From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 1997 - 12:46:22 MST
[Michael Wiik:]
> It seems to me quite intuitively obvious why there are more male
> geniuses than female. Lacking the time and motivation to defend this
> assertion, I nonetheless welcome comments.
I'm speechless. How does one rotate one's finger about one's ear in
ASCII? "Intuitively obvious?" Well, so was Fermat's last theorem.
Comments? Comments on what? The twisted, nay, sprained, mind that
tossed a controversial statement out of nowhere with the remark that
it's intuitively obvious? What makes it intuitively obvious? Or is
there a reason? Are you arguing that there's a conceptual primitive
which assigns male superiority a high truth value? Why should we
believe that it's intuition rather than instinct? Or are you just
toying with our minds? How does this statement differ from: "It seems
to me quite intuitively obvious why the Australians shot JFK?"
What is it about male supremacists that they take male intellectual
superiority for *granted*, as if *we* had something to prove? Why isn't
the default hypothesis that *females* are of superior intelligence?
After all, there was quite a time during the Middle Ages when smart boys
either went to the big cities and died of disease or became celibate
priests. Any genius sex-linked genes that came out of that must have
been on the X chromosome, and while males do have *one* X, Algernon's
Law says that you probably need multiple mutations to wind up with a
real genius.
At this point, I'm becoming ready to give up. "On the generous
assumption that a female genius is possible..." "It seems to me quite
intuitively obvious why there are more male geniuses than female."
These people (de Garis and Wiik) aren't even bothering to argue. They
make bald, unvarnished, unbacked assertions about a field of cognitive
science that we're still trying to crack, claim it's obvious, refuse to
defend it, use it to justify treating most of the human race as
second-class citizens, and when we balk, they call it "political
correctness".
It seems to me quite intuitively obvious why they should all be taken
out and shot. Lacking the time and motivation to defend this assertion,
I nonetheless welcome comments.
[Oh, and a note: "Political correctness" is used to refer to demands
that a particular terminology be used (or not used), or insisting that
one respect a particular sub-culture in defiance of the melting pot, or
insisting that Ebonics be taught in school, or some such. It is NOT
proper usage, simply derogatory, to use it to refer to the political
cause of treating all humans as symmetrical with respect to ethics, the
law, default maximum potential, and social opportunity.]
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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