tikimixologist
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User ID: 257
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Wikipedia suggests no major waves of Japanese immigration to the US post Civil Rights Act. This suggests Japanese Americans are mostly long term residents who suffered segregation (and internment!) yet they don't exhibit any of the postulated dysfunction.
I wonder whether 2nd generation black immigrants (post-segregation) behave more like Chinese immigrants or those dysfunctional Japanese and Black Americans?
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Bloomberg started his company in 1981, well after this stuff stopped being an issue.
Salomon Brothers, where he worked before starting Bloomberg, would have been a better example.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
This isn't just raw bigotry - a person who's learned to do honor culture sparring instead of acting 'reasonably' and signaling disapproval subtlely, who hasn't practiced doing paperwork or writing essays, who doesn't have a support network of other rich people to fall back on, will in practice be at a disadvantage in life, even if they're just as 'biologically' smart as a rich white person.
There is at least one company that attempts to teach intelligent but culturally backward people to do upper class signaling: Bloom School, formerly Lambda. They quite explicitly teach lower class people how to perform class signaling - an example Austin Allred (the founder) gave is that they tell everyone to get a bank account before getting hired, since "just cut me a check" signals low class. They internalize the benefits by charging customers a fraction of their paycheck assuming they get a job that pays at least $50k/year.
It's a popular target of dishonest hit pieces by left wing journalists, near as I can tell for exactly this reason. Journalists are high class, Bloom/Lambda students are low class, and yet Bloom graduates earn more than journalism school graduates.
As for the "why do Jews and Asians succeed then" question...When you're excluded from good occupations by law, your culture will steer away from them and towards unproductive activity or crime,
Every western state of the Union except Washington explicitly included Asians in Jim Crow laws. Southern states did not, probably because the vast majority of Asians lived in the west.
Montana: "Negroes, Chinese and Japanese"
Arizona: "Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu"
California, quite famously the location of lots of anti-Asian discrimination: "Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians and Malays"
Nevada was more descriptive about what these terms mean: "Ethiopian or black race, Malay or brown race, Mongolian or yellow race, or Indian or red race"
Oregon: "Negro, Chinese, or any person having one-quarter or more Negro, Chinese or kanaka blood, or any person having more than one-half Indian blood." (Kanaka = pacific islander.)
Utah: "white and Negro, Malayan, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon void."
Insofar as Asians were not explicitly mentioned in Jim Crow laws the courts generally would include them should the matter be tested. For example in California the law specified "no black, mulatto person, or Indian" and the California Supreme court interpreted it to include Chinese: "It can hardly be supposed that any Legislature would . . exclud[e] domestic negroes and Indians, . . . and turn loose upon the community the more degraded tribes of the same species, who have nothing in common with us."
https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/List_of_Jim_Crow_law_examples_by_state
tikimixologist
2yr ago
If there were a number of minority business applicants who felt looked over in hiring and not adequately promoted, why wouldn’t they want to form their own business?
It's amusing that Goldman Sachs is your example of companies that currently hire Korean PhDs, given that Goldman was originally a company that hired Jews in a competitive marketplace where Jews were discriminated against. At that time Goldman mostly specialized in back office low visibility work - if the Jews get the numbers right, it's fine.
Also in common knowledge that has been memory holed, various popular left wing policies such as minimum wage and Davis Bacon were created to prevent a "race to the bottom" that resulted in greedy businesses hiring negros for cheap.
The general argument against this goes back to Becker, and it relies on a principal/agent problem. Consider a discriminatory firm which is driven out of business by competitors hiring cheaper negros. The former employees of this failed business do not exit the marketplace. Instead, they become employed by other businesses and continue to be racist. This racism may involve things like funneling the best sales opportunities to other white employees, shirking work when on a team project with negros, that kind of thing. The net result is that these racist employees drive down the productivity of black workers. That's the Beckerian theory.
(I use the term "negro" throughout much of this post to emphasize to the reader the time period I'm discussing.)
