Does a meritocracy inevitably create enclaves of "idiocracy"?

[SlackerInc]

I recently read a TIME magazine article about a new book by Charles Murray, who co-authored the infamous book The Bell Curve, which had a chapter about race and IQ. His new book is called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, and describes increasing levels of dysfunction* in many low income white neighbourhoods and towns.

What this got me to thinking about, though, had less to do with race per se than with potential reasons why--despite overall increased wealth and education in American society--the poorest areas of both white and black America seem to be getting more dire in their poverty and levels of what sociologists quite straightforwardly call "social problems".

I've always believed that one of the most important steps forward for this country, or any other for that matter, is to shake off traditional class boundaries and become more and more meritocratic. That is, if someone is born into a poor, uneducated family, but goes to public school and their teachers discover they are "gifted or talented", it should be our goal as a society to identify, nurture, and develop those gifts or talents to their full potential. And so whenever I heard of someone "getting out" of an urban slum or an Appalachian coal mining town, and becoming a scientist or writer or senator, I cheered that as a great sign of progress toward that meritocratic ideal. After all, not that long ago that would be almost unheard of: the occasional Horatio Alger rags-to-riches cases like the Andrews Jackson and Carnegie were really the exceptions that proved the rule.

While we're still a long ways from becoming a true meritocracy, we have definitely made strides in that direction. Two of my best friends really illustrate that: they came from two Midwestern towns on the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. One friend grew up raised by a single mom who has been a diner waitress for decades (and still is); the other, by parents who worked various blue collar jobs and supplemented their meagre incomes by hunting and growing food on their land. Neither of them had any relatives with college degrees. But they both excelled on standardised tests, went on to a highly selective university (the same one--it's where I met them), and "got out".

But what did they leave behind? That's the part I never thought about before. What happens when an increasingly meritocratic educational system plucks out the diamonds in the rough and relocates them elsewhere? Their genes (and social influence too, if you skew more toward the "nurture" side of the debate) are taken out of that gene pool. In earlier times, the cleverer members of a poor community would generally stay in that community (having no other real choice). They would then keep their genes circulating through that community. And even if they didn't have "book learnin'", they could apply their sharp wits toward solving problems for themselves and people around them, and culturally passing on that sparkle in the eye, so to speak: maybe being storytellers who united their communities, or who settled disputes and informally counselled those in need, and taught succeeding generations to do the same, by their example.

When you continue to pull the "best and brightest" out of these communities, don't you metaphorically leave something like "exhausted soil" behind? For that matter, it occurs to me that the increasingly scientific methods of sports recruiting (which scour poor neighbourhoods for younger and younger prospects) may be siphoning the athletic genes out as well. After a few more generations, what will be left but obese dullards?

--------
*Some of which, however--like decreasing church attendance--I'd dispute whether "dysfunctional" is an accurate assessment. Still, there are plenty of other signs of social degradation that even an atheist like me can't dispute.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

What this got me to thinking about, though, had less to do with race per se than with potential reasons why--despite overall increased wealth and education in American society--the poorest areas of both white and black America seem to be getting more dire in their poverty and levels of what sociologists quite straightforwardly call "social problems".

Stagnating wages, fewer jobs, more fees, a shifting of the tax burden from the rich to everyone else.

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

While we're still a long ways from becoming a true meritocracy, we have definitely made strides in that direction.

Incorrect; America is one of the least economically mobile industrialized nations, and has been for at least decades.

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

When you continue to pull the "best and brightest" out of these communities, don't you metaphorically leave something like "exhausted soil" behind? For that matter, it occurs to me that the increasingly scientific methods of sports recruiting (which scour poor neighbourhoods for younger and younger prospects) may be siphoning the athletic genes out as well. After a few more generations, what will be left but obese dullards?

Not enough time. Humans are long lived, slow breeding and interbreed a lot; a few generations isn't long enough for any such genetic effect to take place.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

What this got me to thinking about, though, had less to do with race per se than with potential reasons why--despite overall increased wealth and education in American society--the poorest areas of both white and black America seem to be getting more dire in their poverty and levels of what sociologists quite straightforwardly call "social problems".

Excessive welfare, a victim mentality, lack of moral guidance, dismissal of traditional values and a shifting of responsibility from individuals to society.

When you continue to pull the "best and brightest" out of these communities, don't you metaphorically leave something like "exhausted soil" behind?

Not really. It's not that the soil is exhausted, that makes no sense when referring to humans.

Rather, what happens is that standards drop and examples disappear. This a phenomenon of class segregation that has been well studied and well is understood in Black communities, but doubtless it happens in poor White communities as well.

When Black communities were insular and integration was highly restricted, the best performers were forced to live in the same "ghettos" as the worst. That provided a constant supply of high quality role models for young people to follow. Roel models for practical tasks such as hard work as well as moral examples of religiosity, honesty and so forth. Come the 1960s and open integration and the richest people moved out of the ghettos for White neighbourhoods.

What was left behind was your "exhausted soil" and accompanied by not just a collapse in Blak progress, but an actual retrograde step with declining education, life expectancy, lawfulness and so forth. This wasn't due to the removal of good genes. It ahppened in w period of less than 15 years. far, far to fast to make any genetic explanation even remotely plausible. It was simply caused by the removal of all positive role models. young people ahd nothing to model themselves on and no clear legal path to success beyond.

Just as importantly there was nobody to drag social standards up. Humans are social creatures and set their standards by comparison with others, so any community tends towards the average. And because it is an average a few high performing individual can drag the society up markedly. To consider a basic example: when even one person in a community has an immaculate yard and lawn, then even the worst members will make at least some attempt to keep their yard functionally clean and many people will try to compete with the best. But if that one person leaves, then the many who were trying to compete with them will no longer bother, and the worst will have "permission" to not bother to mow their lawn at all because doing so is no longer dramatically worse than the average. So the tone of the whole neighbourhood falls dramatically because just a few, or even one, person left. Now that is a trivial example, but it applies to every aspect of human life, from the way children are raised to work ethic to percieved potential occupations to lawfulness.

If you remove the top 1% performers from a community, the community standard will decline precipitously overnight. The effect is further amplified by socioeconomic factors. Left with a concentration of unemployed and low level blue-collar workers, any economic downturn will disproportionately effect that community and have a much lesser effect on other communities. That in turn reduces standards temporarily relative ot the rets of the country, but with a steady removal of the elite the standards never return to what they had been. Instead of the cyclical increase and decrease in living and social standards tied to economy seen in the nation as a whole, the segregated community is characterised by a series of declines during economic downturns and only and plateaus during upturns. With all the elite leaving as soon as they can, the community standards can never increase, they can only remain stable or fall. leading to the prolonged decline sen in Black neighbourhoods.


This doesn't require a generational change, it will happen within a just few years. The most dramatic example was the precipitous decline in Black neighbourhods during the 70s recession and subsequent 80s boom. But just because this is best studied in Black communities, where the effect and the result was most dramatically illustrated I see no reason why it wouldn't also apply to White communities. You would expect White communities to exhibit the effect on a less dramatic scale because there wasn't the pulse of movement of the White elite the way there was with Blacks when segregation broke down. But the same basic principles apply.

