I was re-reading a part of Moral Landscape this weekend and came across a concept I had not shared yet.

It’s the idea of building the ultimate society by creating all the social structures, advantages, disadvantages, tax codes, rules, laws, etc.–but with no knowledge of who you will be within it.

So you build out whatever the world will look like, and then you randomly get assigned an identity: Black woman, Hispanic man, young Asian child in South Africa, White male in Australia–whatever.

I think it’s brilliant. ::

Chicken

Beef

So, two things here:

1. Raising awareness: did you know this type of practice takes place so that you can eat cheese, eggs, chicken, and beef?
2. Behavior considerations: now that you do know, what are you going to do about it?

My answers to these questions are both honest and reprehensibly inadequate. First, I will continue to eat these products, because I like them.

I would, however, happily support legislation that required humane treatment of these animals. I fully accept that this would lead to considerably higher prices for these products, and I would happily pay those prices. So, if brands of these products were made available that were “humane” in much the same way as there are currently “organic” options, I would purchase them despite the higher cost.

But ultimately this is a moral failure on my part, as I am willing to continue eating standard products until this happens, and I won’t be spending much energy to bring it about. I can, however, take a small bit of satisfaction in at least knowing that my consciousness is raised, that I know I’m in the wrong, and that if a solution presents itself I will participate.

What about you?

I wrote about this before, but that was from personal experience and analysis. I knew of this piece when I wrote this (I had read about it before) but I couldn’t locate it. Well, here it is. But first some background.

In 1994 “The Bell Curve” came out and made a number of extraordinary claims about intelligence. They basically said it was the end-all/be-all of attributes, and that it defined whether or not you would succeed in life or fail–statistically, anyway.

The hot topics were race and poverty. They said that certain races were smarter, on average, than others, and that this was the main reason for their respective achievements as groups.

So, the media jumped all over it. Tons of “experts” came out and refuted the book, saying it was 100% crap. As it turns out, however, much of it was quite accurate (yet some of the research methods were shown to be flawed). What follows is the official academic response to the book, i.e. a public-oriented statement from the foremost academics in the field of intelligence regarding what was accepted as true by science.

Here are the basic findings (my summary):

1. I.Q. is real, and I.Q. tests are good at testing it.
2. It reliably predicts “success” and “failure” across large numbers of people, i.e. not necessarily for individuals.
3. I.Q. tests are not generally culturally biased.
4. The main races do have significantly different I.Q.s. Whites are the “average”, with 100, Blacks average 85, and Hispanics score about halfway in between. Asians and Jews score a bit higher than Whites. The reason for this, according to the consensus, is: “The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligence appear to be basically the same as those for why whites (or Asians or Hispanics) differ among themselves. Both environment and genetic heredity are involved.”
5. Although science knows I.Q. and intelligence is real (as shown by the data on various life metrics), they don’t really know how or why. Understanding of the brain was still an admitted weakness, in other words.
6. Genetics is considered to be more important than environment for intelligence, but the degree to which this is true is still debated. Environment is still considered to be a major factor.
7. And most importantly: “The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means.”

This is a critical paper. I believe people completely underestimate the importance of intelligence, and that their doing so causes great harm to society. Most do so because they feel the whole concept of intelligence is baseless or weak as a scientific truth.

It’s not.

Check out the list of people who signed that statement. It’s astounding. And that’s not a random list of people; it’s the result of the academic community responding as a group to the Bell Curve. It’s a formal statement of “truth”, as agreed upon by known science at the time. My guess is that this has not changed much at all in the intervening time, and even that it’s been solidified even more.

But we live in a different time now. There’s very little chance of this many academics putting their names on a document like this right now. Not with all this talk of race in it–and in an arguably negative light no less.

Anyway, the point here isn’t race. The only reason that was so heavy in the document is because it was a response to the Bell Curve book, which received most of its scrutiny due to that issue. My point here is that intelligence is real, and that it’s measurable, and that it is crucial to a modern, healthy and happy society.

I think far more emphasis should be placed on studying intelligence in order to engineer methods of increasing it. I think increasing intelligence, more than any other measurable human attribute, will help improve the quality of decisions made throughout the world, and that this should be a major focus of modern educational systems.:

[ Edit: By the way, if any of you know of any modern version of this type of consensus, whether it agrees or disagrees with this one, I'd very much like to see it. ]

Links

[ Mainstream Science on Intelligence | psychpage.com ]

A provoking argument about the effects of agriculture.

