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Post 220

Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 7:47pmSanction this postReply
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Conquest of a Civilization by Open Invitation: One-People/One-World Egalitarian Idealism Leading to Epochal Demographic, Cultural, and Political Decline of Europe

 

Muslim Voters Change Europe


 

An analysis of the voting patterns that barrelled François Hollande to victory on May 6 as the first Socialist president of France since 1995 shows that this overthrow was due in large measure to Muslims, who voted for him in overwhelming numbers.

The French vote marks the first time that Muslims have determined the outcome of a presidential election in a major western European country; it is a preview of things to come.

As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future elections in France.

According to a survey of 10,000 French voters conducted by the polling firm OpinionWay for the Paris-based newspaper Le Figaro, an extaordinary 93% of French Muslims voted for Hollande on May 6. By contrast, the poll shows that only 7% of French Muslims voted for the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy.

An estimated 2 million Muslims participated in the 2012 election, meaning that roughly 1.7 million Muslim votes went to Hollande rather than to Sarkozy. In the election as a whole, however, Hollande won over Sarkozy by only 1.1 million votes. This figure implies that Muslims cast the deciding votes that thrust Hollande into the Élysée Palace.

France, home to between five and six million Muslims, already has the largest Muslim population in the European Union, and those numbers are expected to increase exponentially in coming years. According to conservative estimates, the Muslim population is projected to exceed 10% of the overall French population within the next decade-and-a-half.

During the campaign, Hollande offered an amnesty to all of the estimated 400,000 illegal Muslim immigrants currently in France. He also pledged to change French electoral laws so that Muslim residents without French citizenship would be allowed to vote in municipal elections as of 2014. These measures, if implemented, would enable the Socialist Party tighten its grip on political power, both at the regional and national levels.

Muslims in France -- and across Europe as a whole -- tend to support the Socialists for a variety of demographic, socio-economic and ideological reasons.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3064/muslim-voters-europe

European ‘No-Go’ Zones for Non-Muslims Proliferating

Islamic extremists are stepping up the creation of “no-go” areas in European cities that are off-limits to non-Muslims.

Many of the “no-go” zones function as microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law. Host-country authorities effectively have lost control in these areas and in many instances are unable to provide even basic public services such as police, fire fighting and ambulance services.

The “no-go” areas are the by-product of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged Muslim immigrants to create parallel societies and remain segregated rather than become integrated into their European host nations.

In France, for example, large swaths of Muslim neighborhoods are now considered “no-go” zones by French police. At last count, there are 751 Sensitive Urban Zones(Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS), as they are euphemistically called. A complete list of the ZUS can be found on a French government website, complete with satellite maps and precise street demarcations. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the ZUS, parts of France over which the French state has lost control.

Muslim immigrants are taking control of other parts of France too. In Paris and other French cities with high Muslim populations, such as Lyons, Marseilles and Toulouse, thousands of Muslims are closing off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, are closing down local businesses and trapping non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for Friday prayers.

http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=739

 

Dutch Multiculturalism: Half of Young Moroccans are Criminals
http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=800

Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands between the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or otherwise accused of committing a crime during the past five years, according to a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Interior.
In Dutch neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Moroccan immigrants, the youth crime rate reaches 50%

The Oslo Police have over the past three years investigated 41 cases of aggravated sexual assault, which resulted in rape. All of them were carried out by non-western immigrants to Norway.
http://www.norwaypost.no/news/immigrants-behind-most-cases-of-aggravated-sexual-assault.html


Swedish society is disintegrating and is in danger of collapsing, at least in certain areas and regions. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe. The “Swedish model” would no longer refer to a stable and peaceful state with an advanced economy, but to a Eurabian horror story of utopian multiculturalism, socialist mismanagement and runaway immigration....
 

