David Frum mentions eugenics

David Frum mentions eugenics (but not by name) in his NY Times Magazine article:

It is probable that the trend to inequality will grow even stronger in the years ahead, if new genetic techniques offer those with sufficient resources the possibility of enhancing the intelligence, health, beauty and strength of children in the womb.

Thanks to Steve Sailer for referring me to the article, but I’m surprised that he didn’t highlight the eugenics remark.

The article also has excellent coverage of how the Republicans are losing the votes of educated voters. He doesn’t mention Sarah Palin in the article, but you can’t help but think that this will cause even more high IQ voters to flee to the Democratic Party. If you have a graduate degree, then Obama, even though he’s black and you may be white, is nevertheless more “your people” than Sarah Palin is.

Comments

[Zylonet]

I have an MBA on full scholarship and Obama is not my people. Generally speaking, people with graduate degrees are low testosterone pussies who believe they are special, but fail to realize their own limitations. In my experience, so many people with advanced degrees believe in their own innate superiority despite constant evidence to the contrary.

Biden is a terrific example. He constantly proclaims his abilities, but to my knowledge, he has never done anything to demonstrate that he is in the top 1% of the top 1%. From my observations, Obama is not a "Biden" type personality. Obama, however, does not display any of the raw leadership that I associate with Alpha male status (nor does McCain).

I wonder if part of the problem is the estrogens and chemicals found in the food supply and in food containers. There is a great pussification of the American male and it is difficult to watch.

Regarding educated Americans turning to the Dems, that is easy to reverse. The GOP need only find a leader with a Ron Paul message, but in the body of an Alpha male and with the Alpha personality to match.

Zylonet

[freak show]

biden has an inferiority complex... he's stated that he's graduated at the top of his law school class and with a scholarship. in reality, he had to backtrack since he really graduated near the bottom of a third tier toilet (syracuse) and the small scholarship was revoked after the first year. he's an idiot & a liberal (a paradox i know).

[New Anon]

Is there data on how professionals with graduate degrees vote based on what field of study they earned their degreein?

I would assume the leftist toads with "Gender studies degrees" lean massively left while alpha males with MBAs vote GOP.

[PG]

Gee, I have a M.A. in economics, a JD, and an LL.M. (and I'm agnostic from an Episcopalian background to boot), and I don't consider Obama to be more "one of my people" than Palin. How could I consider a "community organizer"/racial rabble rouser turned discrimination lawyer espousing socialist views to be "one of my people." Obama's career path and his writings (and those of his wife) show that he is essentially a race man with a strong antipathy towards whites (at least in abstract) like Jackson or Sharpton, except that his upper middle class mannerisms allow him to disguise his true feelings, transcend the black community, and make it on the national stage by appealing to the white guilt of indoctrinated middle class Americans. I am under no illusions that an Obama Presidency would accelerate the primacy that race is taking in how the U.S. government (and private entities under government pressure) treats its citizens. Even though I find prolish evangelicals to be somewhat distasteful, I find educated liberals espousing a false egalitarianism even more so. I can more easily make my peace with Evangelical proles and shout alleluya brother than I can change my skin color. I have no doubt that I and my children will get a better deal in the white minority future of this nation from Palin's type of people than from Obama and his ilk.

[Mike]

Agree with Zylonet.

BTW, did you ever notice that people who go on most about their IQs are almost always lacking real-world success. They must continually mention their IQs, since that's all they can show as evidence of their (self-perceived) superiority.

It's pretty sad, really, to go to a MENSA meeting. I went to one. Just one.

When I saw half of the guys over 30 being dropped off by their moms, I realized that the "high IQ scene" wasn't for me.

[Martin Regnen]

I have a graduate degree but Obama definitely ain't my people.

This reminds me of something I've often said: I'm rarely interested in being friends with any educated people unless their degree is from an agricultural university. Those usually manage to remain normal.

[White Fang]

Is it then the case that, if you have no graduate degree, an undergraduate degree from a non-elite university, or God forbid, no university degree at all, Sarah Palin is more your kind of person than Barak Obama, even if you are black or hispanic?

I didn't think so.

[Her?]

I have a graduate degree but Obama definitely ain't my people.

