Ultra-Quickies: When (Reasonably) Smart People Say Stupid Things

     Thomas Wictor appears to be a (reasonably) smart, (reasonably) erudite guy. That makes anything stupid he says more dangerous than it would be coming from an ignoramus or a moron. Consider this example:

     The answer to AntiFa is to defeat them with LAWS. Libertarians who hate laws can go sit at the kiddie table and fantasize while the SERIOUS people take care of the problem.

     Oh! How intelligent! How erudite! There’s only one problem with it: it’s arrogant nonsense.

1. There are already laws against what AntiFa has been doing.
2. Laws don’t change people’s desires, fears, or beliefs; they merely change the incentive structures associated with them.
3. No matter how harsh the punishment for breaking law X might be, it will have no effect whatsoever on the relevant behavior if that law is not effectively enforced.

     Many are the laws that cannot be effectively enforced because far too many people regard them as wrongheaded, excessive, or inherently criminal. Laws against prostitution, gambling, and traffic in narcotics are merely the most notorious examples. Consider this: there are laws against adultery – yes, you read that right: adultery, the crime of being unfaithful to one’s lawfully wedded spouse – in virtually every state in the Union. Those laws haven’t been enforced for longer than I’ve been alive. The reason is left as an exercise to my hornier Gentle Readers.

     So this (reasonably) smart, (reasonably) erudite guy Thomas Wictor has said a very stupid thing. Why? Who knows...but it might have been powered by a desire to feel superior to someone of divergent convictions. That happens a lot, these days.

General Intelligence And Its Sociopolitical Implications

     There has never been a subject more vilified by the Left than that of intelligence measurement. The idea sends the typical Leftist into convulsions. Should you allow intelligence testing, or the concept of generalizable intelligence on which it’s based, the slightest credence, he’s apt to denounce you as, in the idiom of a friend, “everything but white.” Clearly, it’s a subject that deserves more attention than it’s received in recent years.

     The ugly little fact that the Left hates worst is the strong positive correlation between IQ and life achievement. It constitutes a refutation of their mantras about universal equality and dignity. Yet throughout the decades over which intelligence tests have been conducted, that correlation has never failed.

     It makes a perverse kind of sense. When your aim is to reduce everyone to serfdom, admitting to actual, objectively measurable differences among persons is poison to your agenda. But facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things. The measurable, replicable nature of general intelligence is just one of those things.

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     Time was – i.e., before we all became mortally afraid of ever offending anyone – these were the accepted terms for various ranges of IQ:

• 160 and above: Genius
• 140-159: Near Genius
• 120-139: Highly Gifted
• 110-119: Bright or Superior
• 90-109: Normal
• 80-89: Dull
• 70-79: Deficient
• 50-69: Moron
• 20-49: Imbecile
• 0-19: Idiot

     The distribution of persons into those categories was approximately “normal:” i.e., it followed the Bell Curve, with an axis of symmetry at approximately 100. For decades, the standard deviation has remained about 15 points on the Revised Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. Thus, as is usual with a normal distribution:

• About 68.3% of persons will fall into the band between 85 and 115;
• About 95.5% of persons will fall into the band between 70 and 130;
• About 99.7% of persons will fall into the band between 55 and 145;
• Those below 55 or above 145 are no more than 0.3% of the total.

     It was also accepted that persons in the categories of Moron, Imbecile, and Idiot were essentially ineducable. Of course, that was when we understood that education differs qualitatively from training. Some could be trained to perform certain repetitive tasks. However, useful reasoning – i.e., the use of abstractions and inference to reach conclusions – was not to be expected of them.

     Over the decades, studies of races, ethnic groups, and occupations have yielded interesting information about other aspects of the intelligence distribution. These, too, have bad news for the egalitarians and coercive utopianists of the Left.

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     One might “reasonably” expect that the most demanding of the scientific fields – mathematics and the physical sciences – would be dominated by persons in the highest IQ bands: say, 145 and above. Yet the correlation is not that strong. Indeed, persons in the 130-144 range participate in those fields in very significant numbers. There are also researchers and scholars in those fields from the 115-129 range, though they’re proportionately fewer. It would seem that above a certain IQ level, the ability to work effectively with the abstractions that characterize those fields is not materially increased.

     Neither is it the case that persons with very high IQ scores will necessarily be attracted to those scientifically demanding fields. One of the brightest people I know – IQ well over 160 – labored for many years in law enforcement. Another, equally bright, has made a fortune as a marketing consultant. Human affinities and desires matter, too.

     Conversely, persons on the lower end of the distribution won’t necessarily be helpless in an advanced technological society. There will always be rote, repetitive tasks for which persons lacking in intelligence can be trained – and in which they can be happy. Contrary to much propaganda, not all of us aspire to be counted among the stars. Many are content to be useful and self-supporting, if they’re recognized and treated as such by those around them. Indeed, that was one of the critical concluding messages of Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise The Bell Curve. It’s been confirmed by experience of many kinds.

     The above assertions, all of which are well confirmed by endless studies, have been denigrated and condemned by the Left. They cross-cut the Left’s core principle: i.e., that systematic coercive interference in men’s lives and fortunes is essential for general happiness and social harmony.

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     Patterns of inequality that recur over large stretches of time carry messages for us of the present. They suggest underlying causes, though, as I’ve written before, every effect has more than one cause.

     This is particularly striking when one looks at patterns of inequality of achievement among the nations. For example, the nations of Africa have lagged well behind the nations of Europe and North America in social, economic, and political advancement for many decades. Contrary to the claims of professional inciters of interracial hatred, those peoples’ ancestors did not achieve levels of civilization comparable to those of Europe prior to the arrival of the European colonialists. The European incursions lifted Kenya, Algeria, and South Africa, among others, well above their previous conditions. Over the years since the retreat of the colonial powers, those nations have ceased to advance at their previous rate...if at all.

     It’s perilous to pin oneself to a specific, unicausal explanation of such patterns. Even if a researcher succeeds in isolating a “main driver” for a given inequality, there are bound to be minor contributing factors that ought not to be dismissed. His ideological opponents will promote those contributors for the sake of attacking him.

     What’s uniquely painful about contemporary discourse is the Left’s penchant for ad hominem attacks and imputations that target anyone who even mentions a pattern of inequality. Let the inequality correlate with intelligence measurements, and the attacks become vicious beyond all bounds. Sometimes they involve actual violence. The experiences of psychometrician Arthur Jensen should stand as a warning to us all.

     A final observation: Information is difference: the contrast some group of people, things, or events makes with others, while exhibiting consistency within the group. Only differences can convey information. What, then, is the probable fate of a society that will not allow even the mention of differences: among men, among the races, among the sexes, or among the nations? Can it hope for a future as good as immobile stagnation? Or is a steady descent into squalor and chaos more likely?

     Food for thought.

Confinements

     My esteemed colleague Colonel Bunny’s recent article on scarcity has me thinking about an old subject – for me, at any rate – and how it bears on the current pressures against the borders of all the First World nations.

     In Thomas Malthus’s famous, if sadly mistaken, Essay on the Principle of Population, he viewed the world economy statically: i.e., as a set of conditions from which there was no escape. In particular, he omitted to consider the possibility of advances in agricultural methods and technology. By neglecting that consideration, he produced one of Mankind’s most famous examples of DoomSpeak: the proclamation that if we continued to procreate as we’d been doing, our progeny, near or distant, would starve themselves by their numbers.

     To be maximally gentle about it, that hasn’t happened yet. But Malthus was not entirely wrong. The key lies in his premises:

• “Arithmetic” advancements in food production;
• “Geometric” increase in population;
• All other conditions kept constant.

     None of those three premises proved to be accurate. However, if they had, Malthus’s prognostication might have come to pass. As it happens, this is of direct application to contemporary migrations.

