Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Blank Slate and Totalitarian Creep
American Thinker ^ | 15 Sep, 2024 | Robert Weissberg

Posted on 09/15/2024 5:41:05 AM PDT by MtnClimber

The most career-destroying, toxic heresy in today’s hypersensitive world is attributing highly valued traits such as intelligence to a person’s genes and then saying that these and other biologically hard-wired traits were unevenly distributed across population groups.

To say, for example, that the Chinese disproportionately succeed academically due to their genes, not unearned privilege, luck, or any other environmental factor, violates this taboo.

The opposite is the blank slate theory of human nature. Here everything is environmentally determined and according to Steven Pinker, the blank slate view of human nature dominates today’s intellectual life.

Those rejecting this blank slate ideology will be punished regardless of evidence or expertise. James Watson, the Nobel Prize winning co-discover of DNA was fired from his position and widely excoriated for speculating sub-Saharan African economic dysfunction might reflect their lower and genetically determined IQs.

Meanwhile, countless scientists anxious to remain employed will twist themselves into knots to avoid even hinting of biological differences across population groups to explain unequal outcomes in educational attainment, crime, health and elsewhere.

In principle, this taboo is entirely amenable to scientific inquiry. We are not in the 15th century where contrarian views on impossible-to-prove religious dogma such as free will vs. determinism, might get you burned at the stake. In fact, thousands of scientists do study the role genes play and publish their findings, though nearly all of this research focuses on plants and animals, not humans.

Why the fear of documenting the impact of genetics on human behavior?

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: intelligence

1 posted on 09/15/2024 5:41:05 AM PDT by MtnClimber
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Yet the left will orchestrate the illegal invasion of low IQ groups in an effort to displace the higher IQ groups that they hate. I suppose they think they can exempt themselves from this process.


2 posted on 09/15/2024 5:43:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

IMHO the left is importing people from cultures that didn’t have the spiritual Great Awakening that our ancestors had in the 18th - 20th centuries.


3 posted on 09/15/2024 6:02:17 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

“The wisdom of the Roman lyric poet Horace (65 B.C. - 8 B.C.) is worth heeding: “You may throw out nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back.” “

Nature will not be mocked - sooner than later it will get its revenge.

China must be salivating at the prospect of a DEI run America.


4 posted on 09/15/2024 6:14:02 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they control you. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
The Marxist notion of the perfectibility of mankind leads to an inappropriate focus on populations rather than individual differences. The USSR tried for seventy years to create “the New Soviet Man” and as the writer notes, failed miserably.

Academia has wasted innumerable man-centuries of debate over the tired “nature vs nurture” dilemma, resisting as only True Believers can, the mountain of evidence that there are indeed differences among sub-populations in the distribution of heritable traits. Measures of central tendency differ reliably, while the overall distributions heavily overlap.

By acting as if these statistical variations do not exist, the Left seeks to dehumanize the population by forcing adoption of the tabula rasa hypothesis in the name of a specious egalitarianism. The real purpose of course is to reduce humanity to a population of interchangeable drones, serving only the hive instead of themselves.

5 posted on 09/15/2024 6:15:34 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

BTTT


6 posted on 09/15/2024 7:41:19 AM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

.


7 posted on 09/15/2024 7:48:32 AM PDT by sauropod ("This is a time when people reveal themselves for who they are." James O'Keefe Ne supra crepidam)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Give everyone training for a job.

Give everyone education to become good, productive citizens.


8 posted on 09/15/2024 9:20:04 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Randolf Duke proved environmental factors determined a person’s success.


9 posted on 09/15/2024 9:39:15 AM PDT by shotgun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Bookmark


10 posted on 09/15/2024 10:46:55 AM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (God save the United States!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shotgun
Randolf Duke proved environmental factors determined a person’s success.

Then the DEI culture should be improving things?

11 posted on 09/15/2024 11:20:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

I take it you never saw Trading Places?


12 posted on 09/15/2024 12:02:29 PM PDT by shotgun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: shotgun
I take it you never saw Trading Places?

I take it that you never got beat up because you were white.

13 posted on 09/15/2024 12:42:18 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson