"TMJUtah is an occasional over here and a smart regular over at Michael Totten's place."

Also Roger Simon.

Thanks for the welcome. All of you guys have set a high standard, but I thought I'd give it a go, anyway.

The whole point of setting the standards we do is the hope that readers will like the results enough to join us here in the blogosphere. We hope they'll stick around in our comments section, become guest bloggers, argue with us or add to our work via their own new blogs, and/or point us to things we hadn't seen or considered. Everybody wins.

That's why, in my ideal world, Winds doesn't just have a great comments section - it's also a catalyst in spawning some great new blogs. Our blogkids already do us proud, and there's always room in this family for more.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Glen... and we hope to keep seeing you and your insights around here, too.

Glen's blog is so excellent! And by reading him, I found out commenter someguy also has a great blog, MysteryAchievement! And guess what else? Someguy is Kimban! I thought I was the only one. :)

Glenn lost me at "Steve Sailor."

Praktike, I don't understand. Why Steve Sailer?

Because I largely agree with Tacitus (for once).

praktike:

I don't know anything about Sailer apart from the article I linked to, and I should have mentioned that I found the link on Kausfiles.

I did notice his several references in the article to The Bell Curve, which I assure you is not my bag either.

Read the post by Tacitus and exchange with Sailer, and the comments which had a fair bit of intelligence and real argument in them. That was gratifying - but Tacitus' response was not. His criticism was not scientific, but ideological.

Aguing against someone's research because you don't like where the conclusions may lead is morally wrong - you argue about someone's research based on the quality, reproducability, predictive power, etc. of their research. Or, in policy debates, you can question the logical relevance of the conclusions even if true (the one thing Tacitus did right, before undoing it by going on to argue against doing such research at all on the basis of "moral wrong." )

The day you stop doing that is the day you stop doing science - and start doing Lysenkoism or Aryan physics or what have you.

But that's what Tacitus does again and again, largely because he isn't qualified to criticize the science intelligently. Frankly, I don't think he laid a glove on Sailer. It may well be possible to do so, but Tacitus obviously isn't the guy to do it.

I'm not qualified to evaluate Sailer's science either, so I don't know if he's right. I don't know if he's a racist, either, because I haven't read his works in depth - but you can't accuse him of it based on anything he said in that debate.

Is he right? I'm not sure I care. I don't think it changes any of my views either way, frankly, because they aren't logically affected by the questions he raises... but I do think that Tacitus' approach to scientific inquiry is dead wrong. And that is something I care about a great deal.

Galileo's freedom to pursue science without concern for the opinions of the ignorant who disliked where his views led was a seminal moment for our society that made for most of the difference between the places we live in today and medieval backwaters like, say, Yemen. And though Galileo himself lost the battle, he (and we) won that war.

I'm not about to give that up because Tacitus' poor little feelings are hurt.

Ha! Joe said Lysenkoism. :)

Steve is no racist-- he's into H-bd-- human biodiversity. So am I. His analysis is sound, IMHO. He has some pretty good creds, too.

I agree that Tacitus' ideological argument underwhelmed Steve's scientific one.

Umm, the thing is, since the "book" of the human genome was completed in 2000, we're finding a lot more evidence of the biological basis of behavior. And no, it's not PC. But I think we're going to have to find a way to deal with h-bd without yelling "racist" all time.

Some good points ... and yet, Sailer's obsession with race and his affiliation with the odious VDare leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. You're thinking Lysenko in regards to Tacitus, but I'm thinking Mengele in regards to Sailer.

Jinnderella: The way to deal with it is simple. What you are is what you are ("I yam what I yam," as Popeye would say), and it doesn't matter whether you are typical of your race or not. For that matter, it doesn't matter whether your phenotype (characteristics) is typical of your genotype (genes), or whether your talent is typical of IQ either!

Generalizations about people who are similar to you do not change who you are!

praktike: "I'm thinking Mengele in regards to Sailer."

Yikes. If the Mossad is reading this thread - she's just kidding, boys and girls!

From some cursory reading on vDare, I would have to say it whiffs of nativism. I don't like nativism, or the Buchananite (and worse) camp followers who trail after it. I notice articles by Jared Taylor, who William F. Buckley called a white supremacist. And I don't trust people who claim that the ADL is violating privacy by compiling information on hate groups.

