Survival is Not Politically Correct -- It May Even Be Illegal

Adapted from an article previously published on Al Fin, the Next Level

“The BBC offers this advice for anyone in Britain who is attacked on the street: You are permitted to protect yourself with a briefcase, a handbag, or keys. You should shout ‘Call the Police’ rather than ‘Help.’ Bystanders are not to help. They have been taught to leave such matters to the professionals. If you manage to knock your attacker down, you must not hit him again or you risk being charged with assault.” _Gun Tutor

Humans of the advanced world have entered a brave and dangerous new phase of existence. We are moving through a stage where it is politically incorrect -- and sometimes illegal -- to protect oneself and one's family in order to survive a growing range of threats which one is not supposed to be aware of, much less mention in polite company.

Nevertheless, if you want to play through to the next level, you must survive this phase of existence with enough resources and in good enough condition to proceed to the next phase.

For those who are raising children, this point cannot be made strongly enough. Your children need to be raised to be dangerous. Competent, yes. Highly skilled, yes. Technologically savvy, yes. And very, very, dangerous.

But where do children go to learn skills of survival, teamwork, discipline in dangerous settings, calmness under fire, etc. in the modern hyper-feminised politically correct world? That is a very good question (but be careful where you ask it).

There is a national program in the US that is called the Young Marines, which should give program designers some useful ideas. The Young Marines is open to boys and girls from the age of 8 all the way through the high school years. The organisation provides summer camp and a wide range of training programs, including community service.

Several ranks and awards are available throughout the course of training -- similar to the Boy Scouts' ranks and badges. Here is a list of skills and goals for the most basic level of Young Marines:

• Drill movements, including march, halt, fall-in and fall-out of ranks, positions of attention, parade rest, at ease and rest
• Execution of column movements, saluting, and facing movements
• Uniform regulations
• Grooming and personal appearance standards
• Rank structure of the Young Marines
• Military customs and courtesies
• Practicing Formation
• Young Marine history
• Military terms and jargon
• Outdoor tools safety
• Assembling survival kits
• Stove & lantern safety
• Constructing a shelter
• Knot tying
• Lighting fires
• Reading of maps
• Signs on topographical maps
• Orient a map without the use of a compass
• Introduction to the compass.
• Drug Resistance
• Basic elements of speech preparation
• Duties of both a team member and team leader
• Duties of a Young Marine Flag Bearer
• Duties of fire watch
• Responsibilities of US citizens
• History of the US flag
• Components of physical fitness
• Developing personal physical fitness plans
• Tips on healthy eating
• Basic first aid techniques
• In order to proceed to Junior ranks, each Young Marine must perform 50 hours of community service

_Basic Rank Skills & Goals

Information on Ranks and Rank Advancement

The Young Marines programs should be seen as idea generators for most parents, since such programs will not be available everywhere -- and will not necessarily be exactly what many parents are looking for regardless.

But many children will learn important skills of survival, group cohesion and support, and self-discipline, when training with other children of various skills levels but with a generally unified intention to succeed and excel.

The various curricula which we have discussed in connection with dangerous child training have had little to do with military tactical or strategic thought or training. And yet, a well-rounded dangerous child should know something about military tactics -- if only to understand how to avoid being caught up in a combat situation.

For some communities that wish to establish a certain degree of independence from potentially dangerous and aggressive outside groups, a more intimate knowledge of small unit tactics, and infantry weapons may become important to acquire.

Under the US constitution, the right of individuals and communities to organise militias and to bear arms is guaranteed in the second amendment. Up to this point, very few US communities and regions have taken advantage of their constitutional rights to organise such small fighting units.

But as the US moves more deeply into its paradoxical and surreal world of politically correct denial in the face of growing and deadly threats inside the homeland itself, even a "conspiracy of silence" on the part of government, academia, and popular news media outlets will not stop a growing trend toward organised self-defense.

It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

Basic small unit tactics (PDF)

Out of control third world violence may be coming to a city near you

One of many potential threats

Brave New World of Scientism: Stakes are High, Cheating is Rampant

What is scientism? Scientism is an attempt to elevate science to the level of a final arbiter on all questions of human life: Science as a replacement for philosophy, religion -- even a replacement for "God and the gods" -- in the new secular age.

The temptation to overreach... seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects.

Of course, from the very beginning of the modern scientific enterprise, there have been scientists and philosophers who have been so impressed with the ability of the natural sciences to advance knowledge that they have asserted that these sciences are the only valid way of seeking knowledge in any field. A forthright expression of this viewpoint has been made by the chemist Peter Atkins, who in his 1995 essay “Science as Truth” asserts the “universal competence” of science. This position has been called scientism — a term that was originally intended to be pejorative but has been claimed as a badge of honor by some of its most vocal proponents. In their 2007 book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, for example, philosophers James Ladyman, Don Ross, and David Spurrett go so far as to entitle a chapter “In Defense of Scientism.”

_NewAtlantis

Scientism began as a joke and an insult, but it is now being accepted as valid not only by both the gullible general public and professional laity, but also by scientists themselves.

This "elevation of scientists to godhood" provides many of the more public scientists with a great deal of self-esteem and even arrogance. This is most easily seen in areas of science that are most publicly exposed, such as climate change science. But it can also be seen in social sciences, biomedical sciences, and even in some of the harder sciences.

When stakes are high -- scientific prizes, book sales, speaking engagements, political influence, fame and popular adulation etc. -- cheating grows more common. Fortunately, there are still a few scientists who are willing to fact check their colleages, and call them to account if their claims are not supportable by valid real world data.

Uri Simonsohn, a research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, did not set out to be a vigilante...

...Simonsohn does not look like a vigilante—or, for that matter, like a business-school professor: at 37, in his jeans, T-shirt, and Keen-style water sandals, he might be mistaken for a grad student. And yet he is anything but laid-back. He is, on the contrary, seized by the conviction that science is beset by sloppy statistical maneuvering and, in some cases, outright fraud. He has therefore been moonlighting as a fraud-buster, developing techniques to help detect doctored data in other people’s research. Already, in the space of less than a year, he has blown up two colleagues’ careers. (In a third instance, he feels sure fraud occurred, but he hasn’t yet nailed down the case.) In so doing, he hopes to keep social psychology from falling into disrepute. _The Data Vigilante

A recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that since 1973, nearly a thousand biomedical papers have been retracted because someone cheated the system. That's a massive 67% of all biomedical retractions. And the situation is getting worse - last year, Nature reported that the rise in retraction rates has overtaken the rise in the number of papers being published.

The peer-review process needs to be overhauled. Currently, it happens behind closed doors, with anonymous reviews only seen by journal editors and manuscript authors. This means we have no real idea how effective peer review is – though we know it can easily be gamed. Extreme examples of fake reviewers, fake journal articles, and even fake journals have been uncovered.

More often, shoddy science and dodgy statistics are accepted for publication by reviewers with inadequate levels of expertise. Peer review must become more transparent. _Guardian

Celebrity scientists can achieve undreamed of wealth, fame, and power to control science funding and thus the scientific agenda itself. It is no wonder that cheating has become prevalent within the system itself -- all the way to the top, including government funding agencies and funding foundations. The politically connected sciences -- such as climate science and gender psychology -- may be among the worst offenders, but the problem is certainly not limited to the highly politicised sciences.

The problem is global. Retracted papers were written in more than 50 countries, with most of the fraud or suspected fraud occurring in the United States, Germany, Japan and China. The problem may even be greater than the new estimates suggest, the authors say, because many journals don’t explain why an article was retracted — a failure that calls out for uniform guidelines. _NYT

Science Fraud.org

Climate Audit.org

Fraud Endemic in China's Science Establishment

Unfortunately, much of science has been taken over by vested interests, which have achieved de facto control of science publishing in those fields -- not only via the review process, but also by having taken over editing positions within the journals themselves. In climate science, insiders even have the power to force editors of journals to step down if the editors publish articles which violate the pact of groupthink underlying much of modern climate science.

What are these high stakes? The political applications of findings in climate science alone could lead to many $trillions in redistribution funds tranferred from the first world to the third and emerging worlds -- funneled through agencies of the UN including the IPCC. High stakes indeed.

In other politically connected sciences, hundreds of billions of dollars -- as well as much power -- depend upon research findings, which are filtered through the evolving system of "peer review" and selective funding and publishing.

It is not just science which has been corrupted by groupthink PC politics, of course. But when science has been elevated to "scientism," or quasi-godhood, the stakes are high indeed. The temptation and potential rewards for professional grifters has never been greater.

London Celebrates the Joy of Multiculturalism

More: Multicultural celebrations spread throughout London as well as Birmingham as festivities extend into their third day

Extensive photographic coverage and more

Holiday Atmosphere at Multicultural London Festivities
A multicultural society must open its heart to the diversity of celebratory behaviours and fun-seeking activities which different cultures tend to embrace. London exemplifies this appreciation of multiculturalism, as it continues to experience impromptu celebrations of diversity spreading out from Tottenham to other parts of the city. In this new age of ubiquitous social media, celebrations are apt to expand rapidly.

The UK is not the only modern developed nation which has whole-heartedly embraced multiculturalism, of course. We should expect the same type of joyous celebration, pictured above, to spread almost everywhere that multiculturalism has found a home.

Blogger Dennis Mangan has followed the festivities in London, and similar recent celebrations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There truly is no way to escape these happy festivals if one lives in the heart of a multicultural zone -- and in today's modern world, who doesn't? The best response is to go with the current and let your inner multiculturalist emerge. In today's political climate, resistance is futile.

Everyone is looking forward to the upcoming Notting Hill Carnival, the end of this month. Celebrate multiculturalism. We are all Londoners now.

Social Sciences in US a Hotbed of Politically Correct Bias?

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” _NYT

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt spoke at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference last month. Professor Haidt mad a lot of waves when he came right out and called the US social sciences bigoted and quasi-religious in its biases and dogmatisms. Will Haidt become the next target of hate for having spoken his mind honestly? More about Haidt's talk:

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.” _NYT

Unfortunately this is a widespread phenomenon in the humanities and social sciences faculties, and in administrative staffing at universities. To the victor go the spoils. In this case what is being spoiled are the futures of students and entire societies.

Higher education in the US is overpriced and of decreasing quality. As faulty assumptions get incorporated into mainstream academic thought -- and into the thinking of research funding institutions -- the outcome of multi-billions of dollars worth of scholarship and research comes into question.

Affirmative action for libertarians, conservatives, and white males is not the answer. The answer is a complete housecleaning in higher education staffing and research funding to get rid of the ideologues and riff-raff who have managed to clog the system. Such a housecleaning of personnel is necessary at all levels, from K-12 to the highest levels of education. The stink of bigotry, indoctrination, and dogma throughout the educational system is too great to ignore any longer.

Jonathan Haidt's TED Talks page

More: The same phenomenon has been observed among economics professors as well
H/T Powerline

On Not Knowing What the Frack You are Talking About

Those of us who wish to break through to the next level of human existence, are going to have to learn to love uncertainty (via Bishop Hill). The science correspondent of The Guardian looks at some answers to the latest Edge question:

Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Aix-Marseille, emphasised the uselessness of certainty. He said that the idea of something being "scientifically proven" was practically an oxymoron and that the very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.

"A good scientist is never 'certain'. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability."

...Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Bits and Atoms wants everyone to know that "truth" is just a model. "The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't – they make and test models," he said.

"Building models is very different from proclaiming truths. It's a never-ending process of discovery and refinement, not a war to win or destination to reach. Uncertainty is intrinsic to the process of finding out what you don't know, not a weakness to avoid. Bugs are features – violations of expectations are opportunities to refine them. And decisions are made by evaluating what works better, not by invoking received wisdom." _Guardian_via_BishopHill

The mind naturally hates uncertainty. If we do not know what is to happen, we cannot plan for it, and are at the mercy of "the fates."

The basic idea is simple. It is that to perceive the world is to successfully predict our own sensory states. The brain uses stored knowledge about the structure of the world and the probabilities of one state or event following another to generate a prediction of what the current state is likely to be, given the previous one and this body of knowledge. Mismatches between the prediction and the received signal generate error signals that nuance the prediction or (in more extreme cases) drive learning and plasticity. _AndyClark

Of course it is one thing to embrace uncertainty and accept humility. It is quite another to pretend to embrace uncertainty, then to tell everyone to shut the fuck up because you understand what is going on better than anyone else does. That is what several of the commenters at the Edge site appeared to be doing.
True science does not attempt to limit what models can be tested by which experiment. True science does not limit the nature of models which can be entertained and played with. True science does not play down the massive uncertainty within its boundaries so as to influence public policy on a massive scale -- for its own financial benefit and increase in prestige.

This is what we are dealing with in modern climate science -- and in a wide range of other sciences which have attracted the attention of politically ambitious scientists, politicians, and bureaucratic administrators. The quest to build better models -- falsifiable models which can be ruthlessly tested by experiment -- is being hampered and biased by political and ideological concerns. Even at more "enlightened" websites such as Edge.org you can see the underlying corrupting influence of politics.

That is why science is escaping the bounds that "scientists", science bureaucrats, science journalists, science publishers, politicians, political lobbyists on scientific issues, and other supposed gatekeepers of science are trying to maintain. The tools of experimentation are escaping into the public domain, with all the attendant risks and opportunities which that entails.

Scientists are also politicians, at least within their own little realm. Some of them actually sell themselves to "the dark side" and attempt to practise politics on a grander scale. If a scientist lacks humility in his public pronouncements and policy recommendations, he is not practising true science, but is practising politics.

Until we can quantify the uncertainty in our statements and our predictions, we have little idea of their power or significance. So too in the public sphere. Public policy performed in the absence of understanding quantitative uncertainties, or even understanding the difficulty of obtaining reliable estimates of uncertainties usually means bad public policy. _LawrenceKrauss

All models are metaphors and all metaphors are man-made. The greatest danger in financial modeling and the modeling of all human activities is therefore the age-old sin of idolatry. Financial markets are alive but a metaphor is a limited human work of art, entrancing perhaps, but inanimate. To confuse the model with the world is to embrace a potential future disaster. All metaphors have their limits. _EmanuelDerman PDF

Emanuel Derman Map of Emotions PDF
Humans are not programmed for rationality, except insofar as finding the next meal, or a relatively warm, dry, and safe place to sleep are measures of rationality. The lofty world of grand scientific ideals and integrities is more of a convenient fiction to justify academic and research budgets. The reality is more one of roiling emotions and jostling egos of unbridled ambition and jealousy.

Politicians of all stripes want to project an image of invincibility and absolute certainty. Journalists, speechwriters, and public relations hacks assist them toward that end. Scientists -- by keeping their mouths shut about how little they themselves know -- also assist the politicians (at all levels) toward their petty, venal ends.

One of the happy exceptions among scientists is Freeman Dyson.

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. _Dyson

But if your paycheck depends upon wrangling a grant from a government that is down to writing IOUs, you want to project a degree of certainty and a crucial pivotal nature within your research, which you cannot actually know or prove. You probably don't even believe it yourself, deep down, but bills must be paid, kids must be raised, appearances must be kept up....

The enormous academic, political, and journalistic house of cards which exists to bamboozle the public into believing that the ruling and credentialed class knows what it is doing, cannot last forever. It is already crumbling about the edges and showing deepening cracks in its infrastructure.

What should you do about it? Learn to embrace skepticism toward the proclamations of would-be authority, and adopt a robust system of planning in your personal life. Things do not typically turn out the way we expect. Learn to deal with a healthy measure of uncertainty and unpredictability.

And keep your powder dry, you just may need to use it.

Burning Down the House

Source
Americans are living in amazing times. Living under what is nominally a "constitutional republic", they find themselves bumping into limitations and restrictions more likely to arise within a hereditary monarchy or a totalitarian state ruled by a party elite. What is going on?

Professor Anthony Codevilla is a student of government and international affairs who has become quite aware of this phenomenon. He goes so far as to paint a brief portrait of America's Ruling Class, and publish it! That struck me as an act of extreme courage for an academic, until I saw that Professor Codevilla was actually Professor Emeritus Codevilla. He is relatively safe from their vengeance, then, perhaps.

Few will be satisfied by such a brief and teasing look at America's new royalty. They will want a more detailed examination of this phenomenon, and what it may portend. Thomas Sowell in Intellectuals and Society, provides a well-fortified survey of these well connected, often behind-the-scenes lever pullers. According the Sowell, the thing that distinguishes ruling intellectuals from the subservient citizenry, is that intellectuals are not generally held accountable for being wrong. Think about that in the context of real tenure, and tenure that comes from being a "made" member of the group.

Paul Johnson in his Intellectuals, provides the necessary historical and brief philosophical introduction to this central phenomenon of modern public life. Reading the historical portraits of famous paradigm shifting intellectuals provides as many examples of Sowell's "distinction" as one might want.

To understand how a group of well-connected dunderheads could pull off something as audacious as Sowell and Codevilla suggest, take a look at media insider Bernard Goldberg's Arrogance. As I read the continuing saga of the Journolist insiders, I cannot help but recall the many incidents of similar collusion related in Goldberg's book.

Trying to pinpoint an exact date when Americans rolled over and accepted a ruling class of pompous but numbskulled intellectuals within government, media, academia, the judiciary, etc. is futile. From before the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, agents of the old world of authoritarianism were at work chipping away at the ideas that underlay the thinking of the American founders.