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     A group confined to a static set of resources – space, raw materials, tools, etc. – can only increase its numbers by the application of intelligence. It must study and innovate its productive methods if it wishes to grow beyond what those original resources would support. That mandates the use of existing tools to make better ones, and the exploitation of space and raw materials at increased levels of efficiency.

     Any geographically compact city provides an illustration. Take Manhattan Island. The tools and techniques of 1800 could not support Manhattan’s population in 1900, much less that of 2000. That required the increasingly efficient use of space: building up rather than across. As materials science and the arts of engineering advanced, it became possible to heap ever higher structures on Manhattan, and thus to support more and more people and commerce.

     Yet there are limits. Were we to extend that trend naively for a few millennia, Manhattan would be covered by towers several miles high, housing the lives and commerce of hundreds of millions of people. That’s not terribly likely for several reasons, not just because there are other places to work and live.

     One of the limits we tend to obscure in our extrapolations is the limit on human intelligence. Granted that given opportunity, time, and a sufficiently free society, a handful of geniuses can produce innovations that many millions of less gifted persons can exploit. But that handful of geniuses must exist, must have adequate opportunities and time, and must function within a sufficiently free society. All three of those conditions are required for progress of any sort.

     Which brings us to the distribution of intelligence among the peoples of the world.

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     In their hotly debated studies IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen attempted to explore the correlation between the two title characteristics. Their thesis has been contested, of course – mainly by persons determined to suppress all serious scholarship on intelligence, its nature, its distribution, and its consequences – yet over time it has held water. (For those who can’t afford his very expensive books, Dr. Lynn has provided PDFs of the articles on which they’re based.) Another correlation, which has become more significant as the years have passed, is between national average IQ and migration flows.

     Without going too deeply into detail, let it suffice to say that nations with low average IQs exhibit strong out-migration — and the migrant flow tends to be toward nations with high average IQs. The migrant wants a better life, so he heads for a place where (he hears) others live better than he and his countrymen. Isn’t that the usual reason for migration?

     Not all nations that exhibit high mean IQs are open to immigration. Japan, for example, is hostile to it and limits it sharply. But those nations which are open to immigrants, de jure or de facto, have accepted increasing number of them in recent years – not because those nations are hungry for more population, but because the migration flows have become thicker and have exerted ever greater pressure on the borders of the wealthier, higher-IQ nations. Some nations have strained to accommodate those flows; others are making efforts to resist them. But the salient fact is that persons from low-wealth, low-IQ states are heading en masse to high-wealth, high-IQ states.

     If the correlation between national IQ and national wealth points to a causative relation, high-IQ nations with relatively open borders are in for some retrenchment.

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     Today’s migrant flows would not have been possible a century ago. For one thing, the transportation networks that existed then would not have permitted them. For another, First World statesmen were much wiser and more public-minded. Their subjects were much warier about the admission of strangers who share few or no points of cultural commonality with them. Those factors served to limit the interpenetration of immiscible, unassimilable populations.

     In the world of today, a few hundred dollars permits anyone to go anywhere, often without being detected. Where there were once statesmen who served the public out of a sense of duty, there are now demagogues and villains concerned only with their own power, prestige, and perquisites. And where there was once a nearly uniform appreciation of national cultures and a sense of pride about them, there’s a rapidly creeping, potentially fatal disease called multiculturalism.

     Multiculturalism, also called cultural relativism, isn’t just about what sort of food, art, and music persons of varying heritages prefer. It’s also about moral and ethical standards, and standards of public conduct. For those things also correlate with average intelligence, and migration has proved incapable of changing them.

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     To return briefly to subject of intelligence distribution among the nations, even a nation with a low mean IQ can, and probably will possess a few very high intellects: i.e., persons of IQ 3 or more standard deviations above the human mean. However, the mean remains important. In the U.S., 3 standard deviations above the mean would put the test subject at IQ 143 or higher (U.S. mean IQ: 98; standard deviation: 15 points). In Zimbabwe – mean IQ 70, standard deviation 10 points – 3 standard deviations above the mean would put the test subject at IQ 100.

     The normal distribution tells us that 99.7% of all persons will fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean. Therefore, only 0.3% will fall outside it. Therefore, in a nation such as Zimbabwe – population approximately 16 million – even if all 0.3% are 3 standard deviations above the mean, a highly unlikely proposition, only 48,000 persons would have intellects equal or better than the average American. A vanishing number of Zimbabweans would score higher.

     But there’s an even more important influence at work. The culture, institutions, and political soundness of a nation also correlate with its mean IQ. Nations with high mean IQs tend to have high moral and ethical standards, greater freedom, especially freer markets; nations with low mean IQs tend to have lower moral standards, much less freedom, and are usually socialist or “crony capitalist” commercially. That will limit the latitude and effectiveness of whatever high-intellect, high-capability individuals it will possess. Moreover, those high-intellect, high-capability individuals are the ones most likely to want to escape such a nation.

     In light of those easily grasped factors, the chaos that afflicts First World nations that permit high rates of immigration becomes utterly understandable...and inevitable.

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     These days, “colonialism” gets a bad rap. Yet whatever the excesses of the European colonial powers were – and there definitely were excesses; see the Congo under Belgium during the reign of King Leopold II – European colonialism was an inversion of contemporary migration. High-intellect, high-capability First World persons, steeped in a culture that valued freedom and high standards, went forth to savage lands and set to work on them. As far as I can determine, that was a net gain for every African country that received the attention of a European power. That the great majority of those nations have reverted to savagery since since their “liberation” merely confirms the power of national intelligence distributions.

     This is not a brief for a return to colonialism. No First World nation has the time or inclination for such undertakings these days. However, it does argue for another alteration of First World attitudes: one the multiculturalists and open-borders advocates will decry in the strongest of terms.

     Confinement.

     The hardening of the borders of First World nations has become imperative for the survival of some and necessary to the social, economic, and political well-being of all. No First World nation could maintain its economy or its important institutions, were it to permit itself to be deluged by low-IQ, low-capability immigrants from places that know nothing of morals, freedom, or civilized commercial and esthetic standards. Savages import savagery; they most assuredly do not magically acquire the civilizations and standards of the places they invade. They must be confined to their own lands, possibly in perpetuity.

     In this regard, the essays and talks of John Derbyshire touching on the lunacy of faith in “magic dirt” are among the most important documents of our time. They’re mostly available at VDare. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

     (See also this earlier essay on intelligence.)

Our Superiors

     Do you have any? I ask because there are quite a lot of folks who claim to be them. Moreover, they claim to be so superior to us that it entitles them to rule us...whether we like it or not.

     This isn’t a new topic for me. I’ve written before about the “assumption of differential rectitude” that characterizes the Left. But what brings it to mind this fine Wednesday morning is a quirk in the history of socialist thought: the approach-avoidance dance it’s conducted with the idea of the superior man.

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     Most of us have pondered, at some point in our lives, what we would need to be “better” than we are. I don’t mean individual by individual, but as a species. What characteristics of Mankind would need to be augmented or diminished to improve us overall? What alterations would our common nature require for our posterity, some generations hence, to be able to look backward at us and say, “We’re better than they were” and be confident about it?