Links

[ The Worst Mistake | awok.org ]

A new study has found that violent behavior is correlated to the presence of three genes. Here’s a basic overview by CNN’s Dr. Gupta. If anyone has a link to the study, please share.

This is going to present a whole new set of questions. Do certain groups have these genes more than others? Gender? Race?

I expect this research to get very interesting, very quickly.

Links

[ New Study Finds Link Between Violent Behavior and Genetics | cnn.com ]

I’ve thought a lot about having children over the years. Not so much whether I wanted to have them, but why people in general want to have them. More specifically, I’ve been trying to determine whether or not it’s becoming immoral to do so.

Everyone knows that once a good parent has a child they become rather selfless. We often hear things like, “It changes everything”, or, “…all you care about is the baby.”, etc. That’s fair enough and quite admirable, but what about before you had the child?

What are the modern reasons for having kids in the first place? I have some rather unflattering ideas on how most people answer that question.

• Everyone Else Was Doing It
  Typical groupthink. Chris and Julie had a child and it was just precious. It seemed to make them happy. Maybe we should do that too?

• It Just Happened, and I’m Glad It Did
  Typical adolescent mentality. I wasn’t really planning on this, but I can definitely see the attraction now that I’m committed. I guess I’ll just go with it and embrace parenthood. It’s not like I have much of a choice at this point, and I was probably going to do it later anyway.

• It’s What You’re Supposed to Do
  Typical mature conservative. Grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids. Natural. Basic. Timeless. That’s what we’ve been doing for thousands of years. It’s what we’re supposed to do.

Ok, so if I’m arguing that these are not good reasons (although the “nature” argument is the best of them), then what are good reasons for having a child? That’s my problem — I don’t really see any. Not in today’s world anyway. I see excellent reasons for being a good parent once you have a child, but not for bringing a new life into the world in the first place.

I’m toying with the idea that having children in a world where there are children awaiting adoption (and where overpopulation is a real issue) ultimately reduces to selfishness. I think the reason people become parents comes down to one thing: desire. People want kids. They want their own kids.

That’s perfectly understandable, of course, as we are programmed to want things that help us survive as a species. But that doesn’t make it right. We have plenty of other desires given to us by our biology that we control for the benefit of society. Perhaps the desire to procreate is simply one to be added to that list.

It’s a strange thing to contemplate, but the real reason we seek to bring children into the world is for our own benefit. Children bring us joy. They’re there to take care of us when we age. Children are selfish expressions all the way up until they are born. At that point we become mostly selfless, but we can’t use our selflessness after they are born to justify the selfish act of bringing them into the world.

In earlier times we needed to reproduce in order to keep ourselves alive. We have plenty of people now. Some believe that they’re providing a service to humanity. They feel their belief system needs to be expanded, and that creating a few offspring is the best way to make it happen. Aside from the highly self-important slant of that approach, i.e. I’m going to help better the world with my seed, it doesn’t seem very efficient.

So what are good reasons for logical and compassionate people, living in today’s world, to have children?:

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New York is rolling out a new program where they pay poor people to take care of their children.

The experimental program, called Opportunity NYC, is modeled on a 10-year-old Mexican program called Oportunidades, which has been so successful in reducing poverty in rural areas that it has been adopted by more than 20 countries, including Argentina and Turkey. International studies have found that these programs raise school enrollment and vaccination rates and lower the number of sick days students take. Bringing this idea to Harlem and the South Bronx may not make a radical difference, concedes Linda Gibbs, the deputy mayor for Health and Human Services. But, she adds, “It makes these activities matter in a new way.” Gibbs thinks that the money could also make parents more active in asking for services that might not exist in their neighborhoods.” A mother might demand an early-intervention evaluation [to look for developmental or learning disabilities] for a child” to get the $150 payment, Gibbs says. “If she can’t find a doctor to do it, the cash incentive might make Mom more likely to ask why those services aren’t available in her community.“

So here’s the basic idea: bribe poor, ignorant parents into taking care of their children by paying them to do what they should be doing already. I find this horribly depressing. All it says to me is that these people should not be parents at all.

If there are utterly simple things you could be doing that would drastically help your children, but you’re not doing them, then you’re a burden to society. The fact that a financial incentive would inspire them to do these simple tasks is utterly sickening.

Let’s be clear here — this isn’t money to help them pay for these services; it’s to encourage them to simply take actions that they should be taking already as parents.

I still support the program because it increases the chances that children will succeed, but I think the real answer is for society as a whole to apply social pressure on poor parents — as peers. Society must police itself, and that starts with demanding that people are capable of supporting themselves successfully before they start bringing additional life into the world.

