Monday, February 17, 2014

Thomas Sowell Discusses His Newest Book, Intellectuals and Race

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Warning: The audio quality is excellent, but the video is out of sync with it. It’s best to listen, without watching, which is what I did.

 

 

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Sowell looks and sounds great for an octogenarian. The negative part is that after having lost a lot of weight, he got fat again. But he was 82 when he made this video, and had thus already outlived his siblings by over 30 years, and his parents by over 50 years. So, if he wants to enjoy a good meal without worrying about living forever, more power to him.

Much of what Sowell says here is valuable, but he’s wrong about intelligence testing of Jews during WWI, and race and IQ, in general. IQ is probably his weakest subject. What he says about the Jews in WWII sounds like he was misled by Stephen Jay Gould.

He disparages nature, in favor of nurture, or as he says it, “culture.”

He considers himself a libertarian, but rarely says this. However, he is of the older style of libertarianism, as opposed to glibertarianism, that was not nihilistic. This type of libertarianism is today widely considered “conservative.”

He denies that black kids admitted to college under affirmative action are “unqualified,” but rather “mismatched.” This is not the blunt brilliance I’m used to from him. The dichotomy is false. The black kids are unqualified, because they are mismatched.

He also sounds like he’s on weak ground, when he talks about IQ researcher James Flynn’s claim that the children that black GIs fathered with German girls in West Germany after The War had the same average IQ as the children that white GIs fathered with German girls. To which I say:

1. Check the sample size;
2. Check to see if the black GIs and the mothers of their children matched the average IQs for their respective groups; and
3. Ditto for the white GIs and the mothers of their children.

Sowell is much better when he talks about behavior, as when intellectuals promoted the idea that underclass behavior was a blessing, we got more of it, and housing projects and entire cities were destroyed, as a result.

1 comment:

The PDK Herald/Crier Project said...

Sowell as a negro is caught in the trap of reality.

He may wish to pretend negros do not, as a separate sub-species of human, suffer from a physically smaller, lower IQed cerebrum than whites, but they do.

He, like white liberals simply substitutes a preferred illusion to cover up the truth of reality that he does not have to be anguished by that reality.

"The rain may beat upon the leopards back, but it will never wash away his spots". An old adage from somewhere.

From the Sanctuary, I'm PDK: Thank you.