There's also the issue of network effects which I think is more modern. E.g. if your customers or suppliers are racist, a non-racist profit maximizing employer may put black employees in less visible positions. Literally all of the modern examples of this that I can think of result in discrimination against political conservatives:
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Cloud hosting and other SAAS providers (e.g. Cloudflare) refusing to service conservative businesses (kiwifarms, parler).
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Companies that "own the consumer" (Android store/Apple store) blocking access to consumers for conservative businesses (parler, veritas).
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Passive shareholders funneling non-specific demand for investment to companies that engage in performances leftwing stuff (ESG). A famous example is giving Exxon a higher ESG rating than Tesla. "Indexing is communism" is the economic argument against indexing, but also "Indexing is globohomo."
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Employees conspiring against political conservative coworkers, along the lines of Becker's theory. (I have personally witnessed an attempt by employees at getting a conservative fired, which luckily failed due to rigid company policies.)
One working parent in a family is for those who are wealthy enough to have the wife at home (or single-parent families where it's the mother working, or unemployed and on benefits). Expectations are built around couples where both are working and earning, if you want a mortgage or any kind of expense in living in today's society, there needs to be two wage-earners.
This is totally false in lots of places that aren't San Francisco. Prior to the COVID run-up in house prices, the average house price in Phoenix was about $275k. Residents of working age earn in the ballpark of $70k.
https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/AZ/Maricopa-County-Demographics.html
https://www.redfin.com/city/14240/AZ/Phoenix/housing-market
Same is true in most of the fast growing cities.
I vaguely recall there was a much more detailed AAQC about this back on the subreddit.
Tech layoffs right now because companies need to trim the fat and get back to profitability? Unless you have a guaranteed job to walk into as a replacement, you better hope your significant other is working and covering the bills while you try and get another job.
Let me introduce you to the concept of saving money - something that was far more popular in the 1960's than today.
And if there is a constant rota of untrained staff who then leave after two years, how do you expect your hospitals to work? I feel you have not thought this through (or you imagine that nursing just means bedpans and changing sheets).
One plausible way that might work is a tiered system where the 2 year staff changes sheets/bedpans while the pros restrict their efforts to things that require skills that can't be quickly acquired.
I do not know what the breakdown of work is, but it seems quite plausible - thanks to the American guild system - that a lot of work currently requiring a registered nurse could be done by a far less skilled person. We have strong evidence that many such guild-based regulations are not medically necessary, as evidenced by the lack of deaths caused by state-to-state variation between them.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
We haven't set things up to give everyone personalized think tank support yet.
I'm not proposing personalized think tank support, merely in loco parentis. If a person is part of this "unable to make good choices" class, they get to live in an institutionalized environment where important choices are made for them. They don't make the choice to overconsume soda and other junk food (as the current poor do), they get to pick a few options off a menu in a healthy food cafeteria. They don't get to control their own TV, there's a TV that plays wholesome programming a couple of hours a day and they don't get to use it if they don't participate in exercise and productive labor. Etc.
In short, the setup my 2 year old lives with.
Looking for a job is a cost. You don't actually do anything productive to society while looking for a job.
Yes, searching for something isn't productive until you find it. But refusing to search is a great way to ensure that you won't find it.
Looking for full time work (or having a job) at least 27 weeks/year is a 97.3% effective way to avoid poverty in the US.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2019/home.htm
In contrast, about 21% of people outside the labor force were poor. (28M poor people outside the labor force as per BLS report above) / (330M people x 40% outside the labor force).
For one I'm explicitly avoiding any claims about what the situation actually is on average, or on a case by case basis, because I don't actually know.
Why am I unsurprised you don't know? But it's actually not hard to know - it's pretty well documented that the situation is "drugs and video games are fun".
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23552/w23552.pdf https://qz.com/1070206/nearly-half-of-working-age-american-men-who-are-out-of-the-labor-force-are-using-painkillers-daily https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/video-killed-radio-star
I suppose a theoretical alternative explanation is that jobs have suddenly become far more dangerous and people are becoming injured and turning to drugs to cope with pain. This change happened concurrently with the available jobs shifting away from factories/coal mines and towards air conditioned offices. Using a laptop is dangerous I guess!
