I abhor the authoritarianism of postmodernism and its ilk but almost always there is some nugget of insight that is true or needs to be taken into account. As an example, I reject the standard authoritarianism and cult of victimhood of the critical race theorists and intersectionalists. However, the originator of that line of totalitarianism did have a worthwhile insight. The insight did not actually necessitate the repressive policies that its advocates propounded but it was a worthwhile insight.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw pointed out, in entirely different terms, that nominal representativeness did not guaranty actual representativeness.
Take a system that has two sets of binaries, black and white, and male and female. The quadrants are: Black males, 10% of the population, Black females, 10% of the population, White males, 40% of the population, White females, 40% of the population.
Take a large corporation that is committed to representativeness. Have of its workforce is employed in support activities (accounting, HR, training, etc.) and half its population is employed in manufacturing. Manufacturing jobs are paid much more than support jobs.
The corporation reports that it's workforce is representative - 80% white and 20% black and 50% male and 50% female. It's representative, right?
Or is it? Crenshaw's insight was that it might not be. You have to consider the intersectionality of the identities.
If all the internal jobs are performed by white women, the corporation has a workforce that is 50% female. If 40% of the manufacturing workforce are black males, then you have a workforce that is 20% black and 80% white. At the highest level of aggregation, the company is representative, at least in the abstract.
BUT - there are no black women employed by the corporation at all. White males are markedly underrepresented (they should be 40% of the workforce and they are 30%). White females are way overrepresented as are black males.
Like Simpson's paradox where the constituent trends may be opposite the aggregate trends, intersectionality reveals that aggregate representativeness may hide unrepresentativeness at the constituent level. That's a great point that is easily overlooked.
The fact that the authoritarians took this in the dysfunctional bordering on evil direction of quotas and heavily policed identities at multiple levels (race, sex, class, ableism, orientation, transgender, xenophobia, religion, ethnicity, country of origin, socio-economic status, etc.) does not negate the original intersectionalist insight that aggregate representation is not the same as systemic representation.
There are plenty of thinkers out there whose research and insights are interesting but whose perception of the direction of where their research and insight should take them make me nervous.
But if you are a classical liberal and your interests are in progress and truth, then philosophically you cannot shut out insight because of an aversion to individuals. Vespasian was correct, though we might be uncomfortable with the idea, Pecunia non olet. Neither money nor ideas should be dismissed simply because of their origins.
AS an example, I am generally broadly supportive of skills-based immigration to the US. I acknowledge that there might be some effective limit to the percent of immigrants who can be effectively acculturated and absorbed in a given period of time, but that does not negate the commitment to openness, it just implies we have to manage the process.
Our current system is broadly supposed to be tilted towards skills based immigration which should be beneficial to the citizens of the US. There is a subset of our immigration law which is geared towards reuniting families. Fair enough, that is a nice humanitarian position. However, I recently came across a study indicating that 70% of immigrants are actually coming via that family reunion component, what is referred to as a chain migration. One highly qualified person immigrates and then brings parents, siblings, etc. IF that 70% figure is true, then that is a major flaw in our immigration policy. 10%, sure. 70% implies that immigration is occurring without any consideration of benefit to American citizens. The less skilled the the chain migration is, the more challenges that creates for Americans.
Is the 70% figure true? No idea. The article presented a reasonable argument for why it might be so but advocates always present good arguments. The point is not the truth or not but that I have never seen that plausible 70% figure in any mainstream reporting. You have to go to the fringes sometimes to challenge that which is deemed outside the Overton window.
Which brings me to Free speech absolutism by Audacious Epigone. The implications of some of his thought processes make me nervous but he occasionally comes up with interesting information. In this instance, he uses some large scale longitudinal data to establish an interesting correlation.
I consider myself pretty close to a free speech absolutist and regard free speech as the life blood of progress. From the Epigone:
I've previously created indices based on GSS responses to questions about whether various 'controversial' speakers should or should not be permitted to speak publicly.12,000 is a good population size and GSS is a broadly respected source.
The selection of five types of speakers does a pretty good job running the political gamut (atheists, communists, and homosexuals on the left; militarists and racists on the right). That means there are leftists who are fine with nihilistic commi faggots speaking but who don't want to extend the same courtesy to aspiring fuhrers, and vice versa, however, and that muddies things up.
Further, there are wide variances in general perceptions of what should be publicly permissible. At 86% support among the total population, homosexuals are given the green light. Only 61% say racists should be given first amendment protections, in contrast.
In attempt to deal with this, the following graphs show the percentages of respondents, by selected demographic characteristics, who are free speech absolutists. That is, they say members of all five 'controversial' groups should be permitted to speak publicly.
For contemporary relevance, all responses are from 2000 onward. Because IQ ranges are based on wordsum scores, only those born in the US are considered for the five intelligence categories. White, black, and Asian racial categories are all restricted to non-Hispanics (N = 12,370):
Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
Free speech is always being threatened and only 50% of native born Americans are committed to absolute free speech. If a commitment to free speech is indeed the life blood of our nation, then immigrants having only a 30% commitment is obviously a concern. Not an overwhelming concern, but one to be addressed. We don't want to import the dysfunctional cultural traits prevalent elsewhere in the world to our own complex system.
What really grabbed my attention though was the strong correlation between IQ and a commitment to free speech. Among the lowest IQ, only roughly 25% are committed to free speech whereas the top quintile in IQ have an 80% commitment to absolute free speech.
That is a strong correlation on a large data set. Fascinating. The big asterisk is the validity of a 10 word wordsum test. Elsewhere I have seen that these sorts of minimalist wordsum tests are surprisingly predictive but still, it is a proxy for IQ, not a real IQ measure.
This research does not settle anything but it does affirm a possible insight that I had not considered before, that IQ might be a confound for commitment to free speech.
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