But undeniably, they hold the reins firmly in their grips for now. But as I may have mentioned, this ruling class is quite stupid, despite the broad areas that it controls. The seeds of its destruction -- the impending burning down of the royal house -- is inextricably contained within the stupidity of its policies. That, of course, is the fatal flaw for any intellectual. When they finally achieve absolute power and are forced to put their ideas into action. Without having had any experience contending with the unforgiving hand of reality before this point, the ruling class stands helpless before the cascading failures of its ill-founded ideas and prescriptions.

Blaming predecessors and stowaways from the old regime might work in holding off the angry victims-cum-arsonists for a brief time. But eventually, the inner nature of this ruling class will burst forth in the revealing flames of self-immolation.

All we have to do is to learn to take care of ourselves throughout what is going to happen next. The ruling class is going find the appeal of burning down the house themselves to be beyond their powers to resist.

Intellectuals are not meant to rule. They are critics and revolutionaries, not competent leaders. Which does not make the coming pain and hardship any easier to endure. But if you are the type who wants to understand why things have become ten times harder than they needed to be, take a good look at America's ruling class, and how they came to be.

Black-White Test Score Gap

"The Black White Test Score Gap: An Introduction" by Jencks and Phillips is a book length look at the problem.

African Americans currently score lower than European Americans on vocabulary, reading, and mathematics tests as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence...the typical American black still scores below 75% of American whites on most standardized tests. __TBWTSG Chapter1

Nothing perpetuates the racial divide within societies so much as the "achievement gap." It begins early, and persists--even widens--throughout the lifetime. Despite society's best efforts to narrow the racial test score gap, it persists.

It is well documented that scores on cognitive tests taken by adolescents are predictive of future labor market outcomes, such as educational attainment and earnings.1 Even test scores at age seven have been shown to be correlated with measures of labor market success.2 These findings have led many researchers to assign a large role to "premarket factors" in explaining adult earnings inequality, where premarket factors are broadly interpreted to represent endowed ability, the effects of family background and the influence of schools. Premarket factors are also thought to be an important part of the explanation for racial disparities in test score performance.3 __(PDF) Source

Is it possible that tests are biased against some races, in favour of others?

The FDNY test was not the only test to show a gap. So did the SAT, GRE, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, bar exam, police exams, IQ test - every test of aptitude. All of them are supposed to be racist....All of them show about the same gap - what psychometrists call one standard deviation. And all of them show that Asians are about a third of a standard deviation above whites.

Consider how difficult it must be to maintain this gap year in and year out if it were not real, but the result of a conspiracy...Every year, the test makers must work to make that the gap remains the same - and not just one one test, but for everyone from children taking the SAT and AP exams to doctors taking medical boards.

At the same time, East Asians must score better than whites - again, always by the same margin. The White Racist Conspiracy allows Asians to score higher because… why is it again? If the tests are developed by whites, why are whites failing to score higher than East Asians?...To make sure that hundreds, maybe thousands, of different tests conform perfectly to each other in terms of racial/ethnic/gender averages, and achieve those unfair differences through racist cheating for dozens of years, we would expect that there would be a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of people over the generations since these tests were implemented.

Would it be racist to suggest that East Asians have higher IQ scores than whites? Would it be racist to say that Asians are better educated than whites? Would it be racist to say that Asians have significantly lower crime rates than whites? That they save more and waste less of their income than whites?...So why then is it racist to say all those things about whites as compared to blacks when all the tests and statistics show that these statements are factually accurate?

White people don’t break out in tears when they hear that they have lower IQ than Asians, on average of course. They do not feel that now they can’t go to school or that society is against them. They do not suffer low self-esteem as a result of knowing this fact. __Source

Researchers Charles Murray and James Flynn debated the question of whether the black-white gap is likely to every close. Here is the link for viewing the debate. H/T Reason

The test score gap has been persistent over the time period that aptitude testing has been commonplace. In Nazi Germany, IQ tests were outlawed when it was discovered that Jews were routinely outscoring Germans on measures of intelligence. Something similar has occurred in many institutions in North America.

But sweeping inconvenient data under the rug does not mean that the underlying phenomena no longer exists. That is the fallacy of Wikipedia censorship, and the censorship practised by Google in China. The phenomena are still there. All they accomplish by covering it up is to keep the masses of people clueless about the reality they are dealing with.

If there is ever to be a solution to problems of poverty, crime, civil disorder, lack of achievement, etc. that emanate from low IQ, humans must face problems squarely and study them intently. The long term aim is to raise the IQ of everyone, regardless of race and ethnicity. Many of the most severe problems facing humans today come from low achievement and poor problem solving. Low IQ and decadent culture both contribute to low achievement and poor problem-solving. Both of these lower level problems are likewise based upon problems even lower.