In some cases, looking for a job is legitimately a waste of everyone's time, because the individual is worth little to employers and their time is worth more elsewhere. I'm not talking about playing video games here.
Perhaps you should speak plainly and be specific.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
If you want to claim that poor Americans and residents of Flint lack agency and cannot make good choices for themselves, then the natural question is why do we allow them the freedom to make choices?
My 2 year old daughter wants to watch TV and eat candy all day. But she is not competent to make that decision and has her freedom restricted.
Even a perfectly rational agent will notice that there are costs to finding a job and benefits to having one, and that if the costs or benefits change, the cost benefit analysis changes. A rational agent "choosing not to have a job" is making that choice in the context of the current market
Yes. It seems that for some folks, idleness (supplemented by wealth transfers) is more fun than work, and that's why we have poverty.
Which media do you believe is actually conveying this message?
Before my last reply I (briefly) did try to look up what the contemporary conservative coverage about the NPR video was at the time, just to get a sense of what the main takeaways presented were.
I didn't have much trouble finding contemporaneous stuff. Here's what NPR thought the main takeaways were at the time:
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/09/134389342/vivian-schiller-ceo-of-npr-steps-down
"NPR's chief fundraising executive, Ron Schiller, was caught on tape criticizing conservatives and saying NPR would be better off without federal financial support. As NPR's David Folkenflik reports, his remarks were captured as part of a video sting at a time when NPR is under public assault."
Ron Schiller (NPR guy) says "I offer my sincere apology to those I offended."
Other orgs have a similar take:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-schiller-former-npr-f_n_832907 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-leadership/post/was-npr-right-to-ask-vivian-schiller-to-resign/2011/03/04/ABT4uuP_blog.html https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schiller-forced-out-as-npr-president-following-hidden-camera-sting
Here's what a conservative news+comment site said about it: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2011/03/09/ron-schiller-wins-helen-thomas-annual-achievement-award-cair-approves/
Ron Schiller, who was caught bashing the alleged racism of conservatives and lamenting over the self-perceived Zionist control of newspapers in an undercover video produced by James O’Keefe and associates, has been fired:
...
Ohh c’mon Ron, ya big fibber you…. might as well cut loose now “not reflective of my own beliefs” bawaaa haa haaa … Seriously?
Accusations of biased coverage aren't mentioned at all - just some talk about how offensive the guy was. And for background, part of the reason this was a big deal at the time is that Republicans (who controlled congress) wanted to defund NPR at the time. Getting an NPR exec admitting they don't need federal funds was a useful anti-federal funds argument.
The stuff about biased coverage seems to be a talking point invented much later.
There's also the added issue that Veritas has not been consistent about releasing unedited versions of their sting videos. One notable example is from 2016 where a Democratic operative was apparently caught on video discussing how to commit voter fraud. This is and was something that caught the attention of law enforcement, but when Wisconsin's GOP attorney general asked for the full unedited tapes, O'Keefe claimed to have complied but only provided edited segments
I was unaware of this. I'll definitely downgrade my assessment of Veritas (to "not 100% scrupulous, but still better than any other news source") and always check if the full video is released.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Previously you said "individuals cannot be called upon to solve existing systemic problems" and "who else is supposed to solve social problems? Clearly not 'individuals' or whatever, because manifestly absent government intervention they haven't been able to solve them, otherwise they wouldn't exist".
But this is kind of silly, since they demonstrably can.
But you've now retreated to:
Simply because the people of Flint weren't willing to uproot their entire lives to find better water that doesn't imply that the problem isn't important enough to be worth solving via government intervention.
Or phrased differently, the people closest to the problem and with the most to gain from solving it have decided it's not worth exerting an ordinary level of effort to solve. That's a quite different claim.
Have you been mislead by journalists into not noticing this fact? I think that's what Caplan is complaining about.
