scientific fact is being promoted and repeated by a political movement as propaganda for a political goal, the obligation is to very deeply question that science, and yes, that applies to all sides.)

The article mentions the Ashkenazi Jews; I remember reading an article about a study done long ago by a scientist who measured the IQ of Ashkenazi immigrants and found them to average far below that of the average white person - now, years later, they are found to be ABOVE whites. If we accept today's study as being superior, we either have to concede the earlier study was greatly flawed or we have to allow for some possibility that IQ can be raised dramatically through factors besides genetics.

Not long ago, there was a bit of a flurry over some statistics related to the overall drop in crime rates in the US, as it was pointed out that the rise and fall correlate to the usage of lead additives in gasoline - that is, as the lead was being released into the environment, crime rates rose, and after the lead was removed from gas and it began to fade from the environment, crime rates began to fall - the implication being that lead was being absorbed by young children, and as a result their IQ would be affected, leading to a generation of people more prone to commit crimes. An additional theory posited that since poorer neighborhoods would do a poorer job of cleaning such contaminants from the environment, any lead effect would be more dramatic and longer-lasting in the people living in those areas - i.e., non-whites. Now nobody has actually conclusively PROVED anything in regards to all this data, but it is a plausible theory that could account for IQ differences, if you choose to be open to that kind of "line of evidence".

And still the larger question remains. Even if it were true, what is the best course of action to take because of it? For example, if IQ is hereditary, we do know that regardless of trends, there are some pretty low-IQ white individuals, and some fairly high-IQ non-whites. If one is truly concerned with giving one's children a leg up, IQ-wise, then the sensible thing would be for a low-IQ individual to mate with any high-IQ person, regardless of skin color. In this case, the science of hereditary IQ does not serve the political ideal of racial purity and I suspect someone would weasel up some reason why the science suddenly is immaterial in such a scenario...

Anonymous said...

There is no problem with confirmation bias. Most white racial hereditarians were raised to believe that all groups were equal. They agree that East Asians have higher IQs than whites.

As far as Ashkenazai Jews go, I haven't looked at the issue but from what I've read those early IQ tests have to be used with caution. It's been estimated that most immigrants who were tested might never have spoken English or used a pencil.

Group differences in intelligence do matter. Whites are constantly told that they are responsible for low Black academic achievement or poverty. We now know that these differences are most entirely due to genetics. We should stop spending trillions of dollars trying to increase Black academic success via Head Start, etc.

JC

gregnyquist said...

"No one study proves that group differences in IQ have a genetic component. They are part of a number of lines of evidence that point to this as the most reasonable conclusion."

I wouldn't be so quick to make that conclusion. Consider the following criticism of the "Strong IQ Hypothesis" (i.e., that IQ is overwhelmingly determined by genetics):

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/

Just because the blank slate view is wrong doesn't make the strong genetic view right. Genetics and environment both play a role, as well, perhaps, as what might loosely be described as individual "initiative."

Anonymous said...

Just because white IQ can fluctuate doesn't prove that there aren't group/ethnic differences in innate intelligence. No one is arguing that the white/other group difference doesn't have some environmental component.

But take for example the high Ashkenazi-Jewish IQ. They have a 15 point advantage over Sephardic Jews even though they go to the same schools in Israel.

If you believe that Australian Aborigines have the same innate IQs as Ashkenazi Jews then I don't know what to say.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Nyquist - do you believe that all ethnic groups have the same intelligence? Please tell me how human evolution resulted in all groups having the same intelligence.

And do you believe the male/female difference in aggression is cultural?

You say you are against the blank slate but when it comes to the most studied area of psychology which refutes blank slatism you punk out.

Eric said...

Immigrants from Nigeria (you know, Black people) have more advanced degrees (earned at American universities) when compared to other immigrant groups such as Europeans or Asians. This fact alone proves that the idea that IQ is tied to race is faulty. There has to be another factor at work here besides how a person made out in the lucky sperm club. Such as strong family connection, proper diet, and an emphasis on education as a pathway to success.

Anonymous said...

"There is no problem with confirmation bias. Most white racial hereditarians were raised to believe that all groups were equal. They agree that East Asians have higher IQs than whites."

Be that as it may, "white racial hereditarians" mainly bring up the topic of race-based IQ as justification for what they really want, which is to discourage race-mixing and find a reason to segregate or discriminate. The argument is never "oh, here's a difference, so let's use this data to figure out to help out our supposedly disadvantaged fellow man," it's "don't allow the white race to be contaminated!" or some other justification for treating non-whites poorly - when it has not yet actually been fully established that race is the primary determining factor for IQ. "White racial hereditarians" are also notable for ignoring, denying, or downplaying all countering evidence, which itself is indicative of bias.