When the best are able to leave, they do, and the community average falls as a result. Worse yet, with the best leaving constantly the community average can't possibly rise over time because there is no intrinsic mechanism to allow it to do so.

There's nothing genetic about any of this. The people remaining aren't "exhausted soil". They are just people who have no real life exposure to the way that 'normal" people live.

Some of which, however--like decreasing church attendance--I'd dispute whether "dysfunctional" is an accurate assessment. Still, there are plenty of other signs of social degradation that even an atheist like me can't dispute.

Decreasing Church attendance is certainly a symptom. It's an indication of a breakdown in social involvement and a decline in concern about public perception. There's obviously no reason why someone couldn't be involved in their community with a very strong sense of social appearance and an Atheist. The problem is that that isn't what is happening. People give up on religion and it isn't being replaced by anything. They aren't making a decision that Atheism is a better belief system, they are simply disengaging form their community.

[willthekittensurvive?]

Great post Blake

[SlackerInc]

Incorrect; America is one of the least economically mobile industrialized nations, and has been for at least decades.

First, I wasn't talking in terms of now compared to a generation ago, although there was this from your link:

Still, the escalators of social mobility continue to move. Nearly a third of the freshmen at four-year colleges last fall said their parents hadn't gone beyond high school.

But I meant more in terms of now compared to pre-WWII days and going back to the 19th century. Back then, elite universities' student bodies were made up almost entirely of scions of prominent wealthy families. Today, Ivy League schools bend over backward to make their incoming freshmen a diverse lot, representing various socioeconomic strata and geographical origins.

Secondly, the U.S. falling behind other industrialised nations does not necessarily mean it has not made progress. It can just as easily mean that those nations have simply progressed faster.

Thirdly and perhaps most germane to my point, I feel you are comparing apples and oranges here. I don't believe a society that was an absolute meritocracy would necessarily have a high level of class mobility. It would obviously have a higher level of mobility than one where social classes were strictly prescribed and no one moved out of his or her lane. But meritocracy requires merit. I know it's terribly elitist of me to say, but I believe the average slum or trailer park would not be terribly likely to produce many Rhodes scholars, even if the local public school was as good as a school in an affluent suburb. And my point is that this is going to become less and less likely, as the cream of the crop is repeatedly skimmed off by the aforementioned Ivy League schools seeking diverse representation in their student populations.

[SlackerInc]

Decreasing Church attendance is certainly a symptom. It's an indication of a breakdown in social involvement and a decline in concern about public perception.

I think it's plausible that in some cases it's a symptom. But to make the sweeping statement that it is "certainly" a symptom, and imply that this must be the case everywhere that church attendance declines, doesn't follow. Compare Western Washington State with Mississippi or Alabama. The level of concern for public perception is much higher in the former (at least based on how few places look like Third World shantytowns), and social problems of all kinds much higher in the latter, yet Western Washington reports some of the lowest religiosity and church attendance in the U.S.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Thirdly and perhaps most germane to my point, I feel you are comparing apples and oranges here. I don't believe a society that was an absolute meritocracy would necessarily have a high level of class mobility. It would obviously have a higher level of mobility than one where social classes were strictly prescribed and no one moved out of his or her lane. But meritocracy requires merit.

And being upper class doesn't mean you have merit; quite often it means you are a corrupt incompetent who has been handed everything your entire life.

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

I know it's terribly elitist of me to say, but I believe the average slum or trailer park would not be terribly likely to produce many Rhodes scholars, even if the local public school was as good as a school in an affluent suburb. And my point is that this is going to become less and less likely, as the cream of the crop is repeatedly skimmed off by the aforementioned Ivy League schools seeking diverse representation in their student populations.

You sound like you are dancing around saying that it's mostly or all genetic; but there's no reason to think that it is, or that that's even a plausible idea. Nor are a significant number of people going to go from slums to Ivy League schools, if for no other reason than that there are far more people in slums than there are in Ivy League schools even if they kicked out everyone else to make room. You are trying to make something important out of something so rare that it's unlikely that those trailer park dwellers would even know of such a person.

[SlackerInc]

I agree that going from trailer park to Ivy League school is rare (going from anywhere to Ivy is rare); going from trailer park to four year school is unusual but not vanishingly rare. I suspect though that it will not get any more common than it is now if those who are "college material" are culled from the population.

You sound like you are dancing around saying that it's mostly or all genetic; but there's no reason to think that it is, or that that's even a plausible idea.

I'm not dancing around it, although I would dispute "mostly or all". I'd say it's roughly 50/50. What that means though is that an optimal social environment can only bring someone up to their max potential. If the potential is not there, it's not there.

And you are mistaken about the evidence for the heritability of cognitive ability: there's a lot of it.

There's the Horn study:

Results supported the hypothesis that genetic variability is an important influence in the development of individual differences for intelligence. The most salient finding was that adopted children resemble their biological mothers more than they resemble the adoptive parents who reared them from birth.

Then there are studies of identical vs. fraternal twins:

Genes have a very strong influence over how certain parts of our brains develop, scientists in the US and Finland have found. And the parts most influenced are those that govern our cognitive ability. In short, you inherit your IQ.

That's a little too pat, clearly; someone in a very poor, non-stimulating environment will not achieve their potential. If the last sentence above said "you inherit your potential IQ", I'd agree with it. This more in-depth article looks at twin studies and comes to essentially the conclusion I have.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

And you are mistaken about the evidence for the heritability of cognitive ability: there's a lot of it.

That's not what I'm saying; what i'm saying is that there's no reason to think that intelligence is higher in higher social strata. On the contrary; families tend towards genetic mediocrity over time. If you have a stupid family and a smart family and track their descendants a few generations, the descendants of the smart family will tend to have gotten dumber and the dumb family smarter; both will drift toward the average. Any little genetic differences are swamped in the sea of averageness around them over time.

[erislover]

It is hard to quote your whole post, Blake, but I disagree strongly with the premise that a few tend to elevate the many. You see this same sort of expectation in schools: why segregate the smart kids out, let them raise the weaker students up. It has not been my experience that this actually happens. The fact that people are leaving a community when they can should be impetus to fix it, but it hasn't stopped bigoted and fundamentalist small towns, it never stopped the Amish, and there's no reason at all to suppose it would work in any other venue. Diminished expectations and discouragement is not a one-way street. I have a high tech job and have over a decade of experience in my field but you can't just drop me into the jungle to raise the standard of living. I'd probably just die or get killed.

Role models are important, there's no question, and their locality definitely helps, but I don't think any community lacks role models of the sort you mention. Pastors and priests, teachers, local businessmen... all these people exist in all communities. The question isn't whether a community needs more of these people (if they indeed lack them, which I find questionable), but why they aren't considered role models. People whose only hope is striking oil or gold tend not to respect social boundries. As true of gold rush minors as it is of the desperately poor.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

I'm not dancing around it, although I would dispute "mostly or all". I'd say it's roughly 50/50. What that means though is that an optimal social environment can only bring someone up to their max potential. If the potential is not there, it's not there.