 In one of the rare instances where the Swedish media actually revealed the truth, the newspaper Aftonbladet reported several years ago that 9 out of 10 of the most criminal ethnic groups in Sweden came from Muslim countries. This must be borne in mind whilst reading the following newspaper article:

Immigrants are “waging war” against Swedes through robbery

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/938

 

 

 

Muslim 'Rape Wave' Reported in Oslo

Report: 45 of 48 rapes in Norway's capital recently were by Muslim immigrants.

Norway is suffering from an unprecedented wave of rapes that are largely being perpetrated by Muslim immigrants against local women, according to Yehuda Bello, an acclaimed Israeli blogger whosespecial interests include Norway.

Bello reports that from January to late October, 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims. In the first six months of 2011, 208 Norwegian women complained of rape and attempted rape in Oslo alone. In all of Norway, 929 rapes and attempted aggravated rapes were reported since the beginning of the year, he adds.

Bello notes that Norway is "the most advanced country in the world in granting rights to women." However, he adds, the "politically correct rot" prevents the rape wave by Muslims from being reported. "They are called 'non-western,' 'dark skinned,' 'Middle Eastern' et cetera."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150378#.T-0PGbWe59k

 

 

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser

Labour threw open Britain's borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a "truly multicultural" country, a former Government adviser has revealed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

 

 

Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration


Old Europe's population is dwindling even as immigration and high birth rates among Muslim groups are swelling in cities all over the continent.

And in Belgium, it is no different.

Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city’s 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a "duty," claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities.
"In those neighborhoods it's not our government that's in power," he said, "but the Muslim authorities — the mosques, the imams — who are in charge."
FOX News visited one of those neighborhoods, called Molenbeek, which looks more like North Africa than the heart of Europe.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510364,00.html#ixzz1z90lU8uB

 


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Post 221

Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 7:53pmSanction this postReply
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Islam is an ideology. It is NOT genetic.

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Post 222

Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 11:44pmSanction this postReply
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Right, Steve, but he's saying that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to immigrate to Western democracies, because of the threat they pose to the culture and political systems.

Post 223

Friday, June 29, 2012 - 12:22amSanction this postReply
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Hi Bill,

I knew that he might have decided that Muslims should be barred from immigration for cultural reasons, but given the title of the thread and all of his other irrational arguments about what comes out of the genes... Well, I decided to just make sure (maybe he believes that people of color are more likely to choose irrational belief systems like radical Islam - maybe he has statistics to show that correlation).

But it really doesn't matter, because his policy suggestions followed with these articles he has selected amount to pre-judging individuals as a thieves or rapists because they are Muslims. That smells a lot like policies or practices that treat someone as undesirable in some way because their skin is black. And I suspect that race is still lurking behind much of his article selection - I did notice that one of the articles mentioned the Muslims being 'dark skinned.'

There IS a problem with a nation being flooded with people who hold beliefs in things like Sharia, but the problem is in allowing any citizens to vote for laws, or for representatives that pass laws that violate rights. If we lived in a minarchy based upon individual rights, we wouldn't be endangered by the crazy beliefs held by other citizens.

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Post 224

Friday, June 29, 2012 - 1:19amSanction this postReply
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The hostile Islamic invasion of Western Europe is a demographic phenomenon (mass migration + higher birth rates) and represents the biggest contributor to long-term cultural decline and the biggest threat to Western freedoms.  It's also contributing to the genetic decline of the West, since most Muslim migrants derive from low-IQ racial lineages in Africa and South Asia, and since inbreeding is a problem among some Pakistani and other Muslim sects. 

Low-IQ populations are more likely to hold socially conservative and economically statist political views and are more likely to be religious.  

Why are blacks less likely to accept evolution?
http://youtu.be/uvYF_IN5rZI

Particular beliefs aren't genetic, but susceptibility to religious fanatacism and general inclinations toward or against authoritarianism are in part genetic.

