Truth, Love, and Music

[andrew]

Way cool. In another life, I'd be far into game theory, and I still dabble in reading on the subject from time to time.
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"

[andrew]

Fred couldn't keep his mouth shut:



Screwing Jim

Science as Politics Occasionally Contaminated by Reason or Truth, but Only Inadvertently

October 20, 2007

[Oh, damn. I was gonna take a month off from my destined burden of social irresponsibility, but about 500 letters said I should continue my pernicious ravings, and made me feel humble, and this Watson business made me feel mouthy, so...damn.]

Just now we are busily frying James Watson of DNA fame. It seems that he has stated the unstatable, which of course one mustn’t. In an interview with the Sunday Times, he said that he was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." Which is exactly what the testing says.

He further said that he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." Live in Washington for a bit.

Almost as bad, his views are also reflected in a new book, Avoid Boring People, in which he writes: "A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have volved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

At which point all hell broke loose.

For example, FAS—the Federation of American Scientists—weighed in with, “The scientific enterprise is based on the promotion and proof of new ideas through evidence, however controversial, but Dr. Watson chose to use his unique stature to promote personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science.” This is boilerplate hysteria. In all likelihood, whoever wrote it didn’t believe it. If you have a case, you make it. If you don’t, you call names.

The important question is whether Watson is a racist or merely observant—that is, whether what he says is true. A fact cannot be racist. The question of what racial differences exist and why falls into the domain of science—of genetics, psychometrics, and anthropology, which is almost science. It seems to me that if FAS thinks Watson wrong, a public debate on the merits would give the organization a chance to demonstrate his errors. I know where to find quite a few very credentialed scientists who might have the courage to accept the challenge. I suggest a written and unedited debate on a public website. If Watson’s remarks are unsupported by the evidence, surely FAS would be happy to demonstrate as much. No?

Not a chance. They would get eaten, and they know it.

Now, science. Watson’s idea, that different environments select for different traits, is the central idea of the theory of evolutions. To doubt that humans evolved differently in response to different environmental pressures is to doubt evolution in its entirely. This, I think, few at FAS will do.

All right: Will anyone give me one scientific reason why separated groups of people should not have evolved different levels of intelligence? Groups differ in hair color, color of skin, shape of eyes, ratios of various long bones to others, biochemistry, and brain size. Give me one reason why all groups must be precisely identical in intelligence. Just one reason, and Watson’s argument fails. I’m waiting.

No one doubts, as long as blacks (or women) are not involved, that differences in intelligence can exist between subspecies, which is what the races are. No one will take exception if I say that Border Collies are smarter than pit bulls, or that they have been genetically selected for intelligence. Nor will anyone suggest that the difference is cultural, or that breeds of dogs are “social constructs,” or that Border Collies do not exist because intermediate breeds do.

Further—note this carefully, please—so far as I know, neither FAS nor other guardians of PC really object to the idea that genetic differences in intelligence exist between human groups. Recently Charles Murray, writing in Commentary magazine, suggested that the phenomenal over-representation of Jews in affairs intellectual is due to superior intelligence, that the superiority may be genetic, and that evolution may be the reason. (Persecution over centuries selected for those bright enough to survive.) Whether this is true can be debated. My point is that no one objected to the genetic explanation. In particular, Murray was not accused of racism or banished from polite society.

Saying that Jews are smarter is equally as racist as saying that blacks aren’t. Why is it that one statement arouses fury whereas the other doesn’t?

The reason, I suspect, is the My-God-now-what? factor. Almost everyone outside of academe, and I’ll guess many more within than will admit it, know that Watson is right. The evidence is overwhelming and the research careful, as anyone knows who looks into it. Blue-collar people, in constant contact with blacks, know it. School teachers know it. The police know it. Federal workers sitting next to affirmative-action hires know it. Reporters know it. Blacks know it.

