James Watson's Ordeal & The Left Control Of Discourse.

On Oct 26, 9:45 pm, "127.0.0.1" wrote:
James Watson's Ordeal

October 24, 2007

James Watson's embrace of racial differences in intelligence once again
shows the undiminished power of the left to control public discourse on
critical issues related to diversity and multiculturalism. When Richard
Herrnstein and Charles Murray published The Bell Curve in 1994, it was
greeted with a great sense of anticipation in some circles that at last
issues related to race and IQ could be discussed openly and honestly.
Finally, a book had been published by a mainstream publisher that dared
to argue that not only were there racial differences in intelligence,
but also that it was reasonable to suppose that these differences were
partly due to inheritance.

But it never happened. One has to look long and hard to find mainstream
media accounts of race differences in academic success that even
propose genetic differences as a reasonable hypothesis. For example,
recent state reports on school success have emphasized that economic
differences do not explain the racial gap in school success. One would
think that the failure of the favorite explanation of the cultural left
would prompt reasonable people to at least suggest at least the
possibility that genetic differences are involved. But that explanation
is utterly taboo in the mainstream media.

Below the surface, however, in the labyrinths of academia, The Bell
Curve has had an impact. Many new researchers are now studying general
intelligence. Even the US military and much work in
industrial-organizational psychology is taking the importance of "g,"
the general factor of mental ability, into account.

Admittedly, the topic of race differences is still highly
controversial. Nonetheless, even here there are real signs of progress.
For example, an entire issue of the top-drawer American Psychological
Association journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law was devoted to a
review of Black-White IQ differences by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur
Jensen. Their paper (in 2005) entitled "Thirty years of research on
race differences in cognitive ability" concluded that Black-White
differences were between 50 and 80 percent heritable. Most recently,
Rushton and his colleagues published two studies in a paper in the July
2007 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London showing that the East
Asian-European-South Asian-Colored-Black differences, mainly in South
Africa, were substantially heritable.

However, these positive indications have not yet percolated up into the
mainstream media. Watson was in some ways an ideal person to express
his views on the topic and bring this material into the light of day.
At 79 years old, he has little tangible to lose. He is a world-renowned
figure with the sort of stature that can only come from making one of
the central discoveries of 20th-century science. He is also a biologist
with a professional understanding of genetic influences on behavior.
Gene/behavior linkages are a major research interest of the Cold
Springs Harbor Laboratory that he led until being suspended because of
his comments on African intelligence. Watson also has a deep personal
interest in genetic influences on behavior because his son has
schizophrenia.

Of course, the egalitarians are free to have as much of their say as
they like, no matter how nonsensical. A good example is Steven Rose, an
old-time warrior in the IQ wars who is mentioned several times in Ch. 2
of The Culture of Critique. He not only condemns Watson for expressing
his opinion, but is quite happy to see that Watson's life has been
upended, stating that "the repercussions are to be welcomed." At least
that far-left ideologue was honest enough to say he didn't believe in
free speech for scientists. Stalinism lives! Perhaps Watson deserves a
long prison term in a psychiatric hospital.

It's noteworthy that Watson has not caved in on the general point that
natural selection may result in differences between human groups. He
has defended himself by rejecting any implication that the entire
continent of Africa is "genetically inferior" while nevertheless writing

We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different
environments in the world have selected over time the genes which
determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire
of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a
universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this
to be the case is not enough. This is not science.

Watson believes that in 10-15 years we will get "an adequate
understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in
the achievement of important human objectives."

So is the clock ticking for the cultural left? Are we about to enter an
age in which it will impossible to deny genetic differences on
intelligence and we will be able to rationally discuss race differences
in intelligence in the mainstream media? I think not. The cultural left
has a long and largely successful history of being able to combat
scientific ideas that it doesn't like. This was the main conclusion of
The Culture of Critique: The long and sorry history of Boasian
anthropology, psychoanalysis, the anti-hereditarian and anti-Darwinian
movements in the social sciences, and the Frankfurt School all
masqueraded as science but they also wore their politics on their
sleeves. Like other political movements, dissenters were simply
excluded - drummed out of professional societies, publically
humiliated, and relegated to the fringes of intellectual life.

It's a tradition that is alive and well in the 21st century. Watson has
seen his book tour cancelled, he has been suspended from his position
at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and has been subjected to outraged
moralism from people who can't hold a candle to his intellectual
stature. And all for expressing his professional opinion on how the
blind hand of natural selection may have operated to make people
different.http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Blog.htm

The nature of the substrate doesn't matter as long as each node
(person/machine) is capable of telecommunication. See any writeup on
the Global Brain.

Note: The author of this message requested that it not be archived.
This message will be removed from Groups in 6 days (Nov 2, 9:45 pm).

Actually, he changed his mind and requested that it be archived for
1E9 years so that Little Alvin, in Diaspar, can study it.