Fear of Differences, Fear of Reality

Since I'm processing the backlog of my blog notes, here's one piece about a topic that has been at the center of several scandals this year yet surprisingly little open public discussions: genetic differences amongst human beings.

You may remember how Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, was whipped by the established intelligentsia for daring suggest that one of the factors behind the relative paucity of female researchers in some scientific fields could possibly be genetic predispositions. Confronted to the outrage, he lacked the courage to stand even by such a weak suggestion, and crawled back with profuse apologies. Of course, if he had the courage to defend truth, he wouldn't have made a weak suggestion, but a strong statement -- and he would make such a statement earlier, and thus would have been censored out of any influencial office, which would have prevented any scandal.

All the people who have studied the matter scientifically agree about the reality of significant measurable differences between people that can be individually explained by genes, and statistically correlated to genes. But these politically incorrect truths are systematically banned from the mainstream mass media, from school, from public debate. Charles Murray called that The Inequality Taboo.

A few days ago, Andrew Fraser was censored when he tried to publish his article Rethinking the White Australia Policy. Nobody tried to debate the scientific truth of its historic and genetic statements on the one hand, and the justification and legitimacy of the proposed policies on the other hand. No, censorship was the reflex of the University, based on prejudice and political pressure.

Truth is not afraid of debate. Only lies are.

Here is my take.

Everyone is uniquely different. Genome is a significant part of what makes an individual what he is. Actually, it's not just a part, it's the foundation upon which the rest is built, that enables or limit any and all behaviours. If genes didn't make any difference, then there would be no difference between humans and monkeys, between humans and rats, between humans and cockroaches, between humans and amoeba, between humans and dogweed.

Oh, I see collectivists who'd claim that whatever existing differences magically lose any significance within their favorite collective (be it the human race, or some national or tribal subset thereof). Well, sorry to disappoint you, genes make a difference at an individual level: indeed difference at the individual level is the very basis of evolution. Whichever individuals are successful at transmitting their genes, transmit their genes. Whichever individuals aren't, don't. Whichever genes lead to a statistically significant difference in reproductive success rate as compared to rival genes in a given context, multiply or diminish in accordance to these difference, when they are present in the long run. It's always about reproduction of individuals, spreading their bundles of genes. It's always about the relative statistical success of genes in a context. The observable reality of evolution demonstrates the significance of individual genetic differences.

And if you're not convinced, just check any studies about the heritability of some or some other human characteristic. From body height and weight, muscle strength, ability to withstand such or such climate, to various aspects of intelligence, you'll find that the genome is not distinguishing between a majority of normal people and a few abnormal ones, but between a very wide range of variations along as many axes as there are loci of gene rivalry. The existence and extant of these variations between humans has been dubbed Human Bio-Diversity (HBD) by those who promote awareness of it. What is scary is that anyone needs reminding that they share more traits with those who share their genes than with those who don't. Just what level of reality denial does the leftist intelligentsia reach?

The leftist spread fear about Human Bio-Diversity, by calling any difference inequality, and implicitly or explicitly referring to some kind of hierarchy due to such difference. But differences imply no specific hierarchy. They may be used in just as many hierarchies as one can imagined. Sure you can be endowed with more or less tallness, muscle strength, agility, resistance to such disease, acute sight, precise eye-hand coordination, ease with verbal communication, ability of abstract thinking, etc., in myriads of combinations. So what? Is it good or bad to be tall? It's probably bad if you're to work in a confined space, but good if you're playing basketball. What does it mean? That if you're tall, agile and have good coordination, you might consider basketball, but that otherwise, you should consider a different job. If you have a lot of certain kind of intelligence, you might be a great doctor, with another kind, you'll be a great mechanic, and if you're not brilliant in any intellectual activity, you can still be great at some manual activity. Genetic differences induce as many comparative advantages that should guide people to activities where their talents are worth most.

Differences exist, and denying them won't bring any good. Some of these differences can be seen as an inequality, according to infinitely many different hierarchies, including but not limited to infinitely many hierarchies of intelligence. This again is a fact that can be described, and the knowledge of which can be used for greater good, or denied of greater bad. As usual, fools will confuse the descriptive statement of a difference according to some criterion with a normative statement that supposes imposition by force. Well, that's why they are called fools. The descriptive does not imply the normative. To quote Hayek in "Why I Am Not a Conservative", The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people - he is not an egalitarian - but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are.