Which is looking at the issue backwards. While an ideal social environment may indeed bring someone up to maximum 50% of the time, the real issue is that lack of an optimal environment will prevent someone coming up to potential 100% of the time. If a child is born to illiterate, drug addicted parents who may no effort to send the child to school, we can assume that the child will never qualify for admission to Harvard. If the environment isn't there, the potential doesn't count for squat.

To elaborate, let's assume some nebulous "college intelligence" trait that is, as you suggest, 50% environment and 50% genetic. Let's assign the trait a range of values 1 to 100. Let's say the Ivy League schools will only take people with scores >90. That means that the people who can go to those schools require both a near perfect environmental endowment (>40) and a near perfect genetic endowment (>40). It also means that the lower the genetic endowment the higher the environmental endowment must be, and vice versa. A person who is genetically a 40 can still get into an Ivy League school if they have a perfect environment because (40 + 50 > 90). Likewise a person with a slightly suboptimal environment of 40 requires a perfect genetic intelligence to be accepted.

Now consider what that means in reality. A perfect environment consists not just of parents who send you to school every day with a good breakfast inside you, but who help you with homework, hire tutors and so on and so forth. Almost deviation at all from that will mean that even a child with a "perfect" genetic intelligence still won't qualify for an Ivy League school. Now if we assume a normal distribution akin to IQ, children with perfect intelligence will be less than one in every hundred and children with genetic intelligences >40 will be less than one in 20.

Now ask yourself, how many trailers are perfect academic environments? One in ten thousand? Even less? How many are even "really good" academic environments where parents are highly literate, discuss academic topics amongst their friends, help the kids a lot with their schoolwork and so forth? One in a thousand? So even if intelligence is 50% genetic, we would expect less than five thousand trailer park kids to qualify for Ivy League admission.

In contrast, how many homes of Ivy League graduates are academically perfect? Maybe as high as 90%? Even if we allow just 50%, and if we allow that 1 in 20 Ivy Leaguer's kids have genetic intelligences >40 that means that 1 in 40 Ivy Leaguer's kids will qualify for an Ivy League school.

So the average Ivy League acceptance would be expected to include one kid from a trailer park for every 125 kids from upper class homes. That's just performance based acceptance list of course, That doesn't take into account economic ability actually pay for that tuition, social conditioning against applying and so forth.

Note that this all occurs even if the genetic distribution of intelligence between trailer parks and Park Avenue are identical.

That is the point Der Trihs is trying to make. The issue isn't whether upper class kids get into Ivy League schools in part because of superior genetics. That is indisputable, The issue is whether trailer park kids fail to get in because they are genetically inferior. That is your contention, and one for which there is no support. IOW while superior genetics are vital in obtaining Ivy League admission, failure to obtain Ivy League admission is not evidence of inferior genetics.

And you are mistaken about the evidence for the heritability of cognitive ability: there's a lot of it.

Yes, but you misunderstand your own argument. The issue isn't whether there is some genetic component to intelligence. That is beyond dispute.

The issue is your claim that removing the smartest individuals from a community can produce the sort of pronounced decline in social standards seen in Black communities, in just 15 years, due to genetic effects.

Those are two totally different issues. The evidence you presented supports the former, which nobody disputes. It does not support the latter, which is physically impossible.

[SlackerInc]

Der Trihs, I'm familiar with the notion of "regression to the mean", but I think you are going too far with it. Do you really think that if we took all the babies born in the lowest income quintile, and all the babies born in the highest income quintile, and distributed them randomly to be raised by members of the other three quintiles but secretly kept track of who came from where, we'd find little or no evidence years later that the biological parents from the lowest quintile had biological offspring with lower IQs on average?

[erislover]

Originally Posted by erislover

As true of gold rush minors as it is of the desperately poor.

I hereby rule all homonyms as syntactically equal. Thank you for your attention and compliance in this matter. End transmission.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by erislover

It is hard to quote your whole post, Blake, but I disagree strongly with the premise that a few tend to elevate the many.

Well that's fine of course, but the sociologists who have studied this strongly agree. This isn't an idea that is original to me in any sense. It's the near universally accepted theory on class segregation and social decline in Black communities in the US.

You have every right to disagree with it of course, but it would require some hard evidence for me to credit you over every sociologists that I have ever read on this subject.

You see this same sort of expectation in schools: why segregate the smart kids out, let them raise the weaker students up.

I have seen no evidence that this applies to schools and I can see no reason why it should apply. All else aside, a school isn't an enclosed community. Children are far more affected by their parents than their peers, which is obviously not true of adults living in a neighborhood.

Perhaps you might start by asking these people why they think this applies to schools.

The fact that people are leaving a community when they can should be impetus to fix it, but it hasn't stopped bigoted and fundamentalist small towns, it never stopped the Amish, and there's no reason at all to suppose it would work in any other venue.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. Stopped what? Fix what?

Diminished expectations and discouragement is not a one-way street. I have a high tech job and have over a decade of experience in my field but you can't just drop me into the jungle to raise the standard of living. I'd probably just die or get killed.

Again, not at all sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that people who lived in Black communities couldn't survive there? That seems to run counter to the observation that they did survive there. I also don't quite see how dropping you into a jungle would raise behavioural expectations since, as you note, you have no idea how to behave.

Role models are important, there's no question, and their locality definitely helps, but I don't think any community lacks role models of the sort you mention. Pastors and priests, teachers, local businessmen... all these people exist in all communities.

Having grown up in these communities. let me assure you, they don't.

No boy wants to grow up to be a Pastor. No matter how much we might have respected the Pastors, they weren't role models in any real sense. We didn't want to be like them and they were quite clearly a class apart. We had to talk and act differently around them on pain of pain. In no sense were they a normal part of the community and thus they weren't role models. Teachers were overwhelmingly from outside somewhere. In my entire school life I never had a teacher from my economic background that I knew of. Local businessmen were even more rare. Most of the local businessmen in my area weren't even the same race as me. Hell, many of them didn't even speak fluent English. They certainly weren't role models.

The question isn't whether a community needs more of these people (if they indeed lack them, which I find questionable), but why they aren't considered role models.

I don't think you an really dispute that the average project has a distinct lack of people who go to work at a white collar job every morning. And a distinct lack of people who live a comfortable and enviable life through simply gong through the motions. Those are the role models that are lacking.

People whose only hope is striking oil or gold tend not to respect social boundries. As true of gold rush minors as it is of the desperately poor.

Sorry, no idea what that means.

[SlackerInc]

The issue is your claim that removing the smartest individuals from a community can produce the sort of pronounced decline in social standards seen in Black communities, in just 15 years, due to genetic effects.

Blake, please don't make out my argument to be a racial one, because it's not. I'm talking about poor white communities as much as, or more than, black ones.

