Greg Cochran: "The Talking Classes In This Country Think That Human Biology Mostly Doesn’t Matter"
04/06/2013
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At West Hunter, Gregory Cochran sums up the conventional wisdom, c. 2013:
It seems that the talking classes in this country think that human biology mostly doesn’t matter.  The sexes have exactly equal mean abilities and interests – more than that, even the standard deviation must be the same in men and women.  Presumably the third moments as well. 
Race doesn’t exist, so there can hardly be cognitive or personality differences between races. There are no average differences in  mental capabilities between classes.   IQ is not heritable, so eugenics cannot work. Intelligent women should eschew reproduction – that’s something poor people can do just as well, and with the usual 10,000 hours of practice, their kids can be anything they want to be – cowboy, fireman,  or Indian chief. Lest I forget, low test scores in black children are caused by laconic parents, which is why the few children of those career women should be raised by Guatemalan maids. 
Homosexuality is the only genetically-determined personality trait – as well as being a valid lifestyle choice, and a floor wax.  So slash fiction should be the law of the land.
The current assumption that Hart and Risley proved that blacks don't talk enough (but indio childminders from Guatemala are perfectly fine for maximizing Verbal SAT scores) would have struck Charles Darwin as a tad odd. As Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man, in Chapter VII "On the Races of Man:"
There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,- as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body,* the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain.*(2) But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of difference. The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristies are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties. Every one who has had the opportunity of comparison, must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of S. America and the lighthearted, talkative negroes. There is a nearly similar contrast between the Malays and the Papuans,*(3) who live under the same physical conditions, and are separated from each other only by a narrow space of sea.
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