When I say "ordinary level of effort" I mean a level of effort that is regularly exerted by a majority of Americans. The majority of Americans avoid poverty by working a job for most of the year, whereas the vast majority of poor Americans don't work by choice. (I.e. they are not looking for work.) The annual rate of inter-county moves in the US hit it's lowest in 2016 (at 5% of the US population), meaning that in 33 years the average American moved more than 1.7 times.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-189.html
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Well my opinion is irrelevant. The poor people who are refusing to look for work are the ones deciding that problems continuing is better than the remedy. The folks refusing to leave Flint for San Antonio (or other functional city) are similarly the ones deciding they want the problem to continue.
I guess we're just watching two different movies on the same screen. I did not get the "only applies in one direction" point from this at all.
The main point I took away is that NPR guy said multiple things that would - if coming from a Republican - be treated as ironclad evidence of antisemitism. Veritas highlighted negative statements about the Jews. Why didn't they highlight anything about biased coverage?
And why did your video choose to edit out the part of the short Veritas video where he said they didn't give biased coverage to other donors?
The full context here would be to include all the times that NPR execs deny that any donor can influence coverage.
I mean yes, they could release a 2 hour long video instead of 10 minutes of highlights, most of which is boring. And they did (they always do). I feel like your complaint is simply that 10 minutes of highlights can't capture everything.
The full video at the 33:30 mark shows him explicitly stating that he's relaying what someone else, a top Republican donor, believes.
And then a short time later he attributes very similar views to himself (but not to NPR). "I'll talk personally, this is not where NPR is at, ...." So while perhaps they missed disclosing that one of the anti-Republican things he said was attributed to someone else, he said multiple similar things and attributed them to himself (but not NPR).
So let me ask some concrete questions:
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Based on the Veritas video, I think he believes Republicans are racist. Do you think this is false and I've been fooled by Veritas?
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Based on the Veritas video, I think that he personally - but not NPR - has significant negative feelings towards Republicans. Do you think that is false and I've been fooled by Veritas?
tikimixologist
2yr ago
To answer your question of who could solve individual problems, usually individuals.
For example poverty can be solved by getting a job, avoiding drugs and not becoming a single mother.
Poor drinking water for an individual living in Flint can be solved for the individual by leaving Flint - it's not as if Michael Moore didnt give people a heads up about Flint 33 years ago.
Around 9 minutes in: https://www.projectveritas.com/video/npr-muslim-brotherhood-investigation-part-i/
The point Veritas is conveying with this part of the video is not at all that NPR will shade their coverage - that's something your video is claiming via a deceptive edit. The actual point Veritas is trying to make is very clear since they print it at the top of the screen in big capital letters:
Begin my transcript of the Veritas video itself:
Sharia guy: "I'm not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR. The Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere"
NPR guy: "I don't actually find it at NPR."
Sharia guy: "What, exactly?"
NPR guy: "The zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. No. I mean it's there in those who own newspapers obviously but no one owns NPR. I don't find it."
Paraphrased capital letters above caption, i.e. what Veritas wants you to notice: "JEWS OWN THE NEWSPAPERS OBVIOUSLY"
Sharia guy: "I just think what Israel does I don't think can be excused, frequently, so I'm glad to hear this."
NPR guy: "Even one of our biggest funders who you'll hear on air, the American Jewish World Service, may not agree with us. I visited with them recently. They may not agree with what we put on the air but they find us important to them. And sometimes it's not easy to hear what we have to say and what our reporters think, but they still think NPR is important to support. Right because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not."
Paraphrased capital letters: "MANY JEWISH ORGS NOT LOOKING FOR A FAIR POINT OF VIEW"
Your anti-Veritas video edited that part out.
NPR guy: "Frankly, I'm sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They're looking for a very particular point of view and that's fine." (I wonder - is he about to draw a parallel to the thing he said a few seconds ago?)
Muslim guy interrupting: "We're not one of them."
NPR exec: "I'm gathering that you're not, actually."
