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Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

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Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#91

Post by cJ0th »

revscat wrote: post #16
lpsz wrote: post #3

What, however, can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? More diversity (in neighborhoods, in workplaces, in schools) would certainly help -- the transition from "us" and "them" to a unified "us." And yet, it's disappointing how segregated America still is today. One fairly in-depth study [1] offers an example of how "today" came to be. (This report is not about any current events, but rathe…

I believe a greater benefit would occur were we to have more mixed race couples, and with it the offspring that would tend to be produced by those relationships.

absolutely. More generally you could say that people from different races need to have something in common to get along with each other. Or even more general: People need to have something in common to have a healthy relationship.

I think the main problem is that most people lack a true passion for anything. Even many people of the same race don't get along well because they have no real interest in anything. If they don't even share the same race (i.e. have even more different properties), shit is about to get real.

Based on that theory I would guess that you see less racism amongst hackers, musicians, athletes etc.

Humans may have made great progress technologically. But having neat digital watches didn't help society as a whole to grow intellectually to the same extend.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#92

Post by swatow »

vidarh wrote: post #79
swatow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical models can be used to argue for a wide range of viewpoints. You could also write a model where people have different innate preferences over the lifestyle they want to lead, and so self-sorting is an unambiguously good thing. I understand that everyone wants "math" to be on their side, but it's not really mathematics that is doing the work here, it's your assumptions.

The maths does not favour a "side" here. The maths demonstrates the consequences of different distribution of attitudes. Dependent on your views, different parameters will lead to good or bad results. What the model does demonstrate is that the set and distribution of viewpoints that will lead to desegrated neighbourhoods is far smaller than people tend to think. It is much easier to end up with segregation than most…

>The maths demonstrates the consequences of different distribution of attitudes.

It demonstrates the consequences of a modeling different distributions of attitudes in a particular way.

>What the model does demonstrate is that the set and distribution of viewpoints that will lead to desegrated neighbourhoods is far smaller than people tend to think. It is much easier to end up with segregation than most people would expect, even with predominantly mostly benign views in most of the population.

It does not demonstrate this, because the parameters and details of the model have no relation to reality. In order for your claim to be true, there would have to be some mapping from real world conditions, to the parameters of the model.

All this model demonstrates is that for some parameters, individual preference for similarity of neighbors dominates over preference for diversity of the community. Which is (to me) obvious anyway.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#93

Post by pvnick »

I hope what I have to say is not as controversial as I fear, but I don't think that individual racist beliefs are as big a problem as we have been told. To look at somebody and consciously judge them to be inferior based on their skin color is so outdated and obsolete, that those who do so are fringe members of society who are typically elderly and either changing their mindset or dying out. We elected a black president in a landslide victory for God's sake. Twice!

No, what is harmful is the vindictive, hyper-vigilant collectivist attitude that persists in a ham-handed attempt at "leveling the playing field." The idea that certain groups of people (blacks, women, gays, etc) need compulsory protection at the expense of other groups (white males), induces a sort of resentment as a response to what is perceived to be a witch hunt. For example, certain events - such as the destruction of Paula Dean for admitting to saying the word "nigger" in the past, or Brendan Eich's dismissal as CEO for his donations against gay marriage - and certain policies - such as affirmative action or the greatly lopsided outcomes of most child custody battles - evoke an understandable, but completely irrational, feeling of resentment towards those groups as a backlash for perceived unfair treatment. It's this "us vs. them" victim mentality that's the problem in mainstream America. That's where the real racist attitudes come from, not some sort of widespread, conscious conclusion that certain groups are intrinsically inferior to others.

The answer is not collectivist protections or more anti-racism vigilance, it is to look beyond our superficial differences and to consider all people as individuals with an equal capacity to love and to be loved. Racism is an outdated idea. Let it die on its own.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#94

Post by pcthrowaway »

While Einstein only fully stopped eating animals shortly before his death, there is some indication he also felt uneasy accepting the general attitude on animals as food for some time before that. This is prejudice that that most of us have yet to shake still.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#95

Post by tokipin »

myownbusiness wrote: post #70
myownbusiness wrote: post #63

Here's the truth that you young programmers aren't going to like. Einstein was a closet socialist/communist who was hugely overrated as a physicist by the media precisely for his left-leaning politics. "Civil rights" is a nation-splitting tactic that was deeply funded and driven by COMINTERN from the beginning from NAACP to the Scottsboro trials and all the way up to the "protests" in 2014. You folks have been taught…

Show that I'm wrong, downvoting coward.

any one of Einstein's contributions in his miracle year would have put him in the history books. to say his contributions to science have been exaggerated is incorrect. he really was that good, whether you like that fact or not.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#96

Post by ivraatiems »

pvnick wrote: post #93

I hope what I have to say is not as controversial as I fear, but I don't think that individual racist beliefs are as big a problem as we have been told. To look at somebody and consciously judge them to be inferior based on their skin color is so outdated and obsolete, that those who do so are fringe members of society who are typically elderly and either changing their mindset or dying out. We elected a black presid…

What evidence leads you to believe that it will, in fact, die on its own?