But if we admit it, then—My God, what now? Current policy is to avoid the question. Television and welfare (affirmative action is welfare) maintain an uneasy calm. Journalistic suppression of discussion helps. Few see the vast, miserable, hopeless black sections of the cities. Few want to see. All is evasion. That lump in your armpit seems to be growing. Better think about something else….

Some people fear (I suspect) that, if the truth were admitted, nut jobs would call for the reinstitution of apartheid or some such. No doubt they would. The more profoundly disturbing question is what should policy then be? Oh my God, what now? As long as we pretend that racism causes the many and inescapable disparities, we can avoid that looming horror: What now?

What we have now works, barely. A city burns from time to time, yes. Blacks are angry, whites are angry, but we totter on. The problem is that by maintaining a system based on pretense, we make impossible the discovery of a better approach. Denying that a difficulty exists seldom solves it. We cannot muddle through, since “through” implies something on the other side. There is nothing there.

The reasonable thing would be to say, “This is how things are. How can we best respond so as to produce the least misery for all concerned?” Instead we lie, to ourselves and each other, try to legislate biological differences out of existence, play “Gotcha!” when someone inadvertently speaks the truth, and dog-pack him till he squirms and wets the rug and apologizes, which Watson did, and nothing changes, or will.
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"

[dan]

Seems like a good dose of the bell curve should make swallowing Fred's thesis a lot easier,.... but it doesn't. The masses are filled to the brim with politically correct science and will have no truck with anyone who suggests that inequalities amongst the races and gender might be inherent.

From my perspective, being smart, or for that fact, being a male and white, is not all it's cracked up to be anyway. Being human, and an authentic lover of life trumps one's genetic inheritance,... or at least it should.
_________________
"And in The End
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make" -The Beatles

[andrew]

Well, here's an interesting piece of work:

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playgroundvideo3.swf
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"

[ginnylove]

[andrew]

There's more to it here.
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"

[Mr. Flibble]

Fred's latest evo-theory, with pics to boot!

http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm


Tidbit:

[andrew]

Man, I'm glad you posted that, because I also wanted to share that with the Group and clean forgot to get back to it.

Note to all: The link Flib posted is to the current column of Fred's, so the recent Darwin column will rotate off the main frame of the web page next week (or whenever Fred gets around to another column). Not to worry. The column we're talking about here will continue to be listed in the left sidebar under "All Columns" as "392 - More Darwin".

I would just cut and paste the thing here, but it's got a bunch of pictures in it, and moving them gets pretty tedious. The column is definitely worth a click-through, though.
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"

[andrew]

New Phred on the subject of evolutionary dogma in the sciences:




Evolutionary Psychology, Sort Of

All God's Chillun Gottun Gotta Have Structure. Most'em, Leastways

January 25, 20010


People seem to need an overarching explanation of things—of origins, meaning, purpose, and destiny. Christianity provided these things for a long time but, at the close of the Enlightenment, was losing its luster among the educated. Too much in Christianity just didn’t make sense in light of continuing discoveries. The sciences were more compelling, and a better fit for the changing mood of the times.

When the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, it offered a plausible and rational alternative to God Did It. Evidence in its favor existed. Selective breeding of animals greatly changed them. That this might have occurred by natural selection made sense.

But natural selection did not explain where life came from in the first place. The notion of abiogenesis—that life began by accident in remote primal seas—was tacked on to Darwin. Scientists passed sparks through flasks of chemicals hoped to represent the primal seas, and molecules of compounds usually found in living things were discovered afterward. This was exceedingly thin evidence, but it pointed in the desired direction, and was accepted.

Finally, in 1964, the 3K background radiation pervading the universe was discovered, and described as the result of a postulated Big Bang. We now had Genesis without God: the creation of the world, the creation of life, and its divergence into all creatures, including us. Instead of debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, we talked of the state of the world 10 ^ -44 seconds after the Big Bang.