To put it another way, if racial IQ studies showed no marked difference between the races, "white racial hereditarians" wouldn't bring them up, ever, because it's the agenda that drives which science they fall behind, not the science that determines their agenda.

Anonymous said...

I've heard that plenty have advanced degrees from Nigeria but how many from US Universities?

Of course this could be due to selective migration.

madmax said...

"Be that as it may, "white racial hereditarians" mainly bring up the topic of race-based IQ as justification for what they really want, which is to discourage race-mixing and find a reason to segregate or discriminate."

I'll reframe this. White racial hereditarians bring up the topic because they want to create societies based on the racial kinship model (ust like the North East Asians) that exclude non-whites. They want this because it is entirely natural and because it removes one of the greatest threats there is; the threat of violence or extermination at the hand of out-groups. There is great safety in numbers.

You see a healthy, evolutionary response to multi-racialism as some sort of irrational, demonic "racism" that is totally ungrounded and just outdated atavism. But the reality is that it is science based, history based, culture based and above all, its *sane*.

I say this to Nyquist, the supposed expert at human nature, and to every racial egalitarian in the comments:

IF YOU WANT TO LIVE IN A MULTI-RACIAL UTOPIA, YOU SHOULDER THE BURDEN. DON'T FORCE THE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF WHITE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT WANT THIS TO SUFFER THROUH YOUR SCIENCE EXPERIMENT.

Be your own god-damned lab rats. And be prepared for violence directed at you when the shit hits the fan, which it will.

Anonymous said...

"DON'T FORCE THE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF WHITE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT WANT THIS"

While we're on the subject of "Don'ts":

Don't overestimate your numbers. Don't assume you speak for the majority of white people. Don't complain about negative violent effects of one system when the proposed alternative is guaranteed to bring about its own share of negative violent effects.

Don't expect to sway people with your arguments, or convince them that you're "sane", when you tacitly threaten "violence directed at you".

There is a difference between actively striving to live in a "multi-racial utopia" and simply not being overly bothered by there being other races nearby. You ought to try it sometime.

My ancestors were Irish; a lot of people gloss over the history of anti-Irish discrimination in the US, and the attempts to classify the Irish immigrants as being an inferior species of human being. So now am I to take seriously the latest set of justifications for being an asshole? Do I, living in a land of virtually NOTHING BUT IMMIGRANTS, or descendants of immigrants, think there is any reasonable possibility of peaceably sorting out the American Melting Pot and getting everyone to fuck off to their own corners? Hardly. If the white racial hereditarians in North America really want their racial purity the first step ought to be to test their DNA and then piss off to whichever corner of Europe they most derive from. If that's too much to ask, I don't see why I, and the majority of citizens who don't think ethnostates are a good or smart thing, ought to just idly let any old pack of dipshits inconvenience us by trying to start some ridiculous race war.

Anonymous said...

Can I get some proof for the claim that Irish weren't considered human? They wouldn't have been allowed in if they were even thought to be non-European.

Anonymous said...

Well, first, nobody claimed that the Irish "weren't human". Nor does the non-European thing make sense - after all, plenty of Chinese came in to work on the railroads and such. Is this some kind of sarcasm or joke I'm not getting, or are you really that dense?

In any case, just a few moments on Google could provide hours of references... here's what seems like a decent, digestible overview.

https://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2016/03/17/a-history-of-anti-irish-racism-in-the-us/

gregnyquist said...

Mr. Nyquist - do you believe that all ethnic groups have the same intelligence? Please tell me how human evolution resulted in all groups having the same intelligence.

Strictly speaking, groups don't have intelligence. It's the individuals that make up the group that manifest degrees of intelligence which correlates to scores on IQ tests. These scores can be statistically collated to reveal "group averages." But these group averages don't have anywhere near the significance that many people seem to believe. For there is quite a bit of variation of intelligence within groups, which means that making assessments about individuals based on the statistical averages of whatever groups they may happen to adventitiously belong to is, at the very least, bad manners. Who wants to be judged on such a basis? Nor are statistical averages necessarily a sure guide to group success or failure. East Asians feature a high statistical group average IQ than whites, yet white Euro-Civilization has achieved more in terms of science, technology, and art. Why is this? It's probably due to cultural influences, particularly western individualism.

And do you believe the male/female difference in aggression is cultural?

These differences seem primarily genetic, but culture can dampen or intensify these genetic influences. Moreover, the actual difference in aggression between the sexes isn't that much: apparently, in terms of percentages, it's only 60/40.

You say you are against the blank slate but when it comes to the most studied area of psychology which refutes blank slatism you punk out.

