We don’t know our potential

publish #needswork - add the date I opened this. I’m curious Sharded from Musings on politics.

A brief critique of the Current Affairs article, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/09/we-dont-know-our-potential.

The author is brazenly pro-socialist (as is only natural - he’s a professional writer) and makes some novel arguments in support of socialism through a critique of the pro-socialist novel, The Cult of Smart by Fredrik DeBoer, which is in turn a critique of the 1994 libertarian(?) novel, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

The ideas behind Herrnstein and Murray’s (henceforth I will refer to them as H&M’s) book is that:

1. Human intelligence is measurable.
2. Human intelligence is hereditary. Several studies allege 0.5-0.8 variation in educational metrics tied to genetics.
3. The supposedly-meritocratic system we live in is flawed because it organizes a hierarchy based on intelligence, which is beyond an individual’s control.
4. Intelligence is neither an inherently good nor bad quality.
5. The world would be better if systems of government would recognize this and stop pouring money into illusory promises of equal opportunity.
6. We should return to tradition as a means of inefficiently yet stably guiding our social stratification in spite of this revelation.

DeBoer’s argument seems to be identical except with points 5 and 6 replaced:

5. The world would be better if systems of government would recognize this and denounce capitalism as an absurd project.
6. We should return to community-driven government as a means of inefficiently yet stably distributing power and cash to people in spite of this revelation.

Both of these conclusions seem absurd IMO. The former basically accepts racism and social inequity as a fact of life and not worth fighting to fix (a fair utilitarian argument, but that doesn’t really sit right with me), while the latter is naively optimistic about the average human’s care towards other humans and the ability of a decentralized government to deliver everyone cash (I feel weary invoking this argument, but who in a volunteer-based labor force will want to calibrate and manufacture glasses for the 61% of 330 million US population who needs glasses?).

Credit where it is due: both positions acknowledge the uncomfortable possibility that intelligence is hereditary. Given the global economy leaning deeper towards rewards intelligence (even when it is a market inefficiency to do so… looking at quantitative trading in particular), how can we organize society in the best way?

Relatedly: Could it be that a major factor in rising economic inequality is highly-intelligent individuals genetically selecting their partners through college or similar institutions?