And your quantifying of the nature and nurture factors is much too simplistic. Most families in poor neighbourhoods are not headed by "illiterate, drug addicted parents who may no effort to send the child to school". Those families are certainly more common in poor areas, but they are still a minority. And what I'm saying, that I know from personal experience, is that if a kid's innate cognitive ability is up around 48 to 50 (using your metric), they don't need their environment to also be above 40, they just need it to be above 10 or hopefully 20, and have access to libraries (including the Internet) and the resources of even a subpar public school. They can gather what they need from even that relatively sparse intellectual terrain.

Now I will agree that there are "hothouse flowers" raised in affluent educated homes that maybe have natural ability of 40 but parlay that combined with the perfect 50 environment into being able to achieve academically what the poor kid with natural ability of 45 will never manage to. But those kinds of people tend to hit an upper limit at some point, and never become anybody really impressive or memorable although they'll make a comfortable living; whereas that poor kid with the natural 49 aptitude and the 15 environment can definitely become a world-class scholar, scientist, writer, etc. although it won't be easy especially in the early going.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Der Trihs, I'm familiar with the notion of "regression to the mean", but I think you are going too far with it. Do you really think that if we took all the babies born in the lowest income quintile, and all the babies born in the highest income quintile, and distributed them randomly to be raised by members of the other three quintiles but secretly kept track of who came from where, we'd find little or no evidence years later that the biological parents from the lowest quintile had biological offspring with lower IQs on average?

I doubt you'd see any difference at all.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Der Trihs, I'm familiar with the notion of "regression to the mean", but I think you are going too far with it. Do you really think that if we took all the babies born in the lowest income quintile, and all the babies born in the highest income quintile, and distributed them randomly to be raised by members of the other three quintiles but secretly kept track of who came from where, we'd find little or no evidence years later that the biological parents from the lowest quintile had biological offspring with lower IQs on average?

There's just no reason to believe it would be otherwise. There's no evidence that rich people are genetically smarter than poor. It is your contention that it is the case, but you can hardly use the contention as evidence to support that conclusion.

[erislover]

Originally Posted by Blake

Well that's fine of course, but the sociologists who have studied this strongly agree. This isn't an idea that is original to me in any sense. It's the near universally accepted theory on class segregation and social decline in Black communities in the US.

You have every right to disagree with it of course, but it would require some hard evidence for me to credit you over every sociologists that I have ever read on this subject.

Please find me one, then. I'm not so firm in my beliefs. My experience is simply that the diminished expectations apply to the bigger and brighter, and they give up. They don't reach out to their peers to elevate them.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. Stopped what? Fix what?

The problems in the community you mentioned. You wrote a three page paper of a post and I didn't think it would help to line-by-line it.

Having grown up in these communities. let me assure you, they don't.

Yes. Now if only you realized the next sentence you quote was a key aspect of the entire bit of sentences.

No boy wants to grow up to be a Pastor. No matter how much we might have respected the Pastors, they weren't role models in any real sense.

Yes: why? Why pro wrestlers and sports stars instead of Pastors and teachers? Why not their fathers or mothers? We don't need homogeneity in our communities in order that everyone has a role model. Carl Sagan was a role model for a lot of people; there's only one of him. My high school math teacher greatly inspired me (and I have no idea where he lived). We have no shortage of role models at all; only ones you want to count.

We didn't want to be like them and they were quite clearly a class apart.

Yes, why? How would holding the best and brightest back change this?

We had to talk and act differently around them on pain of pain. In no sense were they a normal part of the community and thus they weren't role models. Teachers were overwhelmingly from outside somewhere. In my entire school life I never had a teacher from my economic background that I knew of. Local businessmen were even more rare. Most of the local businessmen in my area weren't even the same race as me. Hell, many of them didn't even speak fluent English. They certainly weren't role models.

No, they were. You just didn't think so. Apparently you still don't think so.

I don't think you an really dispute that the average project has a distinct lack of people who go to work at a white collar job every morning. And a distinct lack of people who live a comfortable and enviable life through simply gong through the motions. Those are the role models that are lacking.

That's nonsense. You don't have to be a white collar worker to be a role model. I can't even believe that you would suggest it.

[SlackerInc]

There's no evidence that rich people are genetically smarter than poor.

Boy, you guys like to throw around this phrase "there's no evidence for X". Don't you ever think, "Hmmm...maybe I'm not all-knowing, so I'd better just say 'I haven't seen evidence for X'"? Just a thought.

So, here's some evidence. What I find interesting is that the NY Times writer tries to spin it in the same direction you're trying to go, but if you look past the verbiage, the raw numbers are clear. Yes, environment matters (I have been saying that all along); but clearly, at least in France, the genetic potential for higher intelligence is more prevalent among the affluent:

Regardless of whether the adopting families were rich or poor, Capron and Duyme learned, children whose biological parents were well-off had I.Q. scores averaging 16 points higher than those from working-class parents. Yet what is really remarkable is how big a difference the adopting families’ backgrounds made all the same. The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower. The same holds true for children born into impoverished families: youngsters adopted by parents of similarly modest means had average I.Q.’s of 92.4, while the I.Q.’s of those placed with well-off parents averaged 103.6. These studies confirm that environment matters — the only, and crucial, difference between these children is the lives they have led.

[SlackerInc]

Missed my five minute window, but wanted to add:

Note that, again despite the spin, having biological parents who were rich instead of poor made a 16 point difference, which this writer glosses over but which is a huge disparity, equivalent to the difference between someone who struggles to graduate high school vs. someone who easily acquires a four year degree and could perhaps even get a master's degree if they worked at it.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Blake, please don't make out my argument to be a racial one, because it's not. I'm talking about poor white communities as much as, or more than, black ones.

I am not making out to be racial in any way at all.

The simple fact is that after segregation ended there was a precipitous and much-studied decline in the social and economic standards of Black communities attributed to class segregation. By precipitous i mean it occurred in less than two decades, far to fast to be caused by genetic factors.

You have postulated that a less precipitous but otherwise identical decline in White communities must be caused by genetic factors.

That just doesn't make any sense. If we know that a dramatic example of a phenomenon is observed in one community, then any attempt to explain a less dramatic example in another community must provide addiotnal epxlantory power not inherent on the original explanation. Anything else is a violation of Ockham's Razor.

In short, we know that non-genetic factors can trigger a precipitous decline in social standards in population B. T posit that a less dramatic but otherwise identical decline in population W is due to some genetic factor is needlessly multiplying entities. The decline in W can be just as adequately explained without invoking any factors not already invoked to explain the event in B.

We have two competing hypotheses. The non-genetic one explains the decline in social standards amongst all human population in the US in the past 40 years. The genetic one only explains the decline in White population. It can not explain what happened to Black populations and has to invoke additional non-genetic factors to explain that.

That is a clear violation of Ockham's Razor.

Most families in poor neighbourhoods are not headed by "illiterate, drug addicted parents who may no effort to send the child to school".

Nor did I ever suggest they were.

And what I'm saying, that I know from personal experience, is that if a kid's innate cognitive ability is up around 48 to 50 (using your metric), they don't need their environment to also be above 40, they just need it to be above 10 or hopefully 20, and have access to libraries (including the Internet) and the resources of even a subpar public school. They can gather what they need from even that relatively sparse intellectual terrain.