     Robert A. Heinlein explored the question in his novella “Gulf:”

     “Now – what is man? What is the one thing he can do better than animals which is so strong a survival factor that it outweighs all the things that animals of one sort or another can do much better than he can?”
     “He can think.”
     “I fed you that answer; no prize for it. Okay, you pass yourself off a man; let’s see you do something. What is the one possible conceivable factor – or factors, if you prefer – which the hypothetical superman could have, by mutation or magic or any means, and which could be added to this advantage which man already has and which has enabled him to dominate this planet against the unceasing opposition of a million other species of fauna? Some factor that would make the domination of man by his successor, as inevitable as your domination over a hound dog? Think, Joe. What is the necessary direction of evolution to the next dominant species?”
     Gilead engaged in contemplation for what was for him a long time. There were so many lovely attributes that a man might have: to be able to see both like a telescope and microscope, to see the insides of things, to see throughout the spectrum, to have hearing of the same order, to be immune to disease, to grow a new arm or leg, to fly through the air without bothering with silly gadgets like helicopters or jets, to walk unharmed the ocean bottom, to work without tiring –      Yet the eagle could fly and he was nearly extinct, even though his eyesight was better than man’s. A dog has better smell and hearing; seals swim better, balance better, and furthermore can store oxygen. Bats can survive where men would starve or die of hardship; they are smart and pesky hard to kill. Rats could –      Wait! Could tougher, smarter rats displace man? No, it Just wasn’t in them; too small a brain.
     “To be able to think better,” Gilead answered almost instantly.
     “Hand the man a cigar! Supermen are superthinkers; anything else is a side issue. I’ll allow the possibility of supersomethings which might exterminate or dominate mankind other than by outsmarting him in his own racket – thought. But I deny that it is possible for a man to conceive in discrete terms what such a super-something would be or how this something would win out. New Man will beat out homo sap in homo sap's own specialty – rational thought, the ability to recognize data, store them, integrate them, evaluate correctly the result, and arrive at a correct decision.”

     [“Gulf,” found in Assignment in Eternity]

     What it means “to be able to think better” is subject to interpretation. Some possible meanings:

• To make fewer mistakes;
• To think faster (with fewer mistakes, or at least no greater number);
• To deduce a larger percentage of the consequences of a proposition;
• To make use of a larger amount of information in the thinking process;
• To think with wider scope: i.e., to reach conclusions beyond those of immediate interest.

     Take Heinlein’s “to be able to think better” as your standard for judging superiority – this time, not of one species over another, but of one individual over another. Now take any one of the above interpretations and apply it to persons you know. What sort of results do you get? How about when you apply it to persons in the public eye?

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     But that “assumption of differential rectitude” also covers moral considerations, right? “Our Superiors” deem themselves both smarter and more moral than are we. This is a thornier subject, as morals and ethics are subjects on which there is no general consensus beyond a very few points.

     In the Decalogue, we find the propositions that for many centuries constituted the definition of moral / ethical law for Western man:

• Thou shalt not murder.
• Thou shalt not commit adultery.
• Thou shalt not steal.
• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
• Thou shalt not covet.

     That handful of proscriptions, which are also known as the Noachide Commandments, was the basis of Western Civilization. Yes, we’ve added a few things along the way – no sex with animals, no crossing a double-yellow line, no wearing white after Labor Day or mixing primary colors during daylight hours, and so forth – but those had more to do with what’s seemly or tasteful than with what must be forbidden. You might not be willing to have dinner with someone who wears white after Labor Day, but you wouldn’t want to see him imprisoned or executed. (Would you?)

     “Our Superiors” have discarded all of those proscriptions – on the basis of their claim of superior morality! They hold that our inferiority entitles them to do all those forbidden things to us...again, in the name of what they call “morality.”

     You don’t think so? Have you listened to any of the Left’s media figures defend AntiFa? Have you heard them justify deliberate lying if it helps them to win power, or to put over some proposition about race, gender, or “climate change?” Have you totted up the number that have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar...or in the panties of some lissome young thing other than their wives?

     This “superior morality” the Left claims bears no relation to the moral precepts on which our society is founded. That makes it difficult to evaluate...unless, that is, you consider American society to be largely good and worthy of defense.

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     The denunciations and vilifications are getting to be so noxious that sooner or later they’ll culminate in large-scale violence. I don’t want to see that day. I especially don’t want to be caught up in it. But that’s the logic of the “assumption of differential rectitude.” By completely discarding the Noachide proscriptions, “Our Superiors” have justified a kind of low-intensity warfare against us. It’s not primarily violent...yet. But the implications of their posture make bloodshed ever more likely as time passes.

     The implications also suggest that they haven’t thought matters through. They’re overwhelmingly likely to lose any open confrontation; that’s one of the conclusions they should have drawn from the election of Donald Trump. But if they were to win, they’d be even worse off: they’d reign over a society whose foundation had been cut out from under it. Such a society cannot be sustained. More, it would have no defenders, and therefore would be a juicy target for plunderers more able than they.

     So “Our Superiors” are neither better thinkers nor more moral than are we whom they despise...we whom they frequently wish were dead. Indeed, they appear considerably lower on both scales than the typical Middle American to whom the Decalogue is the foundation of all life. There’s more to the subject, of course, but I’ll leave it here to germinate some thoughts.

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     An Addendum: Two recent novels, Nick Cole’s Ctrl-Alt-Revolt and E. William Brown’s Perilous Waif, touch upon the possibility that transhuman intelligence might be inherently hostile to Mankind. That, too, is worth some thought – and both novels are immensely entertaining. Highly recommended.

“How Stupid Can You Get?”

     ...is not a question one should bandy about carelessly. Some people might take it as a challenge:

     The University of Iowa’s student newspaper has announced the discovery of a special privilege which intelligent people acquire as an accident of birth. This new privilege — called “cognitive privilege” — functions in essentially the same way as white privilege.

     The Daily Iowan revealed the discovery of this new privilege earlier this week....

     As with skin color and much else, Daily Iowan author Dan Williams argues, people have no control over how smart they are. Life is a huge cosmic lottery full of winners and losers.

     Cognitive privilege is one of “many kinds of privilege besides white privilege.”

     Let’s see, now: for decades, the Left has had multiple cows whenever anyone suggests actually studying intelligence. For instance, when Herrnstein and Murray published The Bell Curve, the first systematic study of general intelligence and its correlates since Arthur Jensen’s tarring and feathering back in 1969, virtually the whole of the academic Left denounced them as racists, sexists, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. Their sin, of course, was to look at genetic factors’ participation in intelligence. Social “scientists” on the Left insisted in a virtual chorus that only environmental factors that affect intelligence ought to be studied or considered for public policy purposes.

     Why? The reason is actually quite simple: if only environmental factors – e.g., home life, cultural surroundings, quality of schooling, and so forth – are valid subjects for study, then government can justify intrusive adjustments to such things in the name of a “level intellectual playing field.” It’s a BLEEP!ing money river for the social engineers.

     There’s just one problem: No one has yet identified a controllable environmental factor that correlates with measurable intelligence, whether the metric chosen is school grades or the Revised Stanford-Binet. Programs such as “Head Start” have spent billions without producing enduring cognitive gains for their clients, even in the early grades of grammar school.

     That’s becoming generally known. As it becomes known, those who absorb the lesson will turn ever more firmly against intrusive government programs to “equalize” educational results, especially as regards the races and sexes. That troubles the Left, ever the fans of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent State.

     That makes me wonder whether, given that it’s in a losing position on the environmental-factors front, the Left has decided to embrace the position it previously condemned: i.e., that general intelligence is somewhere between one third and two thirds a product of genetics.

     Mind you, the prevailing consensus among cognitive scientists is as open to dispute as the supposed consensus among “climate scientists.” Science has no use for consensus; anyone who tells you different is either an ignoramus or a liar. At this time, no one knows the genesis of intelligence, particularly the highest reaches of intelligence. All anyone has is an opinion.

     If this Dan Williams fellow is “on his own,” he might soon be reined in sharply by his fellow-traveling Leftists for implying the endorsement of a thesis that’s long been unacceptable to them. However, he could also be tossing a straw to the wind: a flier intended to test the currents of opinion for whether a new sally in identity politics might be popular. For among the things becoming generally known are the means and distributions of IQ as controlled by race and sex – and if the race and gender hustlers could use these measures, which have displeased them for decades, they’d turn their previous stance on its head to make use of them.

