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Donald Trump declares war on civil rights because "meritocracy" -------------------------------------------------- |
On page 7 of the Rutherford paper there is a reference to an evolutionary psychologist - you might say the king of evolutionary psychology - David Buss and two references to a racist, Gregory Clark:
A collection of about 15,000 English men’s wills from the sixteenth to the twentieth century showed a positive relationship between men’s income and net fertility in England, with the wealthiest individuals leaving nearly twice as many offspring as the poorest individuals (97, 98.) This was probably influenced by higher child mortality rates in lower-SES groups (98,99) and greater mating opportunities for higher-SES male individuals, as women tend to prefer men with more resources across cultures with different mating systems, different levels of gender equality and different religions (100.)
Reference 100 is to David Buss. It's important to know that the claim that "women tend to prefer men with more resources" comes from the evolutionary psychology belief that women are adapted by evolution to be more sexually aroused by men with 'more resources.'
This belief is most clearly demonstrated by Buss's claim about Turkmen women, described by David Buller in his book Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. The first paragraph is a quote, the next is Buller's commentary. (My highlights)
..in a well-documented study, the anthropologist William Irons found that, among the Turkmen of Persia, males in the wealthier half of the population left 75 percent more offspring than males in the poorer half of the population. Buss cites several studies like this as indicating that "high status in men leads directly to increased sexual access to a larger number of women," and he implies that this is due to the greater desirability of high-status men (David Buss 1999 "Evolutionary Psychology the New Science of the Mind").
But, among the Turkmen, women were sold by their families into marriage. The reason that higher-status males enjoyed greater reproductive success among the Turkmen is that they were able to buy wives earlier and more often than lower-status males. Other studies that clearly demonstrate a reproductive advantage for high-status males are also studies of societies or circumstances in which males "traded" in women. This isn't evidence that high-status males enjoy greater reproductive success because women find them more desirable. Indeed, it isn't evidence of female preference at all, just as the fact that many harem-holding despots produced remarkable numbers of offspring is no evidence of their desirability to women. It is only evidence that when men have power they will use it to promote their reproductive success, among other things (and that women, under such circumstances, will prefer entering a harem to suffering the dire consequences of refusal).
Clark also proudly declared himself an hereditarian in racist Quillette.
Charles Murray and "Crémieux" - revealed to be Jordan Lasker who writes for racist Aporia magazine - are big fans of Gregory Clark.
In his review of Clark's book "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World", economist Robert Solow writes (my highlight):
Clark infers that before the Industrial Revolution, there must have been a substantial amount of downward mobility from the higher-income groups. They could more than reproduce themselves, but they could not reproduce the same positions of status for all their offspring. Primogeniture would see to that; and in its absence, division of inheritances would have the same effect. Younger sons would have moved into somewhat lower strata of the English income distribution, not into poverty, of course, but below the very upper crust. Along with that inference goes the hypothesis that capacities and dispositions characteristic of upper-income groups became diffused into English society along with their bearers. Among these was the ability and willingness to respond to economic incentives. Clark writes: “Thus we may speculate that England’s advantage lay in the rapid cultural, and potentially also genetic, diffusion of the values of the economically successful throughout society in the years 1200–1800.”
Notice, by the way, that “and potentially also genetic.” It, or something like it, recurs throughout successive references by Clark to this key hypothesis. I have no idea whether pecuniary aptitudes and attitudes have a genetic basis or are simply passed on in family and social settings as acceptable norms of behavior. It does not matter a bit for Clark’s argument, but that is a reason to avoid insinuating a possible biological basis for this story without any evidence at all.
"Without any evidence at all" is the basis of hereditarian claims about genetic influence on human social hierarchies. All they have is speculation based on "correlations" none of which prove causation.
But that doesn't stop hereditarians from making bold claims anyway.
Oddly, Mr Clark judges the world to be “a much fairer place than we intuit.” He explains this by stating that the rich acquire their wealth because they are clever and work hard, and not because the system is rigged. The world is less corrupt and nepotistic than people might think.This conclusion gives the book a cheery tone, but there are also plenty of nasty conclusions to be drawn. One inescapable judgment is, as Mr Clark says, that “a completely meritocratic society would most likely also be one with limited social mobility.” He does not say that American blacks are poor because they are black. His work implies, however, that poor blacks remain so because they are descended from people with low social competence; discrimination is irrelevant, except to the extent that it limits intermarriage with other groups. “The Son Also Rises” may not be a racist book, but it certainly traffics in genetic determinism.That is a weakness. Mr Clark is too quick to write off the promise of recent social changes. The oldest Americans born after the passage of the Civil Rights Act are barely 50. Impressive work on the effect of good teaching or well-targeted poverty assistance suggest such programmes make a difference.
As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, bringing increased production, economic growth and social change, a modern, more merit-based socio-economic system began to emerge, transitioning to a new social order that could accommodate an ever-expanding population, while also increasing a visible underclass.
Compared with many pre-industrial socio-economic orders, merit-based hierarchies increase opportunities across the population, allocate talent more efficiently and stimulate progress through competition between people and between firms. The term ‘meritocracy’, however, was originally coined in a negative light in the 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young(24.) This book describes a dystopian future, in which meritocracy has led to a newly stratified society, replacing an aristocracy of birth by an aristocracy of talent, with a disenfranchised lower class of the less meritorious. If behaviours associated with merit (for example, intelligence, persistence and creative talent) are partly heritable, variation in genetics within families could still facilitate social mobility. The enduring accumulation of resources within families, however, could limit this mobility, gradually reverting meritocracy back towards an aristocracy of birth.
Since 1960, two new classes have formed in America that are fundamentally shifting the nature of the society: 1) A New Upper Class, larger than that which preceded it, that is the product of an cognitive meritocracy and increased returns on brains; and 2) a New Lower Class that is the product of—well, he never says....
I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism,
properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country's history and adds no understanding to any of today's societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.
Ezra Klein
James Flynn just said to me two days ago that it is consistent with the evidence that there is a genetic advantage or disadvantaged for African Americans. That it is entirely possible that the 10-point IQ difference we see reflects a 12-point environmental difference and a negative-two genetic difference.Sam Harris
Klein is pointing out that according to James Flynn, it is possible that the environment has been so hostile to Black Americans that it has reduced a two point Black genetic advantage over whites.Sure, sure, many things are possible. We’re trying to judge on what is plausible to say and, more important, I am worried about the social penalty for talking about these things, because, again, it will come back to us on things that we don’t expect, like the Neanderthal thing. That comes out of left field. Had it gone another way, all of a sudden we can’t talk about Neanderthal DNA anymore.
...a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
This is why genetics has played such an important role in the dismantling of a scientific justification of race and understanding racism itself. And it's why the latest statement from Trump's White House is troubling many in the scientific community.
Trump frequently speaks about aspects of genetics to make political points. One view that he has expressed repeatedly is that some people, and predictably himself, are genetically superior. "You have good genes, you know that, right?" he said in September 2020 to a rally in Minnesota – a state that is more than 80% white. "You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? You have good genes in Minnesota."
Similarly, in the successful 2024 campaign, he denounced immigrants as having "bad genes". It's hard for someone who studies genes – and the strange and sometimes troubling history of genetics – to understand even what might constitute a "bad" or "good" gene.Ours may be a pernicious history, but the trajectory of genetics has been one that tends towards progress, and equity for all, as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
Per the Rutherford paper's claim: "People with genetic variants that make it easier for them to get a better education are more likely to move to better neighbourhoods, whereas the people left behind are in worse living circumstances with higher mortality rates and greater risk for health problems such as obesity, diabetes (87) and infectious diseases. "