Well as a person who grew up living in a two bedroom government house with two parents and 5 siblings, who tested as a gifted child every year from the age of 8 onwards, who maxed out the reading test at 12th grade level at the age of 11, who won numerous national science competitions and so on and and so forth and who still never came close to qualifying for Ivy League admission, I respectfully submit that you don't know what you are talking about.

I really don't think you appreciate in any way at all the gulf between the impoverished and even the middle class. There's just nothing to work with. Every solution comes with a problem.

Access to libraries? In my neigbourhood? After dark? Are you mad? Nobody would let a child walk home alone after dark in that neighbourhood. And my mother had five other kids to care for, she couldn't sit in the library with me, or even walk up to get me from the buys stop. And the only car was being used by Dad at work even. And studying in a four room house with 5 other children? Forget it.

Your idea that all a child needs is native intelligence and a library somewhere in the vicinity doesn't even come close to the reality. Libraries are at best usable until dark. Allowing for a half hour bus ride home and a half hour walk to the library and another half hour home, I had about 2 hours at the library max. And that time was spent doing homework that needed a quiet environment. I wasn't doing recreational research, I was doing assigned homework. The stuff you were presumably doing at your desk in your room.

Now I will agree that there are "hothouse flowers" raised in affluent educated homes that maybe have natural ability of 40 but parlay that combined with the perfect 50 environment into being able to achieve academically what the poor kid with natural ability of 45 will never manage to. But those kinds of people tend to hit an upper limit at some point, and never become anybody really impressive or memorable although they'll make a comfortable living

What's that claim based on?

whereas that poor kid with the natural 49 aptitude and the 15 environment can definitely become a world-class scholar, scientist, writer, etc. although it won't be easy especially in the early going.

It's beyond not being easy, it's impossible.

Even the brightest High School senior needs to do 3 hours of study a night plus extracurricular activities to have a hope of qualifying for Ivy League admission.

How precisely can this be achieved when living in a trailer with two parents and a sibling, where you have at best 2 hours worth of time studying in the local library each night, and none at all on weekends because the library is closed? While the richer kids can go to extracurricular activities after school then come home and study after dark, that is never an option for kids in trailer parks.

That's more than "not easy going", it's a physical impossibility. But that's the standard scenario for a kid in a trailer park.

[SlackerInc]

Blake, you can once again try to spin it all into a giant impossibility, but I already told you that two of my best friends grew up in poverty without college-educated role models, and eventually gained admission to a highly selective university that gets regularly featured in U.S. News and Money magazine rankings, a school at which a 32 score on the ACT only gets you to the 75th percentile of those who are admitted each year. Not Ivy, but still very selective and prestigious, and they have certainly "escaped" the places where they grew up.

[brickbacon]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

But what did they leave behind? That's the part I never thought about before. What happens when an increasingly meritocratic educational system plucks out the diamonds in the rough and relocates them elsewhere?

I think the fundamental error you are making is in assuming these people are "diamonds", or to put it another way, that "diamonds" in this context are rare. I guess they are kinda like real diamonds in that way . One of the things I have come to appreciate is how common talent is. Talent is often wasted as it is not honed or nurtured, but the raw ingredients are more common than we realize. Although I am sure your friends are smart, and did well on standardized tests, that doesn't mean their potential for greatness was much better than plenty of other people. After all, standardized testing as a means of identifying talent leaves a lot to be desired. So your worry that the poor areas are being depleted of talent is misguided as, IMO, we leave a lot of talent behind.

Second, I think you are forgetting that there are many ways of honing and nurturing talent. The free market still functions in poor areas as well, so someone is gonna respond to consumer demand and market forces. That real world experience is just as good a means of training as school is in many senses. What is problematic is that, in poor areas, that talent is often guided towards black markets and illegal enterprises. That said, I think you can make a convincing argument that many drug dealers have management and business skills that rival most MBAs. They just work in an illicit industry. Just look at how many currently legitimate rap CEOs started by selling drugs. While the means of training for folks like this are less rigorous and less formal, they are still a great means of fostering talent. Even if the "best genes" are gone, the reality is you don't need to be the smartest to do relatively well in life.

Two good books I would recommend on this topic are The Red Market, and Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy. Both talk about the growing informal economy (called system D), and black and grey markets around the world that operate in the shadows. The shadow economy is one of the fastest growing, and biggest economies on the planet.

The total value of System D as a global phenomenon is close to $10 trillion. Which makes for another astonishing revelation. If System D were an independent nation, united in a single political structure — call it the United Street Sellers Republic (USSR) or, perhaps, Bazaaristan — it would be an economic superpower, the second-largest economy in the world (the United States, with a GDP of $14 trillion, is numero uno).

The book also mentions some ways this informal sectors has contributed to the formal markets. Things like dual sim-card cell phones first came from these sectors.

What does that have to do with what you are saying? Think about just how big that sector is, and how disparate the participants are geographically and culturally. These are largely poor people you assume were left behind. People who live in communities whose "best and brightest" moved away, leaving behind exhausted soil. Yet, they collectively managed to establish functional markets that provide things as varied as fruit, human organs, and utility services to those who want them. I don't think systems such as those could arise from exhausted soil. Regardless of how you feel about his actions, stupid people don't make over a billion dollars selling drugs.

The reality is markets, networks, and technology provide humans with a "mechanical advantage" allowing us to leverage our talents. Those things are far more integral to individual success than innate talent is. I would analogize it to running speed. Regardless of how fast you are, you probably can't beat a man riding a bike, and the bike rider can't beat a guy in a car. So in terms of travel, it far more useful to focus on how to create faster cars than to fret about finding faster runners. Genes are important, as is helping people find careers suitable to their talents, but we are not running out of talented people even in "depleted" areas because even if the people leave, the opportunities to leverage talent generally don't.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by erislover

Please find me one, then.

Follow the link above.

I'm not so firm in my beliefs. My experience is simply that the diminished expectations apply to the bigger and brighter, and they give up. They don't reach out to their peers to elevate them.

No idea what that means.

There are so many of these cryptic passages in your posts that if I don't respond to parts of your posts from here on in, it is because it makes no sense at all tome.

The problems in the community you mentioned. You wrote a three page paper of a post and I didn't think it would help to line-by-line it.

I'm still lost. Are you saying that hardest working people all leave Amish communities yet they have still solved their problems? Or that Amish communities have these problems despite the hardest workers not leaving?

Yes: why? Why pro wrestlers and sports stars instead of Pastors and teachers?

Because sports stars were part of the community I grew up in. I knew sports stars who came from that background and who were (I imagined) just like me at my age. If they could do it, I could. That's what a role model is.

As I already explained, Patsors and teachers weren't like me at my age. Even though Pastors may have been in fact, but that never occurred to us. The reverence they were given made them a class apart and not something a child can identify with. Somebody who you can't identify with can't be a role model. And as I already said, none of our teachers never came from our background.

Why not their fathers or mothers?