Swimming upstream against the strong current of conventional campus wisdom holding that just about everything controversial --race, sexual preference, IQ, gender identity and even gender itself -- is "socially constructed," these behavioral geneticists believe that political differences are...deeply rooted in the psyche and even the genes. As one of these scholars put it, "The differences between political left and right are now being recognized as 'very deep and psychological, such that they connect with very basic personality tendencies that don't really have anything in particular to do with politics.'" One estimate "showed that as much as 40 percent of a person's political orientation can be explained by genes."
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/06/the_hunt_for_conservative_and_liberal_genes.html

The West's own secular humanistic religious fundamentalism -- the ethereal post-modern idealism that holds that genes don't matter, that nations are purely cultural constructs, that all peoples on the planet are perfectly identical and inifinitely interchangeable, that African Muslims become Western Europeans as soon as they set foot in Western Europe...is demonstrable insanity.  In a mad world, stating the obvious is met with angry denials and denunciations.  Well, what could be more obvious that that it is not in the rational self-interest of citizens of Western European countries to become demographically Islamified.  Nor is it in mine to passively observe this civilizational apocalypse slowly play out in my remaining decades on this Earth.


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Post 225

Friday, June 29, 2012 - 5:18pmSanction this postReply
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Leonard Peikoff explains why restricting Muslim immigration is a proper defensive function of a government of a free society in this podcast segment:

http://www.peikoff.com/?s=immigration
You said that if a country had laissez-faire it should not control immigration. What if New Zealand, with a population of 4.5 million people, had laissez-faire? Would it be obligated to accept all immigrants, even if that resulted in its becoming Muslim and having Sharia imposed?

17 votes, average: 4.76 out of 517 votes, average: 4.76 out of 517 votes, average: 4.76 out of 517 votes, average: 4.76 out of 517 votes, average: 4.76 out of 5
 
He also supports Arizona citizens' efforts to protect their property rights from illegal Mexican immigrants and endorses the Arizona immigration law that the Obama administration fought to kill:

http://www.peikoff.com/?s=immigration
What is the proper government attitude toward immigration?
32 votes, average: 4.47 out of 532 votes, average: 4.47 out of 532 votes, average: 4.47 out of 532 votes, average: 4.47 out of 532 votes, average: 4.47 out of 5
 
http://libertarianrealist.blogspot.com/2010/07/peikoff-on-immigration_6927.html

(Edited by Brad Trun on 6/29, 5:33pm)


Post 226

Friday, June 29, 2012 - 11:25pmSanction this postReply
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Brad wrote, "Particular beliefs aren't genetic, but susceptibility to religious fanatacism and general inclinations toward or against authoritarianism are in part genetic."

What is your evidence for the latter? Don't your beliefs determine your susceptibility to religious fanaticism and your inclinations toward or against authoritarianism?

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Post 227

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 4:21amSanction this postReply
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William, I just posted a link concerning political orientation.  Studies on the heritability of personality traits, as demonstrated by twin studies, have been posted previously. 

Don't your beliefs determine your susceptibility to religious fanaticism and your inclinations toward or against authoritarianism?
No, that's a primacy of consciousness formulation.  Beliefs emanate from objective aspects of one's nature and one's experiences (primacy of existence), as integrated consciously.  Some individuals and groups are more prone to religious militancy than others.  The genetic basis for this is weaker than for general intelligence, but not unrelated.  IQ is inversely correlated with religiosity.


Post 228

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 9:24amSanction this postReply
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Brad,

You said that particular beliefs aren't genetic, but that religious fanaticism is; but if a belief in religion isn't genetic, how can religious fanaticism be?

The link you posted suggests that beliefs themselves are genetic, because it argues that there's a conservative and liberal gene.  According to the article, "political differences are not caused primarily by conflicting ideologies or moral visions but instead are deeply rooted in the psyche and even the genes. As one of these scholars put it, 'The differences between political left and right are now being recognized as 'very deep and psychological, such that they connect with very basic personality tendencies that don't really have anything in particular to do with politics.' One estimate 'showed that as much as 40 percent of a person's political orientation can be explained by genes.'"

