We're NOT all Equal

[The Prof]

There are two great taboos in society today. Child-molestation (a complex issue, made more complex by the concatenation of numerous behaviours into the same category, all of which are then "tarred with the same brush") and the second is the suggestion that "Nature" might play at least as large a role in our make up as "Nurture".

Research into anything that even slightly smells of "eliteism" is discouraged, and permitted only on the strict understanding that only certain results are acceptable, and attempts to publicise research findings that contradict official received wisdom will be met with the kind of vilification usually reserved for child-molesters. I'd cite as an example the Chairman of Harvard University, driven from his post last year by a baying crowd for suggesting that "there are more brilliant men than there are brilliant women" (His replacement, by way of exculpation, is the first ever woman chairperson in Harvard's history)

Yet, is that suggestion so surprising? Men have - demonstrably and as a matter of known fact - brains that are larger than womens'. Brain capacity isn't - of itself - an indicator of intelligence; but think of it like an office switchboard. You can route more calls though a large switchboard than you can through a small one. Of course, "Can" isn't the same as "Will". A small switchboard MAY deal with more calls than a large one. But working flat-out, the large one can obviously handle more traffic.

If you look at graphs of how men and women score on IQ tests, two things are immediately apparent. Firstly, when it comes to it, mean, median AND mode. women are "on average" more intelligent than men. Second is that the "standard deviation" for men is WAY higher than it is for women: much wider spread of abilities, in BOTH directions. Conclusion, there are more very intelligent men than very intelligent women - and likewise more male morons. (the larger the "switchboard", the more there is to go wrong!) The theory predicts the shape of the curve... experimentation delivers a curve of that shape. What could possibly be objectionable in that? What? It propounds the TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE idea that were NOT ALL THE SAME. That some of us might be "better" than others. (Which isn't at all what the theory suggests. "Different" and "Superior" are not the same thing at all.

Women on average are more intelligent than men; the contentious part is the assertion that women on average ARE "more average" than men. I'm with Eysenk: the results are what they are. If you can't take the heat... then get out of the laboratory!

Eysenk's research suggested results similar to those of the male/female split - namely that Europeans (on average) are smarter than Africans, but less smart than Asians. (Somehow that "less smart than Asians" bit got ignored, as it's not easy to label someone a racist if they're claiming to be "inferior".) American college access, unlike the UK's A-levels, are often granted through "SAT's" - Standard Aptitude Tests. (Here, SAT stands for Standard ACHIEVEMENT Tests, which are quite different) they're a kind of IQ test. And... guess what?! Asians on average score higher than Europeans, who in turn score higher than Afro-Caribbeans. ("Carribeans" are a special case in the USA - immigration is limited, so only the smartest get in. On average, a person of Jamaican ancestry earns more than someone of English (or more commonly, German, ancestry. "Germans" are the USA's largest single ethnic group.)

Note what Eysenk' findings said: Note more specifically what he DIDN'T say but remains accused of "really meaning" (Eysenk's Jewish family fled to England from Nazi Germany. Not someone you'd immediately associate with the idea of "racism"!) Eysenk did NOT say "All Whites are smarter than all blacks. Nor did he imply it What he said was that whites are ON AVERAGE smarter than blacks. That's - in my eyes at least - as inoffensive as suggesting that "men are, on average, taller than women." Clearly they are. (But my FEMALE cousin is a clear 4" taller than me!) One side effect of Eysenk's "unacceptable" findings was to bring IQ tests into disrepute. If IQ tests don't actually measure intelligence, then it becomes acceptable to admit that one group might have higher average IQs than another. Otherwise, you have to find some other way to make this "elephant in the drawing room" go away. (And the ingenuity used to try and rubbish the experimental findings have been extraordinarily inventive!)

There are things you CAN acceptably say - like "Dutch people are, on average, taller than Congolese Pygmies". The Dutch are the world's tallest nation (and proud of it!) and the Pygmies are the shortest. But if you were to suggest that the Dutch have higher IQ's then the Congolese, there would be a furious outcry, the burning of effigies, and rallies in Trafalgar Square. You'd be called a "Nazi". This is "the acceptable face of Lysenkoism". Politicians interfering in science... for political reasons. - and scientists meekly allowing it.

Eysenk is a truly brilliant experimental designer. When he tries an experiment, the results he gets are generally clear and totally unambiguous. He designs-out irrelevancies. And he' also politically naive in the extreme: he performs experiments then emerges with a broad smile to tell you about the "interesting result" he'd just got, without for a moment considering whether it might be one of those results that's "not allowed to be true". He's also a critic of BAD experimental design and bad science, who the US tobacco lobby hired briefly to make their case.

