Look at it this way:
Let's say we all agree with your premise that people with black and brown skin are, on the average, stupider (let's cut to the chase, shall we?). What then? What possible use does this information provide us? What possible benefit may we obtain from this? Especially since, as you say, they have equal rights regardless.
Why do people care about the age of the universe? At present, the answer to that question has zero practical utility, yet the question and its answer fascinate people anyway. To be human is to be curious. For many people, knowledge is an end unto itself. The two examples from the OP are not exceptions.
What's the point, if it isn't just about proving whites are better after all? Perhaps it's just trivia?
Who said anything about "white" superiority? There are other temperate peoples. IQ data actually shows that northeastern Asians have a slightly higher median IQ than Europeans. Those who have meet me at OC events can vouch that I am of European descent, so I cannot be accused of trying to prove the superiority of my meta-group if I believe in the validity of the studies that I alluded to in the preceding sentence (and I do).
That's why folks are hostile to threads like this.
Impugning a person's character because of what that person asserts about what is (as distinct from what that person asserts about what ought to be, as explained in the OP) is wrong. Period. End of discussion.
Such behavior is for self-described Marxist scoundrels in academia like Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin (I am serious, these men were/are proud Marxists), and Jared Diamond and their young, brainwashed sycophants. They threw $hit fits over colleagues (Arthur Jensen, Philippe Rushton, Richard Hernstein, Charles Murray, Linda Gottfredson, etc.) who made descriptive statements like those in the OP. Do you seriously want to be in the company of the first list, my fellow gun owner and OCer?!?! :eek
Any data used to bolster your argument cannot, by definition, be "scientific", for the reasons I mentioned. It's pseudo-scientific closet racism, frankly.
You appear to be making a circular argument here.
You're desperately seeking
I am not desperately seeking anything, and you cannot read my mind. I have been polite with you, and I ask that you not do anything like this again so civility is maintained in this discussion.
The data is real. Whether or not the studies from whence the data came were well-designed is another topic. For the umpteenth time, this thread is not about whether or not the two example conclusions are correct. Rather, it is about how liberal $hitbags (you know, those people trying to strip us of RKBA right now) confuse statements about what
is with statements about what
ought to be.
to fit a preformed conclusion,
Once again, you cannot read my mind, so you have no business asserting that I have a preformed conclusion (and for the umpteenth plus one time, the examples are just illustrative of the behaviorial phenomenon).
one which has no real-world application except to advance notions that white people are smarter, and they probably smell better, too.
As I pointed out above, there is plenty of scientific research (which sucks up
a lot of taxpayer money) into questions that have little to no practical application at present (such as the age of the universe). Pure curiosity is a valid motive, regardless of what you say (though it would be nice if taxpayer money wasn't used).
This might be a valid rebuttal was what I said anything other than anecdotal, and therefore of as much merit as, for instance, IQ testing. I offer it to reveal my perspective, not to prove a point. Surely someone so versed in the rigors of the scientific method should be able to see that at a glance.
For the umpteenth time plus two, this thread is about the behavioral phenomenon, and not the two examples from the OP. My point is this:
even if one or both of the conclusions in the OP are incorrect, that makes no difference, because science works by making statements that are later disproven ("science is built with the bones of dead theories"), and people have the right to make descriptive statements, regardless of whether those statements turn out to be correct, incorrect, or somewhere in between.
I reject the premise that there is any different median intelligence attributable to race or region of origin. I have seen absolutely nothing in all my travels and the life I've lived to support that thesis.
Your anecdotal experiences do not carry more weight than how history has played out (not that this has anything to do with the main point of the thread, which relates to the philosophy of morality, and not to psychometrics and the validity of IQ testing).
I don't believe this for a minute.
If this is true, then why did you pick the examples you did?
