From: Timothy Bates (tbates@bunyip.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Date: Sat Nov 21 1998 - 00:42:11 MST
>Timothy Bates wrote:
>> The fact is that are reliable aggregate differences which have
>>meaningful social outcomes.
bernard correponded
>I see "reliable aggregate differences" as a fact. But "meaningful social
>outcomes" sounds like an opinion to me.
You are right that "meaningful social outcomes" is opinion. I made the
mistake of being relativist.
To decide if you think they are important, decide whether you think that
explaining variance in income, crime, solo-parenting, education, etc
matters. If it does then race matters.
however, I recall having an argument with Phil Rushton at a conference
where I argued the opposite: that race DOESN'T matter. It went as follows
The Bell Curve proposition is essentially that all observed racial
differences are infact IQ proxies and that partially out IQ leaves no
racism. In words, that means that current racial differences are entirely
exlained by IQ and that Occam's Razor would suggest that we use just the
one more general variable rather than keeping both. Race in this case
could be viewed as an evolutionary or historical explanatory variable
rather than a contemporary causal agent.
cheerio,
tim
____________________
The next time some academics tell you how important "diversity" is, ask
how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
Thomas Sowell.
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