Disqus - Latest Comments for Jason Malloy

Re: Down on the Compound

Jason Malloy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:08:07 -0000

"...and tell her about how I am God, and she must never leave the basement because the world is evil and only I can protect her...
The correct answer: An elaborate form of rape."

Is the basement door locked? Is there a reasonably implied threat of violence - by the father himself - if she chooses to leave the basement or doesn't meet sexual requests. The answer to all of these questions is almost certainly 'yes', in any realistic scenario, which is why it is, of course, rape in my opinion.

Importantly, though, it is not rape for the reason you are apparently implying it is rape: information asymmetry impairing so-called "free will". This is why, e.g. we distinguish sex obtained through implied threat of harm as rape from sex obtained through false pretenses (e.g. saying you're a rock star), a common form of using information asymmetry to obtain sex.

Also contra Will's implication, judges and juries aren't generally sympathetic to claims of "brain-washing", which isn't really a scientific idea. E.g. Patti Hearst, Steve Fishman...

So to turn Will's scenario on him, what if this same hypothetical man asked this basement daughter of his to fly to Indonesia with these tickets and this money and stab a drug-dealer to death for her Daddy God. Would this be a murder she is fully accountable for: yes.

And if this man instead asked her to meet him in Indonesia with these tickets and this money and have sex with her Daddy God there would it then be rape? No, for the same reasons.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:35:33 -0000

Explain how you derive an ought from an is.

All 'oughts' necessarily derive from 'is'-es. What else can we derive 'oughts' out of but facts and reasoning about facts? Facts and reasoning about our preferences and needs, facts and reasoning about the preferences and needs of others. Facts and reasoning about how conflicting needs should be balanced. Facts and reasoning about what will work best, and what won't work, to achieve related goals about needs and preferences.

The society that favors the preferences of those who do not want to be raped over those who wish to rape will have greater sum subjective well being. We can argue the premises down to the bone, but what we're doing to establish our 'oughts' here is essentially no different than science. The 'is' begets the 'ought'.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:03:27 -0000

happiness, pleasure,
Those aren’t directly observable. The positivist in me agrees with Kling over Caplan on the value of happiness research.

Neither is gravity. Reported well being is linked to behavioral, hormonal, psychological and physical effects. This is an obscure use of 'positivism'. Also Kling is simply wrong.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:20:37 -0000

TGGP,

Our disagreements here appear weakly metaphysical (as you appear to think they are), and primarily empirical. With you assuming the role of the radical skeptic, which is, frankly, never the good side to be on; because the radical skeptic must deny much already researched and offer little back but doubt.

Psychology isn't physics, but it measures traits linked to physiology and behavior. Well-being, depression, and stress are measured in various units, perhaps just not units you "approve" of. So be it. Go publish your objections in the proper venues. The tests have construct validity which means the scores are replicable and linked to external phenomena of interest. If you want to deny an entire research program I suggest you at least familiarize yourself with it first, so you can, at least, make informed objections.

In addition to the radical skeptic you are donning the hat of the sophist which is both irritating and unenlightening. I certainly did not suggest that art or ethics have independent truth value outside of human existence or outside of their effects on human beings, yet you keep arguing like this is the claim.

It is not the claim.

As the sophist and radical skeptic you deny that human needs/preferences have been or can be measured, reasoned, or negotiated.

They can be, and have been.

And are you saying the total utility version of utilitarianism is correct and the average utility version is wrong, so embracing the repugnant conclusion

There is no need to judge complicated hypothetical alternatives when the judgment here is very simple: both in absolute and average levels the no-rape society is better.

(Unimportantly, I've argued elsewhere one good reason why the repugnant conclusion is wrong: nonexistent people don't even exist to have preferences for existing people to weigh against.)

Would you really like to argue - using reasoning and facts - why society is better off qualitatively and quantitatively prohibiting rape?? Because at this point I see no reason to take your comments seriously or believe they are sincere.

Please note: You aren't arguing that "morality isn't objective" like you think you are here. You really aren't. You are arguing that we can't make reasoned or informed decisions about our personal behavior or collective politics that increase human well-being.

This isn't "philosophy" on your part; it's pseudoscience! You are wrong. You are denying things that can be predicted that we know we can predict.

Even if the possible rape victim can't prove her preferences are recognized somehow by the unblinking void (and they aren't, of course), she can easily make a more convincing case either through science or reason, things such as 1) why her loss would be much greater than her rapists gains, 2) why the precedents set by the rapists rules would end up hurting said rapist, and other rapists, more than the gains they would collectively accrue from them (E.g. would a rapist choose to live in a rape tolerant society if it meant he too would get frequently raped?), 3) The society that makes these rules would gain far more collectively from prohibiting rape than allowing it.

Note, even if the rapist denies her logic/evidence through simple contradiction or weaker/fallacious argument, he is still wrong for the same reason a claim that 1 + 1 = 5 is wrong. The rapist himself would correctly be worse off from his own preferences.

So, yes, 'oughts' do come from 'is'-es. And oughts are objective in the sense that humans factually have needs/preferences and there are factual ways to better and more thoroughly meet these needs/preferences.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:25:21 -0000

Um, No.

Like I said, 'good' isn't and can't be defined by the cold, inanimate universe, but is defined in the context of actual human nature/needs/preferences and our evolving and imperfect (and, yes, competitive) knowledge/reasoning thereof.

What you are implying is that goodness can only be "derived" if it is an intrinsic property of the universe. Therefore what you are saying is that my argument can only "matter" if the exact premise my argument is disputing is true! (heads I win, tails you lose...)

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:42:03 -0000

By the way, this is how theists commonly "debunk" atheist morality: Morality isn't legitimate or possible by reasoning or facts, because, God forbid, people might be wrong or disagree about what is right - so it must all be nothing but arbitrary personal preferences. Therefore morality can only be handed down from an authority. (This, by the way, is genuinely debunked by the Euthyphro dilemma.)

You and TGGP accept the theist preference - reasoned morality can't exist - but presumably don't agree with their flawed "solution". So all you're left with is the theist's atheist caricature: moral nihilism; morality can't exist.

This position is unreasonable and unnecessary, and little different than postmodernist notions that all facts and science are completely relative as well.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:04:28 -0000

In fact science nihilists might have even better footing than moral nihilists in the problem of induction.

At the very least both 'problems' are manageable with the same low budget solution: just precede in reasoning and effort as if they don't exist. The result will be moral/cooperative conditions getting better over time in the case of morality and knowledge/technology getting better over time in the case of science.

... The surprising uselessness of philosophy.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:57:18 -0000

Peco,

Because that is the only possible intelligible definition of 'good' or 'bad'. The universe doesn't have preferences. 'Good' and 'bad' are ways of describing human behavior vis a vis other human beings (and whatever else humans feel morally obligated to). That's it. No humans: no 'good' and no 'bad' (except in the analogous calculations of other animals). Morality is an evolved human trait.

If you believe satisfying preferences, or something else is immoral, then argue it is. Appeal to shared human concerns. Appeal to facts. Make a logical argument.

There really are right and wrong answers in this context. 'We should allow rape', for instance, is a wrong answer.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:22:11 -0000

Caledonian,

I assume you are saying I'm "declaring my own preferences" on rape correct, but the argument I'm participating in is over whether or not there is an objective basis of morality, not the morality of rape specifically. I have given you a logical argument why there is an objective basis for morality, please engage those arguments specifically if they are flawed.

I used the logical wrongness of rape as an illustration, because I assumed we are all in agreement on this point. Perhaps you do not feel there are logical arguments against rape in the context of negotiating human interests. Is this correct? Do you feel, for instance, maybe that more human beings would be better off, or that greater well being would be achieved if rape were permitted or encouraged?

These are questions that can be debated with logic and facts, which is all that is important. Even the morality of the goals themselves -- e.g. is it greater human well-being? and if so, sum or average?, etc -- are debatable on this basis. And there really are right and wrong answers, and righter and wronger answers, because human moral instincts and human interests themselves are material things based in the brain.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:32:07 -0000

I should also repeat the only time I'm ever forced into debating this - that there is a rational, secular basis for morality - is with fundamentalist theists.

That I'm debating this right now with not one but several ostensibly secular atheists is, honestly, mighty depressing.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:23:14 -0000

Caledonian,

If the so-called errors you list are the most fatal to my arguments here, then I must be on pretty firm ground.

1) the universe has no preferences...

'Preferences' by definition are generated by conscious agents. "The universe" is an abstraction, and therefore can't have "preferences" anymore than "justice" or "love" can have preferences. Non-sentient entities like water, rocks, and mud can't have "preferences" which requires sentience. Many animals obviously do have preferences, and the weight of these preferences certainly falls under moral calculus. Again there are righter and wronger answers in how these preferences should be weighed in the cooperative matrix.

2) human interests are uniform and universal...