I picked these two examples because they happen to be among the things that throw the liberals (as I state above, they're the folks trying to disarm us right now) into the most insane of rages. Their fits of rage regarding sex and race have been so energetic and childlike since the 1960s, that many non-liberals have professed varyiung degrees of political correctness in recent years (you may very well be a good example of this, based on your behavior in this thread). But I digress. The two examples from the OP were included in the OP because they serve as very good windows into the liberal mentality. Liberals also behave similarly when people make descriptive statements about things like economics, but the intensity of the reaction against someone who professes Austrian economics is nowhere near as harsh as it is towards scientists who self-profess gender and/or race-realism (their term, not mine). So yes, I could have chosen examples in economics, or educational policy, but I think that you'll concede that liberals do not react as intensely towards descriptive statements in those areas as they do towards descriptive statements in the area of psychometrics.
Do you have any idea how many times I've heard the precise argument, "why are liberals so anti-scientific? when you try to point out that black and brown people are smelly and stupid, they call you a racist! Those bullies!"
I do not have any idea how many times you've heard that. Has it been few or many?
I have never, ever, encountered a person who makes this argument who does it for any purpose other than to justify pre-existing racism.
(1) I have no idea how large your sample size is (that is absolutely critical).
(2) Just because you have not encountered something, does not mean that it does not exist.
(3) Once again, assertioins about what
is are completely different than assertions about what
ought to be, and it is wrong to impugn the character of someone merely for doing the former.
For the record, I am friends with a hardcore libertarian couple from Seattle who moved to this part of Virginia a few years ago (they love guns and the husband OCs, btw). The husband is white and the wife is black. I have told them about both examples from the OP a while ago, and we're still friends. The wife is black and female, and she takes offense at neither. She fully grasps the difference between descriptive statements and prescriptive statements, and she understands that statements about two large groups have no reflection on any given individual from either group. What does annoy her though, is the behavior of knee-jerk, dogmatic liberals who behave the way that I describe in the OP to smear their opponents. Perhaps you would not have said what I quoted immediately above if we were having this discussion at an OC event with them sitting next to me, as you would see that I am friends with both of them.
Which is fine. You said at the onset you wouldn't deprive anybody of rights based on your conclusion, so I really don't care if you're racist – although I might make fun of you for it in the future.
Why do you think that an assertion about what is---completely devoid of any attached assertion about what ought to be---is grounds for mockery?!?!
But if you're really just using that example as a point not about people from warm regions, but about the political left, you chose a particularly terrible one,
See above. I could have chosen Austrian economics, school vouchers/home schooling, etc., and those would have been underwhelming examples, because liberals do not spas
that badly over those in comparison to how they freak out over the two examples that I chose for the OP.
as you picked one without any scientific merit whatsoever,
Men and women (see the above list) who are much better educated than you in the area of psychometrics would vehemently disagree with you, but that's okay, because
that isn't what this thread is about in any case.
and presented it as fact expecting us all to agree.
For the last time, you cannot read my mind.
Frankly, I don't really give a damn about the point you're trying to make, as it's ruined by your misuse of the term "liberal" to refer to the illiberal neo-left.
So sue me for using (1) contemporary usage, and (2) the term that they apply to themselves.
All that's left is a bunch of crap about how people from temperate regions are stupider, which is facially absurd.
I shall repeat:
Men and women (see the above list) who are much better educated than you in the area of psychometrics would vehemently disagree with you, but that's okay, because
that isn't what this thread is about in any case.
Have a good day.
ETA: Actually, you're quite wrong that there are no practical applications of the two OP conclusions if they are indeed correct. Billions of dollars in local, state, and federal tax money are spent on education. The authoritarian Left, like a bully, declares that the hereditarian position is incorrect (or they outright refuse to consider it). That means that any difference in academic performance between boys and girls, or between children of different ancestries, is assumed a priori---ON FAITH---to be a result of various factors in the environments of the children. Therefore, we, as taxpayers, are being gouged on a faith-based assumption. If the hereditarian position were demonstrated true beyond a reasonable doubt, we could then lobby for lower taxes, as money cannot fix performance gaps that are not caused by bad environments.
