Idang Alibi of Abuja, Nigeria writes on the James Watson affair:
A few days ago, the Nobel Laureate, Dr. James Watson, made a remark that is now generating worldwide uproar, especially among blacks. He said what to me looks like a self-evident truth. He told The Sunday Times of London in an interview that in his humble opinion, black people are less intelligent than the White people...
An intriguing opening. Is Idang Alibi about to take a position on the real heart of the uproar?
I do not know what constitutes intelligence. I leave that to our so-called scholars. But I do know that in terms of organising society for the benefit of the people living in it, we blacks have not shown any intelligence in that direction at all. I am so ashamed of this and sometimes feel that I ought to have belonged to another race...
Darn, it's just a lecture on personal and national responsibility. Of course, for African nationals, taking responsibility for their country's problems is the most productive attitude regardless. But it doesn't engage with the controversies that got Watson fired.
Later in the article came this:
As I write this, I do so with great pains in my heart because I know that God has given intelligence in equal measure to all his children irrespective of the colour of their skin.
This intrigued me for two reasons: First, I'm always on the lookout for yet another case of theology making a falsifiable experimental prediction. And second, the prediction follows obviously if God is just, but what does skin colour have to do with it at all?
A great deal has already been said about the Watson affair, and I suspect that in most respects I have little to contribute that has not been said before.
But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not? Am I the only one who's every bit as horrified by the proposition that there's any way whatsoever to be screwed before you even start, whether it's genes or lead-based paint or Down's Syndrome? What difference does skin colour make? At all?
This is only half a rhetorical question. Race adds extra controversy to anything; in that sense, it's obvious what difference skin colour makes politically. However, just because this attitude is common, should not cause us to overlook its insanity. Some kind of different psychological processing is taking place around individually-unfair intelligence distributions, and group-unfair intelligence distributions.
So, in defiance of this psychological difference, and in defiance of politics, let me point out that a group injustice has no existence apart from injustice to individuals. It's individuals who have brains to experience suffering. It's individuals who deserve, and often don't get, a fair chance at life. If God has not given intelligence in equal measure to all his children, God stands convicted of a crime against humanity, period. Skin colour has nothing to do with it, nothing at all.
And I don't think there's any serious scholar of intelligence who disputes that God has been definitively shown to be most terribly unfair. Never mind the airtight case that intelligence has a hereditary genetic component among individuals; if you think that being born with Down's Syndrome doesn't impact life outcomes, then you are on crack. What about lead-based paint? Does it not count, because parents theoretically could have prevented it but didn't? In the beginning no one knew that it was damaging. How is it just for such a tiny mistake to have such huge, irrevocable consequences? And regardless, would not a just God damn us for only our own choices? Kids don't choose to live in apartments with lead-based paint.
So much for God being "just", unless you count the people whom God has just screwed over. Maybe that's part of the fuel in the burning controversy - that people do realize, on some level, the implications for religion. They can rationalize away the implications of a child born with no legs, but not a child born with no possibility of ever understanding calculus. But then this doesn't help explain the original observation, which is that people, for some odd reason, think that adding race makes it worse somehow.
And why is my own perspective, apparently, unusual? Perhaps because I also think that intelligence deficits will be fixable given sufficiently advanced technology, biotech or nanotech. When truly huge horrors are believed unfixable, the mind's eye tends to just skip over the hideous unfairness - for much the same reason you don't deliberately rest your hand on a hot stoveburner; it hurts.
I enjoy your precision.
You make my verbiage look sloppy. (:
Sorry for seeming to ignore this comment for a few weeks. I was busy.
Right now the way I'm seeing this is that because IQ differences are not seen as something that can cause a person a prolific number of differences that are socially relevant for lots of things other than status, it's often perceived as a status grab when it's not.
There are also a whole bunch of other problems that, combined, paint a picture of oppression. OrphanWilde did an experiment in this very thread, asking "Actually, let's try an experiment: My IQ is estimated to be in the vicinity of 220. What is your reaction?"
The result was that he was accused (in the context of the experiment, by people who, I realize, probably do not literally believe these things) of lying by Alicorn and gwern and later suspected to be a psychopath by gwern and shminux.
I was the only one that showed willingness to entertain the idea that OrphanWilde might not be a liar or a psychopath. I suppose, technically that's not oppression against people you believe to be gifted, it's discouragement toward people you believe not to be gifted. However, what happens when people have the same attitude of not believing other types of people about their differences? "Oh you're not really homosexual, let's send you to the psychologist and have that fixed." They may have good intentions but the result is definitely oppressive. If people jump to conclusions about a group of people - even the conclusion that the specific individuals in question aren't part of the group - then those assumptions can oppress the group in question.
Then there's the fact that 50% of gifted children in America are never given an IQ test, yet they require special education to prevent them from developing problems like learned helplessness due to being placed in the wrong environment.
Terman did a study that challenged commonly held beliefs that gifted people tended to be ugly, and have a lot of problems, and revealed various myths. That was in 1921, but there are still echos of that mentality - people frequently associate negative things with giftedness as if trying to balance things out and make everyone equal again on some imaginary scale - when we shouldn't be viewing our equality any differently regardless of intellectual differences anyway.
As I see it, people are having a hard time dealing with intellectual inequalities and frequently react as if they are going to equate to rights inequalities.
This leads them to oppress.
Do you have observations that would be relevant to my perspective, supportive or unsupportive?
Yes, I agree that this is frequently true.
We also frequently react that way to wealth inequalities, power inequalities, and various other things that we fear (not always without justification) will allow a privileged minority to become a threat to us.
It isn't clear to me that "oppress" is a clearly or consistently defined term here, but I agree with you th... (read more)