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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

31 Jan

The biggest "conspiracy theory" in the USA today is that there are massively powerful but almost entirely hidden racist forces at work, which explain every single discrepancy in performance between whites and POC, but somehow don't affect Asians or Nigerians at all.

(2) What does explain gaps? Dozens of empiricists (Sowell, O'Neill, Chua, Fryer, etc.) have found that adjusting for cultural/situational variables that differ between groups - mean AGE, region of residence (the South?), basic qualifications like SAT score - closes ~all of them.

(3) This doesn't mean Black or Native (or Appalachian) Americans can't be disadvantaged as re income/schooling by PAST conflict. It DOES mean no "subtle, untrackable" demons will cause a Nigerian Penn Stater with a solid 1300 GRE to have a very different life from a white peer.

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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

7 Jan

A few last thoughts on the pro-Trump riot yesterday. 1st, it was illegal, ridiculous, and must be severely punished. Rioting is generally disgusting, because of the "dark fun" element of destruction for its own sake. Govts should beat rioters in 'battle,' then toss 'em in prison.

(2) That said, it's frankly difficult for me to see this as some "unique evil." In 2020-21, we've seen many places almost as unique/notable damaged FAR worse - active police stations (!), major federal court-houses, my hometown Mag Mile, what's left of where CHAZ was, etc.

(3) I also don't follow the argument that Black protesters would have been treated far worse than right-wingers. "Room to destroy" BLM/Antifa protesters were in fact often almost coddled. On the Trump side, at least 1 woman was shot to death by police, and 4 people in total died.

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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

6 Jan

Gotta say: the claim that right-wing protesters/rioters in DC would all be dead "if they were Black" is....kiiiiiinda contradicted by the entire past summer of giant, 30+% Black, left-wing riots that caused $2B in damage and generally weren't punished at all. #so_theres_that

(2) For anyone arguing the summer rioters picked low-profile targets: they set an active police precinct - the Minneapolis 3rd - on fire with the cops in it. The "national church," St. John's across from the WH, was literally attacked and damaged at one point. The list goes on.

(3) Of course, ALL rioting is bad, and people found to have been actually violent during a riot should ALL be arrested and severely punished...right?

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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

17 Dec 20

Speaking frankly, AS an academic, the reason many smart normal citizens distrust academic 'experts' is that they see entire fields ("____ Studies") as being full primarily of low-IQ radicals. This is......not entirely inaccurate, Sokal 2 being just the latest hard evidence.

(2) I searched this graphic, posted to the thread, and it seems to basically be accurate - although a bit dated, and presumably obtained via some kind of GRE norming. #IQs_by_field

These are GRE scores by field. Good to see POLS holding its own, son! ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_…

(3) Worth noting - "critical theory" under art history refers strictly to that in the context of art, the one field where po-mo can be useful. The "Studies" fields are grouped under "Other Social Science," IIRC.

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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

9 Dec 20

Random take: I don't think either "left" wing sociologists or "right" wing POLS folk or Economists lie about or make up research data often at all. But, the questions you ASK very often determine what you'll find - and this is why the 90/10 ideological slant in academia matters.

(2) To give an example: the sociologist Devah Pager found, in an excellent quant paper, that Black people are less likely to be hired than white people. H/w, she looked only at entry-level non-affirmative action positions, in the Midwest private sector, with white-owned firms.

(3) One could almost certainly find the EXACT opposite result by looking at applications for "diversity forward" positions, jobs in academia, in the public sector, or positions w the POC-owned ~25% of businesses. However, this second set of studies is almost never done.

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Wilfred Reilly

@wil_da_beast630

23 Oct 20

A STRONG personal bias of mine is that the apocalypse is NOT coming. Literally every projected past apocalypse that I read up on while training as a social science quant - Y2K, global cooling, the Population Bomb, Peak Oil, Club of Rome, global acid rain - simply did not happen.

(2) The list of these could be extended by a dozen: the Western hetero AIDS epidemic, killer bees and the Great Northerly Migration, the Ferguson and Pueyo COVID models, the "trashland" problem, the 'permanent' ozone hole, Alar, radon, nuclear meltdowns, etc. Mankind endures.

(3) All "coming apocalypses" fit a particular pattern: a major book/top paper (1) makes projections based on worst-case scenarios (Pueyo's projected C-19 IFR was 4%) and (2) argues that human mitigation can have only a limited effect on the problem (i.e. Ferguson's 2nd scenario).

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