He found that at the time, the anti-smoking propaganda, was very seldom science based. It was propaganda, pure and simple, based on clumsy observation of experimental data, with absolutely NO pretence to how: A causational link? Hell... people who've eaten ice cream are statistically far more likely to drown than people who haven't. That's not proof that "ice Cream causes drowning": people eat ice cream in the summer, and especially at times when they also immerse themselves voluntarily in large bodies of water... where some of them drown. The statistical linkage are drawn from both figures deriving from a third, unconsidered factor. (People eat ice cream AND THEY SWIM... in hot weather.)

"Equality" and a denial of "elitism" is hard wired into our political system, especially as Education is one of the government's biggest expenditures. Politically, throughout the western world, we hold the official view that Nurture is vitally more important than Nature. To suggest otherwise is just something you're not allowed to DO. Hence the switchover from the old grammar/secondary modern/technical school system - with the associated eleven plus exam - to "Comprehensive" education. Those who had previously been sent to "technical schools"were said to have "failed" their eleven-plus.

I know teachers who tell me that every job they apply for require them to pledge loyalty "to the comprehensive ideal". Not long after the Comprehensive system was forced onto the country (paradoxically by a Conservative government, who got on the train after it was already moving) a husband and wife team who comprised the country's leading educational experts asked permission to carry out tests to see how much improvement the new system had brought about. Now that everyone had an "equality of outcomes", things MUST have improved!

The secretary of state for education (Margaret Thatcher!) gave her permission.... and the tests showed very inconvenient results. Educational standards hadn't improved at all... they'd slumped. The Ministry of education was assigned the task of rubbishing the results and smearing the scientists' reputation - which they did very effectively. The results were confined to page 27 of the newspapers, and the husband and wife team took early retirement. It was made clear that such an experiment would NEVER be allowed again.

The idea that bright parents might, on average, produce inherently bright children just isn't acceptable. It denies the possibility of a magic wand that will make the short tall and the tall shorter. The children of bright parents are the SAME as the children of less bright parents. The only acceptable explanation for their relatively better performance was that they were raised in a "more beneficial environment", where it was (for example) more likely that their parents would do things like read books (thus setting a better example) I accept that it's a contributing factor... but I flatly (and angrily) deny that it tells the whole story.

Off subject? Perhaps. But remember Churchill's oft-quoted cliché "Democracy is the worst system of government... except for all the others"? If you're looking to design a better system, then (as I've suggested before) you need better raw material. Except that "quality control" of materials - or even the investigation of the possibility that there are different qualities is about as acceptable as child molestation. When you shoot or exile anyone who investigates the roundness of the earth... then when you claim "it's flat!" there's almost nobody who can raise an argument to suggest otherwise. There's no evidence to suggest otherwise... because it's all been suppressed. That's not science. "Lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack" (Who was it that said that?!)

I'm not talking about a "conspiracy" theory here... there IS no conspiracy. But there IS an unspoken agreement to accept that 2+2=3, and to destroy the careers of anyone who suggests that 4 is the correct answer. It's a "cultural" thing - like the moral at the heart of the Frankenstein story: "there are some things that we're just not MEANT to know! (Or be able to do)". The mechanism that glues people together into a "society" jut isn't well enough understood. We act collectively in some VERY strange ways.

I've long been interested in kinesics - "the science of body language.", which is very much still in its infancy. We communicate vast amounts of information to each other without ever being formally taught HOW, (or how to read it) but with an amazing literacy. But I'm pretty sure that the same underlying mechanism plays an important part in the "glue" that holds us together as a group. Democracy is, if you like, an attempt to ignore that mechanism and supplant it with something else.

If you think that's a good idea, take a look at how US Agriculture works - particularly the production of almonds (of which the USA has a near monopoly) Almonds grow in vast forests that are completely devoid of competitors - no weeds, no other plants at all. Thus no pollinators, because almonds don't bloom long enough to provide year round sustenance for insects (and other species which might fill the shortfall have all been eradicated) Bees have to be trucked in from hundreds of miles away specifically to pollinate the almonds. Trucking your hives to California and renting out their services to the Almond growers is significantly more lucrative than selling honey. 60% of US agriculture is dependent on pollination by "trucked-in bees". As an ecosystem... it's falling apart. The bees are dwindling in numbers. They weren't designed to be shipped around the country in lorry-bound hives.

There are gaps between our "model of nature"and the real thing... and important trace nutrients seem to have been overlooked in the construction of the "model". Sounds like "there are things that man isn't meant to know"? Far from it. More like "Leonardo's helicopter would never have worked because the design ran centuries ahead of the availability of appropriate materials and a power plant with the right power/weight ratio" Man WAS intended to fly around in helicopters... but not until he'd got the basic science right, first. And that's my point. If we're going to design a better political system... lets get the science right first. The problem is... we're not even TRYING to get it right, but we're vilifying the few people who are.

[HarryStottle]