ApostateAbe
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2002
- Messages
- 1,299
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Basic Beliefs
- Infotheist. I believe the gods to be mere information.
In 1994, after the publication of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, a symposium of academics and political leaders set up a two-hour denunciation session for the press. Nominally, it was intended to denounce The Bell Curve. In reality, they denounced not only The Bell Curve but also the established facts of the mainstream science on intelligence.
The video is here:
Stephen J. Gould was among them. At the time range 1:36:10-1:37:53, he spoke as follows:
At first I thought maybe I misheard Gould when he spoke those last few words: "...all we can do is follow our program, which I expect is correct because the consequences of not doing so are so horrendous, if we're right." It is the most direct and plain statement of the fallacy of
appeal to consequences. He doesn't stop at the cost/benefit argument, but he stated that he expects he is right because of the potential consequences. I suspect that this ideological fallacy underlied his general thinking on the matter (he is now dead), but let's be generous and assume he spoke in haste and really believes that the cost/benefit analysis should not affect our beliefs about the objective probabilities of the science. Arguably, it could mean that we are morally obliged to act on the assumption of an idea even if it is improbable.
As in any religion, variations of Pascal's Wager lead an adherent to underestimate the negative consequences of believing and acting on a false dogma. In the case of the dogma that all mental distributions are equal between the races, it excessively punishes students with shame if they don't succeed in school, it excessively punishes parents with guilt for failing to raise smart children, it excessively punishes teachers and schools with pay cuts, firings and budget cuts if they are at fault for failing to raise the lower IQ of students without cheating (per Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and Obama's Race to the Top Act), it damns, with unpayable debt, black and Latino college students admitted below the typical admission requirements for failing to get grades high enough to graduate, it places excessive blame on the white populations for their false perceived role keeping the lower IQ populations in poverty, causing racial divisions, and any benefits resulting from the false belief (maybe a few more blacks will succeed in school than otherwise) will be temporary--when human genes for intelligence become fully understood within a few decades, that is when the popular fantasies end, the white supremacist agitators will lay sole claim to the science, and the liberal political establishment will be fully unprepared, if it turns out Herrnstein and Murray are correct. And they probably are. The potential negative consequences I have listed plainly do not change that probability, one way or the other.
I am less inclined to debate the science in this thread. That has been done in plenty of other threads elsewhere and I will continue to do so (go to the Social Science and Pseudoscience forums). I would like to discuss the potential consequences and the cost/benefit analyses. There are four quadrants of possibilities with this variant of Pascal's Wager. Tell me how you see it and how you agree or disagree with Gould.
The video is here:
Stephen J. Gould was among them. At the time range 1:36:10-1:37:53, he spoke as follows:
Now the main thing I wanted to say in here, and I credit my good friend Alan Dershowitz with putting it this way in a private discussion, and I think this captures both the moral and the practical point beautifully, and that is: we really don't know the causes of these differences. We really don't. That's the only honest statement, but think of it this way, since we don't know [...] suppose Herrnstein and Murray are right. But, since we don't know that, we continue to try our very best to help out even though it can't be totally effective. That's one scenario. Suppose, however, that we're right, and that these are substantially remediable because the immutability assumption of those four is wrong, but we follow Herrnstein and Murray's recommendations. You see the differential results is so great... after all, if they're right but if we do our program, what's the result? So we've spent some money and we've encountered some frustration, but to think of the tragedy involved if they're right and we follow their program, because then we have extinguished the human spirit in millions of people where it could have been acknowledged and nurtured, and that's ultimately on any cost/benefit analysis or moral argument where it comes down! Since we do not know, all we can do is follow our program, which I expect is correct because the consequences of not doing so are so horrendous, if we're right.
At first I thought maybe I misheard Gould when he spoke those last few words: "...all we can do is follow our program, which I expect is correct because the consequences of not doing so are so horrendous, if we're right." It is the most direct and plain statement of the fallacy of
appeal to consequences. He doesn't stop at the cost/benefit argument, but he stated that he expects he is right because of the potential consequences. I suspect that this ideological fallacy underlied his general thinking on the matter (he is now dead), but let's be generous and assume he spoke in haste and really believes that the cost/benefit analysis should not affect our beliefs about the objective probabilities of the science. Arguably, it could mean that we are morally obliged to act on the assumption of an idea even if it is improbable.As in any religion, variations of Pascal's Wager lead an adherent to underestimate the negative consequences of believing and acting on a false dogma. In the case of the dogma that all mental distributions are equal between the races, it excessively punishes students with shame if they don't succeed in school, it excessively punishes parents with guilt for failing to raise smart children, it excessively punishes teachers and schools with pay cuts, firings and budget cuts if they are at fault for failing to raise the lower IQ of students without cheating (per Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and Obama's Race to the Top Act), it damns, with unpayable debt, black and Latino college students admitted below the typical admission requirements for failing to get grades high enough to graduate, it places excessive blame on the white populations for their false perceived role keeping the lower IQ populations in poverty, causing racial divisions, and any benefits resulting from the false belief (maybe a few more blacks will succeed in school than otherwise) will be temporary--when human genes for intelligence become fully understood within a few decades, that is when the popular fantasies end, the white supremacist agitators will lay sole claim to the science, and the liberal political establishment will be fully unprepared, if it turns out Herrnstein and Murray are correct. And they probably are. The potential negative consequences I have listed plainly do not change that probability, one way or the other.
I am less inclined to debate the science in this thread. That has been done in plenty of other threads elsewhere and I will continue to do so (go to the Social Science and Pseudoscience forums). I would like to discuss the potential consequences and the cost/benefit analyses. There are four quadrants of possibilities with this variant of Pascal's Wager. Tell me how you see it and how you agree or disagree with Gould.
