On sites like iSteve there recently seems to be a dearth of subjects pertaining to HBD matters. Chateau Heartiste writes:
Drum deserves credit for at least broaching the subject of genetic predilection, which still gives the majority of liberals the high holy hives. Try dropping a “genes n’ IQ” bomb on a Jon Stewart audience member and you will witness a shrill sanctimony unmatched by the most religious fundamentalists. Drum is right about one thing: plain and simple, genetic dumb luck accounts for a lot of who we are and how successful our lives are. And it goes beyond just IQ and nose shape, too. There is evidence that genes influence everything from political leanings to conscientiousness to ambition to impulsiveness.
Agree. Genetic determinism makes liberals uncomfortable because it renders their paternalist ideology moot. If some people are inherently superior to others at cognitive tasks, no amount of costly social or redistribution programs will level the playing the field. Also agree with this comment:
It’s not taboo to profess that genetics play a role in the variance of athletic ability but not intelligence, probably because the later is superseding the former in terms of important things like employment, income, reverence, etc. There are increasingly few jobs where physical ability plays a role in the hiring process, and the jobs that do typically don’t pay well. In the smartist era, people are looking up to scientists and other intellectual professions more than athletes or actors. Educated young adults on sites like Reddit are renouncing the propaganda of false hope and inflated self-esteem driven in by their liberal baby boomer politicians, parents, and teachers that was intended to mollify the harsh realities of the real world. Scientists and economists, on the other hand, are untethered by political correctness and freely speak their minds on a wide variety of issues, proposing solutions and theories that many on the left take umbrage to, but inquisitive young minds consume voraciously. A recent ‘ask me anything’ (AMA) by astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson got a staggering 4,000 comments in just a single hour. The typical AMA by an actor or athlete seldom exceeds this number. Economist Bryan Caplan got over 1,100 comments and I didn’t even know who he was until I came across this thread, by accident. The highest rated TV show has a Cal Tech string theorist as the main protagonist.
Bryan Caplan has propossed that parenting style has very little impact on the adult outcomes of children. That would mean genetics plays an important role. From cracked.com:
Just as with money, there is evidence that genes have an effect on grades. In 2013, British researchers studied the academic performance of more than 11,000 identical and non-identical 16-year-old twins. They found that genes contributed more to students’ grades than teachers, schools, or family environments. These findings have been repeated in other studies, as well as on the 1980s television program Diff’rent Strokes, where Willis sometimes struggled with his grades even though he and his brother Arnold had been adopted by a wealthy Manhattan industrialist.
An analysis of Korean-American adoptees found that being raised by a college-educated mother increased an adoptee’s probability of graduating from college by 7 percent. By comparison, a child with a college-educated biological mother had a 26 percent increase in the probability of graduating from college. It didn’t matter if the adoptive parents were rich or educated.
Shhh…don’t tell Wendy Davis lol
Pseudo/junk science like the 10,000 hour rule gives the masses hope that they too can covet enviable skills that are otherwise intellectually out of reach -if only one deliberately practices enough on an unrealistically level playing field. There many exceptions to the 10,000 hour rule, as well as other liberal aphorisms intended to have a leveling effect on individual exceptionalism.