ShrinkWrapped

The Cultural Transmission of Intelligence

When my oldest child was very young he was in a play group with a number of other children in our neighborhood.  For almost two years, Mrs. SW and Oldest Son would meet on a weekly basis with 3 or 4 other toddlers.  We were friendly with the parents as couples and all the children were first children.  As a general rule, parents are at their best and worst with their first children.  Parents tend to be most anxious about their first children, which is ameliorated by the extra attention a first child has as compared to later children, who of necessity receive only a fraction of the attention the oldest received.

One little girl in particular, who I shall call Caroline, caught Mrs. SW's attention.  Caroline's parents were an interesting mix.  Her father, Ed, was a brilliant man, extremely successful in his field, and rather charismatic.  He was a prominent professional, self-assured, and self-confident, already with many significant accomplishments at a relatively young age.  His wife, Susan, had chosen to be a stay at home mother.  As we got to know them better we discovered Susan had come from a difficult back ground; her mother had been a poorly controlled Manic-Depressive who had never been diagnosed or treated until Susan reached adulthood, despite being overtly symptomatic during her childhood.  While I was not at all involved with Susan or her mother as a professional, it was hard not to conclude that her high levels of anxiety were related to her childhood experiences.  Susan suffered not only from anxiety, but she also exhibited the kinds of controlling behavior that are not uncommon in people who feel an intense need for structure in order to manage their own affective states.  Typically, children who were exposed to poorly regulated parental anger and anxiety attempt to control others; if they are unlucky enough to have porous (ego) boundaries, which is often a concomitant of growing up with a disturbed parent,  rigid self-control, accompanied by (unconscious) attempts to control others allows them to feel protected from the vagaries of intense affects.  Susan was especially controlling with her young daughter.  She had a long list of do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts) and whenever Caroline moved too far away from her or began to explore areas that made her mother anxious, Susan would become anxious, even agitated, and physically remove Caroline from the perceived danger.  The dangers that Susan reacted to were nothing out of the ordinary.  While the other children would put all sorts of toys in their mouths and climb on furniture, often gathering bumps and bruises from the subsequent falls, such activity was off limits for Caroline whose mother would react with anxiety verging on panic if Caroline so much as mouthed a doll.  Since a significant part of a young child's exploration of the world involves putting things in her mouth, Susan's behavior cause Caroline to incorporate powerful inhibitions for such exploration.  Further, when everything is a danger, the children quickly learns that the world is a dangerous place and vigilance must be exercised at all times.  Uninhibited play, a direct precursor to uninhibited thought, is crushed.

By now, you may be getting some idea of where I am going with this.  Although Caroline came into the world with a good intellectual endowment and had a high IQ, by High School she was an unhappy, inhibited, deeply incurious young woman who scored well on tests but had no spark of creativity or liveliness to her. 

Consider a culture composed of Susans and Carolines.

The Social Singularity Continued

There are some questions that are so dangerous that most people simply refuse to consider them.  However as our technology begins to offer new tools, some of our unthinkable questions may well be answered within a mere generation. 

One such question concerns the third rail of sociology:  Are some groups incapable of success because of congenital deficits? 

Racists and bigots have traditionally labeled other ethnic groups as deficient and defective.  The Nazis took this its ultimate level in their attempt to destroy Jews, Gypsies, and all others who fell short of their conception of the master race, but the Nazis were neither the first nor the last to advocate and practice genocide.  In fact, a good argument can be made that throughout human history genocide of failed cultures has been the rule rather than the exception.  In this I am using an operational definition of (past) failed culture, ie cultures that proved to be unable to defend themselves. 

The two cultures that stand out as failures (as measured by common metrics) in our current times are sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world, with the greater Muslim world in a more ambiguous condition.  Part of the philosophical basis for invading Iraq was to establish that an Arab country could in fact become a modern state and join the developing world.  It remains unclear how this will play out.

We are now approaching a time when the genotypy and phenotypy of intelligence may be amenable to exploration in a scientific manner.  The implications of this are dramatic and cannot be understated.  Without a great deal of preparation the outcome of such research is likely to be extraordinarily traumatic.

Randall Parker at Future Pundit reports on some provocative research:

Twin Brain Scan Studies Find Genetic Influences On Intelligence

When In Loco Parentis is Child Abuse

Our culture is steeped in sexuality, with the result that too many children grow up with a pervasive over-stimulation which is damaging to the young, developing psyche.  The results of such traumatic over-stimulation can include psychic numbing, devaluation of relationships in favor of hedonic sexuality, poorly differentiated sexuality which, again, devalues relationships, and various other problems in forming and maintaining intimate relationships. 

