James Watson: A Modern Alan Turing.

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Amren, Auction, Bell Curve, Bell Curve controversy, Civilisation, Controversy, Correct, IQ, James Watson, James Watson Racist, Jared Taylor, John Derbyshire, Nobel Prize, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Race and intelligence, racism, VDare, Watson

James Watson, the genius who – with Francis Crick – discovered the structure of DNA, has fallen on hard times. Ostracised for his comments on race and intelligence many years ago, the distinguished scientist has now felt the need to auction his Nobel Prize medal to the highest bidder.

Some have greeted this pitiful news with heartless derision:

“This sounds awful” –  wrote Adam Rutherford in the Guardian –  “…an 86-year-old hero ostracised for his views, shooed from public life by the people who walk in his scientific shadow…. But it’s not awful. Watson has said that he is “not a racist in a conventional way”. But he told the Sunday Times in 2007 that while people may like to think that all races are born with equal intelligence, those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. Call me old-fashioned, but that sounds like bog-standard, run-of-the-mill racism to me.”

No sympathy there then. Rutherford’s twisted viewpoint is repeated across the spectrum of the uninformed mainstream. It is only outside of this spectrum that the matter is seen for what it is – an unambiguous tragedy and a disgrace to science.

A man who has done more than anyone alive to aid humanity’s understanding of itself; a man whose invention and wit upgraded the field of science, exposed the hidden potential of medicine and stirred the imagination of a million minds is reduced to near-penury simply for holding an unfashionable opinion.

Watson reminds me of nobody more than the British code-cracker Alan Turing who, after breaking the enigma code of the Nazis and thus enabling the defeat of fascism, was cast out to the margins of society by his ungrateful country for being homosexual. (Turing later committed suicide by biting into an apple injected with cyanide).

The Left adores Turing and so he is wildly (and rightly) venerated. Watson annoyed the Left and so he is ostracised. That says a lot about which political wing is currently dominant over academia, doesn’t it?

And is Watson actually wrong? Surely that is the most central and vital thing to consider. Here is the statement that got him into this mess:

“I am inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours —whereas all the testing says not really… people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

This (admittedly clumsy) statement is far from ‘hateful’. It is grounded in fact by a crushing weight of experiment and analysis. Here is an excerpt from the book-length study of the subject ‘The Bell Curve’:

“Ethnic differences in measured cognitive ability have been found since intelligent tests were invented. The battle over the meaning of these differences is largely responsible for today’s controversy over intelligence testing itself…There are differences between races, and they are the rule, not the exception… External evidence of bias (in IQ tests) has been sought in hundreds of studies…Overwhelmingly, the evidence is that the major standardized tests used to help make school and job decisions do not underpredict black performance, nor does the expert community find any other general or systematic difference in the predictive accuracy of tests for blacks and whites.”

Those who would call James Watson ‘ignorant’ are themselves ignorant, and those ‘scientists’ who back these catcalls should not be considered scientists at all.

D, LDN.

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Race, Honesty and Nicholas Wade.

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A Troublesome Inheritance, Civilisation, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Genes and Talent, Is Intelligence inherited?, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Race and intelligence, Racism in Science, Scientific Racism, Steven Pinker

Nicholas Wade’s book ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ was always predicted to elicit hysteria. Some even knew the script of outrage word for word. In the pages of VDare and Amren, veteran columnists like John Derbyshire and Jared Taylor awaited the crackling torches and swooshing pitchforks with a bored indifference.

As it happened, the hysteria arrived like a cuckoo from a Swiss clock. From the moment the book was published, Wade has been thrown violently onto the back foot. Political insinuations have been shaded into the background of the author’s profile. Phrases like ‘scientific racism, ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘shady funding’ have been bandied about without as much as a footnote to support them. And most importantly (and shamefully) of all, the science contained in the book has been torn apart, misquoted and miscategorised without any of it being convincingly refuted.

Although predictable, this is unbefitting of established academia. From what I have read of the book, the author’s tone seems altogether gentlemanly, his reputation rather mainstream, and his arguments often very watered down.

The point of Wade’s work is best summarised by his oft-quoted statement that human evolution has been ‘recent, copious and regional’. By this he means simply that man did not stop evolving when he left Africa, that his subsequent evolution has been considerable, and that it has happened in groups isolated from one another genetically. “Recent, copious, and regional.”

Wade won’t be winning any Nobel prizes for this insight, and rightfully so, since this was already the understanding of the vast majority of evolutionists. He may however, given his background at the one of the world’s most respected newspapers, popularise the theory.

And what would that do?

What would happen if tomorrow, everyone in the world went out and bought a copy of Wade’s book, read it and agreed with it? What, in a word, would happen if the science of race was re-accepted by the popular mind?

In the estimation of political Left, there would be hell to pay. American transport would have to re-arrange itself so that populations could be divided on buses and trains. Schools would also need to be resegegrated, Africa recolonised, miscegenation re-outlawed etc…

But are they right? I’m not sure.