The fact that the blank slate is wrong doesn't prove that strong hereditarianism is right. The manner in which genetics influences human traits and behavior is very complex. Not much is understood concerning the relation between genetics and culture/environment . There appears to be a large measure of reciprocal causation going on between these two factors, which the human mind struggles to grasp. Furthermore, there's the factor of volition, which science, based, as it is, on essential deterministic premises, can't adequately elucidate.

Lloyd Flack said...

With groups as large as races there is bound to be some difference on average on all traits. But whether the difference is non trivial is very different question. There are so many differences in environment and historical circumstances that genetic differences are not the first place that we should look when seeking explanations for how well they have done. For starters we do not know what the genes affecting intelligence are and so any attempt to make comparisons between races in this matter are to put it mildly premature.

Anonymous said...

There was an article in the New York Times recently by a geneticist David Reich, who is politically on the left. He said people should expect that races differ in intelligence and behavior. He said that's the way evolution works - it creates subspecies that differ in significant ways. You'd basically have to deny the animal nature of man or be a creationist to think otherwise.

" For starters we do not know what the genes affecting intelligence are and so any attempt to make comparisons between races in this matter are to put it mildly premature."

I don't think the genes for height but it is pretty clear that groups differ in height and there is a substantial genetic component. And there is lots of scientific evidence such as Spearman's hypothesis, regression to the mean, etc. that makes a fairly strong hereditarianism fairly certain.

Anonymous said...

Greg,

Take the B/W IQ gap. It exists in the South, in the North, in the Midwest (which never had slavery or Jim row). It exists in Canada, in England, in Brazil, in the Caribbean.

If that's all you know then it makes a strong genetic theory likely.

Unfortunately the B/W IQ gap in the US is the most studied gap, which makes people who discuss race/IQ sound like racists, but there are other gaps. I've read about studies which measure the IQ of second generation African and Asian immigrants to Europe and there IQs are only slightly higher than those in the native lands.

What aspect of culture explains this? We don't know how to raise IQ and all the methods such as Head Start have failed.

At some point doesn't our friend Mr. Occam provide the most reasonable explanation?

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, the claim that we can't conclude that group differences in intelligence are due to genes until we find the genetic mechanism works in reverse.

Why believe that the gaps are cultural when no one has shown how (in the case of the B/W gap) slavery, Jim Crow or contemporary racism can depress IQ 15 points?

What cultural mechanism explains the evident gaps in IQ?

Anonymous said...

I just gotta point out this:

"Unfortunately the B/W IQ gap in the US is the most studied gap, which makes people who discuss race/IQ sound like racists, but there are other gaps."

And without any sense of irony, in the same entry:

"At some point doesn't our friend Mr. Occam provide the most reasonable explanation?"

I mean, since the whole point in bringing the race/IQ issue up in a non-clinical discussion such as this is virtually ALWAYS to justify some kind of discrimination or apartheid, it just never comes up without someone angling to lobby for "the white ethnostate" or something similar, Mr. Occam would have to say something about THAT as well.

Anonymous said...

So what is your explanation for the high IQ of Ashkenazi Jews?

Anonymous said...

"So what is your explanation for the high IQ of Ashkenazi Jews?"

Who are you asking?

If it's me, the Anonymous directly before your post, then I don't have an explanation, and really don't need to. This question is pretty much a sidestep. Whether I can explain it or not doesn't make any difference, nor would the actual explanation be all that important. The true question worth asking is, if this race/IQ thing were somehow proved true, what then should be done about it?

It seems to me that the people touting race/IQ science the most vigorously in non-clinical discussions such as these do so in order to find a supposedly rational, "objective" reason to discriminate, as if it somehow isn't racism if it can be dressed up with some research.

For my part, I don't think any of this science is sufficient to change or alter basic human rights for any sub-group of humans. If IQ were a good enough reason in and of itself, then one would have to justify discrimination against any individual whose IQ fell under some benchmark score, white people included. But somehow white identitarianism doesn't seem to start by tending its own garden...

gregnyquist said...

At some point doesn't our friend Mr. Occam provide the most reasonable explanation?

I'm not actually a big fan of Occam's razor. The simplest explanation isn't always the correct one because reality can be very complicated. Furthermore, no one is forcing us to come to a conclusion. Sometimes the best solution is to admit there's a great deal we don't know. In the early 1970s, the average Irish IQ was 87 (close to the average black IQ in the U.S.), but today Ireland's PISA scores (essentially an academic tests that can approximate an IQ test) are roughly the same as France and Britain. How is this to be explained? The fact is, there's still quite a bit we don't know. We don't know how much to assign to the genetics and how much to assign to environment/culture, nor do we know much about how environment and culture may affect the development of the individuals genetically determined intelligence potential. Now given the controversial nature of this subject, it would behoove all of us to approach the issue with some measure of intellectual humility and not be so quick to make sweeping and quite possibly unwarranted conclusions.

gregnyquist said...

