An Intelligence Test
esr.ibiblio.org
esr.ibiblio.org
Based on the assumption that the author does not tell his kids to not help whites: yup, racist. There would be several indicators that influence that decision that are ignored here, like: is it a man or a woman? Is it a family? What car do they drive? How are they dressed? ...
I repeat: using a statistical approach is very fine with me -- prejudices are heuristics. It's important to know what your prejudices are and where they come from; and it's very important to have diverse friends; the more cultures you have in your circle of friends the more you can learn from them, the more they can learn from you.
Earlier today, there was an article talking about how often German police uses guns against people (84 bullets a year, I believe) and that American uses more bullets on some chases alone.
Should I think that Americans have it 'in their blood' and not help them out in cases of emergencies?
Nope, I will not.
And I 'failed', because I answered Yes to question 4. By the common usage of the word 'racist', John Derbyshire is pretty clearly a racist. Though that of course has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of the statements in this article.
Yes. This seems to be a test of your ability to gauge, be aware of, and override your first emotional reactions to material. That process, which is driven primarily by the prefrontal cortex within the brain, is correlated with intelligence -- but it is not the sole basis of intelligence.
"...I answered Yes to question 4."
Questions 4 and 5 are the most problematic on the "test," precisely because they require us to make or withhold judgments based on something we can't verify: what John believes about race, what motivated him to write the article, etc.
John Derbyshire is still likely to be a racist even if every statistic he cited is true, just as it's possible for him to be a racist if nothing he cited is true. Labeling him a racist, or not a racist, is our best attempt at guessing his views on race based on the text he's written. Arriving at the conclusion that he is racist, based solely on reading his text, is fairly rational -- regardless of whether or not we're open-minded w/r/t to what his article says, and regardless of whether or not we consider the label of "racist" to be a good, neutral, or bad thing.
I suppose the answer that the author wants us to arrive at for Question 4 is "We can't know for sure." And, while that's true in some respects, the available evidence points us in a direction that we'd be silly to disregard.
Here I get to quote Paul Graham[1]:
"In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not."
I also wonder where we should take refuge, and where should they?
O, rationality, thou art a hard master!