Why is this virtuous?
HBDers might, finally, question these major fallacies.
Ever hear the phrase "talking past the sale"? It's a salesman's gimmick. Prior to closing the sale, the salesman asks his customer: "What color car would you like?" In so doing, he enlists the customer in subverting his own decision-making process. In the customer's mind, he has accepted the premise that he bought the car.
What major fallacies did HBDers buy?
From most, these major fallacies are:
- Consensus can precede consent.
- Popper's "falsification" criterion is the gold standard of science.
- Nurture can't be 100% determinative.
Major Fallacy #3
Nurture Can't Be 100% Determinative
I laid the trap by amplifying his piety with, "Intelligence is 100% a product of nurture."
"THAT'S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!", thundered the gelded Thor.
At which point I further amplified, "Yes, if I put a bullet through your head, your IQ will decrease by 100%!" He abruptly switched to another topic.
For relevance, contrast Chanda Chisala's own words he quotes in establishing his race-realist credentials:
The average (genetic) potentials [emphasis JAB] of intelligence could indeed be as varied as the heights of different populations.
Do you see it?
Here "it" is:
100% destruction of potential is something environments are fully capable of achieving -- and cheaply at that. A .22 bullet costs a nickle. Since wealthy individuals are known for a keen appreciation of costs -- the gelding was wise to quickly change the subject. Indeed, destruction of potential is the central thesis of "anti-racism" but only when the potential being destroyed is that of non-whites. If only the decades of programs and preferences had cost a nickle per supposed beneficiary of "anti-racism"! We can see why HBDers are loathe to legitimize an argument so-abused as to impose such costly, an actually destructive, projects.
But why didn't Chisala propose this destruction of potential in the case of UK white youths? Does he really believe that decades of government-imposed racial preferences for non-whites throughout the West have had insignificant deleterious impact on white youths?
Perhaps. But surely Chisala might have anticipated that HBDers would, in his words, "change the goalpost" once again: Use the most popular argument among social scientists to explain differential outcomes. After all, HBDers, in Chisala's words "exude the obstinate fervor of pseudoscience" by "changing the goalposts" despite having their hypotheses "falsified". So why not?
Major Fallacy #2
Popper's "Falsification" Criterion is the Gold Standard of Science
For example, we have Chisala quoting someone of Richard Lynn's stature, who sets the ultimate "goalpost" in the statement:
If a multiracial society is found where these race differences in intelligence are absent, the evolutionary and genetic theory of these differences would be falsified [emphasis JAB]. Those who maintain that there are no genetic differences in intelligence between the races are urged to attempt this task.
Lynn, long ago bought the pop philosophy of science called "naïve falsificationism". Popper muddied scientific philosophy. He did so by introducing a qualitative "falsification" criterion so as to obscure the prior, and superior, quantitative criterion of simplicity: Ockham's Razor. Ockham's Razor has long been the Gold Standard in the philosophy of science. Unlike "falsification" it is quantitative: Choosing the simplest of proposed theories. Moreover, Ockham's Razor has been rendered measurable in Algorithmic Information Theory. AIT posits when theories are presented with a dataset of observations, the most informative theory best-compresses the dataset. Fewer bits means better predictions. The theoretic maximum compression is called the dataset's Kolmogorov Complexity, measured in bits of information. AIT is now applied as the universal measure in artificial general intelligence.
Remember that phrase -- "general intelligence".
Popper's popularization of a qualitative Fool's Gold Standard in the pop philosophy of science did untold damage to Western Civilization. He performed this feat at the very same instant in history that Algorithmic Information Theory rigorously formalized Ockham's Razor. In AIT a so-called "falsification" merely increases the number of bits in the theory -- its approximation of the dataset's Kolmogorov Complexity. Oh, to be sure, Popper gestured toward a more quantitative, less naive "falsification" standard, but that was merely a backhanded recasting of Ockham's Razor, rendering his entire project an obscuration.
Popper obscured AIT for a half century. But worse, he did so at the dawn of the computer age when AIT should have revolutionized the social sciences as the Gold Standard criterion. It is only now that AIT's superiority as model selection criterion is starting to be recognized by a few with deep theoretic understanding of universal "general intelligence". General intelligence is at the heart of science. Aided by Popper's obscurationist rhetoric, the social pseudosciences have obscured social causality even as they imposed, on vast populations, experimental treatments with no experimental controls, such as mass immigration. This they achieved in large measure by eliding the rigorous, universal model selection criterion of social causality afforded by AIT. This is the kind of damage Popper did to Western Civilization's intelligence, in theory, practice and consequence. This damage is, by the way, evident in continued attempts to statistically refute pseudoscientific models of social causality without a model selection criterion that avoids specious "information criteria" typically utilized by social scientists, such as BIC, AIC, etc. which, unlike AIT, fail to bring, both, errors in prediction and model complexity into the same, commensurable definition of "bits" so that adding them together makes sense.
We should not, therefore, be surprised when someone of Chisala's rhetorical excellence amplifies Lynn's quote with, "I expected the HBDers to at least admit, by their own standard, that this simple unambiguous falsification standard had apparently been met." Chisala performs a Popperian obscuration when he touches on, but doesn't own, Ockham's Razor in his quantitative statement, "Remember, the more [emphasis JAB] universal your claim, the more [emphasis JAB] it can potentially be falsified by a simple singular unambiguous event, which is why Lynn was right to give such a simple falsifying standard."
Chisala's proportional phrase "the more" demonstrates that he, unlike Lynn, is aware of "naïve falsificationism", even as he bases his argument on Lynn's fallacious use of it. In so doing, Chisala captures The Ultimate Prize -- a prize offered by Lynn in desperation to have anyone correspond on anything remotely resembling a collegial basis. Lynn should not have been so desperate as to think past the sale of Popper's "contribution" to Western Civilization. Both of these errors are understandable given the desperate straits of Western Civilization's academy due to 20th century intellectual movements, as evidenced by Brimelow's introduction welcoming Chisala's correspondence.
Major Fallacy #1
Consensus can precede consent.
Consensus reached under duress is a false consensus.
The context of discourse with rhetoricians like Chisala is a regime that violates the consent of those that dissent from the prevailing, anti-HBD, orthodoxy. The HBDers have bought the unstated premise that scientific consensus can be reached while violating consent of the participants.
Proponents of government enforced anti-HBD orthodoxy bear far more than a mere burden of proof in any discourse toward a consensus. They bear an ethical responsibility to abjure such force, and do so as a prerequisite to entering into scientific discourse with their non-consenting colleagues. I am speaking here not of consent to entering into scientific discourse, but government imposition of social theories on entire populations against their will. The majority of HBDers do not consent to their communities being subjected to experimental treatments based on anti-HBD theories. Chisala, as among the most ethical of all social scientists, must own up, with due prominence, to the illegitimate advantage he, and they, enjoy. But he and they, must do more than that.
They must prominently and persistently advocate for the societal investment required to sort proponents of social theories into governments that test them.
Can HBDers do as much for themselves?
Only if they can walk-back the sale.
No comments:
Post a Comment