And why should anyone give a flying fuck? An individual exception doesn't disprove a statistical trend.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/synthesizing_my.html

As for Steve not mentioning the eugenics paragraph, he seems to be generally wary of genetic/biological enhancement whereas Frum seems to endorse it. Kind of weird to mention it at although, it still seems a ways off even if the means are somewhat more discernible now.

[Her?]

I have a graduate degree but Obama definitely ain't my people.

And why should anyone give a flying fuck? An individual exception doesn't disprove a statistical trend.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/synthesizing_my.html

As for Steve not mentioning the eugenics paragraph, he seems to be generally wary of genetic/biological enhancement whereas Frum seems to endorse it. Kind of weird to mention it at although, it still seems a ways off even if the means are somewhat more discernible now.

[rob]

Her?,

Is your handle a reference to Arrested Development?

[Her?]

Yeah, but I'm using the Arrested Development reference in reference to Palin.

And if anyone wants to give me flak over AD being SWPL marker, the first positive review I ever read of the show was in that bastion of all things whiter people, National Review. Whiter people ideology is all around stupid, but some whiter people entertainment has merit.

Apologies for the double post.

[Peter]

"It's pretty sad, really, to go to a MENSA meeting. I went to one. Just one.
When I saw half of the guys over 30 being dropped off by their moms, I realized that the "high IQ scene" wasn't for me."

I'm convinced that there's a fairly strong link between very high IQ's and deficient social skills. What causes it, I don't know, but it's there.

[mnjohn]

"BTW, did you ever notice that people who go on most about their IQs are almost always lacking real-world success. They must continually mention their IQs, since that's all they can show as evidence of their (self-perceived) superiority. "

Be careful Mike. Quite a few people on this site claim to be in the triple nine society and yet probably aren't accomplished scientists or working at google like they should be. Pointing out the truth will only hurt them and cause them to further blog about proles.

[Snufflepig]

"Be careful Mike. Quite a few people on this site claim to be in the triple nine society and yet probably aren't accomplished scientists or working at google like they should be. Pointing out the truth will only hurt them and cause them to further blog about proles."

Fuck it, might as well pile on myself...I bet they don't get much tail either!

[SFG]

"Regarding educated Americans turning to the Dems, that is easy to reverse. The GOP need only find a leader with a Ron Paul message, but in the body of an Alpha male and with the Alpha personality to match."

Granted I'm a liberal so I'm not your target audience exactly, but it's false to assume alpha males are desired by the entire population or in all situations. There's a disconnect between charisma and managerial ability; these things are correlated (I for one have neither), but don't always track perfectly. JFK was a mediocre president despite being charismatic; W has charisma but is, IMHO, one of the worst presidents ever. Nixon and Bush Sr. did a pretty good job despite lacking charisma. Carter had neither; Clinton and Reagan had both. While Roissy and Co. like to pile on betas for lacking skills with women, the considered, thoughtful style of the beta can be useful in dealing with complex issues. And you can definitely have too much alpha--Hitler was very alpha, and Germany wound up with Russian soldiers raping German women in the ruins of Berlin because he thought being the most powerful country in Europe meant he could conquer all of Europe. I don't think Romney's very alpha, but I think he would have made a good President outside of my political disagreements with him.

"I'm convinced that there's a fairly strong link between very high IQ's and deficient social skills. What causes it, I don't know, but it's there."
I think there are three things here:
1. America is anti-intellectual, so smart people interested in being liked will pretend to be dumber than they are. So a charismatic guy with a 150 IQ isn't going to show off his brains and come off as too bright. A well-educated Frenchman is expected to be able to discuss cinema, art, etc...so he's more apt to come off as intelligent than an American of the same IQ, who spends his time following football to fit in. Everybody made fun of Dominique Villepin for his snooty rebuttals of George W. Bush...but he was playing to the French audience, not the American.
2. It's hard to fit in if you're too bright, so you tend to be socially excluded. It's the same way foreigners (on average) would have deficient social skills if measured against the societal norm.
3. Positive manifold aside, most likely there are tradeoffs in brain development between mathematical and spatial ability (at least) and empathy. So while the thousands of other factors will hide this in the general populace, if you look at math wizards who by definition all got the math genes instead of the personality genes, it's obvious.

