“It is not only science that can suffer under the thumb of those in power. The anthropologist Donald Brown was puzzled to learn that over the millennia the Hindus of India produced virtually no histories, while the neighboring Chinese had produced libraries full. He suspected that the potentates of a hereditary caste society realized that no good could come from a scholar nosing around in records of the past where he might stumble upon evidence undermining their claims to have descended from heroes and gods. Brown looked at twenty-five civilizations and compared the ones organized by hereditary castes with the others. None of the caste societies had developed a tradition of writing accurate depictions of the past; instead of history they had myth and legend. The caste societies were also distinguished by an absence of political science, social science, natural science, biography, realistic portraiture, and uniform education.”
That’s another quote from Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works. It reminds me that long ago I promised to write a post on why I am not in favor of caste. I’ll have to ask for another extension on that. However, after giving a Straussian analysis of Mencius Moldbug as Islam-proponent (read the comments for MM’s responses), how could I resist finding the similarities here as well? One of the oddest statements MM has made is that history has been corrupted by “social science” (which he hates) and is properly a branch of literature. He favors figures like Carlyle or Ruskin who held that history is the account of the acts of “great men”, which sounds a lot like myth and legend. He of course despises uniform education as brainwashing by the Cathedral (I can’t say I dissagree terribly there). He doesn’t much trust natural scientists either whether the subject is global warming, string theory (though he seems more sympathetic to Lubos Motl than Lee Smolin for global warming and political reasons) and is quite ready to concede that cold fusion has been suppressed by a conspiracy of scientists.
You might note that the quote contrasts China with India, and MM currently promotes the post-Deng system of the former and named himself after a follower of Confucius. Can a good Straussian take him at his word? He once defined leftism as the belief that we should be governed by scholars, perhaps assuming people would make the connection to Plato’s Philosopher King (he later defined it as favoring disorder, while he as a righty/”pronomian” favors the opposite). A much better connection could be made to the Mandarins of China. The term he uses for our intellectual class is “Brahmin”, which like his “Vaisyas” and “Dalits” he takes from India (Optimates are Roman and Helots served Spartans). This is a purposeful bit of misdirection. The Mandarin class of China was famously meritocratic, while in India one’s caste is determined at birth (there are even some well-off intellectual Dalits). MM notes that the Brahmins recruit the children of Optimates (who are fast disappearing) and Vaisyas sent to universities, and despite PC cant those universities are very meritocratic. Even the ethnic group most closely associated with that caste, the Jews, rose up to it after starting out as lower-class immigrants or shtetl dwellers. The Chinese are well known for their abhorrence of disorder, but what’s often forgotten by Westerners is that this is the result of their experiencing the awful consequences of it repeatedly. Mao and his cultural revolution are a recent example, but there have been waves of other intellectual movements that burned the books of the Four Olds (both the Maoists and the Legalists hated Confucianism). India remained firmly in the grip of the warrior caste, and despite being the birthplace of Buddhism it ignored that faddish religion for the Chinese to take up (some of them simultaneously believe in it as well as Taoism). The sub-continent is also the birthplace of Jainism (perhaps the ultimate progressive religion) and Sikhism, but its adherents are generally content to go into finance rather than trying to overturn society. A bonus from my perspective and possibly his is that India was never unified until the British arrived and conquered the various little kingdoms.
Sebastian Flyte linked to my previous HtMW post, and he’s had me on blogroll for a while. When I first read some of his blog I decided not to add it to my blogroll because I’m not really interested in “The Game”, but there’s other good stuff there as well. The first Tyler Durden link about a self-hating lifestyle is a fairly accurate description of me and while I know it can’t last forever I pre-emptively regret its end and hope to savor what remains of it. It’s hard to imagine something better than childish irresponsibility. At any rate, this boost his traffic more than getting plugged by this nobody and the space he takes up will be vacated by Odessa Syndicate, which no longer exists and has a less fun replacement. You might be wondering why I’m not removing the inactive Brooklyn Copperhead, but he still sends comments to Philip Weiss which means he’s not dead and there’s hope for more posts.
July 15, 2008 at 2:28 am
What are caste societies comparative advantages, and what are their parities (if any), with non-caste societies? Also, is the best sorting of the caste-iness of societies binary?
July 15, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I guess that’s for a later post. Tyler Cowen gives a reason to prefer a caste-based society here.
July 16, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I feel like Obama redeems the concept of history as being made by great men a bit. It doesn’t seem to me that the improvement of african american social game has improved to the point that a black guy can be doing so well in national american politics. It seems to me it’s more that one guy with a silly high iq (magna cum laude, harvard law) wants to be prez and happens to be black, so it changing the rest of society to the degree necessary to make it happen.
It reminds me of a story I read of Trotsky turning a group of soldiers sent to kill him into his supporters with a fiery speech.