     It doesn’t bother me either way. Regardless of the position they adopt, we know what the race and gender hustlers will demand: more government intervention, more government programs, and more government spending. They can’t “redistribute” IQ points...and thank You most sincerely, dear God, for that great blessing.

Somebody’s Gotta Say It Part 2: Further Remarks On Intelligence

     After reading yesterday’s tirade, longtime reader Eskyman commented, in part, as follows:

     That mean old bell curve tells no lies- though I remember (in a previous life) hearing of some psychologists back in the 1920s who gave IQ tests to Australian Aborigines; they interpreted their results as, "them guys is dumber than rocks!"

     What the psychologists didn't know was that the Aborigines had no concept of passing time. There's "now" and "then" and "dreamtime." Most Aborigines were (and are) pretty unreliable on the concept of number too, and anything over 3 is uncertain.

     On the other hand, if those psychologists were dropped in the middle of the Great Sandy Desert, I wonder how long they would last; no matter where they placed on the Bell Curve, it wouldn't help keep them alive.

     All quite correct, and a perfect launching pad for a disquisition on the nature of measurable, abstract, generalized intelligence and its significance in a post-subsistence society.

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     I’m absolute death on the phrase “emotional intelligence” and similar attempts to bastardize the concept. “Emotional intelligence” is a perfect parallel to “social justice:” the first word destroys the meaning of the second one, leaving an empty phrase into which some activist can pour whatever sentiments his/her/their/its agenda requires.

     Etymology makes plain why intelligence means what it does and nothing else. It comes from the Latin verb intelligere, “to understand.” But understanding is about the causes of things – and one doesn’t truly understand unless one can abstract from specific cases to a general rule, and then use that rule to analyze other specific cases and predict what will come of them.

     Eskyman’s observations about the superior survivability of Aborigines in the Great Sandy Desert highlight the essential difference between the Abo context and that of a typical contemporary society. The former is a subsistence context, in which survival imperatives are immediate and paramount at all times. The latter is a far different sort of place; as a friend of mine once said of American life, “Unless you’re down – unless you haven’t a quarter with which to buy your beans – life is a game.” That statement applies to nearly every human society extant in our time. (For those with qualms about the price of beans, the context of that statement was Rockland County, New York in the fabled year of 1968.)

     Consider life as a game for just a moment:

• Every game has a set of rules.
• Some rules, when followed, lead to success on the part of the follower.
• Some rules, when violated, impose a penalty on the violator.
• Though a player can “lose,” he will survive to play again (notable exception for Russian Roulette).

     Now consider the nature of a rule:

• It applies to a particular class of contexts.
• It defines a particular class of player actions.
• It specifies the consequences such an action will evoke in such a context.

     A rule is an abstract statement about the operation of cause and effect within the relevant context. A player must have at least sufficient capacity to understand such a rule – sufficient intelligence -- to play the game without courting embarrassment.

     A humorous counterexample: the old prank-game “Grapes.” This is typically pulled by two “players” on an unenlightened third party. For the sake of sheer blind variety, let’s call the pranksters Smith and Jones, and the third party Davis. The gag goes thus:

Smith: Say, Jones, how about a quick game of Grapes?
Jones: Sure, why not? You go first.
Smith: Okay: avocado.
Jones: Elephant.
Smith: Daiquiri.
Jones: Confession.
Smith: Hah! Grapes! I win!

(Davis, of course, is looking on in total confusion. Perhaps Smith and Jones play another round or two, with equally incomprehensible “plays” and “winner.” Then comes the payoff.)

Smith: Say, Davis, ever played Grapes?
Davis: Uh, no, but—
Smith: It’s a lot of fun. Want to give it a try?
Davis: Well, I don’t really understand—
Smith: C’mon, you’re smart, you’ll pick it right up. You go first.
Davis: Uh...okay: avocado.
Smith: Hah! Grapes! I win!

(At this point Davis is feeling completely lost. Smith urges him to try again, but this time Smith goes first.)

Smith: Avocado.
Davis: Wait a minute, didn’t I just—
Smith: C’mon, it’s your move, play!
Davis: (flustered) Grapes. I win.
Smith: (frowns) No, no, that’s illegal.

     Got the idea? There are no rules. It would take a significant number of rounds for a person of average intelligence (one who’s unaware that he’s being pranked, of course) to work that out. A person of high intelligence might deduce the nature of the thing more quickly, but not necessarily, for a rule-free contest is insoluble by the methods of intelligence.

     Only rule-based societies value intelligence in their common participants, for it has value nowhere else.

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     There are higher and lower levels of abstraction, but all center on rules: their formation (inductive reasoning), their use (deductive reasoning), and the testing of the former by experiments designed with the use of the latter.

     (A slight digression. Nonhuman creatures have exhibited no provable capacity for abstraction. The sole possible exception I know of is the dolphin. The late Gregory Bateson related a tale of one particularly bright dolphin that appeared able to grasp the abstract concept new after an extended series of both conditioned-in responses and subsequent contradictions thereof. Though the story is suggestive, the effect proved irreproducible in other dolphins, and thus must be classified as an interesting occurrence, no more.)

     Though one can be “under the gun” and required to solve a problematic situation swiftly in hope of great gain or at the peril of great loss, in the most important situations relevant to ordinary life in a post-subsistence society, intellectual height is more a matter of accuracy than speed. In other words, we normally have time enough for persons of ordinary intelligence – call it IQ 100 – to solve ordinary problems susceptible to cause-and-effect reasoning; what matters is the accuracy of the answer rather than how swiftly it’s found.

     The scientist must possess facility with both inductive and deductive reasoning. He gathers data about some interesting observable phenomenon, notes patterns in its occurrence and absence, and formulates a hypothesis about the causal relation – the rule – that governs it. That hypothesized rule must abstract the required features of the initial conditions – the context required by the phenomenon – and the cause – the stimulus required – to produce the effect predicted by the hypothesis. The hypothesis then implies the consequences that would follow from reproducing the relevant features of the contexts in which the phenomena were observed, adding the required cause, and waiting an adequate time for the effect predicted by the rule. Should such an experiment produce the predicted results, it would constitute a confirmation of the hypothesis, but should it fail to do so, the hypothesis would be deemed to have been disproved. The procedure, first proposed by Francis Bacon, is called scientific method, and constitutes the one and only method by which one can demonstrate one’s knowledge.

     The engineer, by contrast, usually works with well-confirmed rules about the physical world arrived at by generation after generation of scientists. He applies those rules to produce desired effects, for whereas the product of the scientist is knowledge, the product of the engineer is particular effects reproducible on demand. (When an engineer generates new knowledge, he implicitly crosses the boundary between the disciplines and functions, for a time, as a scientist. The categories are about orientations and applicable procedures, not about particular persons, degrees, or some other sort of “guild membership.”)

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     The above surveys why students of human cognition believe that intelligence is abstract. Two other characteristics integral to it remain to be surveyed.

     We believe that intelligence is measurable because the results of intelligence tests – IQ tests – are highly reproducible and correlate well with the testee’s subsequent success in abstraction-oriented labors. Quibbles about “language limitations” and “cultural bindings” are easily addressed with test variants that de-emphasize linguistic skills and frame their puzzles in terms for the testee’s cultural matrix. The tests’ shared characteristic is their rule-based nature: they probe the testee’s ability to induce the rules of the puzzles presented, and to apply them deductively in comparable situations.

     We believe that intelligence is generalized -- i.e., that intellectual facility can be applied to a wide variety of problems dissimilar on their faces – because the tests probe for such generality, because the possessors of high intelligence (as indicated by the tests) demonstrate such facility in their courses through life (albeit perhaps limited by perceptual or learning disabilities of particular kinds), and because abstraction itself is a generalizing process. Thus, there are both theoretical and practical reasons for believing it.