Our culture's ambivalence about the premature entry of children into a faux-adult sexuality has been on display recently, with both sides of the conflict exhibiting the extreme splitting characteristic of a confused and pathological sexuality.

John Stossel in the Sun discusses the absurdities that arise from a strict adherence to "zero tolerance" policies.  Such policies are greatly favored by those with a bureaucratic mindset because they do not have to worry about exercising critical thinking or judgment (and, after all, making judgments has long been eschewed as un-PC.)  To call the outcome of such policies absurd may be an understatement:

Young Sex Offenders 

Imagine how DeMarcus Blackwell felt when he was told that his son Chris had engaged in "sexual contact and/or sexual harassment" at school. School officials in Waco, Texas, said Chris rubbed his face in the chest of a female teachers' aide.

Well, before you can imagine this father's reaction, you need to know one other fact: His son was 4 years old when the "sexual" incident occurred.

What got Chris into trouble was giving the aide a hug. Only after DeMarcus strenuously complained did the school change the boy's record from "sexual harassment" to "inappropriate physical contact."

At least Chris wasn't sent to jail, as were 13-year-old Cory Mashburn and 12-year-old Ryan Cornelison of McMinnville, Ore. The boys were charged with five counts of felony sex abuse in the first degree because of their conduct toward some 13-year-old girls at their middle school.

The PC-psychosis forges ahead:

Adding 1 + 1 ... or Not

Since the New York Times unlocked Times select it has become possible to once again gain some insight into the cognition of traditional liberalism.  Bob Herbert can be relied upon to take the proper liberal positions on all matters related to race in America.  He reliably supports all of the traditional liberal prescriptions for dealing with issues of poverty and race.  Today he comments on the campaign by Bill Cosby and Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard Psychiatrist, to discuss the critical issues for Black Americans as delineated in their book, Come On, People: On the Path From Victims to Victors.  Dr. Poussaint and Bill Cosby focus on the absence of the father:

... Speaking about the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families, Mr. Cosby imagined a young fatherless child thinking: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly — I don’t know what the reason is.”

Dr. Poussaint, referring to boys who get into trouble, added: “I think a lot of these males kind of have a father hunger and actually grieve that they don’t have a father. And I think later a lot of that turns into anger. ‘Why aren’t you with me? Why don’t you care about me?’ ”

The absence of fathers, and the resultant feelings of abandonment felt by boys and girls, inevitably affect the children’s sense of self-worth, he said.

This is a description of the dynamics of object hunger and externalization which underlie much Black rage.  The core of one's self-identification are the internalized object representations of childhood.  A child without a father often feels acutely abandoned, creates explanatory fantasies for the abandonment (he doesn't love me because I'm not lovable) and remains deeply conflicted about his own self-worth.  The damaged self cannot thrive with such pain and anger directed at itself and externalizes the disappointment to the outside world.  Thus it becomes the world which treats him poorly; it is the world that is racist and hateful toward him.  Combined with the relentless message from our PC-infected schools that they are always wonderful no matter how poorly they do, young Black boys and men are ill equipped to accept responsibility for their short comings and cannot tolerate disappointment or rejection.  Cosby elaborates:

MSM Bias and Pallywood: Incompetence or Malice?

I make it a point to never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.   I hold to this point even when the outcome of such incompetence is harmful to what I consider to be important interests.  However, with new war threats looming, holding the MSM to a higher standard of competence is crucial.

The upcoming Annapolis Summit, already being downplayed on all sides, is all too likely to be a disaster.  The Palestinians and their allies have made clear that their presence at the summit depends on Israeli willingness to cede negotiating points that are non-starters for most Israelis (the right of return, sovereignty over the Temple Mount, etc).  Further, even if Mahmoud Abbas (who is either too weak or too disinclined to confront the terrorists among his Fatah movement, let alone non-Fatah terrorists) can be seduced into attending the conference, the Palestinians have already threatened a third intifada if the talks fail. [HT: Elder of Ziyon]

... Thursday, senior Fatah official and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia warned that if the upcoming regional peace summit does not yield results, Palestinians are likely to respond with a third, more intensified uprising, Army Radio reported.

"If the talks fail, we can expect a third and much more severe intifada," Qureia, who is also known as Abu Ala, was quoted as saying. Qureia currently heads the Palestinian negotiating team.