For my part, I don't think any of this science is sufficient to change or alter basic human rights for any sub-group of humans.

Exactly correct. But there's another side to this issue which needs to be mentioned. The reason why these statistical averages of IQ of certain racial groups are seen as a valid objection to living with those groups is because certain types of socially dysfunctionally behavior statistically correlate with low IQ. However, there's a logical problem here which illustrates the treacherous nature of statistical averages. If IQ is the primary source of one's objection to certain racial groups, wouldn't it make more sense, on a strictly logical point of view, to discriminate on the basis of IQ rather than race? Because as it so happens there's a wide range of IQ within social groups that statistical averages tend to conceal. Seven million blacks in America do better on IQ tests than the average white. For those objecting to blacks on the basis of low IQ, what is there problem with blacks with IQ's higher than the average white? What about the 15% or so of white with IQs below 83? Again, for those who have a problem with low IQ individuals, why don't they have a problem with whites with low IQs?

Lloyd Flack said...

Occam's razor is a rule of thumb rather than a rigorous method. It is choose the explanation that makes the least assumptions. But with race and IQ what we have to do is admit ignorance. We cannot adequately disentangle hereditary influences from those of upbringing and should be willing to admit that.
And then the is the question whether reducing the measure of intelligence to a single number is very useful if one is looking at social questions. There are multiple forms of intelligence and IQ tests do not measure all of them. In particular they do not measure understanding of others and understanding of oneself. And these unmeasured forms of intelligence are arguably the ones which have the most influence on socially undesirable behaviour.
When we can identify the average difference between races in intelligence do not be surprised if the differences are not in the same direction for all forms of intelligence.
Meanwhile since race is at best a very crude predictor of intelligence it is not much use when we deal with any individual.

Anonymous said...

Lloyd

"But with race and IQ what we have to do is admit ignorance. We cannot adequately disentangle hereditary influences from those of upbringing and should be willing to admit that."

This is incorrect. Using studies of twins adopted into different families at birth we can determine that IQ is largely hereditary - probably close to 70 percent. And as Jensen said, the default position is what accounts for the differences within groups most likely causes the differences between groups.

You are also ignoring the other evidence such as admixture studies, brain size differences in ethnic groups, regression to the mean and Spearman's hypothesis.

Greg,

I don't know if that number for Ireland is correct. Assume it is, it can probably be explained by regression to the mean. Ireland had large outmigration for decades and immigrants tend to be middle class, which means higher IQ. So it maybe that after the emigration stopped, Ireland's IQ went back to its natural level. Incidentally Ireland still isn't producing scientists on the level of France and England.

If North Korea stopped enslaving its populace I wouldn't be surprised if the North Korean IQ shot up.

" For those objecting to blacks on the basis of low IQ, what is there problem with blacks with IQ's higher than the average white? What about the 15% or so of white with IQs below 83? Again, for those who have a problem with low IQ individuals, why don't they have a problem with whites with low IQs? "

I'm not objecting to blacks, just pointing out the reality of IQ differences. A concern though is regression to the mean. High IQ blacks will tend to produce lower IQ children. That's why you get the Shaker Heights phenomenon. Shaker Heights is a wealthy black suburb of Cleveland. Its schools aren't Cleveland but they aren't as good as the typical white school.

I'd put it this way - just because groups have low floors doesn't mean they have equally high ceilings. The IQs of Blacks didn't shoot up when they moved North or as the Black/White culture in the US converged starting in the 50s.


Anonymous said...

Greg,

I'm not an expert on Ireland, but by he early 70s it was still poor, rural and non-industrialized. So it could be an example of an accelerated Flynn Effect. Ireland did in a few decades what it took other countries 100 years.

Also, that's the lowest score. If you drop the lowest and the highest (PISA) score you get a definite trend upwards, but not so dramatic. (90-97)

http://www.unz.com/runz/raceiq-irish-iq-chinese-iq/

Anonymous said...

Greg. One thing I've noted about national IQ scores is that they jump around a bit and that the outliers tend to be the lower scores.

jc

Lloyd Flack said...

The proportion of variation in IQ that heredity is responsible for will vary depending on how much variation in upbringing there is. If there is little variation between groups then most of the variation will be due to heredity. If there is a lot then the proportion due to heredity will be less.
But it really does not matter much to me. I identify mostly with my culture and nation and not so much with my race. I deal with individual members or other races, not the race as a whole.
Average differences between races are relevant to what you can realistically expect out of social programs. However the consequences of being wrong if the differences are small are worse than the consequences of being wrong if the differences are large. Thus assuming rough equality is the safer choice if there is considerable doubt. And I do not trust the motives of those arguing that there are large differences. There is too much scope for confirmation bias and hence before I will spend a lot of effort examining claims of large racial differences I need to know that those claiming that there are large differences want to be wrong.

gregnyquist said...