If great men are a lot smarter than the rest of us, they may play measurably large roles in history.
July 16, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I think Obama does have a higher than average IQ, but not a fantastically high one. He was an unremarkable editor of the Harvard Law Review, his “corporate” job he makes a big deal out of leaving was fairly menial, he didn’t really accomplish anything as a community organizer and he lost his first election to Bobby Seale. I think Americans have been comfortable adulating celebrity African Americans for some time, even if it has little to do with Af-Ams more broadly. Colin Powell was highly respected and might have been able to become president, but he declined to run (going directly from the military to high political office seems to have become more rare).
I think that some people are disproportionately influential, but a larger-than-average drop in a bucket is still a drop in a bucket. As a person of historical materialist bent (though I think of it more as a random-walk than inherently directional) I might say that inventors have a lot of influence, but I bet if you went back in time and assassinated a random influential inventor someone else would have taken their place.
July 17, 2008 at 1:50 am
The phrase “unremarkable editor of the Harvard Law Review” is a funny one. Maybe you should go to Harvard law school and compete for an editorship. It might give you a more realistic assessment of the intelligence necessary to secure a slot.
July 17, 2008 at 2:29 am
I couldn’t get into Harvard Law School. Michelle Obama did, but as her recently unbarred thesis revealed, she didn’t really belong. I think there is a definite possibility I’m more intelligent than her. There is also a definite possibility than Barack is in turn more intelligent than me, but that doesn’t make him fantastically intelligent. John McCain has come further than most to the Oval Office, and he doesn’t seem to know jack about squat (he also finished near the bottom of his class at academy), so I don’t think that’s a good barometer of intelligence. Obama gave no written contributions as an editor and the review in his tenure is among the least cited in its history. I will grant him that leaving a paper trail was likely a smart thing to do if he was aiming for higher office. His relationship with Jeremiah Wright was not.
I know that Bush and Kerry both had standardized test-scores available to the public due their military service. I’m not sure if there is something similar for Obama. I’d be interested to know.
July 17, 2008 at 5:20 am
“I’m not sure if there is something similar for Obama. I’d be interested to know.”
There is. It’s called magna cum laude (top 10% academically) from harvard law school. It means getting close to perfect grades in your first year of law school, in a blind grading system, competing against people that are among the top standardized test-takers in the world.
July 17, 2008 at 4:13 pm
With regards to Michelle Obama, I think you’re caught up in herd-think. There are certainly embarrasing examples of black people who end up at law school or elite colleges without the intellectual qualifications for it. A lot fewer examples at Princeton or Harvard law, which get to pick the academic best, but perhaps some.
But the meme “Michelle Obama’s senior paper is below standard” is untrue herd-think, in my estimation. I looked at the first few pages of it with an open mind, and the writing doesn’t distinguish her as sub-par for a Princeton alum or incoming Harvard law student of any race. I wouldn’t read it and think “this is one of the greatest minds of our time” but if someone told me the author of a paper of this caliber graduated from Princeton, and went on to Harvard law and then to be a senior administrator of a large hospital, I’d think- seems pretty reasonable to me.
I work hard to overcome my biases and have accurate models of reality. TGGP, I think there are areas where you get lazy, and believe what you want because you like the way it makes you feel.
July 17, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Michelle Obama was the executive director of community affairs (meaning her job was to handle people with bullhorns demanding more minority hiring, brought to the site by community organizers like her husband years ago) and was promoted to vice president for community and external affairs after her husband’s political profile rose. I don’t think you could tell me with a straight face that her promotion had little to do with her husband’s status. She was also a sociology major, which attracts some of the lowest scores among graduate students, and went into public administration, which has the actual lowest scores. For more on the extent to which our society is an IQ meritocracy you can read La Griffe du Lion.
July 17, 2008 at 10:32 pm
TGGP, I think you’re trying too hard to fit Michelle (and to a lesser extent Obama) into your narrative. There are black people smarter than either of us. It’s unsurprising, given that there are about a billion black people. It doesn’t make broader critiques of affirmative action untrue. But you’re giving away the game of your own status insecurities or whatever when you make silly points like the IQ status of Michelle’s majors. It’s a silly obvious point that her IQ is closer that of a competent ivy league lawyer than a median sociology major, which makes your fact about sociology and policy major IQs a truism.
There were at most about 40 black people in Michelle’s Harvard class, probably fewer. There were at least 20 million black people in the United States when Michelle went to law school. She was among the smartest of that population, way smarter than most white people. End of story.