The parent's are the role models. That's the problem. When both parents are chronically unemployed, the fact that they are role models is a problem, not a solution.

We don't need homogeneity in our communities in order that everyone has a role model.

We do need people who came from the same place though. Suggesting that George Bush can be a role model for an Impoverished Indian child is ludicrous.

Carl Sagan was a role model for a lot of people

Really?

Can you name 12 people who aren't middle class and white who considered Carl Sagan a role model while growing up?

My high school math teacher greatly inspired me

And many of my teachers inspired me. That does not a role model make.

We have no shortage of role models at all; only ones you want to count.

IOW your argument is that I had role models when I was 10, I just didn't want to model myself after them?

Is that about it?

How would holding the best and brightest back change this?

Because they would be role models. This is so obvious that I am guessing that I have missed something.

No, they were [role models]. You just didn't think so.
Apparently you still don't think so.

You do realise that status as a role model only exists if somebody models themself after it, right?

This is as bizarre as telling me that there were vegetables that I liked the taste of, I just didn't think so. It's rubbish.

If an 8y child doesn't wish to model herself after a person, then that person is not, by definition, a role model to that child. Saying that the person really is a role model but the child just doesn't think so is just nonsense. It's logically and semantically incoherent.

That's nonsense. You don't have to be a white collar worker to be a role model.

If you want to be a role model of a white collar worker you kinda do, don't you.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Blake, you can once again try to spin it all into a giant impossibility, but I already told you that two of my best friends grew up in poverty without college-educated role models, and eventually gained admission to a highly selective university that gets regularly featured in U.S. News and Money magazine rankings, a school at which a 32 score on the ACT only gets you to the 75th percentile of those who are admitted each year. Not Ivy, but still very selective and prestigious, and they have certainly "escaped" the places where they grew up.

Nobody disputes that this happens. I have done it myself. That is not the issue.

The issue is your claim that all it takes is genetic intelligence and an average poverty home life. That is clearly not the case. How, for example did your friends manage an hour of extra-curricular and study 3 hours a night in the typical trailer with 2 other people and only two hours access to public libraries? I'm going to guess that they had some very atypical upbringing such, as, you know, not living in a trailer at all.

[erislover]

Originally Posted by Blake

I'm still lost. Are you saying that hardest working people all leave Amish communities yet they have still solved their problems? Or that Amish communities have these problems despite the hardest workers not leaving?

The charge you leveled was this:

Originally Posted by Blake, erislover's emphasis

Rather, what happens is that standards drop and examples disappear....
When Black communities were insular and integration was highly restricted, the best performers were forced to live in the same "ghettos" as the worst. That provided a constant supply of high quality role models for young people to follow. Roel models for practical tasks such as hard work as well as moral examples of religiosity, honesty and so forth. Come the 1960s and open integration and the richest people moved out of the ghettos for White neighbourhoods....
Just as importantly there was nobody to drag social standards up.

There were people to do that. You just don't count them.

Because sports stars were part of the community I grew up in. I knew sports stars who came from that background and who were (I imagined) just like me at my age. If they could do it, I could. That's what a role model is.

No, that's the problem. There's nothing cryptic about it: sports stars are like lottery winners. Actual role models---people who serve as exemplars of social virtue---are everywhere.

As I already explained, Patsors and teachers weren't like me at my age.

Unless you were a role model, then it is a good thing they weren't like you. They're supposed to lead you into a life you should live. Being "like you" is not a criterion for a good role model (though it may be that some role models are like you, like your parents).

Even though Pastors may have been in fact, but that never occurred to us.

Yes, exactly. It never occurred to you. It is still not occurring to you.

And as I already said, none of our teachers never came from our background.

I don't know the background of any of my high school teachers. But they served as examples of what it was like to know something, and I liked that. Learning felt good, it was enjoyable. They fostered that. For all I know each one of them came from Hudson OH (wealthy community) or all of their parents were abusive alcoholics. What would that matter?

We do need people who came from the same place though. Suggesting that George Bush can be a role model for an Impoverished Indian child is ludicrous.

Only because George Bush---either of them---aren't good role models in the first place. I dare say most presidents aren't particularly good role models. But their origin doesn't matter in the slightest. How many mathematicians were inspired by Ramanujan, for instance?

Can you name 12 people who aren't middle class and white who considered Carl Sagan a role model while growing up?

That's not a problem with Carl Sagan being a good role model. You are putting the cart before the horse time and time again, and continuing to bring race and socioeconomic status into it only confuses the issue.

And many of my teachers inspired me. That does not a role model make.

Your criteria are obviously inspired by things that actually don't serve as models for good social behavior. Being a good role model doesn't mean "wealthy and white" and your insistence on dragging it back there doesn't help your position.

IOW your argument is that I had role models when I was 10, I just didn't want to model myself after them?

Yes, that is indeed my argument, though I wouldn't have tried to make it so personal. You think poor communities lack role models; I think they have other, prior problems that stop them from recognizing the perfectly good role models they already have.

You do realise that status as a role model only exists if somebody models themself after it, right?

I do not realize this, no. A role model is someone who can serve as an example of social virtues. Whether they are in fact used this way is a different question.

Saying that the person really is a role model but the child just doesn't think so is just nonsense. It's logically and semantically incoherent.

Enjoy your NASCAR, WWE, and basketball stars, then. It's all you're allowing.

[Blake]

Dude, no matter how often you tell a kid that hates broccoli that broccoli is a tasty food, he still doesn't think that broccoli is tasty. Telling a child that broccolli is tasty doesn't actually make the kid like the taste of broccolli.

This isn't somehting that somebody is allowing. It is a subjective experience. Trying to argue that the experience exists, it's just never experienced by anyone, is semantic and logical nonsense.

Yet that is precisely what you are attempting to do.

You seem to have some idea that people should all feel a certain way, and if they don't they are dysfunctional. That's a pretty narrow minded view, but even if it were correct it still doesn't make it true when you claim that people actually do feel that way.

[erislover]

As I said, enjoy your sports stars.

[Icarus]

OK then.........

Unpacking some key points of what I read here, it appears that the availability of migration out of lower upbringing is a major factor in affecting the environment by removing abundant and adequate role models.

What feeds this migration, IMHO:

1. Ease of modern travel
2. Awareness of options outside of ones environment
3. Perceived advantages to migrating out

So, what can we do about these? Ease if modern travel is not going away, awareness of options due to information availability is not going to go away. Can we do anything about perceived advantages to migrating out?

What I see here is the unavoidable consequence of the growing wealth/income gap, as well as the disappearance of labor jobs. All speculation, but is seems that 50 some years ago one could expect to earn a decent living within ones modest community, while understanding that one in a more cosmopolitan community was not grossly more well off. This is not true in today's world. It is much more difficult to earn a decent living in a modest community, and we are all aware of the people making obscene amounts of money in the cities. So, the incentive to leave is acute, if you are one who feels you may have a chance.

At the risk of suggesting something radical - maybe we need to recognize the need for a certain number of "role models" distributed throughout all communities and enact policies to "seed" these individuals into the communities. Something like the Peace Corp for domestic communities? Otherwise, we sit back and watch it all continue to decline?