I'm not an expert on Ireland, but by he early 70s it was still poor, rural and non-industrialized. So it could be an example of an accelerated Flynn Effect. Ireland did in a few decades what it took other countries 100 years.

It could be an accelerated Flynn Effect, but how do we explain the Flynn Effect? Keep in mind, Irish IQ was rising in accordance with Irish income. So how do we explain this? I'm not sure we can -- which, again, should counsel a fair degree of intellectual humility.

One thing I've noted about national IQ scores is that they jump around a bit and that the outliers tend to be the lower scores.

This raises another issue: imprecision of testing. IQ is considered among the best measurable social science we have at our disposal, but that really isn't saying much. The fact is, not much in the social sciences can be measured all that effectively. That's especially true of environmentally/cultural factors. Very hard to measure, very hard to determine, accurately and objectively, their affect on social outcomes, very hard to know what, if anything, can be done about them. But just because some phenomenon is difficult to measure, or document, or isolate as a variable doesn't mean you can assume it doesn't exist. The notion that what can't be measured isn't real constitutes a gross excess of scientism.


madmax said...

The level of commentary here continues to be uninformed, even that of Mr. "specialist in human nature" himself Greg Nyquist. But this comment makes my blood boil because of its stupidity:

"I mean, since the whole point in bringing the race/IQ issue up in a non-clinical discussion such as this is virtually ALWAYS to justify some kind of discrimination or apartheid, it just never comes up without someone angling to lobby for "the white ethnostate" or something similar"

If I knew nothing about hereditarianism but only knew the history of multi-ethnic societies and the history of the fate of Whites when they lose their countries to blacks... If I knew nothing but what is going on in South Africa TODAY as they increase their racially based land seizures and push ever further towards white genocide... That would be ENOUGH to SANELY argue for white ethno-states and racial SURVIVAL. Again you people are engaging in a massive inversion of the normal as the deranged and the sane as the immoral. You're doing what Leftists always do: pathologize biologically normal behavior.

"Do I, living in a land of virtually NOTHING BUT IMMIGRANTS"

NO. They were SETTLERS not immigrants. That's "proposition nation" bullshit. There is a massive difference between the European SETTERS and the post 1965 immigrants. Jesus Christ, learn your history.

"Don't overestimate your numbers. Don't assume you speak for the majority of white people."

Don't underestimate your opposition. Also, get back to me in three or four generations when Whites become a minority and the country becomes hostile to them. Let's see what politics looks like then.

"For my part, I don't think any of this science is sufficient to change or alter basic human rights for any sub-group of humans. If IQ were a good enough reason in and of itself, then one would have to justify discrimination against any individual whose IQ fell under some benchmark score, white people included. But somehow white identitarianism doesn't seem to start by tending its own garden..."

This is why libertarianism as it is now is going nowhere. If it does not integrate racial science it will have no future. There are answers to this objection largely having to do with suppression of the breeding of the lower classes but it nevertheless remains that the greatest challenge for humanity is to solve the problem of group differences and racial tribalism. The best libertarian scholars to date (Misesean/Rothbardian/Hoppean traditions) have conducted a very important research project aimed at solving the problems inherent in governments, reducing human interaction down to private property and creating a society free from parasitism, larceny and predation. But they HAVE NOT solved the problem of how to create that society nor how to overcome racial differences. Racial Conservatism is therefore an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY for the near future when it becomes clear that multi-racialism is going to fail.

It is you people who are "Contra Human Nature". Again, you are no different than the Objectivists you criticize.

madmax said...

One more:

"I deal with individual members or other races, not the race as a whole."

This is so ignorant I understand why Larry Auster and all the smart and well read Paleo-right wingers used to make fun of me when I said the same crap a decade ago.

YOU DO DEAL WITH THE WHOLE RACE. Your taxes go to sustain them. Your college admissions (or those of your children) is affected by their presence. The value of your dollar is affected by the inflation necessary to continue the subsidy that sustains their existence. Your real estate prices are affected by the distance ( or lack of it) from the enclaves of the those low IQ races. If you step foot out of the nice white (or predominately white) area that you are caged in then you could suffer anything from robbery to BRUTAL SLAUGHTER if you are unfortunate enough to encounter one of the feral savages which comprise a not insignificant percentage of the black race. Indeed your very society is moving backwards instead of outwards towards the stars because we have the albatross around our necks that is the burden of dealing with the African and Meso-American races. I could go on for pages.

Now if you are a libertarian you can scream at me about eliminating the welfare state or ending the Federal Reserve or whatever pro-liberty policy you can name. Or if you are a leftist (god help you) then you can harangue me with even more Rawlsian solutions. But the fact remains, we know no way of dealing with these difference politically because there is not the will to create a libertarian social order and it is not within human nature to create an egalitarian (leftist) one.

