Quote of the Day

Charles Murray, quoting himself and Richard Herrnstein from The Bell Curve:

In sum: If tomorrow you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the cognitive differences between races were 100 percent genetic in origin, nothing of any significance should change. The knowledge would give you no reason to treat individuals differently than if ethnic differences were 100 percent environmental. By the same token, knowing that the differences are 100 percent environmental in origin would not suggest a single program or policy that is not already being tried. It would justify no optimism about the time it will take to narrow the existing gaps. It would not even justify confidence that genetically based differences will not be upon us within a few generations. The impulse to think that environmental sources of difference are less threatening than genetic ones is natural but illusory.
 
In any case, you are not going to learn tomorrow that all the cognitive differences between races are 100 percent genetic in origin, because the scientific state of knowledge, unfinished as it is, already gives ample evidence that environment is part of the story. But the evidence eventually may become unequivocal that genes are also part of the story. We are worried that the elite wisdom on this issue, for years almost hysterically in denial about that possibility, will snap too far in the other direction. It is possible to face all the facts on ethnic and race differences on intelligence and not run screaming from the room. That is the essential message [pp. 314-315].

4 thoughts on “Quote of the Day”

  1. Note that Charles Murray was drummed out of polite society for publishing his research. Similar things, of course, happen to those scientists who challenge the climate change party line. I’ll add that it was recently revealed in a Senate hearing that Obama’s Department of Justice’ – there’s a contradiction in terms if there ever was one – recently explored RICO charges against climate change deniers.

    From Wiki:
    Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government’s invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as “thoughtcrime.”

  2. Surprisingly, Norwegian TV ran an episode on Murray and other “bad thinkers” in a program called “Brainwashed.” You can see Murray making the same points in his interview. You still have to endure a creepy liberal posturing and defense of creepy liberal society, but at least the bad thinkers are getting a broader audience. You can decide for yourself which side comes out the better.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve6uK00AvNo

  3. As to there being no policy implications of differences in average cognitive levels betwen human populations – Mexican-Americans average IQ is more than half a standard deviation below that of US whites. The Hispanics of New Mexico who have been US citizens for seven generations continue to lag substantially behind whites and New Mexico has very low results on standardized tests of educational aptitude. Certainly this suggests that unrestricted immigration from Mexico to the US is likely to cause US economic performance to decline relative to our competitors.

  4. ” US economic performance to decline relative to our competitors.”

    Yes, but they are reliable Democrat votes.

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