"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference"
--Reinhold Niebuhr
Opponents of the hereditarian view like to use the racist card. Somehow, being aware of how genetics affect various abilities of the different races was suppose to turn people into uncaring racist that lynch Black People. For me at least, the opposite happened.
Before I was aware of the extensive implications of genetics, I often looked at Blacks and to a lesser degree Hispanics with a combination of disdain and puzzlement. The basic things that we Chinese people do, like study hard, show up to work every day, don't do drug and don't break laws seems to be something that Black people were unable to follow. For the Hispanics, I admire their work ethic, but was puzzled at why they were unable to lift their circumstances using the great school system in the U.S. like all other immigrants that came before them and some that came after them. Of course I am biased even as a Chinese because surely there are Chinese people who are in gangs and there are Chinese people who also can't do these basic things, but my anecdotal evidence suggest that they are a small minority. The equality warrior in me was also mad that the Chinese seems to be bad at certain things, like climbing up the management ladder of corporations. I chalked this up to racism.
Once I learn about HBD, I have become much more tolerant of differences in abilities of the different races and between individuals. Now, I have adopted a sort of live and let live attitude. Often times, things that persist for decades have a large part of the origin in biology. For example, we Chinese People have done well with school going way back. Back at the time when we were treated as outsiders by the vast majority of the U.S., we were doing well in the engineering fields. The East Indians have consistently won spelling bees contests in recent years once they arrive in the U.S. in numbers. I also look at my own achievements(or lack of) and my kids achievements with the understanding that we were all very fortunate to be endowed with good genes. I am less inclined to attribute these successes to my own hard work and drive and more aware of my responsibilities to care for my brothers and sisters that are less fortunate to be born without these endowments, although I would have like to be able to play basketball well.
If you care to read the writings of the HBD community, you will also find that most people who hold hereditarian views are not angry KKK members, though there are overlaps. The feelings that I get from reading them is that they are mostly nice people.
For society in general, instead of doubling down on the social engineering policies that failed us for decades, we should adopt the motto of equality in opportunities, not in outcomes. In a way, this has already happened to some degree. I don't see a lot of Asians protesting in front of NBA and NFL demanding equality in hiring.
With the current trend in technological development, jobs that require more intelligence have ballooned and is outstripping the supply of smart people. This is the main reason for high salaries for the high tech field and the H1-B visa from which many of my colleagues from mostly India, Iran and China starts their first job in the United States. At the same time, the low skill jobs are increasingly being automated away. A good example that everyone sees is the cashier position. This evolved from one that calculates the prices by hand, to mechanical cash registers to electronic scanners to finally self checkout isles. In the future, we might be able to take stuff from the stores and just walk out. The bio-metric scanner will identify us and automatically charge the items to our accounts. We have a responsibility toward those whose only crime was to be born with less genetic endowment, whose job prospects have shrunk relative to their smarter counterparts. At the same time, we should expect the less able segment of the society to be law abiding, live within their means and to contribute to society in whatever capacity they can. There is plenty of scope for help.
For the West, with all our social issues, we need to reduce the immigration flow from countries that have low IQ's when our own low IQ citizens are already having a hard enough time.
For the Tiger Moms who think that they do their kids a favor by driving them to the brink of suicide, they should understand a couple of things. First, IQ is relatively fixed well before any education can have effect. The Chinese have a saying, When you are three years old, the die is cast for til you are 80. There is a lot of wisdom in that. Second, while IQ is a prerequisite, passion is what is needed for the kid to succeed. Passion cannot be beat into the kid, it must come from within and it comes when a kid is not under duress and have time to explore what makes him tick. I will have more to say about this in later posts.
Finally, for the rest of the world, genetics is the most convincing explanation that could explain why centuries after the Industrial Revolution, when knowledge and capital now so widely available, that vast majority of countries outside the Western European and East Asian states have been unable to industrialize. It also explains why many non-European countries that adapted Western Liberal Democracy and Market systems have fared so badly. I think the lesson here is that we should not blindly export our system to other countries because humans everywhere are not the same, down to the genetic level. That each country must be allowed to experiment and find their own way and we should not meddle in their affairs. Perhaps out of different experimentation, there will come a winning formula that fits some sub-group of countries that are currently struggling.
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