So my point: YOU DO DEAL WITH THE WHOLE RACE and you're a fool for thinking that you don't. I'll tell you what Larry Auster told me 9 years ago. "Your libertarian beliefs are an example of delusional utopianism. They also show why individualism is not grounded in human nature. Grow up."

Lloyd Flack said...

I look forward to the mongrelization of humanity. One more source of conflict will have been eliminated.
And I think Madmar is looking for reasons to make a big deal out of race. I think it provides someone to feel superior to and to scapegoat.

Lloyd Flack said...

And to the extend that libertarianism tries to reduce human relationships to matters of property it goes against human nature and seeks something appalling.
And Madmax's hostility to the lower classes and to anyone that he thinks would not do well under libertarianism is showing through.
Oh, and I'm a centrist who tries to balance competing moral issues and thinks ideological purity is generally a bad idea.

Anonymous said...

"But this comment makes my blood boil because of its stupidity:"

I'd be willing to bet it makes your blood boil more because it doesn't accept your excuses.

"If I knew nothing about hereditarianism but only knew the history of multi-ethnic societies and the history of the fate of Whites when they lose their countries to blacks... If I knew nothing but what is going on in South Africa TODAY as they increase their racially based land seizures and push ever further towards white genocide... That would be ENOUGH to SANELY argue for white ethno-states and racial SURVIVAL. Again you people are engaging in a massive inversion of the normal as the deranged and the sane as the immoral. You're doing what Leftists always do: pathologize biologically normal behavior. "

Speaking of the "Objectivists we always criticize", this framing of things in terms of pathology and sane vs. deranged, that's CLASSIC Randspeak.

Look, humans have all sorts of responses that are natural, but in a civilized society are not desirable. It would be natural to lust after a beautiful woman, but a civilized society discourages acting on that lust without regard to the woman's own feelings. You may envy another man's wealth and that would be natural, but theft is discouraged. It may be natural to want to physically attack a person that frightens you, but unless they actually are threatening you, you ought not to act on that impulse, even though it might be the most natural thing in the world.

Seeing other races as a thing apart from you and wishing to sequester yourselves away may have some natural foundation in the human brain, but again, not everything that is "natural" is good or desirable.

What's going on in South Africa is terrible, to be sure. But it would be alarmist to draw some kind of conclusion from these things you present to say the white race - such as it is, as if it were some kind of monolith - is in danger of extinction. Everyone involved in this discussion will be long dead before that could ever come to pass. And what exactly is it that you are wishing to preserve? Skin color itself? Vitamin D production? Some nebulous idea of "white culture" or "white values"? The problem with the whole idea is that there's no clear-cut idea of the thing that is supposedly at risk of disappearing, or if there is, if it could actually be so easily destroyed it's ultimately not really of much value.

Look at music in the US. Ever since black musicians incorporated some white folk music elements into the blues, ever since jazz, blues, and other black musics inspired rock and roll, and so on, the cultures of white music and black music have been a yin-yang mixture. What then is a purely white form of music? Classical? What do you try to preserve? What do you listen to on the radio - Wagner and Beethoven?

You can't preserve any culture by trying to prevent change. We are not anywhere near the same culture that white people had a hundred years ago. The white ethno-state is not a path to salvation, it's a formula for stagnation.

Anonymous said...

"NO. They were SETTLERS not immigrants. That's "proposition nation" bullshit. There is a massive difference between the European SETTERS and the post 1965 immigrants."

Tomayto, tomahto. The point is that no person of European descent in the US can claim inherent ownership of the land by virtue of their race originating here. Your ancestors and mine all came over long after the land was already inhabited by another race. The idea that you're going to try to separate the races and cordon off parts of the US at this point is absurd on the face of it, and as I said, if you were going to do it properly you'd get on a plane to Europe and seek out your own ethnic-sub-group and build your state there.

"but it nevertheless remains that the greatest challenge for humanity is to solve the problem of group differences and racial tribalism."

And your solution seems to be to make tribalism more blatant and pronounced. Like burning the village in order to save it.

Also, I'll see your "feral savages" and raise you gun-waving militia compounds in the northwest woods and Klan members in the South. Blacks have no monopoly on dealing violence to people who stray into dangerous territory.

Lloyd Flack said...

The number of people murdered on South African farms has been disputed. There have been claims of a number of white farmers murdered that are several times the released numbers of total murders on farms. That said South Africa has a very serious violence problem and whites seem to be the victims of most of the murders on farms. But the murder rate in black urban areas is also high.
It seems to be a very serious but overstated problem. But I am not in a position to check the reliability of the sources that I was able to find quickly.

Anonymous said...

