Escape the echo chamber

https://jamesaltucher.com/2012/12/ten-reasons-i-dont-have-op...

  Maybe political allegiance has replaced 
  basic reasoning skills.

We have phases, where aggregate priciples of interaction change, not unlike shifts in musical taste. Cycles of class and intellectualism, and cycles of low-brow simplicity. Each pole has its own facets and degrees of appeal and attraction. The cycles are an expression of the prevailing winds for the dominant age group.

For the most part, a lot of people clearly thought their vote didn't matter, didn't really care who got elected, developed an opinion that the presidency doesn't matter, and cast the vote that seemed to be biggest joke.

Two other, much smaller, groups of people exist: those that genuinely believe a tiny, weak, incompetant and ineffectual government is a good thing (because substitute teachers aren't as demanding), and those that genuinely want to help, improve the world, and make a difference in benefitting the lives of as many people as possible, starting with those that have the least going for them.

The goof offs, though, voted the most and won. That's it. That's the only thing that happened, and it's not a disaster yet. Let's see if we can keep it that way, and stay on track.

There's some violence and sabotage in the picture too, and all of it stems from an unnecessary war in Iraq that should have never happened. Some of the very real political destabilization on the fringes is essentially blowback and revenge for that debacle. Take a step back, and note the coincidence in timing for each. I'm not sure this stuff will difuse itself. It may simmer on in the background for some time, and might not have any solution, as retaliation tends to fuel a continuity of grudges.

This makes it sound like Black undertook this "reboot" on his own, just by reading and listening. That's not how Black himself tells the story:

In 2010, I moved across the state and started college at this little liberal arts college in Florida, which was about three and a half hours from home

Okay, this was one step he did take on his own: he changed his environment. But eventually he started talking to his fellow students.

And I would say, “This is what I believe about I.Q. differences, I have 12 different studies that have been published over the years, here’s the journal that’s put this stuff together, I believe that this is true, that race predicts I.Q. and that there were I.Q. differences in races.” And they would come back with 150 more recent, more well researched studies and explain to me how statistics works and we would go back and forth until I would come to the end of that argument and I’d say, Yes that makes sense, that does not hold together and I’ll remove that from my ideological toolbox but everything else is still there. And we did that over a year or two on one thing after another until I got to a point where I didn’t believe it anymore.

The whole thing (it's a podcast transcript) is worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transc...

If you’re wealthy this is no problem of course. The wealthier you are, the less opinions you should share or fight for. You can afford this because you can always put your fortune (and yourself) into an available free society with property rights.

If you’re poor however, it only works as long as reason and democracty triumphs in your society. Because nobody will want you if you ever have to flee.

The bigger question is why do some people care so much and why are they so focused on ethnicity among many other data points that could be predictive of intelligence. I typically ask these people if some connection between race and intelligence actually existed, is it your intention to change how society is organized or governed somehow? If it is, then there are historical examples of that going badly, and if not, then why is the answer important?