Quote: (01-25-2012 11:39 AM)Thorfinnsson Wrote:
HBD is a catch-all in order to encompass more than scientific racism. For instance, the neurological differences between men and women which significantly explain why more women don't pursue careers in science and engineering--another educational "crisis" rooted in HBD denialism and PC bullcrap.
It's perfectly possible to reconcile the individual heritability of intelligence while denying that the differences in intelligence between racial groups are genetic in origin. I happen to agree with the hereditarians that the gap is primarily genetic in origin, but scientists like James Flynn who support the environmental position are perfectly respectable. And crucially, James Flynn does not deny that intelligence has a significant genetic component despite his refusal to accept that the racial gaps in intelligence are genetic. In fact, he has made policy statements in his native New Zealand disparaging the fact that highly educated women are not having children at replacement levels. The response from the New Zealand government was that "education" would solve this, whereas Flynn's entire career says this isn't true.
We can continue to sweep the racial issue under the rug and still admit that sometimes stupid is as stupid does. Everyone knows that some children are dumb and some children are bright, and our education policy needs to take that into account. All children should be educated to the limit of their potential, regardless of who their parents are or how much money they have. But that's not the same thing as claiming all children should go to college. Not everyone is college material, and there is nothing wrong with that. In the past this was widely understood in America, and the structure of our educational system and our economy was geared so that people of ordinary and indeed below average intelligence could still acquire useful vocational training and work in good, blue-collar jobs.
The current idea is believing that college magically makes people smart, based on absolutely no evidence at all, and browbeating teachers into fudging the numbers so kids with mediocre intellects look like they're college material. You don't get people to achieve by raising a bar they're already not meeting and demanding they must meet this bar or else.
Smearing things by association with Nazism is intellectually lazy. In addition to Nazi Germany, 27 other countries had eugenics policies. Sweden and the province of Alberta continued these into the 1970s. These policies were primitive and unfair, but they're not exactly the gas chambers. The Nazis also built the Autobahns, but somehow no one thinks the interstate highway system is a one-way road to Auschwitz. Using the same dishonest debating tactics we could claim that a belief in blank slate human equality is a one way ticket to Pol Pot's killing fields, but somehow I don't see Malcolm Gladwell being touted as the new Pol Pot.
Yes, I agree the intelligence is passed genetically, but not racially. I'm not talking about differences between gender either. I'm talking about race.
The foundation of Human Bio-Diversity is that minorities, particularly African people have lower IQ's than other groups and this is because their genetic make up as a race.
Your entire post was sidestepping the question and disassociating yourself with HBD. Your first three paragraphs are just filler to shroud your views, with the exception of the part in bold, which gets to the heart of the matter I'm talking about.
As for the Nazi connection, it's not being intellectually lazy it is a direct connection. When you have a Game blogger who believes in HBD displaying ads for a book written by a eugenicist who consulted for the Nazi's the link is made extremely clear.
You spent your entire post in a misdirection of my point. You are a racist. You believe that a persons skin colour and which part of the world their ancestors came from has an effect on intelligent they are likely to be. At no point in your post did you even try to deny my charge against you.
I think that Athlone would have quite a lot to say about this. I believe that debating against racism is his forte.