IQ tests are reliable and they predict accurately all sorts of life outcomes that no one ever anticipated. There are problems with country-wide IQ tests Say you test 17 year olds, you can't just test the students and ignore the dropouts.

JC

Gordon Burkowski said...

“There is a massive difference between the European SETTERS and the post 1965 immigrants. . . Jesus Christ, learn your history ”.

I've been inclined to stay out of this debate, largely out of a sense of fastidiousness. But this particular remark is such a startling combination of arrogance and historical ignorance that I just have to weigh in.

For the purpose of this argument only, I'll leave aside the glaring and shameful story of how most African Americans got here. Let's talk about “settlers”.

Many of the people who came here could be so described. Take the Homestead Acts, the first of which was signed into law in 1862. Some 270 million acres of land was given to 1.6 million homesteaders. That's impressive.

Yes, those people were settlers. So were the millions of Latinos whose ancestors settled in places like California and Texas before either had been incorporated into the United States – and who are now for some reason treated by many like strangers in their own land.

However, that wasn't the way the overwhelming majority of migrants to America got their start. Thus, between 1880 and 1920 more than 25 million Europeans migrated to the United States. These “settlers” were typically headed for the stockyards of Chicago; the steel mills of Pittsburgh; the garment district of New York. And their “homesteads” were typically a quarter of a room in a jerry-built tenement.

Apparently, the word “settler” is acquiring a new meaning here: that of “white immigrant”.

In many cases, the great grandchildren of these early “settlers” are doing very well indeed – and they should be proud of that. However, their success sometimes leads them to come up with phoney arguments to show that today's immigrants are different from their own ancestors. And they forget that the same racist nonsense was spewed out upon their own ancestors – on Italian, Jews, Poles – as is now visited on today's immigrants.

Yes, history is important. But not the fake kind.

GenZ Legion said...

Burkowski fumes: "Apparently, the word 'settler' is acquiring a new meaning here: that of 'white immigrant'."

Like it or not, America was founded as a white ethnostate. For example, see the Naturalization Act of 1790. That "millions of Latinos whose ancestors settled in places like California and Texas *before either had been incorporated into the United States* [are] treated by many like strangers" isn't inconsistent. (Emphasis added.)

Burkowski: "[later white generations] forget that the same racist nonsense was spewed out upon their own ancestors [...] as is now visited on today's immigrants."

That one calls another a dummy in error doesn't mean that dummies do not exist. The average member of those groups back then had a definite opinion about non-whites. We don't have to wonder what his opinion was. The important question is: was he in error?

Greg: when you say "seven million blacks in America do better on IQ tests than the average white," you omit that many more millions of average whites do better on IQ tests than blacks. It's likewise true that a number of individuals are apparently immune to HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, many more are not. And avoiding risky behaviors remains the most efficient way to deal with that problem.

Some trillions of dollars in public policy initiatives have been given to blacks worldwide over the past sixty or more years. Considering the results to date, and even any results in the future, this is an inefficient use of finite resources. The surest and least intrusive way that average black IQ can be increased without gross, egalitarianism-based misallocation seems to be to add more salt to the African diet. If blacks want to do this for their fellows, then good for them. But wouldn't you condemn that project as ethnocentric (thus "dangerous"), on the grounds that these blacks would be preferentially helping blacks instead of trying to help whites? I believe that you wouldn't. But if whites tried doing something similar for the (comparatively smaller percentage of) low-IQ whites, it's certain that every public voice would excoriate them as "neoNazi eugenicists," including maybe even you as part of your prudent pursuit of realistic popularity or however you're characterizing your political orientation now. Burkowski would probably report 'em to the nearest modern equivalent of the Stasi, clutching his cell phone in one paw and a copy of "Free To Choose" in the other.

Llyod muses: "I identify mostly with my culture and nation and not so much with my race." To paraphrase Rand: "A culture is a 'natural resource,' like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle.... The culture is here. How did it get here? Somehow."

Is it sheer chance that what we characterize as quintessentially "German" was birthed by Germans instead of by Chinese (and vice-versa)? No. The word "nation" comes from the Latin word for "of birth." It refers correctly and originally to ethnos. Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare nor Beethoven Beethoven nor Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion had they been born abos or bedouin. The nation/ethnos/tribe is the mother of the individual. And like the parent/child relationship, the relationship between the individual and the ethnos is reciprocal; the individual can also contribute to or advance the ethnos, but one mustn't get the causation backward. The child may be "father to the man," but he is not father to his father.

Llyod again: "There are multiple forms of intelligence and IQ tests do not measure all of them." No, general intelligence (g) is back of all. Would you say, "The factory's machines do many different types of work, therefore the factory's power generator should be discounted"?

GenZ Legion said...

In case the comment about salt wasn't understood:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html

Anonymous said...