The first step to reducing the world’s suffering is finding a way to stop increasing it. And that means bringing less people into the world that are likely to suffer.:

First off I’ll just say that I’m really bad at this. I seem to fail to take into account the most important variables while latching on to the most inconsequential. That being said I’m going to have a go anyway. I’m seeing a number of trends that I want to try and hash out.

Be aware: this is me thinking out loud. An academic paper this is not.

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• A massive move toward social division along class lines. And yes, this divide has always existed; I’m saying it’s about to get a whole lot more pronounced. This is coming not so much from the rich getting richer, but more from larger and larger groups of people becoming poorer. The key there is that this already large group is reproducing at a very fast pace. This is going to introduce extreme pressure on our already faltering system.
• I see crime in 5-10 years becoming extremely rampant and increasingly violent, with the only counter being an overt militarization of our police forces. I envision a major upsurge in large-scale riots — many of which will be race/class related. I see a culture of revolt rising up in the lower classes, essentially, with this being exacerbated by the fact that much of the middle class is going to be pealing down into the lower class.
• One manifestation of this will be large areas of our country that are simply not safe to be in. This is already the case now to some extent, but I see this becoming dramatically magnified. I see entire halves of cities being partitioned off as hostile — complete with increased security at the boundaries, etc. This of course will add to feelings of isolation and preference. The perception (and reality) will be that the paramilitary police forces will be protecting the rich people from the poor people. And since this will largely be divided down race lines in addition to class lines, that will lead to additional unrest.
• I essentially see dramatic social separation in our future — to the point of the constant threat of riot-level violence. The rich people will isolate themselves off in certain communities and gain the rights to protect themselves with handguns. There will be many more shootings — many justified, many not — all adding to the perception that the rich are able to kill the poor and get away with it.
• Further out we’ll start to see new drugs enter the markets. Drugs that will magnify the differences between the classes even more. Some drugs will be used mostly by the lower classes and will keep them there, i.e. gentle drugs that give a feeling of well-being and still allow you to function. Other drugs will enhance mental abilities such as memory and intelligence. These will largely be too expensive for the lower classes and as a result only the upper class will have them.
• These things will all be accompanied by increased disparities between the groups receiving education. Even fewer of the lower income levels will go to school, and even more of the upper level will. And the ability to gather information will be GREATLY enhanced for the privileged. Not only due to improved technology but because of the cognitive supplements as well. In short, the ignorant will become more ignorant while the smart become smarter.
• What this ultimately leads to is revolution. It leads to civil war. It leads to the massive numbers of the weak revolting against the strong — only to be massacred by the army/police that are wielded by the rich.

So what’s the solution? The solution is one that we don’t have the ability to implement. We, as a society are too encumbered by liberal-minded weakness. We lack the strength to make uncomfortable decisions that will benefit our society as whole.

The solution is to maintain standards for the citizens of our republic. The solution is to temporarily stop bringing more people into this country. To raise everyone who’s on the bottom up to the middle. To say to them that they are American and that we expect much from them. To synchronize our country on a single vision. We need to re-inject the concept of personal responsibility into our discourse. We need to shun those who act like children when they are adults.

We need to stop encouraging children to have children. We need to chastise those who would complain on one hand about not having enough in life, and then go to the club and make a baby. These people need to be humiliated. Don’t pass laws. Don’t punish them legally. Make them feel shame for the disservice they are doing to this country. We must put a stop to it.

Kids raising kids leads to poor parenting. Poor parenting leads to poor education because the teachers fear the parents’ ability to sue. This erodes the entire educational system. It essentially means that our entire country is being filled full of absolute morons. Morons who are easy to manipulate and stir into a frenzy.

A country full of morons who are easy to manipulate means that our political system is useless. Our system is based on informed, intelligent, responsible citizens who think for themselves. Without this democracy is a sad joke. Without an educated and independent voting base politicians will become unable to make REAL decisions that hinge on complexity. They’ll be forced to placate the masses via deception and trickery. Oh wait, that’s already happening.

Essentially the country is becoming a giant shit hole. We’ve relaxed our standards. We don’t demand excellence. We don’t have an identity. And if someone doesn’t figure this out very soon our precious America is going to devolve into a class-divided police state full of illiterate masses managed by a hyper-elite upper class with an eye for extermination.

Sad times are upon us.:

A very interesting NY Times article that discusses socio-economic class, and the opinions that are common to each.

[ Link: What Class Are You? ]