Wow, I didn't make this claim at all. The very fact that I indicated a key aspect of moral reasoning is negotiation implied that I don't believe it. But human interests are largely identical, and are similar enough in important fundamentals to give morality a coherent foundation. (yes, these are empirical issues, and yes, I know more of the relevant science than you do) In fact even the difference between humans and a species as different as say, hummingbirds, would leave some room for a coherent foundation for cooperative well being.

, 3) the implicit claim that morality and ethics are the same thing, which is so deeply confused that I don’t even know where to begin correcting it

I'm just going to dismiss this as pedantic whining. Even if there is a distinction to be made here, the conflation wouldn't damage any arguments I've made in this thread in the least. If you disagree you should probably articulate specifically how my argument has been damaged.

4) that you’ve established why human interests ought to serve as the basis for morality in the first place

What other "interests" are there? Mud and trees and rocks don't have "interests", which are only generated by minds. Many animals, again, do have interests (if less developed ones), and again, I think their interests certainly can be weighed against human interests based on facts and logic. There are righter and wronger ways to weigh these interests.

Instead of replacing the arbitrary authority of the theists, you’ve merely placed yourself in the central seat as the source of Ultimate Law.

Complete bullshit! I have simply stated that there are right and wrong answers to questions of how humans can cooperate to affect human well being. This is a fact because it's what basic logic and scientific evidence show, not because I have declared it Truth.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:24:49 -0000

Caledonian,

If the so-called errors you list are the most fatal to my arguments here, then I must be on pretty firm ground.

1) the universe has no preferences...

'Preferences' by definition are generated by conscious agents. "The universe" is an abstraction, and therefore can't have "preferences" anymore than "justice" or "love" can have preferences. Non-sentient entities like water, rocks, and mud can't have "preferences" which requires sentience. Many animals obviously do have preferences, and the weight of these preferences certainly falls under moral calculus. Again there are righter and wronger answers in how these preferences should be weighed in the cooperative matrix.

2) human interests are uniform and universal...

Wow, I didn't make this claim at all. The very fact that I indicated a key aspect of moral reasoning is negotiation implied that I don't believe it. But human interests are largely identical, and are similar enough in important fundamentals to give morality a coherent foundation. (yes, these are empirical issues, and yes, I know more of the relevant science than you do) In fact even the difference between humans and a species as different as say, hummingbirds, would leave some room for a coherent foundation for cooperative well being.

, 3) the implicit claim that morality and ethics are the same thing, which is so deeply confused that I don’t even know where to begin correcting it

I'm just going to dismiss this as pedantic whining. Even if there is a distinction to be made here, the conflation wouldn't damage any arguments I've made in this thread in the least. If you disagree you should probably articulate specifically how my argument has been damaged.

4) that you’ve established why human interests ought to serve as the basis for morality in the first place

What other "interests" are there? Mud and trees and rocks don't have "interests", which are only generated by minds. Many animals, again, do have interests (if less developed ones), and again, I think their interests certainly can be weighed against human interests based on facts and logic. There are righter and wronger ways to weigh these interests.

Instead of replacing the arbitrary authority of the theists, you’ve merely placed yourself in the central seat as the source of Ultimate Law.

Complete nonsense! I have simply stated that there are right and wrong answers to questions of how humans can cooperate to affect human well being. This is a fact because it's what basic logic and scientific evidence show, not because I have declared it Truth.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:40:16 -0000

OK, I see my comments were finally posted, so let's try this again and see how long it takes before this goes up.

TGGP,

I’m fine with being referred to as a skeptic, but I think the comparison to David Berlinski is inapt.

No, I referred to you as a "radical skeptic", which is not a "skeptic" at all. The linked three-part Slate article wasn't just about Berlinski, but about people who opportunistically reject scientific data and premises because of its "incompleteness" (the author refers to this as "radical skepticism"). It is a self-serving, self-contradictory world-view. The genuine skeptic appeals to the preponderance of evidence to find a best answer; the radical skeptic appeals to the incompleteness of evidence to buttress a foregone (and less supported) idea.

(In fairness, this is simply in reference to very specific positions of yours in this thread, by the way. I don't mean to make a general opinion on the integrity of your thinking.)

You appeal to Arnold Kling's position on happiness research, but that position is ignorant, clumsy, and unscientific. (This appears to be a pattern in Kling's attitude towards inconvenient science in general, as seen in his posts on global warming, his recent post on DDT, etc.)

Not sure why you put quotes around “approve”, but it’s measured using a one-to-ten scale on surveys or something like that, then yes I wouldn’t approve.

Not only is the 1-10 scale valid for measurement, why would it even matter if it was just 'yes' or 'no' survey? If I accidentally step on your foot and you say 'Ouch' that is useful data on your subjective well-being. It says you don't like it when I do that.

Subjective well-being research goes beyond the 1-10 scale, but to the extent it doesn't you haven't made a scientific argument why those surveys and that research paradigm can be rejected, nor can you. It is a useful, validated, and completely legitimate science paradigm.

Just as when two people disagree on the quality of a work of art, there is no way to objectively resolve a dispute between two people over ethics. Do you agree or disagree with that last statement?

I've been disagreeing this whole thread. Let me try and itemize most of my underlying premises:

1) The universe is not conscious, and does not have ethical preferences.

2) Evolution resulted in organisms with consciousness and preferences.

3) Evolution resulted in an intelligent, social species. (human beings)

4) Evolution resulted in a moral machinery for this social species because cooperation was adaptive. This includes shared biological cognition related to fairness, guilt, shame, and altruism.

5) There is therefore a considerable uniformity in the underlying goals, needs, preferences, and cognition of human beings. This does not mean human beings are identical in these domains, but they are relatively similar members of the same species. (and, yes, this is coming from someone who is both knowledgeable and outspoken on human biodiversity - which should enhance the strength of my claim)

6) Basic human needs and preferences are overwhelmingly logical, predictable, intelligible, and uniform. (i.e. human beings need food to live, do not like to be unhealthy or injured, etc.)

7) There are factual ways to meet these needs and preferences. For instance it is a fact that humans can survive by eating meat. It is a fact that humans can't survive by eating plastic.

8) Human preferences and needs can be balanced in any given way without the universe caring (see premise #1), but can't be balanced in any given way without human beings caring (premises #4-6)

9) Because human needs and preferences are standardized (#5), rational (#6), and ordered (#8), human ethical disagreements over how these preferences and needs should be met and balanced are largely disagreements over facts.

10) Circumstances and cognitive barriers and limitations prevent facts from being known or processed. Facts may not be known from lack of exposure to them, or from inability to process them, or from lack of trust in the source.

11) Because ethical disagreements are overwhelmingly based in factual disagreements (#9) and people differ in their knowledge and acceptance of facts (#10), this indicates that many ethical opinions are factually wrong, not subjectively wrong.

There is no way to objectively decide between economic growth and inequality as far as I know.

You assert this because you assume both preferences are fundamentally irrational, based in nothing but arbitrary preference. But they are competing theories about what factually makes people happier. So the disagreement can be resolved with more facts. The recent Wolfers paper provides evidence that growth creates more measurable psychological benefits than equality.

Could you be sure your measurement would not be vulnerable to the same uncertainty?

I can't be "sure" about anything. The anti-rape society is based in better arguments and facts, which is what matters.

Under a utilitarian theory it would be good to prevent them from causing themselves suffering. Would you agree that would be the right thing to do?

No, because invasive totalitarian laws to prevent people from "fasting" would not create more well-being. So it's not better under a utilitarian theory.

If the people you describe were hurting themselves, say, because of a mind-bending bacteria in the water, and we put something in the water to kill that bacteria, then that would be a completely acceptable solution. So, like everything else, facts make the biggest difference in an ethical decision.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:46:03 -0000

I made a spelling error in comment #35:

"...just proceed in reasoning and effort"

Yeah, I'm that guy.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:49:51 -0000

Micha,

Both of you are correct, of course; you are not really disagreeing about anything substantive, but merely arguing over the proper definition of “objective morality.

There are substantive disagreements which are more important. TGGP rejects that human well-being can be or has been measured or reasoned about at all. If I step on your foot and you say 'Ouch', you might've actually liked it when I did that. We Can Never Truly Know.

In this way moral nihilism relies on scientific and rationality nihilism.

Even without scientific data, it is unreasonable to assert that there aren't more and less reasonable opinions about how behavior and policies will affect the lives of others in ways that will help or hurt them.

If someone really can't think of a reason that pro-rape laws would result in more bad than good then they are probably intentionally trying not to think about it too hard. This is called sophistry and it's disingenuous and annoying.

Such a policy would certainly make male rapists better off (all else being equal, ignoring any unintended second-order consequences), and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists and sufficiently lesser weight to the interests of their victims.

This wouldn't make society better off because whether it is recognized or not the women are suffering intensely; there are biological reasons for this. Men who are prevented from raping do not suffer in this intense manner.

...because the atheist isn’t arguing for moral nihilism, and even if he was, it still wouldn’t be any kind of concession. Whether morality can ultimately be grounded on purely objective truths is irrelevant to the question of whether morality can be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation.