One of the conclusions drawn from this study is that "Republicans are impervious to facts" and "things like authoritarianism, dogmatism, closed-mindedness [are] distributed currently more on the right than on the left." Conservatives are also, according to the article, supposed to lack "compassion and fairness," which the authors identify as "liberal values."

Fascinating. If conservatives and Republicans were to deny these allegations, would that simply be further confirmation of their alleged closed-mindedness and imperviousness to facts?

I wonder. Were the scientists who drew these conclusions Republicans or Democrats? Were they conservatives or liberals?

Do you consider this study an example of responsible and objective science? And if so, do you support its conclusions based on your rational judgment or simply on a genetic predisposition to accept them as true?


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Post 229

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 2:08pmSanction this postReply
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You said that particular beliefs aren't genetic, but that religious fanaticism is; but if a belief in religion isn't genetic, how can religious fanaticism be?
In the same way that particular sex acts aren't genetic but sexual orientation is.


Do you consider this study an example of responsible and objective science?
The interpretation of the results is clearly biased, and the significance of the study in the article is overstated (political orientation is ~40% genetic, not primarily genetic).


And if so, do you support its conclusions based on your rational judgment or simply on a genetic predisposition to accept them as true?
Well, I have a genetic predisposition for rational judgment, but not for particular conclusions.  Reason and genes ought not be falsely dichotomized.  Notions of reason divorced from the objective, biological material that makes reason possible render the mind a floating, idealized abstraction.  In reality, brains vary genetically and physiologically between men and women, from person to person, and from race to race. Those objective variations lead naturally to variations in intelligence -- and, to a lesser extent, values and beliefs.


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Post 230

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 2:31pmSanction this postReply
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Bill,

I'm astounded at your patience. Me? A certain amount of nonsense and I get out.

Trun is claiming he has a "...genetic predisposition for rational judgement..." - not judging from what I've read.

He claims that variations in human brains lead to variations in values and beliefs. I.e., black people's brains, in his mind, clearly don't have very good values or very rational judgment. He can't tell us how a gene codes for a belief, but that doesn't seem to bother him.

Nearly all of his arguments boil down to the same thing. "Some races are inferior - especially blacks. Statistics prove this. We should do something or Western Culture will be destroyed."

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Post 231

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 3:51pmSanction this postReply
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I wrote (to Brad), "You said that particular beliefs aren't genetic, but that religious fanaticism is; but if a belief in religion isn't genetic, how can religious fanaticism be?" You replied,
In the same way that particular sex acts aren't genetic but sexual orientation is.
I'm having trouble following your logic here. If you don't believe in religion, then how can you be a religious fanatic? How can your religious or political orientation be one thing but your religious or political beliefs be something else?

I asked, "Do you consider this study an example of responsible and objective science?" You replied,
The interpretation of the results is clearly biased, and the significance of the study in the article is overstated (political orientation is ~40% genetic, not primarily genetic).
Then what proof is there that it's genetic at all?

I asked, "do you support its conclusions based on your rational judgment or simply on a genetic predisposition to accept them as true?" You replied,
Well, I have a genetic predisposition for rational judgment, but not for particular conclusions. Reason and genes ought not be falsely dichotomized. Notions of reason divorced from the objective, biological material that makes reason possible render the mind a floating, idealized abstraction. In reality, brains vary genetically and physiologically between men and women, from person to person, and from race to race. Those objective variations lead naturally to variations in intelligence -- and, to a lesser extent, values and beliefs.
But then you are saying that beliefs are genetically determined.

In any case, the point of my question was this: Is your judgment objective -- i.e., free from any genetic biases -- or is it determined by whatever genes you happen to have inherited. You can say that you've inherited perfectly rational genes, but how do you know that they're perfectly rational, if the quality of your judgment is dependent on the very genes that you're presuming to assess? The only way in which you can presume objectivity is if you are sufficiently free from genetic determinants to assess your judgment independently.

The same objection would apply to the scientists who did the study that you're citing. Their conclusion that the content of our beliefs is genetically determined impugns the objectivity of the very study leading to that conclusion.