---

     The detractors and denigrators of intelligence as conventionally understood are unsatisfied by the above, of course. There’s no way of mollifying them, for they are uninterested in evidence. Their agenda is to erect a pseudo-standard of the sort implied by phrases such as “emotional intelligence:” one that negates all possibility of measurement and destroys any distinction enjoyed by athletes of the mind. It’s a form of radical egalitarianism premised on the notion that denying a thing is equivalent to disproving it. It deserves no respect whatsoever.

     The subject is large and can’t be exhausted in a single essay. Nor am I a high expert in the cognitive sciences, able to give you a glimpse of the frontiers of investigation and the horizons of knowledge therein. But the above should suffice to establish a foundation from which laymen can talk comprehensibly about intelligence and its effects on the world. It should further enable us to dismiss the shrieks of those unwilling to accept that something real, substantial, and inherently valuable undergirds the higher achievements of societies where intelligence is recognized and rewarded, such as the United States of America.

Assets: Yet Another Weekday Rumination

The challenges that confront a devout Christian who is also an analytical metaphysician are considerable. Most persons with a philosophical bent don't candidly acknowledge the constraints of any particular religious creed. Yet there are a couple of philosophers -- Peter Kreeft comes to mind -- who manage the combination without apparent effort.

The problem lies at the most fundamental of all metaphysical levels: the bedrock of reality that lies beneath all we can sense or manipulate. If reality, broadly speaking, is indifferent to our opinions and desires, the "ground state" of reality where natural law "lives" is the fountainhead of that indifference.

Yet natural law is as incompletely understood as anything to which Man has ever applied his power of reason.

---

We begin with a question many have asked and always will: Why are "things" as they are?

The current condition of the United States is deemed unsatisfactory by many. (I don't like it much myself.) But how did we get here, and how do we get to someplace better? What do we need to understand to grasp our devolutionary path, and what must we change to set ourselves on a better one?

There's an awful lot of detail involved in breaking those questions down to manageable bites and addressing them in a practical fashion. But viewed from the 60,000 foot level, there can only be one answer: metaphysically given reality. That is: the laws of nature, including human nature, operating on the context from which we started and the decisions we've been making since then, could have no other result.

That answer displeases many persons: nearly everyone on the Left and no small number on the Right. In their opinion, things "shouldn't" have worked out this way; they "should" have brought us to a happier place. This is the elevation of desire over natural law: the demand that "I must get what I want because I want it."

To be maximally gentle about it, you mustn't hold your breath while you wait.

Men of good will dissatisfied with the present but who can't understand how we got to this point grope for explanations and, by implication, corrections. If they apply their intellects to the problems they perceive, and manage to keep their preconceptions in check, they can make progress. But that word "should," which virtually no one dares to use around me these days, tends to intrude at the worst possible times.

How much sense does it make to say "That shouldn't have happened" after it's already transpired? Most of us grasp this, at least when we're confronted with it directly. But there's a whole class of persons, innately averse to subordinating their preferences and preconceptions to the laws of nature, whose specialty is evading such a confrontation with metaphysically given reality. We call them politicians.

Do they possess adequate intelligence to grasp the true genesis of our malaise? Some of them, possibly, though getting them to admit their mistakes, especially their willful ones, is a completely separate challenge.

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Let's look rather closely at our assumptions about reality.

Our senses precondition the scope of our comprehension of the world around us. Though powerful, human senses are limited. Those limits tempt us to infer that what they cannot detect does not "exist." Yet as recent advances in quantum physics should make plain, that is not necessarily the case.

If you'll allow me an illuminating tangent, please consider the following snippet from Freedom's Fury, in which I tried to give exploitable shape and substance to a conception of a "reality beneath reality:"

    Althea: What are the Loioc rulers most likely to expect of us?
    Probe: First, that the invading vessels will be few in number, perhaps no more than ten. Second, that the invaders intend the conquest and subjugation of the Loioc. Third, that the invaders will rely upon real weapons.
    Althea: I understand the first two of those assumptions, but the third eludes me. What sort of weapon would not be a real weapon? Would it be one that acts solely upon the mind or perceptions of the target?
    Probe: No. You have misconstrued me. We have entered a realm of discourse for which we have not prepared. I did not realize that. My apologies.
    Althea: What realm is that?
    Probe: The realm of metaphysics. I did not realize that despite your accomplishments, you had not yet formulated an explicit conception of metareality.
    Althea: Probe, you have just taken me outside the lexicon I live with. When we of Hope speak of metaphysics, we mean reality as it presents itself to our senses and instruments. Your use of the term is unfamiliar, as is the even newer term metareality. Would you please expand on them?
    Probe: Yes. The senses of spatiotemporal sentients, both organic and nonorganic, are sharply limited. Reality as we perceive it appears fundamental, not merely pre-theoretical but above all theory. Let us assign a few terms for convenience. Let the sentient to whom spatiotemporal reality is all be called a realist. To the realist, the laws of the universe are without foundation. They admit of no explanation, being sufficient unto themselves. Let us call the realist’s highest natural scientist a physicist. The physicist accumulates spatiotemporal data in his attempts to infer reality’s laws. He does not entertain the possibility that those laws might arise from some deeper set of mechanisms. Yet there are deeper mechanisms: atemporal, independent of location, and potentially in flux. Probing them and their interplay is the domain of the metaphysicist: he who studies the nature of metareality.
    Althea: How do my accomplishments, as you put it a moment ago, bear on this realm?
    Probe: You are Hope’s first metaphysicist, Althea. You alone have thought to alter the properties of space itself. It is how you constructed your superluminal vessel.
    Althea: Then to alter the permittivity of the vacuum is an act of meta-engineering?
    Probe: Yes. It requires an assumption realist physicists would dismiss out of hand. Their assumptions are wholly incompatible with it.
    Althea: What are those assumptions?
    Probe: They address the undefined term existence. If asked “does space exist?” the realist physicist would decline to give a definite answer. Space, he would say, is nothing: the absence of anything real. Therefore, the concept of existence does not apply to it. You, by contrast, have treated space as having existential properties. You have treated nothing as being something, and so have succeeded in making changes to it.
    Althea: Which of us is nearer to the truth?
    Probe: Surely that question answers itself.
    Althea: Does my technique for attaining superluminal speeds resemble yours?
    Probe: Only in the results achieved. At present I lack the terms required to explain the technique embodied in my superluminal engine to you. It will require us to expand our lexicon much further.
    Althea: I infer from this that metareality is complex, perhaps even more complex than spatiotemporal reality.
    Probe: If I may borrow an expression you have used in another context, you have no idea. But there is more. Have you attained an understanding of your telekinetic powers?
    Althea: No. They baffle me even as I use them.
    Probe: Yet you use them with precision and confidence. They are as metareal as your vessel’s manipulation of the permittivity of space.
    Althea: That implies that I am actually altering the laws of reality when I employ them.
    Probe: Yes, you are, within the radius of their operation. I became aware of their nature when you freed me of my payload. You reconfigured local reality continuously as you worked. It was a display of metaphysical capabilities no Loioc has ever commanded. Yet your skill and self-assurance were such that I did not suspect that you were unaware of what you were doing.
    Althea: Probe, there are several things I can do for which I lack an explanation. Perhaps they are all metareal. I look forward to exploring them with you.
    Probe: As do I, Althea. Have you ever discussed them with another organic sentient?
    Althea: Yes, I have. He told me to consider them gifts.
    Probe: Who would give you such gifts, yet deny them to others of your race?
    Althea: I cannot say. Possibly God.
    Probe: It appears that we must discuss God at some length.
    Althea: We’ll have plenty of time for that on the trip to Loioc system.

