Please dont misunderstand me. Americans at the personal level and in business transactions are remarkably honest. In a worldwide experiment, wallets with some money were left on the street: in Denmark, 100% of these "lost" wallets were forwarded to the police. Americans also did well in the test. Happily, Israel was not included, so we dont know how (dis)honest we are. What I mean by American dishonesty is about the whole diversity and affirmative action business. Let me explain.
HBD Books blog writes that
"...if you’re not going to give your employees IQ tests and you have nothing to indicate the person you’re hiring is of remarkable ability then not hiring blacks is a rational business decision."Well, yes. Correct. And what you are describing here is the definition of “prejudice”. You (I mean the employer) discriminates against certain group of people because on average they are less fit for the job. It may be perfectly rational for the businessman, who has no interest in taking on risks or uncertainties. But it is terrible for the capable segment within the discriminated group, because they would be performing well and never have that chance. Equal opportunity is to give them the opportunity. Since prejudice frequently is wrong (say “all dark skinned persons are morons” when millions of Hindus are not), the whole idea of managing a business by prejudices is unjust and possibly irrational.
Giving IQ or aptitude tests to the candidates, like the Army is doing, is ensuring that prejudice does not enter in hiring or promotion decisions. The SAT is also a good test. The rational business decision would be honest and give your employees openly some kind of test. If the government or somebody else want you to hire morons, they should compensate you for the expected lower performance. Here in Israel we have specific government programs dedicated to finding jobs for low IQ, handicapped people and specially for the numerous Army veterans incapacitated in the wars against our cruel enemies. Frequently, the entire salary is paid (though the business, not directly) by the government. Americans muddle things by Affirmative Action, diversity hiring and other dishonest methods that complicate and negate their generous intentions, and I know that Americans are a good-intentioned, decent and generous people.
12 comments:
But they are vulnerable to manipulation because they easily feel guilt.
Anon.
If they felt guilt for their sins against God, they would not feel guilty for imaginary offenses and made up responsabilities, such as that some people were born with different that is inferior capabilities. The fear of God is the best antidote against the disease described in the note.
J, your comment in reply is brilliantly illuminating. Words of wisdom.
In effect, if you believe that God made them so and everything is according to God's plan, then YOU (nor your tribe) is responsible for their handicap. As a Buddhist would say, they are here to suffer for their sins in former lives, former encarnations. They in their way toward becoming Buddha.
Whatever.
You have this completely backward - American employers would LIKE to judge candidates individually but affirmative action mandates and the structure of anti-discrimination law forces them to take race into account and treat candidates as members of a group, not individuals. If a large employer does not hire "enough" black people then he can get into all kinds of trouble. The educational system has been undermined so that the average black graduate of any given college is much less qualified than the white or Asian because there is a lower threshold for admission. This backfires on the (rare) highly qualified black candidate because it is assumed he got in under affirmative action rather than on his own merit - the credentials of all black candidates are distrusted BECAUSE and not in spite of, affirmative action. I say rare because in all of the United States there are only a few hundred black students who exceed 2100 points on their SAT, which would normally be the cutoff for a top university. These say 500 students have to be split up among say the top 20 or 50 universities which would leave only a handful per school. (BTW, this is in contrast to Asian students where there are many thousands who meet the 2100 threshold, with the result that maybe 9 out of 10 Asian applicants are rejected from the most elite universities - there would be "too many" Asians if strictly merit criteria were used.)
Generally speaking black students are admitted with SAT scores 300 points lower on a 2400 point scale than white and Asian candidates (100 points lower on each of three 800 point sub-tests). 300 points = 1 standard deviation = 15 IQ points = average gap between white and black IQ.
The solution is to do away with affirmative action and then employers could trust the credential - they would know that a black graduate of say Harvard was as well qualified as a white. Today, chances are very high this is not true and you are asking employers to ignore this (and many do to avoid getting in trouble with the gov't).
One of the reasons we CAN'T get rid of affirmative action is that it would largely do away with the admission of blacks to the top US universities. For example , Caltech, which does NOT practice affirmative action but admits strictly on merit (almost the only top school to do so) has only 1.2% black enrollment, while MIT, which does use AA has 6.2% (still less than the overall % in the population but even MIT is aware that if they reach down too low to admit unqualified candidates then these candidates will only fail later, which happens anyway).
Yes, the system is dishonest.
What happens in Israel? Strictly on merit?
Anon.
I just saw another statistic today - on the US national examples (NAEP), 25% of Asians, 11% of whites and 1% of blacks are at the what they call "Advanced" level (which is not really all that advanced - I would call it competent - the ability to correctly answer basic problems).
For example, on the problem 301-75, only 33% of the (almost entirely black) 4th graders (10-11 year olds) in Detroit and 50% in (mostly black) Philadelphia were able to answer correctly. People with this level of intelligence are unable to maintain an advanced industrial society - they cannot even make change in a souk selling vegetables. This is lower than the level of Arabs and even Arabs are incapable of advanced science (look up the # of Arab Nobel prize winners in the sciences). We are in big trouble - in coming centuries progress will cease and a new Dark Ages will come. Like the barbarians, the people of the future will look with incomprehension on our aquaducts and bridges and will use the stones to build their huts.
Sorry, national EXAMS, not examples.
The Barbarians that invaded Rome became the Germans of the modern world, they had the intelligence to build a modern society, which they have.
The trash now being let into the US will probably never build a modern society of their own in a thousand years like the Germanic invaders did.
Just read Volkmar Weiss. It is all there, and has been for years.
Anon.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
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