Post 232

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 4:17pmSanction this postReply
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Brad,

The primary defense of your political policy recommendations stems from an assumption about the size of the genetic component of someone's IQ score -- heavily relying on personal YouTube videos for exposition. On that matter, I have just made a personal YouTube video, showing how and why it is that environmental factors are more important with regard to IQ scores:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6AVuc-oCo&feature=plcp

I invite you to consider taking the 12 minutes it takes to watch it. You may, after viewing it, have a grand epiphany and start a rallying cry for sound nutrition and rationally-egoistic philosophy (altering our mental and physical environment in order to boost our IQs).

Ed


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Post 233

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 5:27pmSanction this postReply
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If you don't believe in religion, then how can you be a religious fanatic?
By exuding the essential characteristics of a religious fanatic (faith, moral dogmatism, self-righteousness, rash judgments of others, emotionalism, etc.) in whatever explicit belief system you adopt.  I would describe Steve Wolfer as religious, though I can't know the cause of his religiosity.  Most secular humanist egalitarians are religious.


Is your judgment objective -- i.e., free from any genetic biases -- or is it determined by whatever genes you happen to have inherited. You can say that you've inherited perfectly rational genes, but how do you know that they're perfectly rational, if the quality of your judgment is dependent on the very genes that you're presuming to assess?
You seem to be conceiving of reason as some sort of transcendent Platonic ideal in the world of forms that exists independent of genes.  We can exercise rationality to the extent that our genes code for it!  Reason evolved gradually over hundreds of thousands of years as our ancestors' brains increased in size. It exists on a continuum, like all traits. People who are mentally retarded have genes coding for that. Nobody is "perfectly rational." (You can be perfectly logical in identifying that 2+2=4, but you can't judge any value-seeking normative choice as rational except in relation to your own limited, fluid context of knowledge and your own limited, fluid understanding of your biologically given nature.)


The only way in which you can presume objectivity is if you are sufficiently free from genetic determinants to assess your judgment independently.  
One can't step outside one's nature to assess one's judgment.  Under your conception, objectivity is metaphysically impossible.  Objectivity has meaning only in context, and human nature as determined by human genes is part of the context that pre-exists any effort to grasp what objectivity would mean for humans.  If you want to be realistic, you can't drop this context and supplant it with some detached, grand absolute ideal -- as you seem to do again and again in everything from your philosophy of human nature and self-interest to your conception of nations and individual rights to your particular political prescriptions -- which consistently aren't grounded in objective metaphysics, in objective, mind-independent existents from which all valid concepts are built.  Your descriptive and normative principles are floating abstractions.  Realistic principles are formed "ground up," not "top down"; i.e., not deduced from idealistic absolutes. 


Post 234

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 5:46pmSanction this postReply
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Brad,
Reason evolved gradually over hundreds of thousands of years as our ancestors' brains increased in size. It exists on a continuum, like all traits.
There you go, again. It's like you have conceptual blinders on, or something.

First off, I already showed you that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence/correlation between reason (or intelligence, or civility) and brain size. Otherwise, either elephants or tree shrews -- depending on how you judge "brain size" (either by absolute size or by relative brain-to-body-mass ratio) -- would be more reasonable, or more intelligent, or more civil than humans! That's absurd! Yet you keep on ignoring that.

And secondly, I already showed you that reason (or intelligence, or civility) doesn't exist on a continuum -- where humans are merely found out at the far end of some kind of a continuous spectrum -- but that there is, instead, a threshold effect separating humans from animals. Yet here you are, claiming that humans are just smarter animals -- possessing the very same "reason, intelligence, civility" traits that the animals purportedly possess, but just possessing more of those shared traits than the animals. That's double-absurd.

[sigh]

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 6/30, 5:54pm)


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Post 235

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 7:12pmSanction this postReply
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First off, I already showed you that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence/correlation between reason (or intelligence, or civility) and brain size.
I've said that the correlation between brain size and IQ is 0.4.  I didn't learn that from you, Ed. 