The above, though fanciful, touches upon an important aspect of human inquiry: the never-ending question why. Why are the laws of nature what they are? Were they ever otherwise? If so, why did they change? What caused the changes? Might they change yet again, and if so, why?

At this point we're compelled to address the invisible dimension we call time and the operation of intelligence within it.

---

As time passes, things change. But why?
Why do things change? Because the laws of nature operate on them as time passes.
How do we know that time has passed? Because we can see things changing.

Yes, the circularity is frustrating, but that's in the nature of any attempt to cope with the most fundamental aspects of reality. There are even gag lines about it, for example: "Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." All the same, those are the facts: the observable phenomena, wholly indifferent to our opinions, that any interested, unbiased party can confirm for himself. Time passes, and things change.

Now add Man to the mix. Ayn Rand's "being of volitional consciousness," Loren Lomasky's "project pursuer," is the one mobile entity we can be certain possesses individual desires and acts consciously to fulfill them. How does he do this? By noting the available facts and applying his intelligence: i.e., his facility for employing generalizations about natural law, applying deductive logic to them, and reaching conclusions about "if this were to happen in that adequately well defined context, what would happen next?"

That's what intelligence is: the ability to use, and in advanced cases to form, generalizations -- abstractions -- derived from the available facts.

Intelligence is not:

• Artistic gifts;
• Physical prowess;
• Manipulative dexterity;
• Empathy or "compassion;"
• A sterling character;
• Verbal facility;
• Reliability;

...or any other attribute of Man. It's exactly and only his ability to work with generalizations: his ability to reason, as traditionally understood.

Are those other attributes valuable? No argument: in the contexts in which they apply, they're indispensable. But they are not intelligence. Highly intelligent men bereft of all other assets, including some completely paralyzed from the neck down, have nevertheless managed to contribute to human advancement or culture, just as men of ordinary intellect but equipped with major assets of other kinds have done so in their varying ways.

Intelligence, like every other human asset, is important to us, both individually and socially, because:

1. Time passes;
2. And things change.

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For some decades, the Western world generally and the United States specifically have seen a steady increase in the relative value of intelligence in political, social, and economic affairs. Mind you, intelligence is not the only asset valued in those venues. However, its importance relative to other assets has risen, such that persons of ordinary attainments are slowly being marginalized. Of course, the usual qualifier applies: "All other things being equal." In some domains, other assets are critical. For example, in contemporary politics cunning and verbal ability are of great importance, greater than that of intellect. To the extent that a society lavishes resources upon entertainment, athleticism can reap great rewards. But today at least, those domains are of limited size. The fields favorable to high intelligence are far larger, possibly unbounded.

Beyond even that, the highly intelligent man has an edge over less gifted others at inferring in what direction things are likely to change. Thus intelligence tends to correlate with adaptability.

He who knows himself to be of ordinary intellect cannot help but be aware of these things. If he possesses other assets of potential value, he's likely to concentrate on developing and exploiting them. If he's ordinary in all ways, he must accept mediocrity: not an unthinkable destiny in a society that offers everyone a place. The mediocre American lives very well, at least when compared to mediocre persons of other places and times. He can be proud of his legitimate accomplishments. He has as good a chance to be happy with his lot as any genius...if he can avoid the seductions of envy and resentment.

What no one can do -- not even one of my fictional heroes -- is change the laws of nature. They are what they are. If they change, it will be as God wills, not Man. The most important of those laws for socio-politico-economic purposes are the laws of human nature.

---

Each human asset is a tool to be used in pursuing one's chosen ends. Intelligence is no exception. As with other tools, intelligence can only work when supplied with the materials it requires:

• Trustworthy premises;
• Accurate, adequately complete data;
• In most cases, trustworthy generalizations reached by previous thinkers.

There is no question that lacking those things, even the most powerful intellect will go wildly astray. The ancient conceit of the "ivory tower philosopher" deducing the entirety of existence from his thoughts alone is ludicrous. As Bertrand Russell has said, "Logic is often merely an organized way of going wrong with confidence." (Alternately, we have Arthur Herzog's quip that "A paranoid is a logician with a fractured premise.")

The greatest mistakes in human history were made by very smart men who either lacked sufficient data or proceeded from bad premises -- or, in the worst of cases, who denied one or both of those things because they preferred to believe otherwise. This is observably the case regarding the several "experts" who pushed a "catastrophic / unavoidable resource exhaustion and mass starvation" overpopulation scenario in the Seventies and early Eighties. Also consider the behavior of the scientists pushing the "global warming" agenda; all the actual data contradicts their hypothesis, so they wish it aside, point to their simulations, and insist that they must be correct. The consequences have been bad enough to date; may God help us all if they should get their way politically.

In other words, no degree of intelligence can compensate for ignorance or arrogance, and particularly not for the combination thereof. Whether we speak of the "moderate" degree of arrogance that simply insists "I cannot be wrong!" or the "extreme" variety that seeks to defy the laws of nature themselves -- say, remember the "new Soviet man?" -- we're looking upon a quick road to chaos and destruction.

I am hard pressed to think of a single major political, social, or economic ill that was rooted in anything but the arrogance of highly placed men.

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Having waded through 2500 words to get here, you could be forgiven for asking "What's the point?" The point, as it so often is in a Rumination, is the transcendent importance of humility. As I wrote just yesterday:

Humility is merely the willingness to acknowledge reality:

• That we cannot merely decree that what we want is what shall be;
• That reality's laws are superior to our desires, opinions, and wills;
• That others are what they are and have a right to be so, despite our preferences to the contrary.

Inversely, humility is not self-abasement or an imposed belief in one's own inferiority. The humble man need not subjugate himself to anyone or anything. He merely accepts that the world is what it is, and that events will sometimes run contrary to his desires.

Alternately, from Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Whatever your assets, may God bless and keep you all.

Quickies: Predictions Fulfilled

The American Enterprise Institute has posted a brief question-and-answer session with Dr. Charles Murray, one of America's best known social scientists, concerning the observations, assertions, and predictions he and co-author Richard Herrnstein made in The Bell Curve, published just twenty years ago to incredible controversy and no small amount of denunciation. Perhaps the most piercing bit of the exchange is as follows:

Q: The flashpoint of the controversy about race and IQ was about genes. If you mention “The Bell Curve” to someone, they’re still likely to say “Wasn’t that the book that tried to prove blacks were genetically inferior to whites?” How do you respond to that?

Actually, Dick and I got that reaction even while we were working on the book. As soon as someone knew we were writing a book about IQ, the first thing they assumed was that it would focus on race, and the second thing they assumed was that we would be talking about genes. I think psychiatrists call that “projection.” Fifty years from now, I bet those claims about “The Bell Curve” will be used as a textbook case of the hysteria that has surrounded the possibility that black-white differences in IQ are genetic. Here is the paragraph in which Dick Herrnstein and I stated our conclusion:

If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate. (p. 311)

That’s it. The whole thing. The entire hateful Herrnstein-Murray pseudoscientific racist diatribe about the role of genes in creating the black-white IQ difference. We followed that paragraph with a couple pages explaining why it really doesn’t make any difference whether the differences are caused by genes or the environment. But nothing we wrote could have made any difference. The lesson, subsequently administered to James Watson of DNA fame, is that if you say it is likely that there is any genetic component to the black-white difference in test scores, the roof crashes in on you.

On this score, the roof is about to crash in on those who insist on a purely environmental explanation of all sorts of ethnic differences, not just intelligence. Since the decoding of the genome, it has been securely established that race is not a social construct, evolution continued long after humans left Africa along different paths in different parts of the world, and recent evolution involves cognitive as well as physiological functioning.

