Monday, November 19, 2007

yet another reason why I am a monarchist

At Slate this week, William Saletan is saying provocative things about the race gap in IQ scores.

I've been soaking my head in each side's computations and arguments. They're incredibly technical.

Anyway, let's assume for the sake of argument that the "un-PC" side is right. Intelligence is largely genetic, so it varies by family and by race. That's a blow to affirmative action, particularly where it claims merely to correct for racism in admission/hiring. It becomes a more dubious argument that minority kids who haven't proved themselves yet, would if they were given a good opportunity. Because intelligence isn't about opportunity, or environment. It's about your parents.

So this theory is a boon to nepotism and legacy admission.

If person A's father is smart and person B's father is dumb (as evidenced by SAT scores circa 1972) then it's more likely that person A is smart than that person B is. Consider now that A and B have the same SAT score. If I had to bet which one was Smarter, I'd choose A. It's more likely that A was just having a bad day when she took the test, or that B got lucky.

The genetic argument about intelligence makes it logical to favor applicants with successful biological parents. Just because the kids haven't proven themselves yet doesn't mean they won't succeed if given the opportunity. Nepotism merely corrects for luck.

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