[Brutus]

"Brutus asks:

Question: Why hasn't anyone tried to find out what Obama's LSAT and SAT scores were? Since affirmative action is legislated fraud, I believe the public has the right to this information.

I think that an even better question to ask is why public disclosure of test scores and college grades are not a required part of the election process for all candidates? I don’t think you can say that it’s no one’s business when medical records and tax returns are considered the people’s business.

If these scores were released, I’m sure we’d find that Obama is the smartest guy in the race (affirmative action or not, he made Editor of the Law Review at Harvard), so he should release his information first in order to make a big deal about Palin’s qualifications.

Another interesting idea is to have all candidates take the current SAT one morning, so we could have a way to compare their intelligence. This would be more useful than a pointless debate where they candidates just repeat the same talking points."

Sorry about late response, HS. Yes, by all means have candidates take g-loaded tests.

re Obama's intelligence: He seems slow in debate, which has been remarked upon by many journalists. His law review job was 100% affirmative action, and isn't it curious that he wrote nothing for edition he edited? Obama took gut courses from the likes of Derrick Bell, who is a dumb racist. Obama failed to publish any peer-reviewed articles while at Chicago.

My guess is that Obama's IQ is a good 2 standard deviations below non-AA Harvard admits. Remember, Obama and the Obamaphiles are trying to pawn this mediocrity off as a genius.

He ain't no genius.

[Payout]

$1,000,000 Challenge for Obama's Grades:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/128461.html

[Randall Parker]

Smart maladjusted people: There is a sampling bias here. Average and dumb maladjusted people are less memorable than brilliant maladjusted people. Absent some quantified data from a well designed study I'm reluctant to agree that extreme smarties are socially inept.

Mensa probably attracts the smarties with nothing better to do.

[whiskey]

First off, I also have an MBA and Obama is not my people. He'll only be the people of elites -- those from Harvard or Stanford. Definitely not USC or Notre Dame, to say nothing of say Texas A&M, or Univeristy of Wyoming.

By definition, most people go to Tier 2 or lower schools, Harvard and Yale only have so many places. This is why snobbery is a losing electoral proposition. Yet it feeds emotionally the needs to feel superior, so Democrats, being the party of snobs and elites and Harvard grads, feed that at every turn.

SFG -- Paul's POSITIONS are poison to nearly everyone. What few realize is that the Republican Party has become the Party of LBJ. Who was popular. Voters just want guns and butter for THEM not for elites. Dems pander to David Geffen and billionaires, Reps to Joe Average. No one wants Libertarian policies. Since that has real costs and generally leaves the US pretty defenseless against the great equalizer, nukes. Pakistan has more than a 100 of em, and they're not very secure. Add in Iran (which will go nuclear) and everyone else -- limited government is not now or in the future likely or popular.

Instead what people are missing is the likelihood of women, since it's mostly single women who have kids now, deciding to maximize physical size, strength, testosterone, and dominance (Alphaness in other words) at the expense of spatial-abstract thinking. Since those are what form the basis of sexual selection. Car salesmen instead of scientists.

You are far more likely to see intelligence weeded out by eugenics than added in. Since women abhor intelligence in men, given it's link to lower testosterone. And love dominance.

As far as politicians go, some are "beta" and some are not. That only applies to women. Andrew Jackson was nobody's fool, tough, fought duels, only his wife found him attractive.

Nor does America dislike intelligence: Edison, the Wrights, Farnsworth, Colt, Wesson, Browning, Ford, Gates, Wozniak, Bell, and probably a few I missed stand testimony to American's love of intelligence. Burt Rutan and Stephen Hawking are household names, heroes of men everywhere.

What America dislikes is pretension, barriers to success by credentialism (which requires connections that by definition most Americans do not have and never will, nor their offspring). Univ. of Idaho should count as much, most Americans think, as Harvard since their kids can go to the former, the latter is for the rich and connected, and privileged minorities.

This ought to be obvious, but again stupid emotionalism by elites gets in the way. Americans have upward mobility ambitions, and the sort of "you are only smart if you went to Harvard" attitude enrages them since it says really, in effect "stay poor(er) than us elites who have the only ladder upward to success."

[ckdh]

whiskey,

that's bull. having connections does help tremendously in the admission process at Harvard, but the majority of people there are middle class or lower.