"Is it sheer chance that what we characterize as quintessentially "German" was birthed by Germans instead of by Chinese (and vice-versa)? No. The word "nation" comes from the Latin word for "of birth." It refers correctly and originally to ethnos. Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare nor Beethoven Beethoven nor Ben-Gurion Ben-Gurion had they been born abos or bedouin. The nation/ethnos/tribe is the mother of the individual."

Which all sounds very pretty until you think about it for a bit. What we think of as "Japanese" comes from Japan, for instance, but what Japan is originally came from China, and then mutated until the two branches were significantly different. Was Japan "born", or did it evolve?

What is American - today - comes not only from white settlers, but from influences from other ethnicities. The black slaves have long contributed their part to America's character. Perhaps not as long as the whites, but long enough. The previous example of rock music applies: rock music is an American invention - but NOT a purely white-derived creation. It would be impossible to separate the black from the white, and why try? (Besides, I refuse to support any state that would by definition sneer at and belittle Hendrix.)

America today simply IS multiracial and multicultural, and has been for some time, regardless of what some people earlier in history may have intended. That genie is out of the bottle and it would be a Quixotic trial to try and undo that. Even among whites exclusively there is cultural variation - Southerners, East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and more - regional differences with a variety of perspectives. If you can't rely on the unanimity of the fractious white people, then the ethno-state becomes the pipeiest of pipe dreams.

Gordon Burkowski said...

"The previous example of rock music applies: rock music is an American invention - but NOT a purely white-derived creation."

One can go a lot further: in its essentials, it's a black-derived creation. Just read any history of rock. And then, of course, there's Jazz. And Blues. African- American music is America's most important contribution to world culture - played everywhere that governments allow it to be played.

Elvis Presley went stratospheric in the 1950's because he was a white singer doing black music. The racists of that era were totally aware of this fact - and consequently enraged.

Incidentally, rock 'n' roll owes its name to a song of 1922 by African American Trixie Smith: "My baby rocks me with one steady roll". I wonder if she'll be remembered in four years when we reach the centennial?

Anonymous said...

"African- American music is America's most important contribution to world culture - played everywhere that governments allow it to be played."

Soviet citizens used to bootleg American music by making phonographs out of discarded X-ray films. American music (and its popular culture in general) is arguably one of the things best suited to get "the foot in the door" with other cultures, and spread American values. Even the Beatles started out trying to emulate Chuck Berry.

So what do white ethno-nationalists intend to do when they get their ethno-state and enforce their pure white values? What pure white culture do they intend to present? Country music? A regression to European classical styles? Or will they simply keep on with rock music and make up some B.S. about how it was always all so white...?

gregnyquist said...

New evidence regarding declining IQ in western nations and environmental factors relating thereof:

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/13/iq-scores-decline/

We know less than we think.

Anonymous said...

Greg your analysis of the Left and modern Marxism is deeply flawed. Post-modernism and identity politics was a reaction to the collapse of all socialist political movements (be they western or eastern versions) as a credible political force in the 1980s when the neo-liberal capitalist model emerged and seemed unassailable. It is not surprising that during the next 30 years most left-leaning activists essentially surrendered to neo-liberal logic and devoted themselves to winning reforms on the margin. But as any good Marxist dialectician will tell you things are constantly in motion and change. The profitability of neo-liberalism was based upon reducing labour costs by a combination of union-busting, new technology, moving to places like China and brining in cheaper migrant labour from the global south. But in doing this the capitalist effectively killed his market as his now impoverished workers didn't earn enough to buy his products. This contradiction was resolved by extending credit to workers to keep them buying his products at the same rate and kicking the debt-time bomb up the road until the entire financial system almost came crashing down in 2009. The massive debts of the Banks was transferred to the State in an eye-watering bailout and the state decided to pass the burden onto the working class through a series of austerity cuts. The result is a decade of stagnant or declining wages, which many workers are starting to conclude is the new normal and are beginning to once again organise collectively on a socialist platform. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn were unimaginable 4 years ago, yet both have come very close to political power. I myself held fairly conservative social and economic views on the eve of the 2009 crash - now I am a socialist - my baseline personality has not changed. Ideas reflect the material changes at the base of society.

gregnyquist said...

I myself held fairly conservative social and economic views on the eve of the 2009 crash - now I am a socialist - my baseline personality has not changed. Ideas reflect the material changes at the base of society.

There is an error here that needs to be addressed. Personality is the number one measurable predictor of ideological allegiance, but that doesn't mean everybody's ideology is reflection of their personality. There are all kinds of factors involved, and there exist outliers and exceptions --- people's who's personality doesn't play a large role in their ideological affiliation. But the point is: the fact that their are outliers and exceptions does not refute the general fact that personality is the number one measurable predictor of ideological allegiance.