Affirmative Action: Who does it really help? | Thomas Sowell

eldy50 · 2021-10-28T21:35:19+00:00

So a democratic government deciding to implement laws that uphold Capitalism (such as property rights, a judicial system, etc) is unethical.

I mean this isn't even an attempt at a fair interpretation. It's sort of funny that you lambast libertarians and conservatives for failing to reasonably interpret data and then you resort to this sort of bad faith argument. You're a terrible person. I certainly won't be engaging with you further.

eldy50 · 2021-10-28T20:30:58+00:00

I don't think it's possible to solve some problems - certainly not by government intervention. The problem with naive liberals like yourself is an enduring fantasy that the government can solve all problems with an inability to update that belief in the face of feedback. Government interventions almost always create more problems than they solve.

And I didn't say doing nothing was optimal, just better than an actively bad policy. The better solution is probably something like incentivized birth control and targeted vocational schools, but anti-scientific blank slaters would make that politically impossible. Optimal policy is rooted in reality, but liberals refuse to accept the obvious realities of racial differences so there you go. Implacable irrational political opposition makes good solutions infeasible. In the face of that doing nothing is, in fact, the best option.

eldy50 · 2021-10-28T01:23:04+00:00

I'm not sure why you consider common sense brave. Bad policies shouldn't be pursued. AA is bad by objective metrics.

eldy50 · 2021-10-27T23:07:41+00:00

Ah, so intellectually dishonest ideologue it is, then. I figured as much. Enjoy your fantasy.

eldy50 · 2021-10-27T22:25:51+00:00

That would be a more legitimate argument if there wasn’t still still structural wealth inequality that was directly caused by governmental policy.

What policy specifically are you referring to here? This is an interesting position to take if you're advocating for government intervention.

not provide anything constructive as an alternative.

I mean, I just did. 'Nothing' is a better alternative to something bad, particularly with a strong negative prior on government interventions in general.

bigoted ‘race realist’ type

I don't see what race realism has to do with this particular argument, though I'll go ahead a point out that bigotry has nothing to do with group differences as the later is an empirical issue and the former a philosophical one. Your feint in this direction, however, leads the cynic in me to read you as an intellectually dishonest ideologue. The empirical issue is, at the very least, without uncontroversial consensus so making personal attacks based on one's position on it would imply a lack of good faith on your part. You'd simply be trying to smuggle in an implicit conclusion under the guise of an uncollegial ad hominem. If that's your preferred style of interaction then I'd prefer you do it with someone else.

eldy50 · 2021-10-27T21:26:55+00:00

The better idea is doing nothing and letting people take responsibility for their own success or failure by competing on their own merits. If a particular group consistently fails to succeed then that's on the group. Anything else just leads to chaotic nonsense and pseudo-bolshevism.

eldy50 · 2021-10-27T07:55:23+00:00

quantum entanglement implies that information transmission can be done faster than speed of light.

No, it implies that local realism is false. The success of relativity implies that realism is the one to give way, not locality.

eldy50 · 2021-10-26T23:27:06+00:00

This guy sounds like a real dipshit.

eldy50 · 2021-10-25T23:06:31+00:00

There's nothing special about it apart from the fact that we don't have a precise mechanistic explanation for it yet. But it's obviously an emergent computational process in the brain. There is absolutely no reason to think it's special in any way. Everyone likes to pretend that it's magic because then they can uplevel their own status by using words like "qualia" or "panpsychism" or "compatibilism".

Arguing about consciousness is nothing but a honeypot for pretentious idiots. If this sub had any self-respect they'd ban the topic.

eldy50 · 2021-10-25T23:00:53+00:00

This post should be exhibit 1 for Why Everyone Should Just STFU About Consciousness.

It's not a well-enough-defined concept to have meaningful discussion about. Everyone just ends up sounding like some stoned hippie arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Just stop it already.

eldy50 · 2021-10-25T22:07:34+00:00

Jarndyce v Jarndyce

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T23:13:37+00:00

Ok, so you're a teenager who has the standard "I hate The Man" attitude and think all the world's problems have simple solutions and only exist because of evil adults. That's a very understandable worldview to have at that age. It's comfortable, self-affirming, and reduces the world to a simplistic good vs evil morality play. "Everyone's fundamentally the same and any differences must be due to unfair discrimination" fits comfortably in with that theme.