The paraphrased capital letters clearly indicate what Veritas wants you to take away: NPR guy will say antisemitic things for the chance at a donation, but they won't bias their coverage for donations from Jews or <didn't get to finish that thought because this potential donation doesn't want biased coverage>.
And if you watch the full video you get the broader point being made: NPR guy hates the tea party and white Republicans, but he's totally cool with Muslim Brotherhood guy and admits Jews control the newspapers.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
The word "incapacitation" does not appear in your original comment
The concept however is clearly spelled out: "...we need longer prison sentences for the criminals we have in order to prevent the same guy from doing 4 more crimes."
Moreover, your napkin math has nothing whatsoever to do with how crime is distributed among criminals--it just compares different policing and sentencing strategies. The distribution of crime at no point enters into your calculation.
"Suppose the average criminal commits crimes at a rate of 3/year between age 20 and 35, meaning that in the absence of policing his career will consist of 45 crimes."
I suppose it was slightly badly phrased, I should have described it as a "representative criminal" instead of "average criminal". But yes - my napkin math shows that in the regime of high #s of crimes/criminal, locking them up forever is a very effective strategy.
The question of distribution of crimes/criminal is how much crime actually comes from that regime. You previously said you think it's a lot:
I believe that crime does roughly follow an 80/20 rule, with a few people having a rap sheet many pages long
Do you want me to disagree? I can do that. 2/3 is not that high of a clearance rate; on the flip side, 1/3 is not that low.
Interesting - it looks like my 33% is not too far off from the actual number of 41% for violent crime. The "high" numbers you're providing are only for murder, which is a red herring - most crime isn't murder.
You state that the effect of deterrence would have to be 70% (although only account for prospective criminals, not those who have already been arrested in the past), but don't actually give any reason to suggest that this is unrealistic.
You're the one making the claim deterrence is the best. Kind of strange how you haven't actually provided any estimates of elasticity here.
I don't follow the logic from the stats you quoted to your estimate; can you make this argument in more detail?
Not in this thread, because I don't see any reason you wouldn't ignore what I say and misrepresent me as you've already done repeatedly.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
The second example comes from the NPR sting, where Veritas used deceptive editing to imply that NPR executives were very eager to accept a $5 million donation from a Sharia group in exchange for coverage input.
Huh?
The edited Veritas video portrays the same thing as the unedited Veritas video: NPR exec clearly states that they won't let a donation influence their coverage, but also NPR exec is totally sympathetic with and yes-manning this guy. That's even visible in the takedown video you linked.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
At any point, did you google to see if there is any empirical research on what deters criminals? This is an empirical question.
It's also a question of only peripheral importance to the actual topic of discussion, namely that of incapacitation. The paper you linked is irrelevant because it's not even attempting to measure the crime prevented by incapacitation.
In fact, you explicitly assume these effects to be 0.
Given how many misinterpretations of my comments you seem to be making, I'm beginning to think they might be deliberate.
Just on the off chance you are discussing this in good faith, let me quote a sentence in which I very explicitly do not assume deterrence is 0: "In this scenario, for doubling clearance rates to work even as well as harsh prison sentences, it would need to cut num_criminals [deterrence] by 70%."
The thing you linked to is primarily about recidivism probability. What is its relevance in this context?
You could try reading the first comment I wrote, which explains clearly that a) I'm looking at one particular graph which is an approximation of P(crime/criminal) b) it's weak evidence and c) I'm asking if someone has better data.
I did dig a bit deeper and found this somewhat dated study: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpr94.pdf
Basically the 272k criminals released from jail in 1994 are believed to have committed 100k violent crimes and 208k property crimes within 3 years.
As per table 12, 55% of people who were released from prison in 1994 had 7 or more arrests previously and about 75% of this group would be arrested again within 3 years. 44% of the group had been in prison at least once before, and this group also has a 75% 3 year rearrest rate after getting out.
These numbers sure seem in the same ballpark as my napkin math, which you haven't stated any particular disagreement with.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Generally having a highly certain and rapid pipeline from crime -> arrest -> trial -> punishment is a stronger deterrent than just a longer sentence.