It is time to honestly get to the base of these problems so that we can open the way to a more widely participatory future, where human problems are solved rather than used as political hockey pucks.

Image Source

Addendum 20 April 08: The above posting takes no stand on the nature vs. nurture debate, regarding underlying causes for achievement and test score gaps between populations. Here is a brief, readable summary of both sides of the issue--nature and nurture.

For those drawn to more international comparisons, this Wiki article contains a table that gives comparisons of estimated average population IQ scores for 81 different countries.

Climate "Science"--Still Not Ready for Prime Time

Satellite data suggests that the tropospheric temperature anomaly may be inconsistent with the global surface temperature anomaly calculated from surface station temperature data.

Greenhouse theory states that CO2 exerts its effect high in the atmosphere--absorbing infrared emitted from the surface. If such atmospheric greenhouse absorption was truly the source of CAGW, why does the data not support the theory? Why the divergence between surface station data and satellite data?Some data seem to suggest that over the past 4 years much of the world's oceans have also stopped warming. Given the lack of data support for alarmist GCM models, you would think that the IPCC would encourage the exploration of alternative hypotheses--such as solar variation, alternative anthropogenic forcings, various negative feedback mechanisms affecting climate, etc.



I began as a climate skeptic questioning previously dominant "global cooling" scenarios. It seemed obvious to me that all the CO2 that humans were producing was bound to exert a warming affect on climate. Then, as the greenhouse theory of global warming heated up, I began to look more carefully at the actual quantities and multiple forcings and feedbacks involved. Although it was still obvious to me that humans were influencing some of the forcings involved in climate, it became clear that the human components of forcing could not possibly be the dominant component.

Then, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) became fashionable in the media, among scientific funding organisations, the UN etc. CAGW became the new politically correct dogma--the orthodoxy. Nothing raises my skeptical curiosity more than a dogmatic orthodoxy that tries to take over a branch of science. I began to wonder if there were any objective climatologists left? "Green science" had become PC science, and most of the grants for climate scientists were going toward the orthodox view.

The largest problem with "politically correct science" and "green science" is that they are not really science at all. They are the ideologically motivated suppression of any science that diverges from the "correct" conclusion or hypothesis. Unfortunately, realclimate.org never had a chance to be an objective science blog. From its very beginning, realclimate was forced to fight a rearguard defensive battle--motivated by a rather unscientific desire to protect status and grant funds earned by previous findings called into question by superior data analyses.

I am still looking for objective climate scientists. Steve McIntyre is certainly as objective as any human, but he is not a climate scientist, and does not have access to the big research money that the more PC "scientists" have. Roger Pielke Sr. is quite objective, and deserves wider readership. David Smith appears fairly objective. No doubt there are many more that I have yet to discover.

How the US Can Compete With China

China's economic juggernaut appears unstoppable, to the average eye. The US must work under far more stringent rules and regulations in doing business, than the Chinese. Perhaps the answer for the US is to export some of its ideological idiocracy to China, to even the scale.

There was good news in the April 1 New York Times Magazine, in an article by Ann Hulbert entitled “Re-education.” Hulbert describes the enthusiasm among Chinese for American-style education. She opens with the story of Harvard freshman Tang Meijie, an exceptional young woman from Shanghai who earned her way into Harvard by bucking the usual academic grind in China and focusing instead on extracurrriculars. Meijie is on our side: “There is something in the American educational system that helps America hold its position in the world.” Meijie’s goal is to bring American-style liberal education to China.

....Our master plan for dumbing-down Chinese education, however, is not just about atmospherics or theatrics. Let’s not forget: this is American educationism. And that means theory.

...Assured that the Long March of the Revolution will inexorably reach the Great Frivolity of American-style educationism, I can worry a little less about the coming Chinese hegemony.

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Along with US-style government education, the US should export its system of tort law along with a generous supply of trial lawyers to China. That would help even the score. Exporting a huge portion of feminist style affirmative action and political correctness would likewise cut the Chinese down to size. They would not know what had hit them! Sexual harassment lawsuits alone would destroy 90% of China's economic growth.

Clearly, the US has some secret weapons that would be very deadly to virtually any other economy in the world. If only the CIA could learn how to implant some of these "memes" into other economies and cultures, the US would have no competition at all for the next century or two!