Otherwise, either elephants or tree shrews -- depending on how you judge "brain size" (either by absolute size or by relative brain-to-body-mass ratio) -- would be more reasonable, or more intelligent, or more civil than humans! That's absurd!
Yeah, and it's also absurd to suppose that a creature with a single brain cell could do calculus. 


there is, instead, a threshold effect separating humans from animals. Yet here you are, claiming that humans are just smarter animals
In our evolutionary lineage there was no distinct threshold.  There was no specific point in time when an "ape" birthed a fully "modern human" as we define it today.  The distinction is clear to us now only because we've gone hundreds of thousands of years further along in our divergent path from our ape ancestors.  The categorical distinctions observable today are a result of a continuum effect.  If we go back far enough, we can trace some of our physiology to our fish ancestors.  

You're idealizing our species as having somewhow been created distinctly from all others, and you're denying that brain size encephalization is a rough indicator of cognitive capacity, probably so that you can ascribe a transcendent equality to all humans that is not biologically objective.  You're being a human creationist.  Read Darwin.  Get real.

"There exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties..." -Charles Darwin
 
I go over the brain size issue in more detail here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tY26zm9Q0rM#t=644s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3zG-wWUc6E


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Post 236

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 7:52pmSanction this postReply
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I'm still seeing the conflating of IQ and intelligence.

PLEASE... put 100 individuals who all have scored almost identically on the same IQ test out in the real world and measure, using any commonsense criteria you want, their successes and failures in key areas of living life after a few decades, eliminate those results that would be accidental (like diseases one couldn't reasonably avoid or prevent, etc.) and note that the variability in success/failure rates would far, far exceed the variability in IQ scores drawn from a random sample of individuals in the same culture.

Get over IQ - it is a pitiful, and inaccurate measure of a limit on a capacity that to be exercised must pull on many, many things not measured at all - things that don't even exist when we are born.

Intelligence only lives in the context of emotions, of prior beliefs, decisions, values, accepted elements of the subcultural environment, intellectual skills acquired, and characterological traits developed. If this weren't true two humans with identical brain sizes would have identical levels of intelligence and make very nearly identical decisions and experience very nearly identical outcomes. We know that's nonsense.

There is a biological basis to human intelligence, just as there is a biological basis to my ability to digest, to walk, to breath, etc. But for me to have a native capacity at the biological basis says nothing about not getting indigestion from bad eating habits, how fast I can walk, or how far I can take my intelligence capacity. And human intelligence is the least bounded or restricted of our capacities by its very nature - it is developed, not innate.

The very idea of using a statistical model, where the key variable amounts to skin color, to measure intelligence of individuals (surprise! it isn't something possessed by a group - you can only locate it within an individual) is such complete nonsense.

Where we find a strong statistical correlation between skin color and some socioeconomic data, then we need to look at common belief systems - it is so obvious to an Objectivist - ideas have consequences. And those who choose to adopt whole-heartedly the set of beliefs that amount to an entire sub-culture will rise or fall in accordance with the effects of adopting those ideas.

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Post 237

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 8:24pmSanction this postReply
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The following study estimates the heritability of "religiousness" to be .3 - .45 and the heritability of "specific religion" to be 0.  It estimates intelligence to be heritable at .82 - .88, but that's based on a non-representative twin study that doesn't reflect the contribution of extant impoverished conditions in society, so .75 seems more realistic. 

Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits
A Survey
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.
http://www18.homepage.villanova.edu/diego.fernandezduque/Teaching/PhysiologicalPsychology/zCurrDir4200/CurrDirGeneticsTraits.pdf


Low-IQ Islamic fundamentalists with high birth rates are spreading genes that help perpetuate the ideology. Even though the ideology itself is 100% cultural, the susceptibility to religious-type thinking is partly genetic and is greater among Muslim populations than among higher-IQ, less religious inhabitants of Western countries (who presently have much lower fertility rates).




