Re: Scientific assumptions [was: Help needed with expletives

In article <MPG.22951bbcfa306b08989891@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gerry Quinn <gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <ddfr-88FFD3.21335613052008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
In article <2mnpf5-np5.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Aqua <aqua@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yes, much the same thing as what happened to James Watson when he
"merely raised the possibility" that development in African is doomed
due to blacks' lower intelligence.

That incident is a reason to distrust literature that claims to
demonstrate things about blacks--producing evidence inconsistent with
official truth is dangerous in that case as well. But his claim was
actually more than raising the possibility.

In any case the idea that developmemt in Africa is doomed is a
considerable extrapolation from the finding that average IQ varies with
race.

I don't think Watson actually had, or at least mentioned, findings on
average IQ--he seemed to be going by personal observation, which isn't
worthless but is risky.

And I thought his point was not that development was inevitably doomed
but that attempts to support development that misidentified the problem
were doomed. I agree with that, although in my view the mistake is
different and more serious than he implied; my guess is that "foreign
aid," which is what is largely being pushed as the solution, is a good
deal of the problem.

If you have a poor country and foreigners give the government lots of
money, that both creates an incentive to grab control of the government
and hold on tight and provides the resources to hold on tight
with--including killing lots of people who might support rivals.

(The authors of _The Bell Curve_ made the same mistake of drawing
invalid inferences from such observations.)

I didn't finish the book, although I probably should--both because of
the controversy and because the beginning was interesting. What invalid
inference did they draw?

The point that struck me in the early part as interesting was the
argument that as the society became more meritocratic it sorted people
more by ability, and that that had nonobvious undesirable (as well as
desirable) effects. A hundred years ago, lots of low status people were
just as smart as lots of high status people, since status depended
largely on the luck of ancestry. As mechanisms for identifying able
people and sorting them into more important (and higher status and
higher paying) activities get better, you move towards a society where
the people at the top not only think they are smarter than the people at
the bottom but are usually right. That might have some unattractive
consequences for what the society is like.

A further implication--I don't remember if the authors drew it or
not--is that as the society sorts more by ability, assortive mating is
going to push the spread of abilities wider, again with consequences
some of which are unattractive. That's an obvious candidate for sf
treatment.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now
.

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