Good points.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:09:34 -0000

...and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists

And this is an unrealistic counterfactual; even rapists don't want their wives, daughters, and mothers getting raped, and would suffer from this.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:59:43 -0000

Tigers and wolves have preferences because they are conscious animals with interests.

Tigers and wolves are not "the universe", an abstraction.

Abstract concepts and inanimate things do not have interests or preferences, something generated only by sentient minds.

If someone wants to argue that rocks "like" to be wet or hugged (or whatever) then they are a grossly superstitious new-age flake.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:07:44 -0000

Peco,

See your comment #37, and my comment #38. Your question has already been addressed.

By the only intelligible definition of 'good' and 'bad' - the evolved human context (comment #52) definition - behaving in certain ways is 'good' and 'bad'. Outside of a human context the concepts of 'good' and 'bad' have no meaning; they aren't tethered to anything.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:16:42 -0000

Tigers and wolves are just as much abstractions as the universe.

A tiger is not an "abstraction"! Tigertude is an abstraction.

Tigers and wolves have consciousness that includes pain and pleasure, emotion, a theater of awareness, insight and analysis, and drives. The universe does not.

Think the universe doesn’t have preferences?

It doesn't. What you just described are material laws and operations, not "preferences"! A metaphor does not an accurate description make. If a doctor tries to cure "butterflies in the stomach" with a butterfly net, the patient will probably die.

Organisms have ethical systems, but it is the nature of the universe that determines what they are, and whether they persist.

Yep. See comment #52. My primary argument is that human ethics are based around facts about humans (originating from material laws and operations) that are known or can be discovered.

It's not even clear what you disagree with me about.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:53:22 -0000

Yes, the concept exists, but you could say it’s wrong.

Well you can say anything you like. You can say the moon doesn't exist. I already told you why the concept of 'good' is meaningless unless it's reasoned about in the human context that generated it.

If someone stabs and eats a bus driver because they were hungry and didn't care for rice, you can certainly call that 'good' (or 'chair', or 'blorxivozz') if you'd like, but you have necessarilly redefined the word or drained it of it's meaning in the process, unless the usage is trying to indicate you believe the action promoted some increased welfare that compensates for the harm it created.

And while you would be using the right word for what you were, in fact, trying to describe, you would still be factually wrong and the act still wouldn't be 'good'.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:05:16 -0000

Then why do you insist upon using it? Questions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t meaningful

That's not what I said. They are meaningful because humans exist.

...we have to turn to right and wrong.

Those are both normative descriptors. They are describing the same thing.

It is right for wolves to be cooperative, and wrong to be individualistic

Again normative terms are meaningless outside of the human context. It isn't 'right' or 'good' for the sun to be hot or grass to be green, they just are.

You don’t seem to understand that a system of morality doesn’t need to address anyone’s interests or wants at all

I don't "understand" this because it's false. Without human beings and human interests there is no one to generate a "system of morality". It is meaningless outside of the human context where it evolved.

A code that permits casual rape is theoretically possible, and you must address that theoretical contingency without saying “it’s immoral”.

If it is possible that some human society would believe casual rape is good, then this would be a society with factually wrong beliefs according to the necessary definition of 'good' or 'right'. I am not a cultural relativist - their society is based on factually wrong social and political ideas that are failing their people.

I'm not just asserting that "it's immoral" I'm telling you there are biological facts about rape and it's psychological consequences for women that make it wrong according to the necessary human definition of 'wrong'.

If human beings, as a species, were extremely different genetically and behaviorally from what they are now, then "rape" might be "good". But we aren't. Either way, ethical reasoning is necessarily based in facts about humans.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:51:41 -0000

But even granting that, TGGP’s conclusion still stands; ultimately, the preferences that you and I share, and that you are think are “objective”, are only objective in the sense that a significant majority of humans share those preferences. Sociopaths, Vikings, sadists, masochists, and others with strange, minority preferences could honestly say they disagree and we would have nothing to say to rebut them other than, “Too bad, let’s fight.”

Regardless if they are sociopaths or vikings, and regardless if they can establish their way by force, they still couldn't disagree correctly from an ethical standpoint.

A sociopath can correctly argue 'I'm going to kill you for fun', but could not correctly argue 'I'm going to kill you for fun because it's good' because he would then require a rational argument for why human wellbeing has been fairly increased at the expense of my suffering. This argument could not be made, because the murder was factually selfish and unfair.

Again, you are assuming that society should give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women as it does men.

No, I am arguing that societies that don't are necessarily built on factually wrong ideas about women.

Our choice of how much weight to give to the interests of non-human animals relative to our own is not a question that can be answered by appealing to the objective universe.

I disagree; animal rights must rest on the same analytical foundations that we take human rights from. The ethics of animal treatment depend on four factual issues: a) which capacities are the basis for rights, b) how do these capacities vary, c) how does variation in capacity map on to variation in rights, and d) what capacities do certain animals have.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:10:19 -0000

Micha,

And where is it written that to be moral one cannot be selfish and unfair?

As I have argued many times in this thread, it is written in the definition of morality itself, which is in turn written into the genetic code of human beings.

You are confusing the word 'good' for the concept of 'good'. Just because a sociopath says killing me for fun is "good" doesn't mean anything at all. He can just as easily say a tuba is a chair, or an elephant is a penguin. But as soon as he's forced to define "chair", we will readily understand he is talking about the large, low-pitched brass instrument and not the piece of furniture you sit on.

It's the same exact thing for 'morality'. As soon as he defines morality as "causing others pain for my own amusement" he is necessarily automatically defining something else entirely. The concept of morality inherently means something different: behaving in a fair way to reduce or not cause harm to others.

These premises were laid out most nakedly in comment #52. The concept of morality is genetically hardwired into the evolved brain of human beings, and it has a logical meaning.

But at the end of the day, if his preference for misogyny is great enough, and you cannot convince him that he will be worse off from his own perspective if he doesn’t take your advice, the argument is over.

This is irrelevant to the objectivity of morality, since the same thing can be said for factual issues in general. If he wants to say/believe the moon is made of bacon, there is absolutely nothing I can do to "make" him change his mind except present evidence and logic that refute his claim.

Similarly, if he wants to argue that oppressing women is "good" he necessarily has to A) Define 'good' - which has a factually correct and factually incorrect definition, and B), if he defines it correctly (which he isn't according to your own scenario), show how the facts of his sex-biased system are consistent with fairness and well being - which he couldn't do as well.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:41:41 -0000

Whatever evidence or logic you present me with, can I still not reasonably say, “Sorry, men are just more important than woman, whites are just more important than blacks.”

No, you obviously can't! In what sense is it "reasonable" if you've presented no factual (i.e. reasoned) basis for the moral distinction? 'Good' has a coherent, biologically rooted meaning, and any justification based on facts will not be consistent with that meaning.

Are you referring to any facts here other than common usage?

'Common usage' is a faulty way to put it. See comment #52; we're not talking about the Merriam-Webster College English Dictionary definition of a word but the pan-psychological human knowledge of a concept. Without the biologically rooted concept there would be nothing to put a word to.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:44:20 -0000

How does it have a biologically rooted meaning?

Because people in every culture understand 'good' to mean something more than just reciprocity (where the powerful hurting the powerless would not be 'wrong') and including concepts like 'fairness' that recognize exploitation as a wrong.

... but you could also say that you don’t prefer doing good things.

Absolutely. People can certainly do this can't they. What I have argued is that they can't redefine 'good' to mean something it doesn't inherently mean.

Do all humans know it? If not, should the humans who don’t be treated (morally) like tigers or wolves

Seems about right, if metaphysical. Psychopaths do indeed appear to lack normal genetic moral instincts.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:50:24 -0000

Peco, I don't consider these particularly difficult questions. I should emphasize though, that I don't see how any of this has much to do with the arguments I've made about the objectivity of ethical answers. This is kind of a tangent, but since you addressed me I'm answering to be polite.

Should they be treated as non-human for moral purposes?

"Treated as non-human" is a loaded phrase. I do not, for instance, believe psychopaths should lose rights, nor do I believe they should be given any more license to cause harm. But we can certainly think differently about their actions for similar reasons that we don't believe a man-eating tiger or a volcano are 'immoral'. That's about as far as that goes.

If psychopaths are morally treated like tigers, does that mean that anyone who disagrees with specific (reasonable) moral principles is a moral tiger?

No, there is a large difference between poor reasoning or factual incorrectness and psychopathy. If people with normal moral capacities deny the importance or existence of these capacities, they still have them.

If the FLDS people are moral tigers, how can you say what they do is wrong?

No one has provided any evidence that the FLDS is composed of psychopaths, and it is highly unlikely. But if true then moral judgment specifically would be difficult. *shrug*

Do you believe this is damaging to something I've argued here?

If there is a large group of moral tigers, are normal humans moral tigers to them?

The premise is that they don't have moral capacities and we do, so no. It is an inside morals looking out description.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:17:27 -0000

Micha,

Perhaps racism or misogyny is simply an aesthetic preference.