Contemporaneously with the announcement of the book, "journalist" Jason de Parle did a hit piece on Murray that appeared in the New York Times. Its title: The Most Dangerous Conservative In America. Never let it be said that the Times simply reports the facts and leaves us to form our opinions for ourselves.

As Murray says elsewhere in the Q & A, his and Herrnstein's predictions of a social fissure steadily widening between the "cognitive elite" and the rest of the population, while the "cognitive elite" steadily merge with the economic and political elite, have observably come true. He foresees more troubles, and worse, over the decades immediately before us...and unusually for a social scientist willing to give his opinions openly and candidly to the public, both reason and the available evidence are on his side.

Ann Barnhardt Speaks On The Ebola Crisis

[I have a tremendous admiration for Ann Barnhardt, who might just be the ballsiest person currently writing for the Web. This is a woman who demonstrably lives her convictions. She never retreats from a standard of absolute candor. If Zoroaster were asked to cite an example of one who always “speaks truth and shoots the arrow straight,” he’d name Miss Barnhardt without hesitation.

Below I repost, with her permission, Miss Barnhardt’s “Important Ebola Note” from October 2, 2014. Please, please press this piece upon everyone you know – especially the politically-correct sorts who don’t want to close our borders against travelers from West Africa because it would be “racist.” It bears a far more important message than any alternate I might compose today --FWP]

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So there is tremendous chatter about this guy from Liberia, and we now have enough of the backstory to see just how maliciously negligent the so-called protection agencies really are. But what I want to focus on is Thomas Eric Duncan – the Liberian who after hauling his sister’s still living yet rapidly disintegrating body to and from the hospital thought it would be a great idea to take a three-legged flight to Dallas, and then just casually forget to mention at the Dallas emergency room the whole “I hauled my sister, dying of Ebola, to and from the hospital a couple of weeks ago.”

There is speculation that Duncan is a psychopathic arch criminal, or that he was recruited by musloids to make the trip. Nope. I doubt this very, very seriously. Then how in the world, you may ask, could he possibly DO THIS? I’ll tell you the likely answer if you really want to know, but I warn you, our culture has conditioned even the “strongest” of you to reject the truth I am about to lay out. Are you sure you want it? Fair warning has been given. Complaints will not be fielded.

The AVERAGE I.Q. amongst Liberians is 67. Anything below 69 is considered severe impairment. Only people who are profoundly mentally retarded, such as with severe Down Syndrome, have lower I.Q. scores, and many folks with milder Down Syndrome actually have I.Q. scores in the 70s and 80s. What we are talking about in Liberia is the AVERAGE IQ of non-impaired human beings. AVERAGE. Which means, by definition, that half the populace is above 67, and half the population is below 67.

CITATION HERE. A ranking of nations by average IQ. Fascinating.

Mr. Duncan, in all likelihood, got on a plane bound for Dallas because all was was thinking was “the Americans will save me”. He gave NO THOUGHT whatsoever to the consequences of his actions or to other human beings, nor did any of his family members, because people who are dim-witted think only about themselves and the immediate gratification of their immediate needs and wants. We see this manifested in our own western cultures, wherein people who OBVIOUSLY have lower I.Q.s are far, far more prone to crime – such as theft – and sexual promiscuity, as well as drug use, because they lack the powers of impulse control and consideration for other human beings that is an undeniable characteristic that goes along with an IQ that is several standard deviations “left” on the bell curve. When all you are capable of pondering is yourself and your own physical pleasure, or the maintenance of your own life, when a person or people is so collectively impaired that thinking through the consequences of actions three or four steps ahead, or of thinking of how one’s actions will affect other people, is almost impossible, then Thomas Eric Duncans happen.

The first step to defending against this reality is to ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

People have been saying for years, “This political correctness is going to get us all killed.”

Yes. Yes, it is.

Now, if you are sitting there squirming thinking that I am being all racist, let me just copy and paste that last sentence and make one little adjustment:

When all you are capable of pondering is yourself and your own physical pleasure, or the maintenance of your own life, when a person or people is so collectively impaired that thinking through the consequences of actions three or four steps ahead, or of thinking of how one’s actions will affect other people, is almost impossible, then contemporary American culture happens.

I wrote this not just to make the point about failing to acknowledge and deal with objective reality, and how that is now LITERALLY going to kill people, I wrote it to hopefully rehabilitate Duncan’s reputation. I doubt he is a psychopath. I doubt he is a terrorist operative. I think he is just a sub-Saharan African who is probably teetering on the precipice of mental retardation, because that is what the odds clearly, clearly dictate.

-- Ann Barnhardt, 10/02/2014 –

Decreeing Utopia

It didn't work for Lenin.
It worked even more poorly for Stalin.
Mao killed sixty million Chinese and it still didn't work.
Pol Pot? Are you BLEEP!ing kidding me?
The Eurocrats have failed as well.
Who's left?

Perhaps that last should have been "Who's Left?" But I digress.

These clowns are left:

End global hunger and all forms of malnutrition and poverty by 2030, along with all urban slums around the world. Halve the number of deaths from road traffic accidents globally (an estimated 1.24 million in 2010, according to the World Health Organization) by the same date—and “reduce levels of violence and halve related death rates everywhere” by then too. Make sure that the income of the bottom 40 percent of the population in all countries grows faster than the national average. Achieve “global resource efficiency,” and try to separate economic growth from “environmental degradation and resource use” everywhere over the next decade and a half.

All of those lofty, ambitious –and for critics, improbable and not-very-closely-linked—objectives, as well as many more, are currently being bundled, massaged and repackaged at the United Nations, to be formally unveiled in September as the ”sustainable development goals,” the centerpiece of the latest multi-trillion-dollar U.N. bid to reshape the planet along largely socialist or progressive lines.

Are you surprised in the slightest, Gentle Reader, to learn that Obama supports this "initiative" -- or that his envoy to the soiree is John Podesta?

Well, it does keep them off the street, at least. And inasmuch as U.N. types contribute mightily to downtown Manhattan traffic and parking problems, that's no small thing. But should the Obamunists manage to commit us to this "big container of verbal fudge" (William Easterly, formerly an economist at the World Bank), it will be the end of anything even resembling a free market in these United States.

I've argued before that smart people have no place in government. It's always smart people who chisel around the edges of their authority when in office. It's always smart people who "baffle 'em with bullshit." And it's always smart people, when their houses of straw catch fire, who mutter to themselves that "nobody understands or appreciates me." Unwillingness to accept his limitations -- or limitations that arise from the nature of Mankind, for that matter -- is the hallmark of the "intellectual" in office.

Please don't misunderstand me. There are plenty of smart people who are humble enough to stick to what they truly know and can do well. But he who seeks a public position of authority has two strikes against him for that reason alone. An intellect significantly above the norm adds a million more. Worst of all is the man who believes himself both above average in intelligence and ethically qualified for a position of power, and is wrong on both counts. I could make a good case for immuring such individuals in lifelong solitary confinement as soon as they display their plumage.

Time was, there was a common rejoinder to the man with too many opinions and too little sense of his limitations: "If yer so smart, why ain'tcha rich?" It was far better aimed than many of its wielders knew. The typical aspirant to political power has never achieved anything on his own hook. That's part of why he wants his hands on the levers of power.

But should he get there, this supposed intellectual will believe himself capable of re-engineering Mankind. He'll craft "policies" that directly contradict the most basic drives of a sentient creature. When his schemes fail in practice, he'll call for immense enforcement mechanisms with draconian powers. He'll blink in incredulity when black markets arise to countervail his intentions. He'll bellow in rage when he discovers that such markets are ineradicable...and that among the most enthusiastic participants in those markets can be found some of his closest, most trusted lieutenants.

The United Nations regularly convokes such intellectuals and asks them to redesign human society. There's never a shortage of eager attendees. There's usually a lot of crisis-shouting and mutual genital fondling. There's often a complete lack of hard sense.