July 18, 2008 at 1:28 am
I’m not going to deny that Michelle Obama is smarter than the majority of whites. Most whites don’t really belong in higher education. Unfortunately, it has become the norm and far too many are expected to. I take into account the fact that she went to Harvard, as well as what the representation of blacks at prestigious universities would be in the absence of affirmative action, as well as the scores of sociology majors. I don’t know whether or not she was a competent lawyer, though perhaps I could look it up (I don’t vote and I’m not all that interested in the outcome of this presidential election, even less so in the First Lady). I do know that according to one of his colleagues and a current supporter, Obama significantly exaggerated his corporate law days. His accomplishments as community organizer are detailed here. I think that Obama has a healthy degree of far-sightedness and egoism (one reason I’m not as worried as some people I link to are about his becoming president), but I don’t think he planned for his efforts to be good for Obama rather than his community. I think he was genuinely disappointed in his failure to do more (I think it helps to actually believe in political pablum in order to better fool voters, which is indirectly supported by parts of How the Mind Works). Which brings me back to my main point about the inability of Great Men to amount to much in the grand scheme of things.
Having been reminded about Douthat’s book about slacking at Harvard, I would suggest looking at MIT for the most intelligent people (math majors especially). And speaking of Douthat, I would hazard that wonks have higher IQs than politicians, even ones successful on the national stage. My world-view that contains such a claim fits well how Perelman, Sidis and Christopher Langan frittered away their talent.
July 18, 2008 at 1:46 am
You don’t buy in to Dog of Justice’ claim that Perelman “frittered away his talent”? He won a Fields Medal just 2 years ago. Would that I could fritter away talent in that egoistically successful a manner.
I don’t put harvard law school in the same categoy as harvard college. I think harvard law is a peer institution for production of “meritocratic” eliteness on par with harvard mba, wharton, harvard medical school, stanford grad school for electrical and computer engineering, and maybe one or two other programs that I’m overlooking (some elite econ programs? yale law?).
July 18, 2008 at 1:59 am
Perelman didn’t fritter away his talent by winning that Fields Medal, he did so afterwards. Although I think he was somewhat of a reclusive weirdo even before then.
I suppose you have a point about harvard law school, I don’t too much about it. I know Bush got his MBA at Harvard after graduating from Yale. His standardized test-scores show he’s above average intelligence, but not greatly so. He’s apparently very intellectually lazy, which is why his scores surprised people. Business majors are just a step above sociology majors on the IQ chart, though I suppose many with MBAs majored in econ instead.
I remember Malcolm Gladwell writing an article on how Harvard was long averse to meritocracy, but I forget whether it was any good.
July 18, 2008 at 2:34 am
elite business schools are a unique situation. In some ways they’re smarter than other institutions, filling their bottom quarters (some might say it’s larger than a quarter) with people useful for their more meritocratic (in terms of quantitative intelligence/achievement) admittees. Elite mbas are holding their own with elite applied math PhD’s in market and entrepreneurial success, by at least several measures.
It seems to me you’re cherry-picking examples to reinforce what you want to believe.
I think intelligence, including nontransparent intelligence is a valuable topic for you and me to study. But I think we should come to it open on first principles, and not believing sour grapes narratives spoon fed to us (including by those who would conspire with you in facilitating your desire to believe that they’re not smarter than you).
July 18, 2008 at 2:35 am
As for Perelman, come on, that was in 2006, just a couple years ago.
July 18, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I don’t think my GWB example was simply cherry-picking. He is a two-term president (as Obama aspires to become) that went to Harvard after graduating Yale, and you stated that Harvard’s MBA program is comparatively meritocratic to Harvard Law. Due to his notoriety his military standardized test-scores have been publicized. If I intended to have a rigorous analysis I might seek out measurements of Harvard MBAs and lawyers more generally, but as I noted this is not a major concern of mine. I have no problem acknowledging that Obama is smarter than me, I just don’t think that makes him some unusual IQ-elite Great Man reshaping history. I think he is a man for his time, not one who has or even may shape his time to fit him.
I was skeptical when I read Half Sigma claiming that IQ is uncorrelated with wealth or income (in one post he even says they are negatively correlated). I did not previously believe that high status or wealth was simply the result of an IQ meritocracy, but my priors were strongly in favor of a positive correlation with the tails being rather unpredictable. I still disagree with HS, and I think he does have sour grapes (he frequently complains about not getting a good BigLaw job because he went to a non-elite school, he asserts that the elite corporate level and some industries such as finance are a non-competitive racket without providing much evidence, and his complaints about a career in programming are contradicted by most other bloggers in the field including many of his commenters) but I don’t simply dismiss his evidence. I have reduced the extent to which I believe in the existence of IQ meritocracy but still believe it has some existence.
July 18, 2008 at 2:15 pm
“and you stated that Harvard’s MBA program is comparatively meritocratic to Harvard Law”
where?