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Post 238

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 11:00pmSanction this postReply
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I asked, "If you don't believe in religion, then how can you be a religious fanatic?" Brad replied, "By exuding the essential characteristics of a religious fanatic (faith, moral dogmatism, self-righteousness, rash judgments of others, emotionalism, etc.) in whatever explicit belief system you adopt."

Okay, so you're using "religion" metaphorically. I really wish you had indicated that. You say "Most secular humanist egalitarians are religious." Given your characterization of religiosity, I would say that you too exhibit these characteristics.

I asked, "Is your judgment objective -- i.e., free from any genetic biases -- or is it determined by whatever genes you happen to have inherited. You can say that you've inherited perfectly rational genes, but how do you know that they're perfectly rational, if the quality of your judgment is dependent on the very genes that you're presuming to assess?"
You seem to be conceiving of reason as some sort of transcendent Platonic ideal in the world of forms that exists independent of genes.
Of course, the ability to reason is dependent on our genes, but how we exercise it -- whether we think well or poorly -- isn't exclusively determined by them such that some people are inexorably rational and others, inexorably irrational. How we exercise our ability to reason depends as well on our choice to think, to focus our minds in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and on our education. Human beings are self-actualizing, self-correcting organisms. They are not passive receptacles of their genetic background.
We can exercise rationality to the extent that our genes code for it!
Of course, but they code for it in all human beings. All (normal, mature) human beings have the capacity to think rationally. It isn't that some are forever barred by their genes from doing so. Obviously, people are born with different levels of intelligence, but given a normally healthy brain, they can learn to think logically and to accept a rational philosophy.
Reason evolved gradually over hundreds of thousands of years as our ancestors' brains increased in size. It exists on a continuum, like all traits. People who are mentally retarded have genes coding for that. Nobody is "perfectly rational." (You can be perfectly logical in identifying that 2+2=4, but you can't judge any value-seeking normative choice as rational except in relation to your own limited, fluid context of knowledge and your own limited, fluid understanding of your biologically given nature.)
If I understand you correctly, I would agree. The point is that everyone can learn to avoid contradictions in his ideas and to properly integrate his existing knowledge, however modest it may be.

I wrote, "The only way in which you can presume objectivity is if you are sufficiently free from genetic determinants to assess your judgment independently."
One can't step outside one's nature to assess one's judgment. Under your conception, objectivity is metaphysically impossible.
I think you're missing the point of the argument. If you say, in accordance with the study you cited, that your political orientation or your disposition to think objectively (or non-objectively) is solely dependent on your genes, then you're saying that you can't choose to be objective, fair or unbiased -- that intellectual honesty is not open to your choice -- that whether you're biased or unbiased is strictly a function of your genes, and there's nothing else you can do about it. But if you have no way to choose objectivity or intellectual honesty, then you can't know whether your thinking is valid or invalid, or your ideas true or false.

To put the matter another way, people can learn to overcome their biases -- they can learn to think objectively; they're not genetically stuck with a disposition toward intellectual dishonesty and closed mindedness, as the study seems to suggest.

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Monday, July 2, 2012 - 4:32amSanction this postReply
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Brad,

If the same person takes an IQ test multiple times, the scores are 90% similar (0.90 correlation). And concerning the two kinds of twins I mentioned before -- identical (MZ) and non-identical or fraternal (DZ) -- the correlation between identical twins is 0.86 and between non-identical twins it is 0.60. That means that between these two kinds of twins, there is a difference of 0.26. This brings to mind 5 questions:

1)
What would the difference in correlations be if IQ was 0% genetic?

2)
What would the difference in correlations be if IQ was 25% genetic?

3)
What would the difference in correlations be if IQ was 50% genetic?

4)
What would the difference in correlations be if IQ was 75% genetic?

5)
What would the difference in correlations be if IQ was 100% genetic?
Ed

p.s. I will provide answers to these 5 questions in 72 hours if you have failed to respond by then.


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