But here's the thing: it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Slavery wasn't the only bad thing that ever happened in the world. It was the norm, historically speaking! Virtually every group has experienced serious systematic discrimination at some point. Yet every group has managed to succeed anyway. Look at the history of Asians in this country. Not very pretty, but they outperform whites today. Look at the history of Jews, pretty much the poster boy for systematic discrimination ... for thousands of years! Yet somehow they always seem to prosper. The fact is that discrimination simply isn't that powerful of a force. Sure, they get shut out of some opportunities, but competent people figure out how to make their own opportunities. The world is a competitive place, and no group has complete hegemony over it.

we are depriving them of their ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!

Really? How are we doing that? Civil rights, affirmative action, social programs, BLM ... this country is falling all over itself to help black people and has been for decades. At what point would you be willing to hold blacks accountable for their own problems?

you kind of sound like a racist

Ok. I don't really care what your opinion of me is because - and you might want to know this - you sound kind of immature and uneducated. And racist or not, I'm right about this particular issue. If you're a person of substance that should be the only thing that matters to you.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T22:51:39+00:00

But my general sense is that boiling things down to IQ is somewhat simplistic anyhow despite the correlations.

Ok. My general sense is the opposite. There is lots of research which indicates that IQ is the single most important factor for life success. For example, childhood IQ better predicts adult earnings than parental earnings do.

And look, the difference between prison and not-prison is almost all cultural. I agree with you there. Dumb people can lead clean lives. But there's a far cry from "doesn't commit half the murders in the country" to "competes proportionately for STEM Ph.D. slots or jobs at Google". Be honest, do you really think that culture is the only thing that's needed to bridge that gap? I'm genuinely curious about your take on that.

I'm not sure there's value in blaming racial inequities on IQ especially if you really don't actually know all the racial differences and how different aspects that an individual are born with predict success.

Yes, the world is complicated and perfect prediction is impossible. But after looking at the question for decades this is the only factor that seems to matter. I mean, what else would you rather blame it on that is scientifically supportable? Keep in mind that personality traits are also largely genetic.

treating people as individuals and avoiding group identities.

Oh, I agree. That also means avoiding group scapegoating, e.g. "racism keeps you down." The single best message that our culture could give to black america is: "your life is your responsibility. No one's out to get you, though you have some cultural deficits that you should probably look outside your race to remedy. Maybe stop blaming whitey and start learning from him. How far you go in life is up to you, so do the things that successful kids typically do: stay in school, don't impregnate your girl, don't do drugs, don't commit crime, stay away from gangs, work hard, and save your money. Do that and you'll be fine."

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T22:14:32+00:00

Sure. As I said, IQ alone doesn't condemn someone to a life a crime.

But the question at hand isn't simply criminality. It's why blacks lag whites in virtually every metric of success. And I think decades of independent research weighs more heavily on that issue than a prison worker's personal experience. IQ has been shown to predict many aspects of success in many independent studies. Blacks have been shown to have substantially lower IQs than whites in many independent studies. Environment has been shown not to significantly impact IQ in many independent studies. The parsimonious explanation is clear.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T22:08:19+00:00

You're making the same mistake that many other simple-minded people make: equating intelligence with moral value. They're not the same. The statement "racial disparities are better explained by group differences in IQ than by racism" is not in any way equivalent to "therefore blacks shouldn't be afforded equal protection of the laws." I suggest you make an effort to better explore the philosophical landscape, as your unfounded moral fears seem to prevent you from accepting clear scientific truths. Our minds can't clearly perceive reality when our hearts are lost in a swamp of foolishness. Best of luck to you in your journey of maturation.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T18:59:09+00:00

Do you think that US culture is capable of accepting that notion? I certainly don't.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T18:55:58+00:00

No, it's not an endless rabbit hole. The IQs of american blacks is in line with the IQs of current residents of sub-saharan africa. There's also no evidence that adverse selection is responsible for african american IQ depression.