Indeed, this is a common and unpersuasive racist argument without any moral meat whatsoever. It directly contradicts logical and biological notions of fairness. The racist argument certainly has no relationship with the necessary definition of morality. The racist can hate but cannot hate because it is 'good'.

In what sense is racism or mysoginy “unreasonable” if you’ve presented no factual (i.e. reasoned) basis for equality?

These arguments are well known and were very common during the 20th century, why do I need to retread them here? Powerless groups were able to gain rights, not by force of might but by appealing to the moral instincts of the dominant groups with honed logic and superior facts.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:21:10 -0000

peco,

if psychopaths take over the world and kill all other humans, does it change objective morality?

Read comment #52. Yes, it wouldn't "change" it, it gets rid of it.

More specifically, psychopaths, as intelligent, selfish actors would still use reciprocity, which provides a basis for cooperative behavior even between entirely self-interested agents ('you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours', 'mutually assured destruction', etc). But they wouldn't have the capacities which characterize the moral concept: fairness, empathy, altruism.

Micha,

The racist can make the following argument: All else being equal, satisfaction of one’s preferences, even aesthetic preferences, is a moral good.

See comment #52 and #72. This is not the definition of 'morality' in any society, it's the definition of 'selfishness', or 'immorality' if it means hurting others. The concept of morality inherently means something different: behaving in a fair way to reduce or not cause harm to others.

Because all of these arguments (Kant’s Universalizability, Mill’s Harm Principle, Spencer’s Law of Equal Liberty), while plausible and to various degrees persuasive, are not objectively provable through facts or logic.

What do you think we're trying to prove with facts and logic? I'm trying to prove facts about humans. And, in fact, the success of those civil rights movements and the proven persuasiveness of the ethical arguments you list, among other things, do indeed demonstrate factual truths about human morality: it is altruistic. Human beings selflessly desire the well being of others when those others are perceived as the "ingroup".

Your racist argues that black appearance justifies unfairness, but there is ample reason to believe that is not the genuine source of his mistreatment. The same history would have created the same outcomes if the skin colors were reversed. Historical circumstances created an unfair arrangement which was then necessarily justified and maintained with false facts to appease the moral instincts.

The civil rights movement provided the images and arguments that contradicted the false facts. If outgroup status was justified by false claims about the humanity and capacities of blacks, the images of dogs attacking the defenseless, and reasoned black pleas for empathy and equal treatment were indeed factual rejoinders to those justifications.

Comment #68 deals with this further, as does Peter Singer's The Expanding Circle. Who belongs in the ingroup involves reasoning and facts (mediated by emotions) about rights and capacities.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:10:26 -0000

Caledonian, you don't get much philosophy from a dictionary. Those entries don't contradict me, and neither do they clarify much at all. In the dictionary link 'morality' is defined as being 'moral' which is defined as "principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong". 'Right' is then defined as 'good', and then 'good' is defined as 'moral'! The dictionary gives you a circle of synonyms and assumes you can take from there.

Wikipedia, which does dissect the concept says: Generally speaking, morals are basic guidelines for behavior intended to reduce suffering in living populations.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:23:27 -0000

Comment #52. What differs drastically are the facts known to people. The underlying cognition of human moral motivations is entirely similar.

I don't know of any time and place where a motivation of causing more harm was considered 'good' by local standards. In many instances harm is and has always been (often tragically) caused in perceived service of a greater prevention of harm.

Re: False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

Jason Malloy — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:32:19 -0000

Micha,

Again, who belongs in the ingroup involves reasoning and facts about rights and capacities.

You can't cause "harm" to a rock, because a rock has no preferences. (Comment #46) "The environment" is also an abstraction without sentience and preferences.

See Comment #68 for animals.

Re: Arthur Brooks on Religion and Happiness

Jason Malloy — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:55:46 -0000

But it remains that many European countries have become happier while becoming less religious. It’s not clear to me why the mechanism matters.

I agree with your main point, but of course mechanism matters. For instance, happiness in marriage has stayed the same over the last 30 years but that masks the changing dynamics of that happiness: married people talk to each other less than 30 years ago which lowers marital satisfaction, but they earn more household income than 30 years ago which raises it by a similar amount. The result is a wash, but it didn't have to be. Communication could have been more important and marital happiness would have gone down, or money could have been more important and happiness would have gone up.

Going back to the national comparisons, perhaps loss of religion does lower happiness, it's just that money more than makes up for it. It is certainly possible that happiness could have been higher still in every one of those countries if religious belief/culture had been preserved through whatever means.

If government policy A leads to a growth rate of 1000% and government policy B leads to a growth rate of 1%, you can't say B was a success (instead of a disaster) just because you are moving in a better direction.

You used the same fallacy thinking about immigration.

Re: Wherein I Do Not Accept Crispin Sartwell’s Challenge

Jason Malloy — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:35:37 -0000

The moral justification is utilitarian.

Where is the empirical evidence my rights and safety are better secured under anarchism?

Sweden vs. (the artist formerly known as) Somalia. No contest.

Re: Wherein I Do Not Accept Crispin Sartwell’s Challenge

Jason Malloy — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:43:57 -0000

TGGP,

Great Somalia link. The selected comparison drew some serious attention here, but I was mainly being glib.

For the most part I believe social organization comes from the bottom up, so an anarchist Sweden would in my opinion be a comparatively ordered society, just as East Germany was relatively functional compared to other Communist states. Both societies are filled with cooperative and capable individuals.

An anarchist society would function relatively well where the people themselves work, cooperate and organize spontaneously to a high degree (e.g. Japan; see Kristof on Kobe earthquake), and where threat from organized external violence is low; most likely due to the beneficence of a great state military power, as in the modern world, or from geographic isolation from others, as with the older Iceland. (unsustainable and externally predicated conditions)

But even with these conditions, such a society still would not live as well, or as fairly as under state government.

Re: What Books Would You Ban?

Jason Malloy — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:57:37 -0000

The Mismeasure of Man. The whole enormous genre of behavior genetic/psychometric/sociobiology bashing propaganda.

Re: My Partner

Jason Malloy — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:22:49 -0000

"This phrase presents something of a communication problem, especially with Kerry’s androgynous name."

So what? You lost me at the beginning. There are no drawbacks to 'Partner'.

Re: My Partner

Jason Malloy — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:26:44 -0000

And will is correct, 'wife' is the gender specific term for the concept:

"A wife is a female spouse, or participant in a marriage, or civil union or civil partnership."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife

Re: Pedro Carneiro on Charles Murray

Jason Malloy — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:16:36 -0000

I understand Dr. Murray's dissatisfaction with the BA system, but the system is set-up in such a way, it seems, that any party that defects will injure themselves. This hurts his argument, because he is arguing for a more practical system, but the party that follows his advice will not be acting in a practical, self-interested manner.

This is why in previous articles he has hinted that lower ability people would get a bigger financial return from trade school rather than college. But since that isn't true, his argument is a harder sell.

Similarly he argues that employers would do better with a CPA type of exam than going by a degree. This could be true (And in fact certain ridiculous anti-discrimination laws might be one reason the system is so inefficient). But it could also not be true, as Bryan Caplan suggests.

So if it hurts the young person to defect, and if it hurts the employer to defect, this makes Murray's pitch a hard sell. He needs to more fruitfully come up with a plan about how things can change. And that will require appealing to those with the power to change it that it is in their best interest to do so.

Specifically, if he could convince employers that an IQ test or a CPA type exam would be the legally safest, most efficient, and most profitable route, the value of the BA for the low ability person would indeed drop dramatically.

Unfortunately this would overwhelmingly help rich, smart people at the expense of poor, stupid people. (if the BA system truly is currently elevating tons of underqualified dumb people into the ranks of the middle and upper middle class). And this undercuts what I think Murray has always wanted: the best deal for the left half of the bell curve.

Re: Pedro Carneiro on Charles Murray

Jason Malloy — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:54:01 -0000

Bryan Caplan's response is close to what I said, as I thought it would be.

I disagree with Caplan though that employer decisions already prove the BA is a trustworthy signal. He has a naive Beckerish view on the efficiency of markets (e.g. employers who racially discriminate would go out of business). As far as I know, no employers have ever collected data on IQ tests vs. humanities degrees. I think it's very doubtful that college is screening out "lazy" people in such a way that college wage premium is maximally profitable.

It's a very real possibility that the whole inflated BA system is based on bad, inefficient. and costly selection decisions by employers. If employers are acting a certain way before there is data to justify it, then I think there is a good possibility that they aren't acting on some indirectly obtained knowledge, but on habit and tradition. This is why good data really can improve markets.

Also...

"You can try jawboning Microsoft into switching to certification tests. But can we really believe that Murray has seen a profit opportunity that Bill Gates hasn’t?"