Can stupidity be a brake to civilization? Well, intelligence is undeniably what makes civilization advance. Design better rules of human behaviour, and there you have a progress of civilization, taking better advantage of nature in making people happy. Design stupid rules of human behaviour, and there you have a regress of civilization, making people waste more of nature's potential, their own and each other's lives for nothing. But civilization doesn't need everyone to be super-duper intelligent. It just needs rules to be invented by intelligent people, and followed by less intelligent people. And no, this doesn't imply a command structure: force and fraud are not the only way to convince people to follow rules, and most of the time they are a very bad way that doesn't actually convince of much.

So what if my friend Jacques is intellectually limited? He's a nice boy, and is able to have a some simple job and live happily. Just because Jacques couldn't invent much doesn't mean he can't enjoy the inventions made by his better (inventionwise), and live a productive life in peace with other people. He can, and he does. However, Jacques should most probably not be consulted for the design of much anything, and especially not for large-scale decisions that will be enforced nationwise by gunmen in uniforms.

Of course, the same thing happens at a bigger scale when we consider zillions of people such as Jacques. They could all peacefully partake in an advanced civilization; but giving them the political power to enforce their whims upon others is a sure recipe for disaster. A mass immigration of people whose genetic traits will statistically lower intelligence of a country, when this country has a democratic regime will probably contribute to the country going downhill, by making politics even more irrational than it used to be. Some people, like Fraser, conclude that immigration is the problem, and should be controlled. I contend that democracy is the problem and should be done away with. More generally, politics is the problem and should be done away with.

If you re-read the Hayek quote, you'll find that it condemns force not just as an illegitimate means to impose the will of ones upon the others, but also as a counter-productive paradigm for determining whose will to impose upon other people. Once you accept the principle that force is legitimate to impose the will of the superiors upon the inferiors, then you create a huge incentive for some people to seek, obtain and use this power. And the people who'll end up using this power will not be the superior according to whichever lovely criterion you'd fancy, but only according to the unique directly relevant criterion, that is the ability and lust to seize, use and keep power, by force and by fraud.

So what do I conclude with respect to immigration? Giving to some superior politicians the power to set national criteria for immigration is a sure recipe for long-term disaster. Force should not be used to stop some people through regulations and attract other people through subsidies. Force should not be given to previous inhabitants against new inhabitants or to new inhabitants against previous inhabitants, in the form of ballots or other privileges. Property rights should be respected by previous and new inhabitants alike. Those, previous or new inhabitants, who cultivate respect for the property of others can live peacefully and productively together. Those, previous or new inhabitants, who practice or spread disrespect for the property of others should be stopped or removed from society. In particular, those who preach or practice ideologies and religions of dominion of ones upon others (including the religious enslavement of women) should be stopped or removed from society. That's all. Stupid or intelligent, black or white, tall or short, able to speak english or unable, it doesn't matter. At least not directly. All that matters is the ability to abide by the natural law of respecting other people's life and property.

If some people are too stupid to respect that, they not only shouldn't be let in -- they shouldn't be let to live free if at all. But I know pretty stupid people who are able to respect others, my friend Jacques being a blatant example, so stupidity itself is definitely not the criterion, and neither is any of the gross approximate genetic criteria that have been proposed by various publicists. I'll tell you more: if some population survived at all during the preceding millenia, then a majority of its members are able to live peacefully and productively in a common society; otherwise the population would have destroyed itself in improductive internecine wars, long ago. So most everyone on earth can peacefully partake in civilization, and any gene combination that breeds anti-social psychopathy can be but rare. That doesn't mean anyone is equally able and likely as anyone else to live peacefully -- but it does mean that even when taking the costs of properly preventing or coping with antisocial behaviour, most everyone will prove on the average more productive than destructive.

PS: I feel sad that I have to state what is obvious, but just so as to fend off the usual foolish or fallacious criticism, let me go at it once again. It is particularly stupid to judge an individual from statistical expectations in a general population that shares with him one superficial trait that is irrelevant to the judgement at hand, instead of judging him for the actual relevant characteristics he possesses. Just because experience and scientific studies show that women with great mathematical abilities are rarer than men with great mathematical abilities doesn't mean that anyone is recommending to turn away the rarer able women and prefer unable men to them when filling positions that requires mathematical skills. Whatever the distribution across various populations of good athletes in a certain sport, the champion will be designated based on his actual individual performance, not based on what the outcome of his genes ought to be according to some lousy partial model, however allegedly scientific. But this won't cancel whatever statistical validity these models might or mightn't have. Correct statistical models do help show that unequal outcomes often come from unequal initial stakes, without any active discrimination at work; they help show that active reverse discrimination is as harmful as it is illegitimate. Once again, the evil is not in making descriptive studies, it is in imposing normative rules, either based on such studies or based on their denial.

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