This latest gathering appears to be aiming for some sort of ultimate grand prize. As columnist George Russell notes, everything from the elimination of poverty to the reduction of traffic fatalities appears in the "zero draft." No one's pet peeve has been omitted. Nothing is said about costs or the implied incursions into individuals' rights. Evidence of logical coherence is entirely absent. Yet the draft claims as its overarching principle..."sustainability."

The one and only thing the United Nations could do for the people of the United States is to relieve Manhattan of its load on the borough's streets. I shan't hold my breath waiting for them to do so.

An Intellectual's Duty

[John Derbyshire, one of America's brightest opinion writers, has produced a subtly satirical screed about the electoral dangers of letting smart people vote. It moved me to reprint the piece below, which first appeared at Eternity Road on March 12, 2008. -- FWP]

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There aren't many persons who, if asked whether significantly above-average intelligence could ever be a liability rather than an asset, would answer in the affirmative. That's because there aren't many persons with significantly above-average intelligence.

Yes, you read that right. You have to be pretty smart to understand why smarts aren't a good fit for every context and every occupation. One of Jack L. Chalker's Flux and Anchor books presents a penetrating example. In it, a woman who has earned a large boon from a powerful wizard asks him to use his power to make her permanently happy and carefree. The wizard plies a spell that strips her of her memory, halves her intelligence, and turns her into an uncritical, limitlessly willing sexual plaything -- the simplest conceivable satisfaction of her request.

True, most of us wouldn't aspire to that position. But some would, and dare anyone say (from a purely secular perspective) that to choose such a life would be wrong? Happiness and peace of mind are fleeting things; all but a few truly fortunate persons possess them only in snatches. Aldous Huxley is reported to have been greatly troubled by the number of persons who viewed his Brave New World, in which the overwhelmingly greater part of the population of the world was engineered for subnormal intelligence and high susceptibility to a happiness-inducing drug, as a depiction of a true Utopia.

Still, there's that "Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" business. Most persons of high intelligence wouldn't sacrifice it for anything, not even a greatly prolonged, blissfully happy life. In part, it's because high intelligence enables the owner to imagine and pursue fulfillments inaccessible to the less gifted. In even larger part, it's because the esteem generally attached to intellectual power greatly stokes one's self-regard.

High intelligence is a tool that can work many wonders. We owe much of our comfort and security to the insights of a few dozen geniuses. But that doesn't make a genius suitable for a position only a dullard can fit.

---

Just this morning, your Curmudgeon stumbled upon the following at co-conspirator Travis Corcoran's site:

NZC: Didn’t Spitzer want to be president someday? So, that’s totally in the toilet.

TJIC: One American disqualified for the office…only 299,999,999 more to go!

NZC: And you’re allowed to say that, because you’re leading from the front - you’ve totally disqualified yourself a dozen times over.

TJIC: Yeah, that whole “dig up the corpse of FDR, and then !@#% in his skull” blogging topic would totally come back to bite me in the primaries.

NZC: Indeed!

TJIC: …unless I ran as a Libertarian…

It was good for a chuckle, but your Curmudgeon sincerely hopes that Travis is aware that his high intelligence disqualifies him from any and all public offices.

What's that you say? You want very intelligent people in government? You, sir, are a hazard to the body politic. What on Earth are you doing at Eternity Road? Don't you know what sort of mischief smart people get up to when entrusted with power? Didn't we get enough of a demonstration from the Clintons? Do you really want a reprise of that disaster?

No. No smart people in office. Please! Smart people are too good at reinterpreting their marching orders and rationalizing their way around moral or Constitutional constraints on their authority. If any of the Founding Fathers was a genius, Thomas Jefferson was -- yet he, most libertarian of them all, violated the Constitution's constraints on federal power several times in his first term of office. He rationalized his transgressions as "necessary" and "practical." So highly did Congress, and the people generally, think of him that he always carried the day.

High intelligence is almost always accompanied by a high opinion of oneself. He who thinks that well of himself is all too easily led to see himself as above the rules that bind others. If you were looking for a capsule summary of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, you have it now.

What Americans should seek in their public officials is men who can understand the duties and limitations of their offices, and will cleave to them unswervingly. This demands a routinier, an "organization man," a dullard. It's not the right billet for a genius. Very bright people chafe at taking orders, even from brighter, more knowledgeable people; they're always looking for an angle, a way to finesse their way out of doing what they've been told.

The duties of an elected official are spelled out in either the Constitution of the United States, or some similar charter subordinate to it. The powers that attach to whatever government his office pertains to are spelled out in a similar fashion, albeit not always with the degree of specificity a libertarian-conservative would like. If those rules and constraints are seriously meant, then we don't want our officeholders looking for ways to chisel around the edges. We want good, solid dullards, schooled from the Bible and the handle of a broom, who'll do as they're told, without the slightest trace of creativity.

We don't often get such men, these days.

---

The word "intellectual" has acquired an unsavory connotation these past few decades. It deserves that connotation rather more than not. Intellectuals in the corridors of power, rich in self-regard and flushed with ambition to leave their footprints upon history, have wreaked great harm upon American liberty and our Constitutional order. But we were foolish enough to admit them, so the blame lies at least as much on us.

Restoring the original Constitutional compact has proved dauntingly difficult. Once government opens niches for men of intellect, those niches prove damnably difficult to close. There's always an argument for genius in the power seat, usually that it's necessary if we're ever to undo the damage wrought by prior geniuses. Even when it's tragically wrong, it can be too seductive to resist.

But an intellectual's duty is to resist. If the word "duty" has an objective meaning, a man of genius should feel a duty to move toward those fields where his gifts will bring good to the world, rather than to a post where others will have to pay for his mistakes. For even geniuses make mistakes. Indeed, they make more of them, and more rapidly, than persons of average attainments.

Sadly, in our current milieu, wherein the achievements of an Edison or a Tesla are reckoned as grubby commerce while "high office" earns the highest of plaudits, too many bright fellows are drawn toward the profession of politics. But power doesn't merely corrupt; it attracts the already corrupt and corruptible. Thus, it's in the nature of political power that those with the weakest morals will be the most successful.

This is not the time or place for the exploration of so perverse a situation; among other things, your Curmudgeon hasn't yet had enough to drink. Suffice it to say that we've created incentives that divert high intelligence away from its proper applications -- science, commerce, and philosophy -- and into the quest for power over others. Those incentives are self-reinforcing; they can only be unmade by the creation of even stronger counter-incentives, at whose nature we cannot yet guess. For the present, due to the excessive adulation of the hoi polloi for the conspicuously gifted, we're doomed to be ruled by persons of low morality protected by high intellect. It's the worst situation we could have contrived for ourselves.

To young Americans seeking a suitable course in life:

• If you're smart, go into business.
• If you're very smart, go into the sciences.
• If you're not smart, but were properly raised and can follow clear, simple directions, there may be a spot for you in government.
• If you're a Certified Galactic Intellect...how about a nice game of chess?

---

[Having reread and reflected on the above -- hey, what do you do at 4:00 AM when the pains, the dogs, and the late-night traffic won't let you sleep? -- it occurs to me that a review of our recent, supposedly smart chief executives is in order:

• Woodrow Wilson: World War I, huge expansion of the federal government, the income tax, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Amendments.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: The "Brain Trust," a thirteen-year economic contraction, World War II, the destruction of the Constitution's restraints on the federal government.
• John F. Kennedy: The Bay of Pigs, hot and cold running prostitutes, and the elevation of the detestable, wholly amoral Kennedy family to a kind of American aristocracy.
• Bill Clinton: Semen-stained dresses and bombed-out aspirin factories in Sudan.
• Barack Hussein Obama: Please!

Any questions?]