Gates is notorious for relying on IQ tests, so this was a bad example. Also I don't know how important college is in MS hiring decisions, but I think it hasn't been denied yet that technical degrees like engineering actually do usefully signal job-applicable knowledge, unlike, e.g., an English degree.

Re: Let’s Measure Meaning!

Jason Malloy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:04:23 -0000

"But knowing why we are here, or what we are for, turns out to be terrifically useless in guiding our choices or framing our lives."

I think this is because you aren't looking at the question with sufficient granularity. If by 'why' you mean 'how' then, yes, the most general answer is because ma and pa had the sex, and then you could break down the hows of sex into as much information as you want (from the nervous system, to perceptual stimulus, to physiology, to hormones, to the base pair sequence that coded those hormones). At this most general level you are right that this doesn't give you much useful information. This could be telling you to go have sex with a woman, or reproduce, or reproduce with your mother -- none of which seem like they would be better choices than what your natural wants and not-wants could guide better (people already know they want to have sex, and in the case of gay or asexual people, who don't instinctively desire reproductive sex, the guideline would make their lives worse).

But at a deeper level of 'how' I think knowing all of your genes, and how they will react and have reacted in the past would be about the most useful information you could ever have about what decisions to make in your life. To use your own nerdy example, let's say bizarro world Will spends 10 years at kitten-eating school, and then another 5 years in the kitten-eating labor force before having a nervous breakdown and joining a PETA monastery where he can spend the rest of his life doing what he now realizes he wanted to do all along: pet kittens.

But with the correct amount of biological self-knowledge, Will could have saved himself 15 traumatic, wasted years and a nervous breakdown. He would have known beforehand that kitten-eating would upset him and why. With full genetic self-knowledge people could plan their lives for the maximum experience of "meaning" at the earliest possible age.(starting with their parents)

To a rough extent this already happens with our limited knowledge. People are similar enough that we can see things like money, accomplishment, deeper relationships, children, community, and religion, generally lead to more meaningful lives (children appear to be the only general false positive). So most people lay some sort of early groundwork to make one or more of these things happen.

Re: Let’s Measure Meaning!

Jason Malloy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:22:57 -0000

Also children are a good example of what I'm talking about. On average having chidren makes people slightly less happy. (the reason for this, by the way, seems to be the number of people having children out of wedlock) But lots of people really do become much happier, and find a lot of meaning by having children. Others think they will but don't. It may be difficult for many people to predict which category they will end up in. Genetic self-knowledge would correct this, and maximize potential meaning by improving a major life decision.

Re: Nothing New, of Course

Jason Malloy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:03:18 -0000

To the extent such campaigns do anything, it results in the opposite of what it's trying to accomplish, further ghettoizing male liberalism with the kind of effete, supplicant males females really don't like to choose. Among men who have a lot of sex partners, Republicanism and chauvinism are rampant, in part, because it serves as an honest signal of their capability of attracting women. Lesser men have to refashion their politics to please young single women, while attractive men don't need to. I suspect the hierarchy of male desirability looks like this:

Unattractive Pubs - Least desirable
Unattractive Dems - 2nd least desirable
Attractive Dems - 2nd most desirable
Attractive Pubs - Most desirable

And while men are more likely to tweak their politics to win over sexual partners, women are even more likely to conform their politics to their long term partner. So while these 'vote Dem, get laid' posters are rather cute, they better realize that it sets a precedent, and that Republicans could actually turn it around and cut even deeper, by suggesting that Democrat girls are just whores for sex and fun, while Republican girls are the valuable ones you invest in long term.

Re: Defending the Study of Race and IQ

Jason Malloy — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:24:30 -0000

jlerner: "When one controls for socioeconomic status, American Blacks still under perform American Whites by nearly a whole standard deviation"

Ben Wechsler IV: "Interesting. So, relative to whites, blacks are extremely high achievers, doing much more with what they've got than white people."

No, because the first statement is in reference to background factors, not earned income. Controlling for IQ closes most of the B-W wage gap. So blacks and whites matched for IQ have similar occupational returns.

On the other hand, we see very different IQ outcomes for the children of blacks and whites of matched economic backgrounds. Black children from homes in the highest socioeconomic bracket have lower IQ scores than white children from homes in the lowest socioeconomic bracket. And their adult income reflects their IQ score virtually regardless of race or class background.

So this could be interpreted either as blacks underperfoming given initial socioeconomic advantages, or neither blacks or whites performing any differently than you would expect give initial IQ scores.

"Self-published?"

Figure 8 is the best piece of evidence offered on this question so far.

La Griffe is no piker, and the PISA numbers are all available to check online. Williams study isn't published until next month, so we can't evaluate it's methodology or know what data set was used. But it's hard to compete with the PISA data if we are asking how much cultural differences matter.

Re: New at Cato Unbound: Lott Replies to Loury

Jason Malloy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:13:23 -0000

There are only two real reasonable purposes I can see for prisons: The first is deterrence, and the second is to sequester dangerous people away from society. But being dangerous is a biological condition. Women aren’t dangerous, and old people aren’t dangerous., but some young, low status, unmarried men get very dangerous. The difference is entirely biological. And if the problem is biological, the solution can be biological. In fact, we already pretty much have this solution: it’s called chemical castration, and it virtually kills recidivism among sexual offenders. I know of no studies for its effects on other kinds of violent offenders, but the null assumption is the effects would be similar. Sexual offenses and other violent offenses stem from the same psychological pathway of impulses.

So here is a modern alternative to prison: If an offender is sentenced to, say, 5 years in prison, they will be offered the choice to either serve their time, or to remain free if they volunteer for the reversible regimen of feminizing chemicals for a time equal to their sentencing. Basically an updated form of probation for more serious crimes. Another option might even be total freedom in exchange for surgical castration.

While this type of option raises the cruel-and-unusual flag for some, the major concern it creates is the exact opposite for me: while it would no doubt prevent future crimes from the castrated person himself, the castration penalty is so non-threatening, so un-cruel compared to prison that it would probably also raise crime in the general population by serving as a “get out of murder free card” for many others. Pre-op transsexuals would basically get a free murder card. And many men, I’m sure, would gladly give up their own testicles for the murder of their choice.

The balance is probably still in favor of the castration option.

Re: Outing Myself (from the Cannabis Closet)

Jason Malloy — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:30:28 -0000

I don't see why it should matter if you smoke pot, or that people "come out of the closet". The laws don't make sense. Each new president with a drug history that doesn't work to improve things needs to get the guillotine.

That said, the laws do exist, and because of that it makes people who do smoke pot lose some of my respect, because it means they may well be supporting some violence down through the black market distribution chain. (at least that is my default reaction)

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 13:48:09 -0000

http://gnxp.com/gnxp_board/viewtopic.php?t=9

To anyone unfamiliar with the situation let me provide somewhat of a backstory. My name is Jason Malloy, I am 24 year old art school graduate, as well as an enthusiastic reader of the web log called Gene Expression. Gene Expression was the result of the merging of five popular blogs back in June of 2002, and it was engineered by two South-East Asians, a geneticist known as Godless Capitalist and a biochemist named Razib. The idea was to provide perspectives on the current state of the controversial sciences of human nature. This includes the fields of sociobiology, IQ, and genetics. All three of these sciences are mistrusted by the American public (%50 of which disbelieve in evolution), and are continuously under attack by moralists and activists on the Left and the Right. In essence there has become two views in the sciences today- the one the public knows about, and the one the scientific professionals know. All three fields of inquiry- sociobiology, IQ, amd genetics, have been vehemently attacked, both presently and in the past, as "racist". GnXp was never about hatred, it was about questions, and about answers. In short it was about a disspationate search for the truth of evolved man, no matter how challenging or frightening those truths might be.
Inevitably, the most controversial topic Gene Expression writes about is the one of race. One question Gene Expression asks is if the races of man are different, or if they are %100 the same. GnXp says that they are not %100 the same. But it be absurd to say that GnXp is racist because of that, because no one believes this. If we could take any one native from Senegal, and any one native from Korea, I think any honest individual would be able to pick out who came from where. This is only talking about the most reliably discrete portions of their respective racial phenotypes, many more features of their respective biologies are shared, but distrubuted differently on a statistical curve. These curves are many, and have incredible variations from population to population. People who participate in GnXp discussions are particularly interested in this because they come from all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds, and its implications for medicine are really astounding. Ignoring race, makes the (mostly white) moralists feel good about themselves, but for American minority populations, such willful ignorance can and has caused a great deal of suffering and death, as treatments and prescriptions, and procedures that are optimal only for whites are used on patients of ethnicities they were not designed for. At times these treatments can be ineffective and even harmful. Other times, better treatments were available, but ignored for ideological reasons at the expense of the patient. Another place where these statistical population variations interest people and GnXp is in the area of sports. Just as we might agree that the vast majority of Eskimos are Shorter than the vast majority of Dinkas, literally tens of thousands of such differences exist between racial populations, including things, but not limited to, such as skeletal structure, muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity. Anybody who watches the Olympics have already noticed what ethnicities take what sports, and which ones others are virtually absent from. You won't find many Samoans taking the diving gold, or many East Asians winning the 100-meter run. No one population is "superior", b/c anatomical variety involves trade-offs. Well-muscled American west-african blacks may have physiology that gives them edge in sports such as football and basketball, but those same features make them ill-suited, for the most part, in similarly outstanding performance in areas such as swimming and diving.
http://www.africana.com/Utilities/Content.html?...
Two authors who talk about these significant and facinating population and racial differences are Jon Entine and Sally Satel, esp. as it applies to sports and medicine. For further exploration here are some links:

