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Comment by occam | Hacker News Reader

"... one of the lowest percentages of immigrants of any Western European country: only two percent of its 5.2 million residents.

And a substantial fraction of Finland's immigrants consist of spouses of Finns, Finnish-speaking citizens of Russia (there are pockets of Finnish-speakers throughout the forests of northern Russia), Estonians, whose Uralic language is closest to Finnish, and Swedes (Swedish is the second official language). Third World immigrants make up less than one percent of the population."

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070319_diversity.htm

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I'm pro-immigration, in the classic "the more the merrier" tradition of those with confidence in both markets and human innovation.

But to be intellectually honest, we have to acknowledge that immigrants of different languages, cultures, and economic backgrounds will bring many 'average' statistics of education (and health, etc.) down. This is even true if the immigration is a net-benefit to both natives and newcomers.

With that in mind, the massive downvoting of the parent comment (at -9 at one point) is a dishonest enforcement of political correctness.

Even if you disagree with the conclusions of the linked article, and the other views of that article's author, the comment here is factual and relevant to the topic at hand, and the linked article includes other useful facts about Finland.

If the submission question "What makes Finnish kids so smart?" is legitimate at all -- the study of why one country has different results than others -- discussion has to be free to consider major things that make that country different from others. In Finland's case, that includes its traditional and apparently legally-enforced homogeneity.

I would not want to live in such a place, but I don't want my understanding of such places crippled by a long list of "things you can't say".

legally-enforced homogeneity

Honest question: Would you want to live in a country with legally-enforced diversity?

(Because that's where you're living.)

The question is too vague to answer. What kind of 'diversity' and how is it 'enforced'?

I haven't emigrated, and I prefer more open immigration than either Finland or the U.S. allow.

Yes.

Your neighborhood or mine? Is it okay if the good and decent men of congress choose your neighbors? Or should nationalist groups like La Raza be in charge of determining the country's composition? That's what I mean by "legally-enforced diversity": Powerful people, deciding for other people, whether they are acceptable, or whether they should be numerically marginalized.

If you are asking if enforced diversity as it exists in this country today is ok, as in one cannot be discriminated against based on nationality, color, creed, or sexual orientation, then yes. I prefer that to a nation where tiny city states can determine whether or not they want their neighbors to be all white, or bosses can decide if they only want to hire men. That's totally fine with me, even if it needs to be legally enforced.

La Raza is not a nationalist group, but an organization to help disadvantaged Latinos. Do you know La Raza members?

How about freedom of association? I heard that they tried that once. Seems like a good idea.

"the massive downvoting of the parent comment is a dishonest enforcement of political correctness."

I don't read Sailer's blog, but from what I understand it's mainly devoted to proving that African-Americans have lower IQs because of inferior genetics. Now you might say, well if this really is true, then wouldn't denying it be intellectually dishonest? Here's the thing though. The black-white IQ gap has been almost entirely explained by controlling for SES and other factors. Anyone who spends all day quibbling over the last two or three points clearly just has an axe to grind for other reasons.

The black-white IQ gap has been almost entirely explained by controlling for SES and other factors.

I used to think the same thing. But when I actually spent some time reading and evaluating the evidence, it turns out that is far from the case. The official scientific consensus is that the jury is still out. But there is certainly a strong case for the genetic basis - see this article in Slate for example: http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/

> it's mainly devoted to proving that African-Americans have lower IQs because of inferior genetics

No, it isn't.

Sailer's other writings are no good reason to downvote the factual, relevant excerpt above from user 'occam'.

And regarding those other writings, do you think you can give a fair summary, and a convincing refutation, when you haven't read them?

I've read some of them, and I followed his spat with Gladwell. I also didn't vote down his comment. My point was more that Steve Sailer in general has never struck me as the model of intellectual integrity.

I downvoted it, not because of political correctness, but because it seemed like linkbait. The account was only hours old and the post expressed no view of its own.

Also, the reference to "Third World" immigrants struck me as gratuitous, and suggestive in a negative way.

I agree with most of what you say. But I also think homogenity is not the whole story. How many non spanish speaking kids are there in a typical Mexican classroom? I know Mexico does have an indigenous population, but I think the share of Mexicans who don't speak proper spanish is very low. Probably even lower than that of native swedish or russian speakers in Finland.

My conclusion is that economic and teaching related causes are probably more significant than ethnic ones. I think you would find that mixed language elite schools anywhere in the world rank higher than the average Finnish school. Sadly, it's a poignant feature of most european immigrant populations that they are poor and uneducated. They don't just speak different languages, they don't speak any language particularly well. It's just averaging of course but that's what the PISA test does.

Jesus, as if there weren't enough populist demagogues blaming every problem on immigrants already, now we have to put up with you here on HN.

http://www.siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm

Have a look at the rankings at the bottom, and then explain why Canada, with about 3-4 times more immigration per capita, outscores the US.

Don't bait him. His SEO technique is to spam more popular blogs/forums with links back to his, and to get into these types of arguments, producing more link opportunities for him. Worse, we may get more of his constituency moving in. (There goes the neighborhood).

The best method to protect the site from being inundated with more stuff like this is to try to stay as hacker-focused as possible, perhaps relegating the race/gender/IQ trifecta to the same status as religion and political discussion, or to accept the likely degradation in discussion.

I'm assuming if your comment has negative karma its links are necessarily nofollowed?

edit: Then the strategy aswanson alleges occam is pursuing is totally misguided. Maybe a little note on the bottom of the comment box that all links are nofollowed would prevent any further such attempts.

All links in comments are nofollowed.

...would prevent any further such attempts.

Presuming he is smart enough to understand the implications.

>perhaps relegating the race/gender/IQ trifecta to the same status as religion and political discussion, or to accept the likely degradation in discussion.

I'd prefer to accept the degradation. "X racial subgroup is better/worse in some way than y racial subgroup" is one of the unnamed Things You Can't Say and I see no need to censor it here, even if the discussion makes me uncomfortable.

Right, sweeping it under the table is never a good idea, but I don't know what else can be said about it that hasn't been beaten to all hell and back here and everywhere else. It's not like opinions are going to change, and I, for one, get nothing out of it.

It is informative to know how other people think about these things, so you have a point. I do worry, though, about what type of people will be attracted here by this type of meme.

Nofollowing isn't enough to stop determined SEOs with lots of time on their hands. A nofollow link is still decidedly better than no link at all, because it gets a couple of clicks of traffic and maybe, maybe will be picked up by someone else as a follow link.

The best method to protect the site from being inundated with more stuff like this...

You may be right. It may not (yet) be possible to have a sincere public discussion that isn't drowned out by PC ideologues on one side and racists and xenophobes on the other. It's not always easy to tell who's who, either: sometimes uttering "what you can't say" is an act of courage, sometimes it just means you're an asshole. Intentions and emotions are part of this, and they're harder to read outside the personal sphere.

"Worse, we may get more of his constituency moving in. (There goes the neighborhood)."

We should do everything we can to keep out these immigrants.

Surely there is a technological solution to this. Perhaps a thought purifier?

I don't see how this is SEO. Secondly, I disagree that race, gender and IQ should be banned from discussion along with religion and politics. Ban trolls, not subjects.

Canada has extremely rigorous requirements for immigrants.

"Canada" and "extremely" in the same phrase? An oxymoron!

Edit: I almost didn't post this because people are being so sensitive today. But you're a tough guy. :)

canada's immigrants tend to be more educated. this isn't much of a stretch, the people crossing the border at arizona in 110 degree heat tend to be some of the most disadvantaged from their own society

And what's your point?

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