Liberal democracy is too well established in every Western country for explicitly racist legislation to make a reappearance. There is no way that Atlanta, Georgia or Birmingham, Alabama could conceivably return to the dictats of Jim Crow and very few balanced people would suggest this. Demographics are everywhere different from former times. The world is different. The charge in the bomb has gone dead. span>

And since – as we are routinely and correctly informed – the ideas of racism are not legitimate anyway, we can surely dispense with the abuse directed at communicators of politically neutral scientific fact. Those who cannot be reached by this elementary logic can wait for the Rwandan Einstein or the Icelandic Usain Bolt for the next thousand years if it pleases them. It doesn’t matter. The thing about truth is that it stays true whether people believe in it or not.

D, LDN.

A Question for Egalitarians.

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A Troublesome Inheritance, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Detroit, Egalitarianism, Freedom of speech, Jared Diamond, Jared Taylor, John Derbyshire, Marxism, Nicholas Wade, Race and Genetics, Race and intelligence

In the educated quarters of the United States, a new book about race is causing quite a stir. It’s called ‘A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History’ and was penned by NYT science correspondent Nicholas Wade. In the book Wade argues that race – contrary to liberal consensus – is not a ‘construct’ but a biological fact, and that because of this, average levels of intelligence (as well as various aspects of personality) vary between ethnic groups.

The ‘controversy’ here is of course unwarranted. The findings of modern science almost always suggest ethnic disparities in cognitive ability exist and are severe enough to have political and economic consequences. 

But if you’re still unconvinced, Wade may be of some help to you. I also came up with a nice thought experiment today which may help our side of the argument albeit in a less scientific manner.

If you’re an egalitarian – a Communist of some kind perhaps – and have stumbled upon this horrible, fascist, racist blog by accident, please don’t go before you read and consider the following:

Imagine if sixteen years ago, a South Korean family adopted a Nigerian boy at birth, and then, two weeks later, adopted a Korean boy, also at birth.

The two 16 yr old brothers have grown up eating the same food, and have enjoyed the same amount of exercise. Both also attended the same schools, and were raised by the same stable and complete family.

For a reason we don’t have to go into, the two brothers are entered into a head-to-head IQ contest, and you are obliged by law to bet money on the outcome.

The money you bet with isn’t your own though. In fact, it is the total UN aid budget for Africa for the next ten years. If you lose or decline to take part, the money will be redirected into the bank account of Rush Limbaugh.

Who would go for and why? This direct confrontation between conscience and ideology makes for an interesting dilemma. The answers will be revealing.

D, LDN.

Political Correctness, Godfrey Bloom and the African Tragedy.

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Africa, African people, China, Christianity and Islam, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Godfrey Bloom, List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa, Member of the European Parliament, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Race and Genetics, Race and intelligence, Romania, Saharan Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa

I was motivated to write this post after reading about the treatment of Godfrey Bloom, the UKIP MEP who has been severely reprimanded for protesting the transfer of British aid to a catch-all territory he called ‘Bongo-Bongo land’.

While the term Bloom used is obviously retrograde, silly and a throwback to the worst days of colonial racism, he was entirely correct to criticize the foreign aid budget which (alongside MP salaries) surely ranks among the great scandals of our day.

How can we justify, Bloom asked, giving any money to the foreign poor, when the poor here are becoming reliant on food-banks?

He could have gone much further, I’m sure, if political correctness hadn’t forbade it. Perhaps I can go further for him. Aid to Africa – though it has been a noble pursuit in the past – is today largely a swindle.

While the problems of Africa are real and tragic, they are usually self-created and self-maintained. Malnutrition for example, is the fruit of overpopulation. Aids is the fruit of irresponsibility. Tribal conflict is the fruit of culturelessness. 

To be absolutely frank, if we really cared about the welfare of Africans, we could solve their problems in a single decade by enforcing two commonsensical policies.

1. A child limit per woman.

Even though the same policy in China has led to horrid individual tragedies, Africa sees many, many more as a result of overbreeding. We must be clear that African parents who bring six or seven children into starving countries are not just uneducated, but frankly evil. They are behaving in a disgusting and reprehensible way and should be made an example of.

2. Economic policy, agriculture and city planning must be delegated to non-Africans.

Africans are not as bright as Europeans (the average IQ of a Sub-Saharan African is 70; the average for a European is 100), but they are still very much human-beings and deserve their share of human dignity. That dignity depends on their liberation from a state of darkness they evidently cannot escape.

African countries, even those considered to be merely ‘desert plains’, can be made into semi-modern countries with the right leadership. The Arabs and Berbers of North Africa manage to guarantee themselves a bassline standard of living (often in countries with little fertile land), but Sub-Saharan Africans clearly aren’t able to achieve the same. 

The only alternative to the status quo therefore is for Non-Africans to administer the economic and agricultural policies of Black-majority countries.

There you go.

Job done.

None of this will ever be undertaken of course, because to do so would wreck the Egalitarian order of the West. I just thought it might be nice to imagine a world in which we put peoples lives above theories.

Perhaps angry liberals could start thinking a little less about Mr Bloom, and a little more about that.

D, LDN.