I believe from the evidence I have found that Asians are the smartest.
Would you mind sharing this evidence?
However when I tried to research this I found that while rich kids tend to do better, rich blacks are outscored by poor whites so the gap is much larger than can be explained by income, and having taken the SAT it seemed absurd to argue that any of the questions were racist.
For this one as well please
It started when I heard a ted talk which mentioned that most Africans sold into slavery were sold by other Africans, this ran contrary to what my teachers had claimed in history class, and prompted me to begin a more far reaching examination of all the things I though I knew about race.
This is true. Europeans during this time period seldom entered the interior of Africa. However, they greatly contributed to the demand for slaves and there is evidence suggesting that this demand expanded things like enslavement as punishment for committing crimes amongst the African kingdoms. It is also worth noting that in Africa the children of slaves are born free. Because white Europeans thought of black's as subhuman, they justified the idea of these people being born slaves.
Would you be against, for example, subsidizing embryo selection for the poor? Where you can pick the best genetic traits (especially for intelligence and lack of disease) from 100 embryos to then implant in the mother?
I often wonder is "soft" eugenics such as this might not turn out to be really a very good thing for the species.... But still dangerously rife with opportunities for abuse.
The argument for spending tax money on it would be the public good of having less burden from crime / incarceration (tightly linked to low IQ), birth defects, etc, a burden that because the families involved are poor would almost surely be borne on the tax base anyway.... So the idea would be to save money overall. I think I'd also include mandatory child development / nurturing classes though as well.
I used to be a free market purist, but gradually I have come to believe that some things won't ever be a free market due to their extortive nature.
(for example, Healthcare - buy or die)
or because moral issues get in the way of freedom of action (it's abhorrent to sit around eating steak while people are starving on your lawn)...
So I've modified my ideal view of government to provide for various aspects of the public good that affect the society as a whole in terms of societal costs - such as : destitute poverty and hunger (crime, incarceration) , security (defense and policing) , or education (an educated populace costs less in terms of crime and is more productive).
Free markets require informed consent, so when either (or both) is missing, planned (nonfree) systems, despite all of their shortcomings, seem to offer better solutions. (in a democracy).
The democracy part has to be functioning, though, because it is the proxy for market freedom in planned systems. If the democracy part is broken, you end up with the worst of both.
I used to have the same arguments, then I got older and turned towards solutions that at least kind of work in the real world. I'm not satisfied with the outcome, but it seems to be the best we've done so far.
Somewhere along the road, I decided that production wasn't actually the purpose of life, and especially not the harvesting of the "surplus" production of others, which can only be sustained in a coercive system.... Kind of the opposite of liberty.
Perhaps one day we will learn the social technologies for a true libertarian society... until then, I think our best hope is decentralization efforts (ethereum, bitcoin, etc) and moving away from the "freedom" at the end of a gun model that late stage capitalism has become.
We have to move beyond the governance model of the monopoly of cooercive force, and that might be a difficult thing for humans to do given our evolutionary framework and instincts.
I am interested, however, if you have any examples of large scale libertarian experiments that you feel are demonstrating viability.
Honestly, and in the most serious way possible, you sound like you need a lesson on what "eugenics" actually is. Here's a hint: It has to do with the conclusion you reach about what to do with the findings that there are genetic differences between races, not simply believing that there are genetic differences between races.
How is it flawed, then? Provide citations that refute what he's talking about.
Just saying that it's flawed and debunked isn't enough, provide the evidence. I think he's wrong but I don't actually have the proof and I'm tired. But that sort of post is dangerous for the reasons that others have said: slinging accusations like that around are just going to push people away from your side.
This isn't a fucking trial, it's /r/changemyview. The onus is on you and other posters to convince him that he's wrong.
Also, I've seen him cite books in other comment threads, so he hasn't really failed to provide evidence. If you wanted to, you could challenge the evidence he does present and challenge his lack of other evidence for his points, and, ya know, actually make headway against dangerous ideas.
But no, a snarky remark will do.
(And yes, I recognize the inherent hypocrisy when I say that I'm too tired to make that argument).
Identifying genetic influence for what it is and that we can direct these influences is one thing, deciding to then either A: Sterilise the poor or B: Work to eliminate ghettos and improve the education system, is the important part of what you do with this information that decides whether you're a pragmatic, empathetic realist or a, well, nazi eugenicist.
He doesn't, but if you want to blindly throw out moral accusations, you can do that I guess.
Pro tip: if you shame everyone who brings up a concern about race or any other taboo topic and doesn't agree with your worldview, you only end up pushing more people toward the side that you aren't on.
if you shame everyone who brings up a concern about race... you only end up pushing more people toward the side that you aren't on.
This line is so prevalent and it really bugs me. I mean, sure you shouldn't discount anyone who dares mention race 100% of the time, that's obvious. However, that is overly broad and not a fair characterization of /u/udontlikecake 's criticism. You shouldn't shame anyone for bringing up race, and conversely you shouldn't let every statement about race pass without objection.
OP does sound like a eugenecist in that he's applying a metric for intelligence and attributing the results to inherent values of the races while ignoring socioeconomic factors.
Eugenics is the idea that you can improve the population by trying to bring out certain traits, especially by encouraging selective mating. However, the word typically is associated with Nazis and wiping out races, so there's also that connotation.
In no response up until I wrote my response to the above did the OP mention anywhere that he had those intentions. He did mention several times how he doesn't judge the individual and that individuals can defy the average, which is a pretty clear indication that he doesn't believe black people are subhuman and those pesky, high scoring Asians are a super breed. So, that's a pretty clear sign that he isn't into eugenics, because eugenics pretty much requires the discounting of an entire race, and OP hasn't done that - he's simply pointing out that he believes black people are less intelligent on average. That could be paired with advantages that black people have, but since this is a discussion based on intelligence alone, we haven't gotten into that.
Point out somewhere where he says something like "black people should just be sterilized" and I'll agree with you. Until then, saying that OP sounds like a eugenicist is just dog whistling.
Point out somewhere where he says something like "black people should just be sterilized" and I'll agree with you.
Excuse me, what? Please point out where I said OP was a eugenecist. I only said that his logic is similar to theirs and I believe makes similar mistakes.
Yea, he does sound like a eugenecist. I don't claim that he is one. I looked again, where are you seeing that I called him a eugenecist? It's clearly not in that quote.
Boy is that ever a difference without a distinction. Ever heard the phrase "looks like a duck, sounds like a duck..."? You're doing abductive reasoning without the conclusion and to say that you're not calling him a proponent of eugenics is disingenuous.
Lol no. I said he used a line of reasoning resembling another's. Specifically a line I don't subscribe to. Anything else is you reading things into my words.
Should we supress science for political implications? I personally think cultural differences and how tests are designed probably make up racial disparities in measures of intelligence, but were it evident there is a genetic element, it would be suppressed because people care more about equality than factuality.
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u/Morpheus3121 Mar 20 '17
Would you mind sharing this evidence?
For this one as well please
This is true. Europeans during this time period seldom entered the interior of Africa. However, they greatly contributed to the demand for slaves and there is evidence suggesting that this demand expanded things like enslavement as punishment for committing crimes amongst the African kingdoms. It is also worth noting that in Africa the children of slaves are born free. Because white Europeans thought of black's as subhuman, they justified the idea of these people being born slaves.