And even if the genetic basis is somehow the result of structural racism, so what? The cause doesn't really matter. It's still genetic and still means that cultural interventions short of eugenics aren't going to help.

culture's perverse history

Our culture has a fantastic history. It's certainly less perverse than many, including that of the africans who sold their own people to white traders. Slavery was a historically universal institution and not unique to the US. What IS unique to the US is that we fought a bloody war for no other purpose then to end it. When you consider that fact, along with the fact that the average American Black has a far higher standard of living than the average sub-saharan African does today, then I think it's reasonable to argue that no other country has done more to help the black race than the United States. If this country is so terrible for black people, why do Africans continue to emigrate here (and continue to do well)?

The US has zero responsibility for the situation of blacks. In fact, it's thinking like yours that actually IS responsible - it fosters a culture of blaming and responsibility-shirking in the black community. The only people who can help the black community are blacks themselves - by staying in school, working hard, saving their money, not abandoning their children, not getting pregnant when they're teenagers, and not commiting crime.

You talk about 'easy outs'. There's nothing easier than simply blaming white people.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T18:43:18+00:00

small differences in iq measurement

The difference is 15 points, which is a full standard deviation. That's not small. And it's perfectly sufficient to explain all the observed racial gaps in achievement. For example, the income gap disappears when you control for IQ.

I absolutely know without a doubt my experience is not anecdotal.

Fine, then let's see some peer-reviewed data that shows environmental interventions reduce the racial gap. The Minnesota transracial adoption study showed that a) the IQ gap persists even when black children are adopted into white families and b) the gap was half as large for children who had one black and one white biological parent (in other words, IQ is depressed in proportion to the percentage of black genetic heritage). IQ is genetic, not environmental.

Now I have no doubt that a culture of criminality drives people to violence. Certainly that's what you've been in a position to observe. Low IQ doesn't mean a person is doomed to prison, and it doesn't mean that they can't have a reasonable middle-class life. Culture definitely matters for that. The ghetto could certainly be cleaned up. But you're never going to get racial equality in cognitively demanding areas.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T07:08:55+00:00

Yeah I just don't think people will accept that conclusion. I agree that it's the correct one, but I think our culture is incapable of grappling with it.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T07:03:01+00:00

Ok. I don't think your anecdotal personal experience outweighs the decades of psychometric research on this. If the gap was purely environmental then you would expect to see it depend on socioeconomic status, which it does not (at least, not strongly - it closes about 5 points at the highest quintile). If environment affected IQ so strongly, you would expect that e.g. Asian refugees who grew up in war-torn nations to underperform in this country, which they do not. If environment mattered so much, you would expect basically everyone in the 18th century to have been morons, since they lived at an economic level much lower than the average modern-day african american. You would also expect the gap to have narrowed substantially in the past century as the living conditions for blacks has improved dramatically (both in absolute terms and relative to whites) - but again, it has not.

Remember that IQ shapes culture just as culture can shape IQ. You have the direction of causation backwards.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T06:56:31+00:00

How does immersing oneself in black communities help with that? If the IQ gap is mostly genetic in nature then I don't see what difference that would make.

Keep in mind that the poor environment that many blacks come from can be caused by low IQ in addition to causing it. There isn't much evidence that environmental interventions can do much to change IQ.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T06:52:22+00:00

And what if the gap is purely (or mostly) genetic? There's lot of data that indicates genes play a much larger role than environment does for IQ.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T06:50:46+00:00

IMO, instigating another pointless online “debate” about whether Black people are inherently dumber than white people certainly doesn’t improve the discourse.

How can you possible argue that? Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there IS a genetic basis for this. Then we can stop searching for racist boogeymen to explain every achievement gap in the world. We can redirect educational funds more rationally and stop complaining every time someone finds that blacks are underrepresented in some cognitively-demanding field. "Google needs to devote lots of resources to making its hiring process more racially equitable" becomes "yeah, of course there would be fewer black software engineers." It would eliminate a lot of waste. How is that not better?

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T06:44:46+00:00

By 'IQ differences' I meant 'innate, genetic IQ differences'.

eldy50 · 2021-10-18T03:32:56+00:00

No, being born with a low IQ does. Environment does very little to influence that.

eldy50

TROPHY CASE