I do some back of the envelope arithmetic here, based solely on example numbers involving many crimes/criminal, and get totally different results: https://www.themotte.org/post/329/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/58654?context=8#context
Can you be quantitative about what, specifically, you disagree with in that analysis?
We may have long prison sentences, but violent criminals do not spend much time in jail.
...with a few people having a rap sheet many pages long). Are they doing a lot of crimes because we find them and let them off easy, or because we never find them in the first place?
If as you say they have a "rap sheet many pages long", that means we did in fact let them off too easy the first time. How could a crime be on their rap sheet if we didn't find them earlier?
The paper you link is entirely unrelated to the question I'm asking, namely "how fat tailed the distribution of number of crimes per criminal?"
tikimixologist
2yr ago
The academic consensus seems to be that, within reason, what really deters crime is not harsh punishments but the high clearance rates - actually catching more criminals. So more police is definitely part of the solution to crime, but once criminals have been caught I think the evidence in favour of meting out very harsh punishments is minimal.
There's two methods of stopping crime: deterrence (not committing a crime due to fear of getting caught) and incapacitation (not doing crimes because he's in jail). Most of the "harsh sentences don't work" arguments are based on ignoring incapacitation.
But this is exactly where it's important to distinguish between scenario (a) and (b) in my comment above.
Suppose the average criminal commits crimes at a rate of 3/year between age 20 and 35, meaning that in the absence of policing his career will consist of 45 crimes. Two methods of policing:
a. Put a lot of effort into clearances, solve 2/3 of crimes, and lock him up for a year. He commits an average of 1.5 crimes before getting locked up for a year, meaning every 1.5 years he commits 2 crimes and then spends a year in jail. He commits 10 crimes before age 35. Total crimes = num_criminals x 10, total jail time = 10 years.
b. Solve 1/3 of crimes and lock them up forever. The criminal successfully commits 3 crimes before getting caught on average. He's locked up forever and has committed 3 crimes before his 35'th birthday. Total crimes = num_criminals x 3, total jail time = 14 years.
In this scenario, for doubling clearance rates to work even as well as harsh prison sentences, it would need to cut num_criminals by 70%.
In a "few criminals, lots of crimes/criminal" scenario, even a low clearance rate results in any individual criminal eventually getting caught.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
What changed in 2021?
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Are you claiming 13/53 is not representative of non-murder crimes? Or are you merely claiming the data isn't easily available?
In any case, criticizing the lack of data in a comment that explicitly acknowledged incomplete data and asked where to find better data is a little silly. It's adding nothing.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Here's a little bit of incomplete thinking about the classic "13/53" number, which is a ballpark figure (varying year to year) that represents the fact that black people are overrepresented by a factor of about 5x in crime. I see a lot of people tend to interpret this number as "black people are 5x more likely to commit crimes", but that might not actually be the case.
Concretely, there's two ways this stat could come about:
a. There are 5x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 1x the rate of white criminals.
b. There are 1x as many black criminals per capita and each black criminal commits crimes at 5x the rate of white criminals.
There is of course a continuum between them, but I think it's useful to focus on the two endpoints because the endpoints have totally different policy responses and also suggest totally different causes.
For example, the policy response to (a) is that we need more police to catch a lot more black criminals. The policy response to (b) is that we need longer prison sentences for the criminals we have in order to prevent the same guy from doing 4 more crimes.
They also suggest different causes. Scenario (a) suggests something (HBD, special kinds of poverty not reflected in census stats) causes blacks to have a higher criminal propensity, whereas (b) suggests police might just be extra lenient towards black criminals thereby giving them more time on the street in which they commit more crimes.
Interestingly, while the theory of police abandonment will get you cancelled today, it was very much the theory pushed by black community leaders in the 90's. It was one of the things leading to "3 strikes" laws (long prison sentences for the 3'rd crime in order to get rid of the very worst criminals).