Still - like Joe said - all kinds of accusations fly when people do this kind of research, which isn't good for free inquiry. I may post on this some more at my blog-thingy when I've had a chance to do more reading.

praktike, given that Lysenko is nearly as horrific to me as Mengele is to you, I still don't think either comparison is valid. :)
We're entering an era where genetherapy will deliver a valid toolset for curing disease. If we don't understand the mechanism we can never define a cure for genetic diseases. My personal idol, the greatest geneticist that ever lived, William Hamilton, can appear very "racist" in his writings. Yet he gave his life studying AIDs in Africa. The truth is, guys like Hamilton and Sailer are way too involved in understanding the mechanism to consider if what they say might be percieved as un-PC.

David, it is the mechanism of inheritance that draws me. :)
Can it be fixed in environment? What is the difference? How did it get that way? Can it be fixed on-chromosome? When? Where? Those kinds of questions are surely legitimate, and people like Sailer are working on the answers.

You know me-- I celebrate h-bd! I admire many beings that are genetically and memetically disparate from me!
Hybrid vigour rules. :)

Glen Wishard-- I get a definite guy reading from praktike! It is interesting that you don't. :)

Oh, don't get me wrong--nobody could have any shred of sympathy for Lysenko after reading Hungry Ghosts. None.

I get a definite guy reading from praktike!

Yup. I'm a real boy.

Back when I was still in a university English Dept. my colleagues had a field day going into ecstatic paroxysms of rage and disgust over "The Bell Curve." Based only on what I've read (I'm not a geneticist or anything of the sort) I have some reservations. How, for instance, does one define race? Are there genetic markers that would identify one as caucasion, asian, african? However, again based solely on what I've read, there is a basic Philosophy 101 logic to deal with. The IQ gap between races (assuming a scientifically acceptable definition of race) is real and it persists when taking into account factors such as socio-economic status and parents' education level. If IQ tests measure something real and important, asians and caucasians apparently have more of whatever they measure than do blacks and hispanics. If whatever IQ tests measure is or is largely genetic, then asians and caucasians are apparently born with more of whatever they measure. The only room for debate seems to be: Do IQ tests measure something real and important, and if they do, is whatever they measure genetic? Like Joe and Jinnderella, I don't beieve those questions will be effectively answered by declaring them off limits, labelling people who ask them racist, or declaring the whole subject "immoral."

jinnderella - "I get a definite guy reading"

Me, too. I mistyped. Sorry, praktike.

BTW - on the subject of screen names, why do so many people do the e.e. cummings thing?

why do so many people do the e.e. cummings thing?

I can only speak for myself: I have no pinkies.

I came up with a hypothesis on this, and perhaps you winds readers can tell me if it has legs-- Any scientist or academecian that is NOT LIBERAL automatically gets labelled as a racist. True or false. :)

You need to refine it a bit, jinn, by formulating it more tightly. For instance:

"As any non-liberal's academic or scientific career grows longer, the probability of being accused of racism approaches 1.0"

The concept as stated would bear a close theoretical relationship to the original formulation of Godwin's Law, of course. Variants of Sircar's Corollary may then suggest themselves for testing.

One may also wish to refine the "scientific career" section, as fields like geology and quantum physics may be exempt. On the other hand, if one allows blanket condemnations of science and the scientific method as inherently and a priori racist to qualify, then this formulation is a slam dunk and a quick one.

Obviously, more work is needed.

Joe, Too true-- but I bet it works if I restrict the target population to geneticists, evolutionary biologists, sociobiologists, behavioral geneticists, etc. It is very hard since The Blank Slate to have anything to do with genetics and still be PC. :)

Let's say, the probability of being called a racist is inversely proportional to the ability of the individual to practice PC. And the ability to practice PC (even where it is antithetic to truth) has a high positive correlation with liberals. :)

Of course, if you're in one of the fields where intellectual rigor and responsibility have been destroyed by pomo (English, History, Anthropology, Education) then you have to assent to the proposition that science itself is a white, male, patriarchal, [insert "ist" here] ideology. Or, of course, you are a white, male, patriarchal [insert "ist" here]. Or if you are a woman or a minority, the ruling ideology has been "interpolated" into your "subjectivity" yada yada yada.