http://www.jonentine.com/science_genetics.htm
http://www.jonentine.com/sports.htm
These differences of body in racial populations are fairly controversial, but are supported by an unsurmountable body of scientific evidence. Perhaps if these were the only differences covered by GnXp, the website would not recieve the kind of of charges that Richard are levying against it, but the website, using common sense and the weight of mainstream scientific opinion, does go further. For you see, since all credible scientific naturalists abandon the notion of Cartesian duality, the picture would be incomplete to leave the picture at the superficial level of the body. Individual humans differ not only in the "physical" traits I have been discussing here, but in "mental" ones as well. Not only do individuals differ in aptitude, behavior, and personality, it has been decided that these differences are in some part (40-%80) genetic. For instance Indentical twins raised apart are measured to be more similar than fraternal twins raised together. This includes things such as personality, IQ, and criminality. That being said, as the measured physical traits of different populations statistically vary, so do the measured mental traits. Now ask yourself, why would these inhereted mental traits that differ between individuals not cluster within closely related people just like the physical ones do? The most internally coherent and parsimonious answer to this question, is that inhereted traits of aptitude, personality, and behavior are not evenly distrubuted throughout world populations, but are just as statistically uneven as the inhereted physical traits such as the ones of skeletal structure, muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity discussed above. These patterns would be predicted from this model and not surprisingly they do occur. NorthEast Asians, on averge, have higher mathematical than verbal aptitude whether they are raised in Asia, or in Europe, or Africa, or America. They also have lower rates of criminality, divorce, and sexually transmitted disease (as well as a lot of other patterened data), than native white or black population (on average), no matter what culture they are raised in. Similarly, West-African blacks show cross-cultural patterns as well. Whether they are raised in Europe, Asia, or Africa blacks have higher verbal than mathematical aptitude. They also (on average) have higher rates of criminality, divorce, and sexually transmitted disease, etc., than the surrounding asian or caucasion populations of the cultures where they are raised. This experiment is repeated daily throughout the world, with stable results. It has also been repeated under more controlled and measured scientific circumstances under the famous Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study conducted by Sandra Scarr. White, black, and Mulatto babies were all given up for adoption to reletively affluent White families, and then studied as they aged to evaluate their progress of aptitude and behavior. The results of the expiriment were what could be expected from my assumptions stated above. The black babies, though there IQs did end up higher than the A-A mean, were lower than those of the Mullatto children, who themselves had lowered measured IQ (on average) than the white children. Further evidence to support the default assumption (stated above) is the reletive stability of the black-white IQ difference over 100 years of measued testing. It has remained at an anamolous 15 points (1 SD) different mean score. This is through years of changing circumstances and different conditions of society. Why would Jim Crow blacks score at the same disadvanteged rate as post Jim-Crow blacks? Further, why would blacks raised in Europe, Israel, Australia, etc. have the SAME mean difference in measured mental ability than the local caucasion populations? Why 1 SD? I imagine it is for the same reason that Kenyan's take %60 of the distance running metals in the Olympics, whether they are raised in Kenya or not.
This is not a complete listing of the reasons for the suspicion of these diffrences, but it is a start. I have to say that it doesn't come as a surprise that a MAJORITY of those in related scientific feilds suspect that the black-white IQ gap is IN PART caused by genetic factors, as well as Environmental ones.
www. gnxp.com is NOT a racist website. It is a website devoted to honest discussion and debate about human differences and similarities. The great majority of us there believe in equality before the law as our central guiding Jefforsonian principle. We care about the nature and reality of mankind, because we are Humanists, and humanists hold as a constant right the dignity of all men, b/c human dignity is presupposed instead of contingent on external conditions or anything we may discover.

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1...

Mainstream science on Intelligence:

[on measured b-w differences] "Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved to"

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 13:58:25 -0000

http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_200...

http://www.sallysatelmd.com/html/a-nytimes3.html

Here are some links that got left out from above.

Also sory fer al teh misspelings. to lazy to use the spel chek.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Tue, 14 Jan 2003 22:16:45 -0000

"the Gene Expression people tell me I'm a politically correct liberal"

I've never said you're anything but what you demonstrated in our discussion, Richard: a Republican who would gladly ignore any fact if it could help get rid of affirmative action.

(Also, for someone who pretends to hate "stereotypes" so much, you certainly haven't hesitated to repeatedly take any one person's opinions from the GnXp comment board and attribute them to everybody there.)

So, can either Anil or Richard tell me why only an %100 environmental explanation is suitable, or even more plausible, as an explanation for the persistent b-w IQ gap? Does considering otherwise make someone a "crossburner"? Yes or no? Also, can someone tell me why partially heritable traits, such as ones that affect aptitude, personality, and behavior, should logically (much less morally!) be expected in %100 equal distributions across world populations, when this is virtually unheard of for any variant trait?

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Wed, 15 Jan 2003 01:43:16 -0000

"Jason, the $ sign goes before the number, but the % sign goes after it."

Well, if we're going to correct my writing errors, we could be here all day. :)

Richard, I appreciate all of your repsonses (although I really wish our dialogue could take on a more respectful, dispassionate tone). I am going to cut-and-paste your response into The GnXp Message Boards, and respond to it there, probably much later today. I really hope you, as well as Atrios, or anyone else who would like to share their opinions, for that matter, will register in and respond there too. I sincerely believe that public debate and discussion on this matter will be a good thing for all parties involved. I am very eager for others to talk about this, no matter what their opinion, b/c I believe we can all grow stronger off of eachother (even if that means learning how to deal with/dispute opposing opinions better). Maybe some minds will even get changed.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:55:57 -0000

"Athletic differences, like most things, are a combination of nature, nurture, and culture."

But aptitude, personality, and behavior are not I guess?

btw, Rushton continues to publish in peer-review communities, and we've already been over the Pioneer fund. Your frequent guilt by association arguments have never been a convincing debate tactic. You have to provide some logical dismissals of actual data.

"What I'm looking for is one link to one global study that firmly establishes the alleged low IQ of black-skinned people, so I can rip it apart."

I've got a better idea, why don't you find me one study from any time or any place in which a nice represenative sample of Blacks have out-scored Asians or whites. In the meantime here is a survey of world IQ data (Table 5):

http://socio.ch/internat/volken.htm

Notice the black country scores all cluster at the bottom, the white countries cluster intermedietely, the asian countries at the top. This pattern happens no matter what culture the respective populations become a part of.

I promised you I would have a reply last night. I'm sorry, I got busy/distracted. Hopefully I will get to it in the next couple-O-days.

Cheers (

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 12:12:32 -0000

ups...forgot to sign my name.

"Or just like they (to my knowledge) have never been in an Olympic swimming final. "

There have been some black swimmers of distinction.

http://www.swiminfo.com/lane9/news/3488.asp

" I used to be a pre-olympic swimmer and basketball player, which isn't an allowed combination according the racial theorists."

Richard can this please stop at some point? Here is what I said:

"No one population is "superior", b/c anatomical variety involves trade-offs. Well-muscled American west-african blacks may have physiology that gives them edge in sports such as football and basketball, but those same features make them ill-suited, for the most part, in similarly outstanding performance in areas such as swimming and diving."

Sometimes you are so cynical, I don't even think you know what your trying to dispute.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sat, 18 Jan 2003 16:11:56 -0000

"Intelligence in the grand sense (not just the ability to perform certain kinds of verbal tricks) is a universal, with survival value in all places at all times. Therefore, we can't account for supposed differences in intelligence according to an appeal to local conditions.

That would be saying that some climates favor stupidity, which is clearly absurd."

This is evolutionary nonsense, Richard

I don't know how you could look anyone in the eyes and recite this theoretical excrement. David, you may certainly field this one, in your own way if you want to, but I am already grilling Richard for this tripe here:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=65

I guess by your theory, Richard all those non-intelligent, non-human animals who are surviving just fine are some sort of evolutionary paradox. If some climates didn't "favor stupidity", there wouldn't exist right now the non-intelligent chimps who forked off of our shared evolutionary ancestor, you blowhard.

"Your comparison between specific athletic abilities and intelligence is apples to oranges. Athletic ability as a generality isn't a property of racial groups; what we see is specific athletic abilities in specific sub-racial groups, such as the sprinting ability of West Africans and the long-distance running of East Africans, and these are adaptations to local conditions."