“production of “meritocratic” eliteness” isn’t the same thing as meritocratic admissions. Like I stated in a follow-up post, elite business schools are probably smarter in also admitting a larger minority of people useful to their meritocratic admittees than other elite institutions like Harvard law or Stanford graduate computer engineering school. Most would reasonably say W. fit into that category of useful admittees. Thus, trying to pick W. as an example of one of the meritocratic admittees is cherry-picking (actually, I’d go farther and say it’s deceptive to our audience). Are you trying to have a discussion where we both learn something, or just perform an argument?
July 18, 2008 at 3:03 pm
TGGP: the only part missing from the equation is innovation. As I’ve argued earlier, Islam creates a static environment from which all forms of innovation stagnate and decay (art, architectural, music, technological). I don’t think Mencius, nor myself, would want to live in such an environment.
There are three longterm alternatives to Islam: neocameralism, if it works; government ala China, i.e. dictatorship by committee; or the creation of a new religion, probably after a nuclear world war, which can synthasize the various strenghts of Christianity (technological innovation, prostelyzing), Judaism (technological innovation, hard-code for individual living), and Islam (prostelyzing, hard-code for individual living, hard-code for political and governmental vision).
July 18, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Innovation is change. Technological change in particular led to the rise of the large centralized state. The absence of it is a feature, not a bug (from my Straussian Moldbug’s perspective).
When the Jews were really religious, they didn’t innovate much. They contributed the most after they were Protestantized and many ceased believing in God, at least from a Christian perspective.
GNXP has a thread on the link between IQ and wages here.
I guess I was confused by the phrase “meritocratic eliteness”. However, in the sentence where you introduced it you did not distinguish but rather said that Harvard Law and MBAs are comparable. Rereading your follow-up post I see a point you were making that I didn’t get the first time. Do you think Harvard Law has different portions of “meritocratic” admittees as its MBA program? I don’t have any priors as to what would distinguish them.
Why do you say “perform argument”? Why not just “have an argument” or “argue”? I may or may not learn something through this conversation, I don’t know. I like to respond to my commenters, especially when they have thoughtful things to say.
July 19, 2008 at 5:37 am
TGGP,
1. Yes, I think Harvard Law has pretty low non-meritocratic admissions of the George W. (good for our meritocratic admittees) variety.
2. “perform argument” -it seemed to me you were saying contrarian things rather than making sharp arguments that exposed weaknesses in my model of reality. The latter is what I think helps us learn, not the former. Examples of non-sharp statements of yours in this discussion, in my evaluation, include talking about the average IQ of Michelle’s major and using George W. as an example of the qualifications and performance of a median meritocratic Harvard MBA admittee.
July 19, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I don’t think GWB is a median Harvard alum, just a comparable one whose standardized test scores are available to us.
As I said, I have no priors over the relatively meritocratic nature of Harvard’s law vs MBA programs. What is it that leads you to believe law is more meritocratic?
July 19, 2008 at 3:15 pm
tggp, I’m going to bow out at this point because there’s a wealth of information for you on these basic questions, if they’re even in good faith.
July 21, 2008 at 4:27 pm
It’s weird for me to read your genius level analysis and absorption of a wide range of ideas (for example in your latest blog post) in contrast to your performed dopeyness in discussions like in this comment thread.
July 22, 2008 at 11:19 pm
My most recent post consists mostly of quotes, so it is hard for someone else to gauge how much I understand.
A note to readers: I am out of town and do not have continuous access to the internet. I apologize for any delay in responding, especially if a comment gets caught in the spam filter.
August 2, 2008 at 6:23 am
I think Americans have been comfortable adulating celebrity African Americans for some time
Yeah, like that quarterback guy.
August 2, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Who are you referring to?
February 22, 2009 at 10:11 pm
[…] In his book Huntington makes the useful and (these days) uncommon distinction between immigrants and settlers. The book on the settlers of America who define its culture even now which Huntington drew from is David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. Of his “four folkways” Fischer surprisingly enough (Razib disagrees) deems the Quakers to have had the most influence on present-day America. This despite the fact of their smaller numbers (they didn’t even make up as large a portion of their own Mid-Atlantic region as the other folkways did of theirs) and being less educated than the Puritans of New England. I myself feel more akin to the Puritans and still refer to myself sometimes as an ultra-Calvinist. Thought I complain a lot about my country’s involvement in war, I’ve never had the pacifist spirit but get vicarious enjoyment of some Wrath of a Vengeful God righteous smiting. My awareness of war as a negative sum game is purely System 2 thinking. I’ve noted before the decline of war, and agree with Sailer that due to modern economics its benefits increasingly shrink. Quaker folkways are especially suited to a mercantile society, a “nation of shopkeepers”. Mencius Moldbug gives a dissenting take on Quakerism here, replacing his previous supreme bugaboo of Puritanism. It is his disgust with the modern American creed that led me to write a Straussian interpretation of him as proponent of Islam (with a bonus update for Hinduism). […]