To people thinking logically, as scientists not infrequently do, the three elements of this narrative were separable. The world could have come into being other than by the Big Bang, yet accidental abiogenesis might have occurred. Life might have arisen by means other than in the oceans by inadvertence, yet evolution by natural selection might still have occurred. In the minds of many, however, all three merged into a seamless creation story, and then acquired the emotional importance accruing to ideological dogma or religious faith.

In many respects it was a religion manqué. Faiths usually have standards of right and wrong, of morality, of Good and Evil, but evolutionism didn’t, and couldn’t, being in the philosophical sense purely material. The best it could do was to try to make moral behavior somehow conducive to the passing on of one’s genes. It could not begin to explain consciousness, and so ignored it. The central question of religious concern, what happens when we die, evolutionism could not even ask, as doing so would imply the existence of realms beyond the material.

Though strictly speaking evolution doesn’t imply progress toward anything, people want very much to believe that there is purpose or direction in life. Thus the ineradicable belief in the non-Christian popular mind that evolution is a straight-line advance from the primitive and inferior to the higher and better, with (who could have guessed it?) us at the pinnacle. Continuing motion toward perfection was sure to come.

Scientific inquiry is separated from ideological rigidity by a willingness to entertain questions and admit doubt. The giveaway of ideology is emotional hostility to skeptics. Evolutionists today have it in spades. Just as the church once reacted punitively to Galileo for abandoning the party line, so do ideological evolutionists to those who do not accept the dogma of evolutionary political correctness.

An example: In a column I once wrote regarding the alleged accidental formation of life, asked: “(1) Do we actually know, as distinct from hope, suspect, speculate, or pray, of what the primeval seas consisted? (2) Do we actually know what sort of sea or seas would be necessary to engender life in the time believed available? (3) Has the accidental creation of life been repeated in the laboratory? (4) Can it mathematically be shown possible without making highly questionable assumptions? And (5) If the answers to the foregoing are “no,” would it not be reasonable to regard the idea of chance abiogenesis as pure speculation?”

The response was violent. I found myself accused of “trying to tear down science,” of wanting “to undo the work of tens of thousands of scientists.” I wouldn’t have thought the tearing down of science within the destructive powers of this column, but perhaps I am playing with a loaded gun. I pictured smoking shards of laser physics, embryology, and organic chemistry lying in dismal mounds on a darkling plain.

The evolutionarily correct take apostasy seriously. Razib Khan, who largely runs the website Gene Expression (gnxp.com) flew into a rage and deleted all mention of me from his web site (to which I had never posted anything). I was, he said, arrogant and ignorant and just no damn good. What he actually said was, “Anyone engaging in a Fred Reed impersonation, that is, talking about shit they know nothing about shamelessly and without any humility in light of their ignorance, will now be deleted at my discretion.”

I pondered this flood of unleashed humility, typical of its kind, and thought, “Huh? I asked questions. A question is an admission of ignorance. How is that arrogant?” And if my questions were stupid, why were so many of his readers, who are not at all stupid, impersonating me?

His reaction was less that of a scientist to questions than of an archbishop to heresy. Why the savagery? He or any other of my circling assailants could simply have answered my questions. For example, “Actually, Fred, residual pools of the ancient seas have been discovered, and you can find a quantitative analysis at the following link.” Or “Craig Venter has in fact replicated the chance formation of life, but it didn’t make the papers. Here’s the link.” (I made those up.)

I would have responded civilly, “Holy Catfish, Batman! I didn’t know. Thanks.” And that would have been that. But no one, not one soul, actually answered them. Why, I wonder?

If the answers to all four questions were “no,” it wouldn’t establish that the asserted abiogenesis didn’t happen, but only that we didn’t know whether it had happened. So why the blisterish sensitivity?

Because (or so I suspect) “no” answers would be conceding that the middle link of the Big Bang-abiogenesis-natural selection chain was pure speculation. It would be like asking a Christian to say, “Well, we don’t really know that Jesus was the son of God, but he could have been.”

Richard Feynman said that "science is the culture of doubt," Never happen.
_________________
"The question is not, 'How far?' The question is,
'Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?'"