It is in this context that the slowly developing drama of France2 and Pallywood must be understood.  Reporters, most especially foreign corespondents, have long held themselves up as models of hard-nosed, cynical sophistication.  They have long held pretensions of responding to a higher calling, that is, to bring the spotlight of conscience onto the oppressors who harm the innocent, to give voice to the silenced .  Beyond the damage they have already done to their craft by abandoning the attempt to report facts, they are risking more serious damage to their credibility by their daily attempts to manage and direct the "narrative."  However, I am not concerned with their livelihoods; I am concerned with how this is likely to play out as we approach another round of fighting in the Middle East.

The Singularity and the Unconscious

My last two posts, especially The Social Singularity, dealt with issues that may well seem rather esoteric, far from concerns that most of us have to confront.  There is a Science Fiction quality to discussions of the Singularity, Social or Technological (and ultimately the two aspects can not be clearly distinguished), but the pace of change has already increased so quickly that we may well be in the early stages of profound change.  Certainly to a learned and sophisticated European from the 19th century, we are already beyond the event horizon of the Singularity.  I would suggest that we are all living in a time where the event horizon is rapidly approaching, though like the theoretical astronaut approaching a black hole, exactly when we pass the event horizon will never be obvious to a participant observer. 

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence correctly believes that the single most significant aspect of technological advance will be in the realm of artificial or augmented intelligence.  Their blog is an excellent place to explore some of these concepts.  For example, today Michael Anissimov discusses What is Intelligence?, while last week, Mitchell Howe considered Artificial Consciousness, two subjects of great interest to me.  Mitchell Howe points out an interesting conundrum for the AI community:

What about consciousness? The sense of being one person and not somebody else? The sense of being a captive and concerned audience to the happenings of your particular self?

I think Singularitarians like myself tend to ignore this question — not because it’s unimportant, but because we don’t see it as relevant to our core concerns. Conscious or not, recursively self-improving artificial intelligence presents a risk and opportunity impossible to understate.

...

The implication that tends to follow here is that even if AI is possible, AC — Artificial Consciousness — may not be. Rather than jump right in to a rebuttal, however, let me toss this question to the cognitive science experts in the room: To what extent, if any, are human brain functions relating to creativity and aesthetic appreciation linked to those behind our perceived senses of identity and free will? Has the research progressed far enough to tell us?

The Social Singularity

In response to my post yesterday a reader sent me a link to a highly thought-provoking article, Social Singularity, which presented a very optimistic view of the currently evolving discontinuity known as the internet.  Warren "Bones" Bonesteel, an author and researcher, Sgt USMC 1976-1983, approaches the internet aspect of the technological singularity from a very different place than I do, but his article is instructive:

Currently there are more than one billion people on the internet. Some scholars and researchers claim that the next five years will see at least another one billion people join us. That latter number does not take into account internet capable iPods and cell phones, etc., which are projected to become even more available and ubiquitous over the next few years. In America alone, there are currently two hundred and eleven million people on the internet. More than seventy percent of them get some or all of their news and info from the WWW. The People are now beginning to flex their new-found muscles and take over the aggregation and implementation of memes and narratives that have traditionally been handled by other institutions. [Emphasis mine-SW]

...

The media, our cultural and social institutions, the powerbrokers and politicians no longer control the memes and narratives of our society. The changes that we are going to see will be deep and profound. I have had a very positive feeling about the future since I - finally - understood what I was seeing. What is happening won't end in Xanadu or Utopia, but, in time, it should result in much better scenarios than we presently face as a world culture and society.

One point one billion People around the world are on the internet, with another one billion people projected to join them in less than five years. For our traditional information and educational Gatekeepers and for traditional bureaucrats, politicians and power mongers, this is fearsome news, indeed. For the rest of us, this is empowerment of a type and kind never before seen or imagined. This is true Democracy.

His conclusions are worth considering:

On Autonomy and Regression

Yesterday, The Barrister at Maggie's Farm posted some thoughts about the internal conflict between freedom and security which is so often finds expression in our political life.  He quoted Erich Fromm:

The great psychoanalyst and socio-political thinker Erich Fromm in his politically, psychologically and sociologically brilliant book Escape from Freedom (1941) pondered the human ambivalence towards freedom especially in the context of Fascism, but it applies to any powerful State. He notes that the concept of the "individual," and thus the notion of individual autonomy (ie individual freedom and its responsibilities and risks) arose at the end of Medieval society and was coupled with the Reformation. He asks:

In addition to the problem of the economic and social conditions which have given rise to Fascism, there is a human element which needs to be understood. It is the purpose of this book to analyse those dynamic factors in the character of modern man which made him want to give up freedom and which so widely prevail in millions of our own people.