First of all, its nice to see you admit to ethnic adapations. While sub-dividing racial populations does tell us much more, you are also missing out on the larger picture if you don't zoom-out as well. Blacks of Sub-Saharan origin are more closely related to eachother than to those outside of the continent. In fact, outside of junk genes, the pygmies, and the khoisan, there actually is very little genetic diversity within Africa. Whatever trade-offs blacks are making locally, enabling them to specialize for certain running events, they are still, as a population whole, able to out-run Asia on average. We usually consider the sports that blacks succeed at most as more masculine (football, basketball, running and jumping, heavy-weight boxing), while the Asian athletes excel at sports of grace (figure-skating, diving, gymnastics). Relavent statistical differences in things such as height, bone density, and testosterone makes for some dramatic differences in the athletic achievements, and kinds of athletic achievement, between racial populations. In this way we are able to make statistically important conclusions about races, in the same general way you just did with sub-racial populations.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sat, 18 Jan 2003 16:22:03 -0000

A message by me, to Richard, from the GnXp comment box:

Oh, and I'm still waiting for a better defense of this curious assumption :

"Now the interesting thing about intelligence is that it's universally a survival value, as I understand intelligence, so there's no genetic reason that one group would develop more or less of it than any other group; it's not something that has localized importance."

Let me put it like this Richard: SOMETHING has to account for, in all those many eons of human evolution, why an ape population could fork, one part of the split could grow more intelligent and survive, while the other part of the split could stay the same in intelligence and survive. It is NOT the default assumption that all possible evolutionary environments will necessarily result in, or select for, the same level or kind of animal intelligence. Perhaps all human populations, in some sort of grand cosmic coincidence, ALL do have exactly the SAME distributions of aptitude, but it wouldn't be because of your flawed theoretical foundation for assuming it.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:25:59 -0000

"Species split off from ancestral lines when a mutation leaves them unable to reproduce with the ancestor species, and that's why humans and apes don't get married, generally speaking."

This is irrelevant to what I was saying or disputing [now, watch the emphasis]:

Richard said: "Now the interesting thing about intelligence is that it's universally a survival value, as I understand intelligence, so there's no genetic reason that one group would develop more or less of it than any other group; it's not something that has localized importance."

Jason said: "Let me put it like this Richard: SOMETHING has to account for, in all those many eons of human evolution, why an ape population could fork, one part of the split could grow more intelligent and survive, while the other part of the split could stay the same in intelligence and survive."

Regardless of the mechanism (which was not in question, or in any way related to my point), higher intelligence in no way has to be thought of as a "univers[al] survival value". Clearly, animals survive that lack it, and ones that have it don't. Did the Neanderthal out-live the chimp? To quote myself:

"Trade-offs, especially the ones necessary for intelligence, are one of the great stories of evolution. A brain is actually a very expensive thing: it eats a lot of energy, it takes a long time to develop, etc."

Do you really believe that the relentless caloric demands of a brain and the 12-15 or so years of care that it takes for a human to become self-reliant aren't going to be liabilities in some evolutionary environments?

If the answer is "yes, I concede that this could be a liability to be selected against in some environments", then your original idea that "there's no reason that one population would be selected for more intelligence than any other group", is theoretically false. You ignore the trade-offs of greater intelligence as if they didn't, or even couldn't exist.
And this doesn't even include the high rates of depression, myopia, and schizophrenia and other "harmful baggage" that go along with greater intelligence, increasing its liability.
And even that doesn't include a million hypotheticals as to why your bold assertion that "EVERY group would select for the SAME DISTRIBUTION of intelligence in ANY POSSIBLE environment" is evolutionary hog-wash.

"I would remind you that African genetic diversity is actually greater than that of any other regional group."

Yes, that makes for a great soundbite, Richard, and you keep repeating it [even after Razib and Troy disputed it], but it only holds true for junk genes. You know, those genes that don't actually do anything but allow scientists to make forensic geneological trails back in time. As Cavilli-Sforza says in "History & Geography of the Human Genes" [via Mr. Sailer]:

"? differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small."

Summary: 1)Yes, mutation is nifty but it has nothing to do with this conversation. 2)The idea that there is an "optimal" intelligence that every environment would select for if it could is bogus. 3)The famed genetic diversity of Africa is a myth.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:50:59 -0000

Ah, the return of those ever so fair and persuasive klan and nazi references. When arguments all fail its time to fall back on the methods of juvenile emotional debate.

"But when we're comparing sub-groups of humans, with the ability to transer adaptive mutations, this logic no longer applies, unless you're now trying to say that black people aren't human."

Maybe it's my fault for making a previously unclear argument, or perhaps I just have low reading comprehension, but I honestly, honestly, have no idea what you're trying to communicate here. You made a theoretical argument Richard, that argument was that there was some sort of "optimal" level of intelligence that would be more beneficial to have in ANY possible set of environmental circumstances. Maybe in a Cartesian world this might be true (though I'm not too certain why "a little more" intelligence wouldn't always be better in that universe), but in the real world having a bigger and/or more intelligent brain involves trade-offs (some known- others not) that could make selection for this trait either beneficial to survival or not beneficial to survival depending on the specific environmental circumstance. The "transfer of adaptive mutations" and all of those distractions has nothing to do with, and no bearing on my actual argument. There is no a priori assumption that intelligence is the "best" solution, because it is all contextual. If I'm confusing you by jumping around to forking chimps and neanderthals, I will try to clarify: the point of the analogies was that survival doesn't necessarilly require any trait. That is as far as my analogy goes. Please don't take it further. Just trying to get you to look around and see that humans aren't the only living creature. None of this "maybe you think blacks aren't human" inflammatory garbage. Whether it's at the level of phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, or race, no trait should be considered somehow "universally optimal" or beyond contextual benefit to the organism. Get it? Context. You have a bad evolutionary theory Richard. You have already admitted that populations can and do have different statistical distributions of genetic traits (regarding west and east africans). Also, aptitude, personality, and behavior are some of those traits that you have attested to as having genetic components, and that individuals differ in those components. I am telling you right now that no level of intelligence, no kind of personality trait, and no behavioral proclivity that can be found in the entire spectrum of human variation is objectively optimal in EVERY possible selection environment. There is no circumstance what-so-ever where it will be reasonable for me to accept your statements to the contrary. It's ludicrous. There is absolutely no reason to think that different selection environments wouldn't work to select for different distributions of these aptitude, personality, and behavioral traits that are within the catalogue of normal human variance.

Summary: "Now the interesting thing about intelligence is that it's universally a survival value, as I understand intelligence, so there's no genetic reason that one group would develop more or less of it than any other group; it's not something that has localized importance."

In Richard's Manachaen world, evolutionary traits actually are "inferior" and "superior", because he has personally defined them in absolute Platonic values. But in the universe of prudent evolutionary theory, the "superiority" or "inferiority" of a trait, or collection of traits, or distribution of traits within a population is determined by contextual selection pressures. Survival is the only goal, and there are some generally reliable, but no hard-and-fast rules on how to get there. This applies esspecially, and this should go without saying, to all the diversity that exists within normal human variance. Despite what Richard would have anyone believe, no normal human is "inferior" from the stand-point of the universe, and given the right contextual environment anyone of us could have been the template for darwin's optimal survivor.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 01:14:58 -0000

Alright, I'm getting sleepy. I'll finish later, but I'll briefly say this: Cavilli-Sforza, Mr. Sailer, and I are actually all in agreement to the idea behind "race" (If you look at the cover of the book I linked to, you'll see a color-coded map that relates very closely to those same old-fashioned racial categories your grandpa probably talked about); the only dispute that may exist between us and cavilli-sforza is nothing but a superficial semantic one, which can be easily resolved. I will do that tommorow.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Sun, 19 Jan 2003 07:54:38 -0000

harmon,

I sympathize with your sensitivity to the issue, and I agree that human value is presupposed, and at the level of the individual. The biggest reason this issue is interesting to me is becuse I feel that any information about humanity is good information. I also believe that a world that will not address the likelihoods and possibilities of man's reality ends up inadvertantly putting a low premium on both man and truth. Perhaps if I paraphrase your concerns you can better understand why this is issue is truly important:

"Dude (I suppose that's the social correct salutation here..?)

Who cares about this stuff? I mean, when it comes down to it, let us suppose for the sake of argument that man did evolve from a friggin' ape. So where does that leave us? We're all still better than a bunch of smelly apes. Or worse, we look better too - double whammy! So now what?

All that matters is the individual person you are dealing with. The guy across the table, down the hall, around the corner. He's an individual unique person, & you deal with him as you meet him. THE FACT THAT MAN EVOLVED FROM CHIMPS, DOESN'T MEAN A THING!"

In other words, knowledge doesn't have to be justified by its relative utility, it is instead its own inherent virtue.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Mon, 20 Jan 2003 12:13:10 -0000

"? differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small."

Sailer misrepresents Cavilli-Sforza's findings, and even admits as much. . ."

Your challenge here is unrelated to what we were arguing, and leads me to believe you are left with little more to add to this dialogue than equivocation. You repeatedly used the argument that Africa was the most diverse continent, as a claim to counter the idea that its peoples could share any significant patterns of disributed traits. You were then challenged by several people on why you were misusing that claim. Razib himself challenged it on several separate occasions, yet you still continued to repeat the argument with an utter lack of concern for those important objections. I figured maybe a clarifying quote from Cavilli-Sforza (who's research I believe is responsible for your oft mis-used soundbite) might help to finally get you to pay attention:

"? differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan and Pygmies seem rather small."

This legendary diverity that you keep cheerleading, in the face of all reasoned arguments to the contrary, is in junk genes, Richard. But now the king of diversion, must sidetrack the larger debate and drag me down a whole new trail. Now I must defend Steve Sailer b/c I used Cavilli-sforza's quote off of his website (Oh no, another tainted source!).

At this point I am going to challenge your tangential objection, b/c I said I would, and be on my way. The reason for this is two-fold: 1)At the beginning of this conversation you stated your premises as to why nothing but an 100% environmental explanation for the achievement gap is possible. I feel since that time you have made statements that have respectively disagreed with each of your original premises, and that resultingly point more to our conclusion- the possibility of a partially genetic explanation. I might out-line this at a later date on the GnXp Message Board. 2)The pointlessness of this Sailer diversion leads me to believe you are no longer interested in the topic of the main conversation. I thought the point in dispute was African diversity? I use a C-S quote off of Steve's website, and now for some reason I have to answer for Steve's alleged (and completely unrelated) lie about Sforza's view on race. In on-going debate-style conversations like this such needless wandering will always result in a restrictive exponential increase in the amount of typing it will take to fully respond to all of your points. I feel that we have reached the ceiling of my post-length tolerence. Moving on. . . .

The funny thing about the word "race" is just that- it's a word. Like any word the idea it is invested with is dependent on the speaker. Mr. C-S discusses why he rejects "race" here:

"I don't like the word "race" because it corresponds to old subdivisions that are inconsistent with genetic reality and unjustifiable by a rational classification. Moreover, there is no real use of such classifications and, what is worse, there is always an associated racist flavor."

In other words, he feels the word "race" connotates something platonic (essential) and Linnaeun (perfectly hierarchical and sub-divisible) and racist (pre-applied value judgements). The Anthropological Association of America rejected a similar definition of race:

"In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups."

The problem or "squid ink", that Mr. Sailer was reffering to was the fact that rejecting a word, does not make the phenomenon it was used to originally describe go away. I could say I reject "love" b/c it corresponds to old ideas of intangible spiritual ideals and hokey sweetness. But then if I'm a neuro-psychologist who goes on to write an 800 page book on the origin and workings of feelings of "affection" in the human animal, without using the word "love", then I am being semantic and nothing more. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza is a "population" geneticist, and we can use the word "population" as a substitue for describing statistical genetic relationships, but like the switch from negro, to colored, to black, to African-American, shuffling terminology does nothing to rid the idea of its baggage in the minds of anyone. Steve Pinker wrote an article on this "squid ink" tactic called "The Game of the Name" for the New York Times.

So no, Richard, Mr. Sailer is neither a misrepresentor, or a liar, or a mind-reader, or a candidate for the "master-race" for that matter (he's half-Jewish), he just understands how language works, and "The Name Game" is fun but ridiculous.

And what of the connotations of race that the AAA and Mr. C-S were seeking to reject? Does Mr. Sailer invest his definition of "race" with the triple "errors" of Platonicism, Linnaeunism, and bigotry? In fact Steve has rejected all three: he has stated that race is neither essential or perfectly sub-divisible, and he has stated that value is indeed at the level of the individual. In effect Sforza and Sailer and the AAA all equally agree on what race is not. For a well-written manifesto of what race is to Mr. Sailer, I would recommend his essay on the matter titled: It's All Relative: Putting Race in Its Proper Perspective. I think in this essay he fairly well clarifies that he understands race neither to be Platonic or Linnaeun. Steve's definition of "race" is no more or less than what C-S means by a" population". Whatever word we use for the phenomenon it is relative in two senses: [From article. My comments are in brackets]

"First, it's all about who your relatives are. A modern Darwinian approach to race would start from the bottom up, with the father, mother, and baby. All mammals belong to biological extended families, with a family tree that features all the same kinds of biological relatives as you or I have?grandfathers, nieces, or third cousins and so forth. And everybody belongs to multiple extended families?your mom's, your dad's, etc.

Which leads to my modern definition of race:

A racial group is an extended family that is inbred to some degree.

That's it?just an "extended family that is somewhat inbred." There's no need to say how big the extended family has to be, or just how inbred

We know that humans have not been mating completely randomly with other humans from all over the globe. Most people, over the last few tens of thousands of years, just couldn't afford the airfare

. . .in anybody's family tree, certain statistical patterns will stand out. Just ask somebody, "What are you?" and they'll tell you about some of the larger clusters in their family tree, such as, "Oh, I'm Irish, Italian, and Cherokee."

. . . This is a scaleable solution. Do you want to know a lot about a few people? Then, the more inbred, the more distinct the racial group. Or, do you want to know a little about a lot of people? The less inbred, the larger the group. [remember Richard we can know a lot about the few people of West and East Africa, as you admitted, or we can clump them together and know a little, but still useful, less, because they are still share more genes with eachother than they do with the Japanese or Han Chinese]

. . .The bottom-up approach simply eliminates any compulsion to draw arbitrary lines regarding whether a difference is big enough to be racial. [in other words it doesn't matter "how many" races there are] With enough inbreeding, hereditary differences will emerge that will first be recognizable to the geneticist, then to the physical anthropologist, and finally to the average person. [this would be the continental sized groupings on Sforzas book cover]

. . .The second sense in which race is all relative: it's pointless to make absolute statements about the significance or insignificance of race. You always have to ask, "Compared to what?"

. . .You have to look at it relatively. If you were planning to climb Mt. Everest and somebody were to say, "The difference between Mt. Everest and sea level is insignificant, it's just a 0.15% difference in the distance from the center of the Earth," you'd roll your eyes. But, when somebody says the same thing about genetics, it's treated as a profundity.

Similarly, we are constantly told, "there are more genetic differences within races than between races." This is, in general, true. But it hardly means that the differences between races therefore don't exist.

. . .Keep in mind that 80% of the variation observed was within racial groups. Which is about what you'd expect from observing the world around you. In every racial group, there exists a wide variety of physical and personality types among men, from the most hyper-masculine to the most gentle.

Still, few who watch sports on television, follow Olympic running results, or examine interracial marriage patterns, will be surprised that blacks on the whole score highest on those androgen receptor gene alleles associated with greater masculinity. . .[-->whites-->asians]"

There is certainly no reason to think that "Sailer misrepresents Cavilli-Sforza's findings", and this applies esspecially to the "junk gene" African diversity that was the primary issue anyway. Furthermore, there is no reasonable contradiction that can be noted between Sforza's work and Steve's interpretation of that work. You took a superficial disagreement over nonclamenture and conflated it into some big phony scandal.

I would like to close by thanking you, despite the many ugly confrontations we had, for having such a frank and open dialogue. I am not trying to being cute or sarcastic, I genuinely like exploring issues with those who disagree, because it is the only chance for me to see issues from differing perspectives. I thank you for the time you spent in this conversation, and hope that you or anyone else who wishes to praise, add comment, or disagree will come over to the new GnXp Message Board and start a thread or join in on a conversation.

Re: Is Gene Expression racist?

Jason Malloy — Mon, 20 Jan 2003 13:20:37 -0000

Thanks Rich!

You always were one of the good ones.

Re: The Legitimacy of Border Policy

Jason Malloy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:35:28 -0000

"Private ownership of land (and state-backed property rights) is justified because the system as a whole tends to leave people better off than does common ownership."

Great. Then a conservative immigration policy is justified because the system, as a whole, leads to a relatively ethnically homogeneous and high human capital population that promises long term political stability, functional institutions, high levels of social trust and altruism, low corruption, low levels of fear and predatory criminal behavior, lower inequality, and high standards of living.

The United States and Canada have much higher standards of living than the racially mixed/ethnically heterogeneous Spanish and Portuguese descendant nations south of Texas. Importing the people of those nations is importing the social characteristics, lower human capital, and lower standard of living of those nations.

Free movement of labor is fine given that there is a high degree of confidence that the itinerants leave when they are supposed to, and have a poor prospect to gain permanent citizenship for themselves and their children (and its attendant access to voting rights and social services).

Porous immigration means a relatively small number of immigrants and their descendants benefit from the higher standard of living here at the expense of the living standards of the native population and their descendants.

Tighter immigration means a relatively large number of world citizens and their descendants benefit from the higher world living standards that stem from the higher living standards of our native population and their descendants. This means a greater export of wealth, technology, science, culture, and ideas that benefit both the nation and the entire world than if our nation had lower human capital, less functional institutions, more civil strife, and lower economic development.