[SlackerInc]

Icarus, I like your idea! Alternatively, we could try to spread low income housing throughout mixed areas of more middle income housing (this is already being tried as I understand it, as an alternative to the giant public housing towers that most people now admit were a failure).

That said, I think you can make a convincing argument that many drug dealers have management and business skills that rival most MBAs. They just work in an illicit industry.

One study found though that the compensation is really shitty given the risks.

[erislover]

Originally Posted by Blake

Dude, no matter how often you tell a kid that hates broccoli that broccoli is a tasty food, he still doesn't think that broccoli is tasty. Telling a child that broccolli is tasty doesn't actually make the kid like the taste of broccolli.

I just can't let this sit.

The problem with your broccoli argument is simple: junk food is everywhere. Sports are everywhere, from tee balling toddlers to college and professionals. If your broccoli argument held the steam cooking it, we'd have to conclude that there are in fact no role models anywhere except for these junk food lottery winners. In that case, your concern about people leaving is bunk: most everyone leaves everywhere in that case. My lower middle class neighborhood didn't have any football stars. No pro wrestlers. No supermodels. No glamor at all. Kids don't like to eat their vegetables but most nevertheless learn to eat them (some actually really like them eventually) and even though junk food is everywhere, vegetables are everywhere, too, if you're just willing to count them as food.

Count them as food, Blake. Count them as food.

[wheresmymind]

Broadly speaking I agree with Blake, but I'd like to bring up another point that I don't think has really been discussed so far.

First, although genetics certainly plays a role in intelligence, there isn't just one "intelligence gene" controlling it, so it would take more than just a couple generations for any genetic signal to become apparent. Even just four or five generations would cover about a century, a time period long enough to ensure at least one socially-upheaving event would take place (think WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, the civil-rights movement, etc that have taken place in the past 100 years), and probably a large influx of immigrants as well (European immigrants a century ago, Hispanic immigrants now). These types of events have a way of stirring up the social pot in a way that will constantly be bringing fresh "smart" blood to the poor and fresh "dumb" blood to the upper classes. Do you read about any Astors in the tabloids today? Did they talk about the Hiltons 100 years ago?

Even if the brain drain described in the OP was 100% effective at removing the the smartest individuals (and ignoring the fact that other traits like ambition and drive as well as environmental factors are at least as important as intelligence when it comes to academic achievement), the gene pool in poor communities would be far from closed. Humans are often indiscriminate in their mating habits, so there will always be gene flow between the higher and lower classes (rich men boinking their maids/babysitters, rich women boinking the pool boy/milk man).

In other words, on timescales relevant to human evolution (at least one or two centuries), humans are genetically and socially pretty well-mixed.

[ralph124c]

WE are now living in a Post-Industrial Economy-one in which there are a small number of high-skill jobs, open to people with higher education. The well-paying factory jobs are not here anymore-they are in Asia. Meanwhile, the working class struggles on low level, service jobs-which pay low wages and no benefits. This is why the inner cities are deteriorating, and there is no investment.
Ther advent of this new economy was noticed 30 years ago-when GM, FORD, Chrysler learned that it was cheaper to import engines, transmissions, and complete vehicles, rather than make them here. This is another reason why Detroit is a city of abandoned factories. WE are constantly told that "free trade" helps us-while China racks up trade surpluses. This "post industrial" economy is not going to last, because the USA is now one of the most indebted economies in the world-while we have an enormous navy, and troops fighting wars around the world.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by erislover

I just can't let this sit.

The problem with your broccoli argument is simple: junk food is everywhere. Sports are everywhere, from tee balling toddlers to college and professionals. If your broccoli argument held the steam cooking it, we'd have to conclude that there are in fact no role models anywhere except for these junk food lottery winners. In that case, your concern about people leaving is bunk: most everyone leaves everywhere in that case. My lower middle class neighborhood didn't have any football stars. No pro wrestlers. No supermodels. No glamor at all. Kids don't like to eat their vegetables but most nevertheless learn to eat them (some actually really like them eventually) and even though junk food is everywhere, vegetables are everywhere, too, if you're just willing to count them as food.

Count them as food, Blake. Count them as food.

It seems like your disagreement is almost only semantic. By "role model," you mean "someone who it would be a good idea to imitate," but Blake means something different--"someone who it is a good idea to imitate, and who is actually imitated."

It doesn't seem like a good idea to argue over which is the right definition of "role model." Just call them "role model" and "schmole model".

You're telling Blake that there are role models available in poor neighborhoods. He's telling you that it's important that there also be schmole models. Do you disagree? Do you think that there should be, not just people it would be a good idea to imitate, but people who it's a good idea to imitate and who are actually imitated?

If so, then do you agree with Blake that there are not a lot of schmole models in poor neighborhoods?

If so, then do you think there should be?

If so then how do you think we can encourage that to happen? That's what Blake is trying to discuss with you. What are you trying to discuss with him?

[Evil Captor]

Originally Posted by willthekittensurvive?

Great post Blake

Yes, thank you for that wonderful example of kneejerk conservative American gibberish, Blake!

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

Yes, thank you for that wonderful example of kneejerk conservative American gibberish, Blake!

In the post being referred to, I don't see anything I can identify as particularly stereotypical of conservative American politics.

(Maybe the very first sentence, now that I reread, but nowhere else in the body of the post.)

[SlackerInc]

FWIW, I myself took Blake's first post as being quite conservative. I'm surprised anyone would need to reread it to see that. The first sentence is, after all the first sentence, a tone setter--and I'd think if someone were to miss a sentence in someone's post it wouldn't be their first sentence, sitting all by itself up top as a one-sentence paragraph. Also, it's not just a sentence, but a laundry list, hitting five different right wing hobby horses. So, Frylock: "maybe" the first sentence? Really? I've got to think you are yourself conservative (thus to you the sentence just came across like plain ol' common sense), as to anyone outside the right that is a pretty blatant, flashing neon sign.

[erislover]

Originally Posted by Frylock

It seems like your disagreement is almost only semantic. By "role model," you mean "someone who it would be a good idea to imitate," but Blake means something different--"someone who it is a good idea to imitate, and who is actually imitated."

No. Here is what he said:

Originally Posted by Blake

When Black communities were insular and integration was highly restricted, the best performers were forced to live in the same "ghettos" as the worst. That provided a constant supply of high quality role models for young people to follow. Roel models for practical tasks such as hard work as well as moral examples of religiosity, honesty and so forth. Come the 1960s and open integration and the richest people moved out of the ghettos for White neighbourhoods.

This is not a semantic difference. I then said:

Originally Posted by erislover

Role models are important, there's no question, and their locality definitely helps, but I don't think any community lacks role models of the sort you mention. Pastors and priests, teachers, local businessmen... all these people exist in all communities. The question isn't whether a community needs more of these people (if they indeed lack them, which I find questionable), but why they aren't considered role models.