I have recently discovered some weak evidence in favor of theory (b) while going down an internet rabbithole on a totally different topic. Specifically, look at the first graph in this analysis:
https://github.com/propublica/compas-analysis/blob/master/Compas%20Analysis.ipynb
The "decile score" of the x-axis is a reasonably predictive index of a convicted criminal committing new crimes. The dominant features in the model generating the index are things like "# of previous crimes", "was the current crime violent", etc. As can be seen from the graph, white criminals are overrepresented on the left tail (little repeat crime risk) of the graph, whereas black criminals are spread evenly. Of course, this evidence is very weak - it's only about criminals up for parole in a certain region of Florida.
Does anyone know of more data on this?
tikimixologist
2yr ago
A useful exercise is to mentally replace "conspiracy theory" with "beliefs the writer wishes to characterize as low status and dismiss without consideration".
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Thing is, this is going to be for middle-class and upwards of that. Nobody cares about making the kids of the underclass all IQ 120 at minimum, because they're still going to live in crappy single-parent homes in crime-riddled shitholes and go to schools where metal detectors and armed security guards are needed because the little darlings shoot each other
So...they'd be in the same situation as a variety of Asian immigrant groups? High IQ children, poor parents, bad schools, sounds like the Hmong a generation ago. Recall that for a while, "what about the Hmong" was often used as an argument proving Asians aren't a model minority.
As of 2019, Hmong household income ($68k/year) was higher than average ($65.7k).
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/asian-americans-hmong-in-the-u-s/
If they have the same IQ as poor Asian kids, they might also have the same crime rate and out of wedlock birth rates as poor Asian kids. That would solve the problems of going to schools full of stabby kids pretty quickly and the problem of single parent homes in a generation or so.
Once you solve the problem of "poor people are terrible to be around" by raising their IQ, poverty in America isn't actually a big deal. If you disagree, try to name a good or service you think poor Americans lack.
They are always going to be at the bottom of the ladder, because great now you're IQ 120. Meanwhile, the rungs above you are making sure their embryos are selected to be IQ 130-140
You seem to be assuming that technology for embryo selection will develop along the lines of cars (where the 10x more expensive car is perhaps 2x as good as a Corolla) as opposed to along the lines of cell phones (where even Elon Musk uses an iPhone). Why do you believe this?
I can see one plausible story: regulators prevent poor parents from accessing the technology while the rich get it done in Macau.
tikimixologist
2yr ago
Did you not notice how every villain for a decade was a cell of brown middle eastern terrorists?
I did notice how for approximately one decade, the demographics of terrorism were accurately portrayed (in the ballpark of 75% Muslim) on a small number of TV shows (24 and Homeland being the only notable ones) which likely gained popularity for that reason. Note that "accurate" is perhaps overstating things; from what I recall, seasons 2-5 of 24 (season 1 was pre 9/11) had about 50% Islamic terrorists. The primary terrorists on Homeland (at least in season 1) were 50% white.
Both of these shows were both heavily criticized for this.
I'll also note that even on these TV shows, the portrayal always very carefully exemplified the George W. Bush ideal that the problem was Islamic terrorism, not Islam. Frequently Islamic terrorists were merely pawns of evil Dick Cheney-ish white people (season 2 of 24 - Halliburton engineered the attacks to start a war in the middle east and sell weapons) and Muslim anti-terrorist agents were nearly always included in the cast. Characters who were unreasonably suspicious of good Muslims were frequently portrayed.
I also noticed that before and after that, most terrorist villains were explicitly made European to avoid offending people.
They did know it was bullshit.
But they found phonics boring and considered their own entertainment more important than children learning stuff.
https://archive.is/WdzIm
It's much the same story with Direct Instruction, which is basically the classroom version of spaced repetition (and also students get tracked based on ability). Teachers follow a very repetitive script and those scripts are organized based on spaced repetition principles. No creativity. No use of their professional education. Just follow the script.
Back in the 90s we did some great trials and discovered Direct Instruction was the best way to teach children. But teachers found it boring and revolted against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_instruction
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