I find Steve Sailer to be intelligent, interesting, and something a little close to evil.

These articles are some of his more intelligent and interesting works, where he spends his efforts making illuminating points about various cultures.

I find his works on racial differences to be somewhat more disquieting, mainly because I believe them to be a set up for the points that he tries to make about racial differences in mental abilities and implications about racial differences in ethical makeup (just how many times does he have to quote the difference in per capita crime rates, etc..)

First, this research into racial difference in mental abilities is pretty dicey. Nobody starts it without an intended outcome (in either direction), and our knowledge of neurology is iffy enough that attributing differences to genetic components, pre-natal environment, and post-natal environment is a wide open game that allows the figures to fit almost anyone's biases.

However, regardless of the science, the field has questionable value to humanity as a whole.

There are two major points that I dislike.

First, like it or not, our culture tends to equate a humans value with their intelligence. An accident with that kills a mentally retarded child is less tragic than one in which a child genius. Whether he intends to or not, Steve Sailer is trying to promlugate an idea that *will* be translated as "Blacks are less worthy human beings than whites."

(As an aside, my guess is that Steve is fully cognizant of this outcome, but his motives stem from cultural preservation rather than racial hatred.)

Secondly, any student of humanity knows that we humans overgeneralize. We take a guideline and give it force of law. Steve is always careful to talk about how the science talks about groups, but the reality is that it *will* be applied to individuals.

Society is fundamentally designed around the concept of equality of opportunity *because* there's a fundamental belief in equality of man. Remove the belief, and the whole reason for equality of opportunity is lost, and at terrible cost for our society.

He talks about eliminating affirmative action so that one knows that any minorities that got in deserved their place. At the same time he pushes forward positions that, if widely espoused, would guarantee that most would not accept the person's merit anyway.

My personal experience was more related to the Summers controversy. Intelligent teachers who intellectually understood that statistical differences in outlying ability cannot be translated into observations about individuals *could* not overcome their own intuitive bias to accept that yes, there were (few) individual women who were extremely talented at physics. These women (okay, girls) bore the cost.

At first I was angry at th teachers. Eventually I realized that this is simply how humans are wired.

The truth itself is not absolute justification. See a controlled fire in a movie theatre and scream "fire" and lots of people panic and die. Are you responsible, even as you spoke the truth? Yes, if you are intelligent enough to understand how people will react to your words. (And, more trivially, are you a hero speaking truth for telling your grandmother that her dress is ugly?)

To me, Steve Sailer is like that. He chooses to promlugate a somewhat dubious science that will have, if he is successful, a dreadful cost on society and countless talented inviduals. I don't believe that is his goal in and of itself, but I do believe that is a price he is willing to see paid (by others) in order to further his goals.

Posted by: Tom West on July 15, 2006 9:56 AM