From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Sep 21 2002 - 18:10:03 MDT
Eliezer writes
> Post of the Month.
about Damien's
> What motivates anyone to ask if `some groups of people have genetic
> limitations' that require appropriate treatment (intensive costly
> education, gene therapy, segregation, enslavement, whatever)?
>
> In general, I think, it's a pre-scientific `chunking' of our experienced
> world that coarsely aggregates people into sets on the basis of some
> blindingly apparent discriminator--sex, say, or age, height, skin tone, eye
> shape, hair type, verbal accent. We seem to have a propensity to carve the
> world into groups of this sort, treating some people as inside the `us'
> boundary and others inside the `them' boundary, and for these sets to get
> confused with `friend' versus `foe' AND `sexually unappealing' versus
> `wickedly attractive' and many other possible readings.
As for the first paragraph's question, I think it preferable
to review the facts about race: today we know from history
that extremely capable and intelligent people exist and have
existed at all times. Take for example the impressive
achievements of the "primitive" Babylonians and Mayas in
astronomy, the metallurgical advances of blacks in several
areas and times in Africa, and the evidently world's best
15th century porcelain techniques of Amazonians. Recall
how often Europeans with their much more advanced technology
would grudgingly refer to "native cleverness". In "Guns,
Germs, and Steel" author Jared Diamond even entertained
the idea that native New Guineans are more intelligent than
Americans. This should be regarded as an open question,
and settled only in the highly qualified statistical way
that such a question can only be answered.
So what motivates some people to ask if "some groups have
genetic limitations" that require attention? One easy duck
to this question is that some people aren't acquainted with
many people of other colors or with a lot of knowledge of
the achievements of other cultures.
But that is not an adequate answer, and here is why. Certain
stereotypes are created, e.g., "dumb Swedes", "dumb Pollacks"
here in the U.S., probably by the actual behavior of some
limited groups in some regions. For example they'll say
in Minnesota "Oh yeah?", "Yeah!", "Oh YEAH?", "YEAH!", and
it can sound pretty stupid to people who, ironically enough,
say, "Really?", "Uh-huh", "Really!", "YES". Then if there
indeed are many uneducated people from the region in question,
the stereotype takes off.
But there is more to it than that, as the title of this
thread indicates. Now I happen to be a member of the 3rd
brightest group according to the research, but since I
have no racial pride (and don't understand yet how people
do), this affects me about as much as if it turned out that
I had a rare blood type that almost always was found only
in the mentally retarded. "So?", I'd say.
But suppose that humanity had been unlucky, and instead
of at *most* less than a standard deviation between the
intelligence of *groups*, there had been three or four
standard deviations. Say that the people in high altitudes
had had to evolve more intelligence to cope with their
environment. In a worst case scenario, there might have
been a complete continuum between humans and animals. What
then? In that case it *would* have been *unavoidably*
necessary to inquire into what kinds of "intensely costly
education, gene therapy, segregation, enslavement, whatever"
to resort to. But it's all a matter of degree, isn't it?
So another answer to your question is that in some fields
and places the difference *is* noticeable whether you like
it or not. When I teach math to groups of gifted kids, it
works out exactly like the advocates of the bell curve
would have predicted. No one is sorrier about this than
I, but that's the way it is. You can see the difference,
and, by damn, the kids know it too (but thankfully almost
*never* refer to it). A woman wrote a letter to the San
Jose Mercury newspaper a few years back, complaining that
her daughter had come home one day from high school saying
"My goal is to be the first white kid on the honor list!",
and bemoaning how her sweet daughter had somehow been
infected with racism.
> In general, I think, it's a pre-scientific `chunking' of
> our experienced world that coarsely aggregates people
> into sets on the basis of some blindingly apparent
> discriminator--sex, say, or age, height, skin tone,
> eye shape, hair type, verbal accent.
While I admit that the lack of knowledge that I referred to
above is "pre-scientific" [rant about that suppressed here],
this "chunking" is IMO an ineradicable part of any human's
ceaseless hypothesizing---both conscious and unconscious---
of what's going on around him. Hence the ceaseless
disagreements about "profiling". Are people clinging to
stereotypes, or are other people fooling themselves by
clinging to political orthodoxy? Or are both processes
at work in different individuals?
If I'm right about that, then I think that we should
be pretty cautious about being *real* certain of
exactly what "the problem" is here.
Lee
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