Patterns

"With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one."

                                                                                           --William of Ockham

Back in the 1800's, Charles Darwin created his seminal work, The Origin of Species, because he noticed patterns. For example, the different species of finches in the Galapagos Islands, suggesting a common ancestor. In fact, most discoveries will likely first appear as patterns to some keen observer who first notice them. After someone noticed a pattern, then people tried to come up with explanations for the pattern. Usually, the most sensible and straight forward explanation is the right one. This is known as occam's_razor.

Nowadays, people still notice patterns, however, if the pattern goes against one of the social narratives, we are suppose to not only ignore the pattern, but to go all out of our way to cleanse our minds of the dangerous conclusion that occam's razor would suggest for the pattern. Lest we fall afoul of becoming a social heretic. If we cannot remove the pattern from our discourse, instead of using occam's razor, we are suppose to come up with explanations that fit best with the dominant social narrative, however far fetch the explanations are.

We can notice that different breeds of dogs have different athletic abilities. After all, no one would race his basset hound against a grey hound. Athletic abilities in people are useful and valued by our society. In our world of equality, all attributes that are valued by the society should be equally distributed among the different races (races are not dissimilar to the different breed of dogs, by the way). We are not suppose to notice that people whose ancestors were West Africans do well in sprinting, and Kenyans do well in marathons. We are suppose to cleanse our mind of the idea that genetics plays an outsize role in how we do in athletic ability.

We are allowed to notice that some people are fatter than others. In this society, the poor are the oppressed. No matter how badly their lives turned out, they are never at fault for their conditions. We are not suppose to notice that in the United States, poor people, on average, tend to be significantly fatter than the rich. If you ever notice this pattern, you are suppose to cleanse your mind of the conclusion that maybe the poor are fatter because they lack will power and discipline, something Occam might suggest. The only acceptable explanation is that society did not do enough to help them. This leads to absurdities like banning certain size soft drinks. For the other fat people higher up in the social economic ladder, the most socially acceptable explanation for their condition is that this is a genetic condition for which they have no control over whatsoever (be sure to remember that the genetic explanation should not apply to the poor, lest they be stigmatized. Stigmatizing the poor would get you ostracized by polite company), or that they have a medical condition. Compulsive Eating Disorder, Obsessive Rotund Syndrome, or some such. Never mind that just a hundred years ago, very few people (people who passed their genes to us)were fat. or that other countries did not suffer any of the "metal illnesses" that cause so many of their people to be fat.

We see that some neighborhoods have very high crime rates. Blacks in this country have been historically oppressed, started with slavery. The narrative is that to this very day, they continue to be kept down by racism and poverty, end of story. They are not responsible in any way for the pickle that many of them found themselves in. We are not suppose to notice that high crime rates are associated with high percentage of Black population in the neighborhood. In fact, if you look at the top ten cities in the U.S. with the highest crime rates, without exception, they all have higher percentage of Black people then the average population of 12%. In most cases, they are significantly higher. In many of these highest crime neighborhoods, Blacks constitute the majority. In our world of democracy, this means that they control all the levers of power to run their cities. They elect the mayors. They decide who run the police departments. Instead of helping the police, who is having a hard enough time enforcing the law, the socially acceptable narrative is that the police is the problem. When Michael Brown was killed, instead of using his race to fundamentally change the dialog about crimes in Black neighborhoods, president Obama sent his top cop Eric Holder to investigate the police in Ferguson, even after the police had been cleared of wrong doings by a grand jury. To correct the injustice perpetrated by the police, Blacks are allowed to loot and burn down businesses while they demonstrate. Of course, the demonstrators are not responsible for any of these. They are all peaceful, except for the ones that aren't. They never steal, except for the ones that do.

If you ever attended colleges in the United States, you will notice the relative absence of Black and Latinos in our universities. In fact, the more selective the universities, the fewer they are. In the same university, the more intellectual horse power a given field requires, such as physics, engineering, the less likely you will find Black and Latino students. Unlike the other patterns which are not socially acceptable, this pattern is noticed by the politically correct and discussed frequently. The reason, of course, is Affirmative Actions, a sort of spoil system that allocate quotas to each race. Having noticed the pattern, we are nevertheless obliged to come up with an explanation that fits with the socially accepted norms. The conservatives blame the lack of academic achievement of Blacks and Latinos on their culture. There might be something to that argument, except that if you look at Black babies that were adopted at birth by White parents, a sort of cultural transplant, the pattern of academic underachievement still holds. Liberals blame racism and poverty. Perhaps in the fifties, racism was an insurmountable obstacle to some. I knew some Chinese people from that era. One of them, who obtained a chemical engineering degree, was told point blank that he would never work as a chemical engineer because he is Chinese. He ended up running a Chinese restaurant. Today, having been on the other end where I interviewed many people for the companies I work for, I can tell you that as long as you are good, you will be hired somewhere. Does racism still exist? of course they do, but today it should not stop anyone from getting ahead any more than being fat or being a little off socially. In the Silicon Valley, we have many different races working well together. In certain fields, it is even noted for the relative absence of Whites. Poverty today is not the same as poverty in 1929. Back then, if you are poor, it means you don't eat and starve to death, many did. Today, if you are poor, ninety nine percent of the time, you have a roof over your head, more food then the minimum required calories and nutrition. most of the poor have cell phone and cars, something that the middle class did not have just a few short decades ago. There was a time in America when the campaign promise was a chicken in every pot. One final thing that blows big holes in explanations provided by both the left and the right, the offspring of Black upper class( who presumably have acquired the right culture that got them ahead) did worse in SAT score then the offspring of White lower class, who presumably did not inherit good culture from their poor parents. Nor did the sons and daughters of Black upper class gain an upper hand due to their relative affluence over the sons and daughters of the poor White parents.

For those of you who understand HBD (Human Bio Diversity), I am preaching to the choir. You have heard this from many sources. If this disturbs you but you want to explore these topics more, I will be writing about each of these in more depth in my next few posts.