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Entry: Egalitarian, Totalitarian, Socratic? Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/egalitarian_totalitarian_socratic#27439 Post contents: I feel like I'm back at Chicago, listening to the neoconservatives praise equality and condemn the Bell Curve because it might demoralize the lower classes. I'll just repeat my questions and points from before, Caleb, which you have yet to answer. I believe you are not familiar enough with the literature to make the sharp IQ/Moral distinction you make, because moral behavior depends in part upon habits and perceptions, which are indeed filtered by and predicted by IQ in individuals(and thus trends vary by race just as IQ varies by race). Caleb, have you read the Bell Curve? Are you at all familiar with the literature? We’re not talking about who can finish a Sudoku puzzle here. IQ predicts things like crime rates, illegitimacy, on the job accidents, wages, school success, child abuse, etc. If it weren’t illegal, insurance companies would use IQ and race (and not the proxy “zip code") to use this information to predict risk even more precisely. It’s true, it’s not a one-for-one prediction, just as not all 18 year olds drive like crap. Most of the important truths about human nature are statistical and probabilistic in nature. IQ is relevant, and it shouldn’t be ignored when we live in a world where risk must be measured and probabilities must be dealt with. We live in a self-governing state where errors flowing from Boasian egalitarian myths are very tangible, e.g., No Child Left Behind. We don’t need to use racial heuristics when we have good IQ data, in situations like hiring, school admissions, etc. Color awareness is unnecessary when we have superior and individualized data. But cops and law enforcement and girls walking alone in parking garages must use these data about trends and probabilities based on what we can perceive about strangers. (SAT scores and 1040 forms are not stamped on most peoples’ foreheads.) In policy these groups trends matter too. There is a world of difference if OJ Simpson is found guilty and if Robert Blake is. And the difference is the dominant attitude, culture, and average IQ of the group concerned. Of course, it’s not determined for individuals; but deciding to deploy police or avoid living (or even passing through) a particular neighborhood is a judgment made on group averages not individual cases. This is all a bad thing or something we should lie about, I suppose. We should not forget, in looking at this complex world of ours, that some blacks acted heroically in the LA Riots, including the handful of homeowners that went to save truck-driver Reginald Denning. But a very high proportion (even then it seemed less than a majority) acted like the famous “motorist” Rodney King himself: violently and criminally. When you’re dealing with crime there’s a world of difference of a population with 5% versus 35% criminals. Your moralizing, Caleb, won’t hide the facts. Because these facts and tendencies are known from everyday life. They are merely confirmed by statistics and academic study. I find it stunning, though, that a so-called conservative would call my arguments sophistry when I began my earlier post by noting the facts about intellectual difference should be mollified by Christianity and compel us to be charitable. Sent at: 2009 01 09