These are the outstanding questions that arise when we look at the human aspect of freedom, the longing for submission, and the lust for power. What is freedom as a human experience? Is the desire for freedom inherent in human nature? Is it an identical experience regardless of what kind of culture a person lives in, or is it something different depending on the degree of individualism reached in a particular society? Is freedom only the absence of external pressure, or is it also the presence of something and, if so, what? What are the social and economic factors in society that make for the striving for freedom? Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from? Why is it that freedom is for many a cherished goal and for others a threat?

Because the conflict in all of us is a dynamic conflict, with the relative strength of our desire for autonomy varying in inverse proportion to the desire for regressive surrender to a powerful authority, there is always a dynamic equilibrium existing between the two trends.  There are a number of reasons for concern that the dynamic equilibrium is becoming increasingly unbalanced toward the security end of the spectrum; this is not a salutary development.

With Enemies Like This ...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Variously attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, et al.

The staccato of Peace Drums can be heard emanating from the usual suspects in the Middle East.  The Israeli government and the Israeli Left are desperately looking for someone to surrender more land and sovereignty to (even if in reality the Palestinians have minimal attachment to Jerusalem.)  Mahmoud Abbas is a poor choice, not only a corrupt yet urbane thug, Holocaust denier, supporter of Palestinian terrorism, but also weak and vacillating as a bonus.  At the moment he is apparently the best that the Israelis and their American enablers can find.  Threats and demands have been variously reported and, as usual, Israel, having gone some way toward re-establishing deterrence via their strike on Syrian nuclear facilities last month, are now expected to make concessions from a position of strength.  Of course, were Israel to actually lose a war, no one would expect the Arabs to make concessions form a position of strength.  Since there would no longer be an Israel, such an expectation would be moot, in any event.  For Israel, every war is an existential struggle; they live in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by genocidal Jew Haters, so defeat would not offer an opportunity to return to some mythical status quo ante.

At the moment, it is fair to say that Civilization is threatened by radical Islam, a supremacist, racist, anti-Semitic ideology based on the Koran.  While it is proper and expectable that any religion believe that it offers the best and most fitting avenue to approach God, only Islam insists that anyone who raises questions about it deserves death.  This leads to such quaint customs as beheading infidels, heretics, and apostates, and suicide bombing, which the Arabs did not invent but have gone a long way toward perfecting.  It also suggests a commonality of outcome for Israel and those other nations most at risk from the depredations of Imperialist Islam.

As is traditional, Israel is civilization's "canary in the coal mine" and their experience is likely to be instructive.  Yesterday the Jewish Chronicle posted an article by David McAvoy (who spent a year in Syria from July 2006 to August 2007) which helps explain why Israel will never be defeated by the Arabs and why Islam will ultimately fail in their efforts to take over Europe. [HT: Dissecting Leftism]

Why Myths Matter

In one of those coincidences that give texture to our existence, today is a day to celebrate two different men, with two different legacies.  The way in which each has been used and abused by history is quite instructive.

Today is Columbus Day, a day which used to be celebrated by Americans of all stripes and persuasions.  Christopher Columbus discovered America and paved the way for the settlement of a New World; that New World eventually bequeathed us America.  The myth of Christopher Columbus was of an intrepid explorer, sailing into the West, risking all to find a new world.

The New York Times today has only one article about Christopher Columbus.  Apparently, there remains some dispute over his provenance.  The article, Seeking Columbus’s Origins, With a Swab is fairly straightforward, but mentions, almost as a gratuitous afterthought, the current mythology surrounding Columbus as translated by our leading bastion of liberalism.  In the middle of a discussion of the utility of DNA testing to establish whose claims to Columbus are correct, there is this:

A Colom match could overturn conventional wisdom about the nationality, class, religion, and motives of the man who began the age of American colonization. On the other hand, an association with Colombo DNA would cement Italy’s national pride in a man who remains a hero to many, complaints from American Indians he slaughtered, Africans he enslaved and Vikings who got there first notwithstanding. [Emphasis mine-SW]

By now no one is surprised that Columbus is only understood as a murderer of Native Americans who lived in an idyllic state of nature before the white man arrived, or that he was somehow responsible for enslaving Africans, or that he didn't even discover the New World.  This devalued mythology is as one dimensional as the typical idealized depictions of Columbus when I was in grade school; of course, in first grade, we didn't expect much nuance.

The contrast is most striking because there is another anniversary celebration going on.  For those who have not been paying attention, apparently we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the death of that great humanitarian whose face launched a thousand T-shirts, Che Guevara.