Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The Winegard bros on The Bell Curve - let's wrap it up

Alt-right Stefan Molyneux created a 
lovely logo for evo-psycho bro Brian Boutwell - 
he appears to have gotten the image of his face
 from Boutwell's St. Louis University faculty page

Ugh. I am so tired of writing about just this one section of the Winegard brothers defense of The Bell Curve, published by Quillette. It's turned out to be even more ridiculous than I expected and my expectations were not high to begin with.

And I originally wanted to review what the Winegards think race is, in a separate article, but I felt I had to plow through this one first. So let's wrap this up.

At least there are only two more links.
Many scholars in the field have noted that there is a bizarre and unhealthy difference between publicly and privately expressed views. Publicly, most experts remain silent and allow vocal hereditarian skeptics to monopolize the press; privately, most concede that the hereditarian hypothesis is quite plausible. Here, we’ll leave the last word to the always judicious Earl Hunt: “Plausible cases can be made for both genetic and environmental contributions to [racial differences in] intelligence…Denials or overly precise statements on either the pro-genetic or pro-environmental side do not move the debate forward. They generate heat rather than light.” (p. 436).
Whatever the truth about the cause of racial differences in intelligence, it is not irresponsible to forward reasonable, cautiously worded, and testable hypotheses. 
Link # 12 Many scholars in the field have noted that there is a bizarre and unhealthy difference between publicly and privately expressed views.

The link presents an edition of Society magazine. The scholars listed include J. Phillippe Rushton, professional racist and Linda S. Gottfredson, professional racist. I expect there are some other racists in the table of contents, but at this point I'm suffering from too-many-racists fatigue and can't be bothered to research the other names.

Link #13 ...it is not irresponsible to forward reasonable
Whattaya know. This is a link to the very article I originally wanted to discuss, On the Reality of Race and the Abhorrence of Racism written by the Winegard bros and Brian Boutwell.

OK, let's tally their supporting sources:
  • 3 - their own work;
  • 6 - work that relies directly on Jensen and/or Rushton;
  • 2 - refutations of the hereditarian position;
  • 1 - paper they think supports them but which denies skill is 100% innate;
  • 1 - THE 2013 SURVEY OF EXPERT OPINION ON INTELLIGENCE which has a chart indicating the most reliable source of news on intelligence testing is Steve Sailer's blog.
Presumably the Winegards and Boutwell don't believe it's racist to declare differences in test scores by "race" to be genetic, but rather "race realism." Hopefully their article will explain not only what they consider the "reality of race" but also what they consider racism.

A supporter of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, he has been described as alt-right by Politico and The Washington Post, and right-wing by CNN.[3][4][5][6] The Freedomain Radio internet community which he leads has sometimes been described as a cult.[7][8][9][6] Molyneux formerly worked in the software industry.
Molyneux is also a raging misogynist.   RationalWiki quoting Molyneux:
Women who choose the assholes will fucking end this race. They will fucking end this human race if we don't start holding them a-fucking-countable. Women who choose assholes guarantee child abuse. Women who choose assholes guarantee criminality. Sociopathy. Politicians. All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married assholes, and I don't know how to make the world a better place without holding women accountable for choosing assholes! 
The theory is that if someone is evil, it's his mother's fault because she deliberately chose to reproduce with "an asshole." This is evolutionary psychology logic, since in its view of humanity, everything is caused by genetic inheritance and nothing is caused by environment. Combine that with the Men's Rights Activists/Pickup Artists philosophy that women don't like "nice guys" and you've got yourself some raging alt-right Molyneux-style misogyny.

The real question is, how do Molyneux and his alt-right cult intend to hold women "a-fucking-countable" for all the evil in the world.

OK, I don't want to fall down the alt-right rabbit hole just now, I have enough to deal with their allies the evo-psycho bros. But here is Molyneux in a Youtube video with alt-righters Gavin McInnes, misogynist about town, Owen Benjamin, MRA/"comedian" and  Mike "pizza gate" Cernovich.

For an additional understanding of how extreme Molyneux is, here he is at Infowars:

STEFAN MOLYNEUX: LEFTISTS ARE JOYLESS ZOMBIES
Brainwashed liberals are trying to eradicate happiness for the rest of America