In other word's, Blake explicitly considers there to be a paucity of role models, and I disagree, because "role model" isn't just a synonym for "rich folk [who left us dummies behind]". The argument then focused on people kids would actually look up to, and those weren't teachers and pastors. And that is what I said is the problem: the very people that are good role models aren't being used that way.

Do you think that there should be, not just people it would be a good idea to imitate, but people who it's a good idea to imitate and who are actually imitated?

Obviously my position is just that. It is Blake who holds that there were no good role models behind, because the wealthy people moved.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

FWIW, I myself took Blake's first post as being quite conservative. I'm surprised anyone would need to reread it to see that. The first sentence is, after all the first sentence, a tone setter--and I'd think if someone were to miss a sentence in someone's post it wouldn't be their first sentence, sitting all by itself up top as a one-sentence paragraph. Also, it's not just a sentence, but a laundry list, hitting five different right wing hobby horses. So, Frylock: "maybe" the first sentence? Really? I've got to think you are yourself conservative (thus to you the sentence just came across like plain ol' common sense), as to anyone outside the right that is a pretty blatant, flashing neon sign.

Originally Posted by Blake

Excessive welfare, a victim mentality, lack of moral guidance, dismissal of traditional values and a shifting of responsibility from individuals to society

Definitely American Conservative talk. FWIW I simply didn't see this the first time I read it.

Take that sentence out, though, and I literally see nothing stereotypically conservative in any of the rest of his post. What exactly are you seeing that I'm missing?

Blake's post is all about interdependence. This (again, forgetting about the first sentence) is a far cry from any stereotypically Rightist talk I've ever heard.

[Frylock]

You say:

Originally Posted by erislover

This is not a semantic difference.

But then, in summarizing the dispute, you say:

I disagree, because "role model" isn't just a synonym for "rich folk [who left us dummies behind]".

Disagreeing because you don't think Blake is right about what a word means is by definition a semantic dispute.

And it's the very dispute I said you were engaged in--the semantic dispute over the meaning of the term "role model."

[SlackerInc]

Take that sentence out, though

But he didn't take it out--he led with it, setting the tone for what followed.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

But he didn't take it out--he led with it, setting the tone for what followed.

Mmmm.... okay then.

But it's not fair to characterize the whole post as a bunch of conservative nonsense (as Evil Captor did) when the conservative talk is only in the first sentence, and the rest is decidedly atypical of stereotypical conservative talk.

[Kimmy_Gibbler]

Originally Posted by Frylock

You say:

But then, in summarizing the dispute, you say:

Disagreeing because you don't think Blake is right about what a word means is by definition a semantic dispute.

And it's the very dispute I said you were engaged in--the semantic dispute over the meaning of the term "role model."

I love the smell of semantic ascent in the afternoon.

[SlackerInc]

the rest is decidedly atypical of stereotypical conservative talk.

It most certainly is not. It's more subtle, but still definitely reminiscent of the critiques you'll hear from "conservative intellectuals" about the "moral decline" of "Black America".

[erislover]

Originally Posted by Frylock

Disagreeing because you don't think Blake is right about what a word means is by definition a semantic dispute.

Frylock, allow me, one more time, to emphasize the problem:
"Roel models for practical tasks such as hard work as well as moral examples of religiosity"
These are the exact examples I assert still exist, and will always exist, in every neighborhood. Blake just didn't count them. Television has them (e.g. Carl Sagan), he just didn't count either. Parents---but Blake only wants to think of unemployed parents, so he can discount them, too. In short, my problem is one of accounting, not definition.

[Blake]

FWIW, my first sentence was thrown in therw as a parody of Der Trihs' strident leftist response in the preceding post. Compare the sentence structure folks.

Anyway, carry on telling us how those well-known hotbeds of Radial Conservatism, University Social Science Faculties, have got it all wrong.

[Evil Captor]

Originally Posted by Frylock

In the post being referred to, I don't see anything I can identify as particularly stereotypical of conservative American politics.

(Maybe the very first sentence, now that I reread, but nowhere else in the body of the post.)

yes, the very first sentence is DEFINITELY a conservative laundry list of complaints:

Originally Posted by Blake

Excessive welfare, a victim mentality, lack of moral guidance, dismissal of traditional values and a shifting of responsibility from individuals to society.

If you bullet pointed each item, especially. Here's more:

Originally Posted by Blake

. Roel models for practical tasks such as hard work as well as moral examples of religiosity, honesty and so forth.

Equating religiousity with morality, honesty and so forth, standard conservative gibberish.

[quote=Blake]Now that is a trivial example, but it applies to every aspect of human life, from the way children are raised to work ethic to percieved potential occupations to lawfulness.[quote]

Equating lawn mowing work ethics, and lawfulness with general goodness. Basically, if you aren't living in a tidy white house with a neat green lawn and a steady job, you are probably a Democrat and a child molester.

Originally Posted by Blake

Decreasing Church attendance is certainly a symptom. It's an indication of a breakdown in social involvement and a decline in concern about public perception.

Although Blake is careful to make the point that an atheist could be lawful and so forth, the notion that church attendance is associated with a higher level of morality is an old conservative meme, espeically beloved by the religious. Makes you wonder why Europe is not a squalid mess.

I do have to give Blake full credit for not promoting the line that blacks are lower in intelligence, etc. The overwhelming thrust of his post is renouncing that line, but there is a lot of standard conservative gibberish buried throughout it. That's what I was responding to.

[Frylock]

What are you talking about when you refer to lawn mowing?

I don't mean to simply ignore the rest of your post, but that one line threw me off so badly I need to get clear about it before I can say anything about anything else.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

yes, the very first sentence is DEFINITELY a conservative laundry list of complaints:



If you bullet pointed each item, especially.

Turns out Blake intended that as a parody.

Here's more:



Equating religiousity with morality, honesty and so forth, standard conservative gibberish.

I don't see any "equating" here--it's a list, not an equation. But he does say that role models for religiosity are examples of the "moral" type of role model. This doesn't strike me as particularly conservatives. You know there are fervently religious people who think of religion and morality as being closely intertwined on both sides, right?

Although Blake is careful to make the point that an atheist could be lawful and so forth, the notion that church attendance is associated with a higher level of morality is an old conservative meme, espeically beloved by the religious. Makes you wonder why Europe is not a squalid mess.

He didn't say church attendance is associated with a higher level of morality. He said it's associated with a higher level of social cohesion. Again: Not even close to stereotypical conservative gibberish. "Social cohesion," to my mind, sounds closer to commie talk than to tea party talk. ("Closer," not "all the way there.")

I am pretty sure Blake's parodic first line threw off your reading of the rest of his post.

I don't know if Blake is liberal or conservative or something else. I do know he thinks there's nothing immoral about copying intellectual works, even if they are copyrighted. Is that something that conservatives tend to think?

[SlackerInc]

Frylock, your apologia strikes me as tortured and unconvincing. Do you really believe it, or are you just being stubborn and lawyerly?

One thing I noticed that no one has stubbornly persisted in is insisting there's no evidence for wealthy people being (on average) innately more intelligent than the poor, once I provided some evidence. Glad we've settled that at least!