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#97

Post by _almosnow »

moron4hire wrote: post #54

Racism will continue to be a problem as long as it serves as a useful distraction for the people to prevent us from really scrutinizing the ruling class and the complete disparity between the goals of the super-rich people and the needs of the rest of us who are just trying to get by. Racism, sexism, homophobia, drugs, guns, taxes, war, spying, all of it are just distractions because whether the issue goes left or ri…

Totally agree with your view of how things work on a higher scale.

Isms will always exist because not all of us are equal and we will never be; and I'm not saying that with a discriminating tone, what I mean is that you have to be completely retarded (excuse me, but it's true) to actually believe and state that we are all the same. We all like different stuff, we all have different ways to achieve our goals, we even have (VERY) different moral foundations to asses whether something should be right or wrong.

On the other hand, most of us are used to live under the terrible premise to puts oneself (and thus, its kind) before others. Put these two facts together and everything that has happened (and will continue to happen) throughout our history becomes obvious.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#98

Post by vidarh »

myownbusiness wrote: post #63

Here's the truth that you young programmers aren't going to like. Einstein was a closet socialist/communist who was hugely overrated as a physicist by the media precisely for his left-leaning politics. "Civil rights" is a nation-splitting tactic that was deeply funded and driven by COMINTERN from the beginning from NAACP to the Scottsboro trials and all the way up to the "protests" in 2014. You folks have been taught…

I find it absolutely hilarious that you believe that Comintern - an organization that was dissolved in 1943 - is still "funding and driving" civil rights struggles.

As someone who used to be active in a party that used to be a part of the Comintern, and that spent a lot of time during my youth to try to build support for re-establishing an International, and who learned in the process there are about a dozen "Fourth Internationals" (Comintern was the Third), a few Fifths, and at least a couple of Sixths, none of which acknowledge each other, all of which are ludicrously impotent tiny little groups, the idea of some shadowy remnant of the Third actually still existing and having the power and will to do something good for a change is some world class tin foil hattery.

I also love how you try to pretend that it was a secret that Einstein was left wing, yet at the same time try to push the idea that the supposedly left wing US press (... as a European, the very idea of a left wing US press is comedy gold) were exaggerating his worth as a physicist because of his secret left wing views.

By all means, keep on going. It's exactly this over the top lunacy that have changed US attitudes to socialism - the rate of change the last 20 years have been astounding. Maybe in another 20 your political landscape will start to approach the European.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#99

Post by anigbrowl »

zimbu668 wrote: post #66
itg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More diversity (in neighborhoods, in workplaces, in schools) would certainly help" I'm not so sure. I went to a very diverse and large high school in NJ and what ends up happening is self segregation. All the ethnic groups would mostly end up hanging out with their own types.

When filming Planet of the Apes, the apes and humans didn't mingle over lunch, and the apes, orangutans, and chimpanzees all self segregated as well. http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/12/13/skin-deep-2/

It's worth reading the link here: the point is taht people have a tendency to segregate even for entirely arbitrary reasons, eg when they are playing members of different groups in a make-believe story for film. I've seen similar behavior on lots of film sets; if there are 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in the cast, they'll gravitate to each other at mealtimes, and likewise cast and crew tend to self-segregate as numbers increase.

Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)

#100

Post by lexcorvus »

audioburn wrote: post #61
itjustdontwork wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell us something we don't all already know? It's a fact that rich black students on average have a lower IQ and do worse on tests than the poorest of white students. Just as men are different from women, in many ways, blacks are different from whites in many ways. There's no point in trying to hide from it.

>It's a fact that rich black students on average have a lower IQ and do worse on tests than the poorest of white students. Citation needed

There's a lot of data on this subject; if you're actually interested in evaluating it as a scientific hypothesis (rather than dismissing it as heresy), this should get you started:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2014/03/2008-sat-scores-by-race-b...

The study in question involves the SAT, not formal IQ tests, but the two are highly correlated. [1] You'll also see that the original claim isn't quite supported, as the poorest group of whites scored slightly worse than the richest group of blacks, but the study does broadly support the conclusion that the poorest whites outscore all but the richest blacks.

[1]: See, e.g., http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/Frey.pdf?origin=p.... "These studies indicate that the SAT is mainly a test of g [general intelligence]."

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