A clash of worldviews

From Italian north-south genetic differences confirmed by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard.  The subheading is Moving the debate forward one step at a time.  

There is, appropriately, a huge aversion to bigotry based on stereotypes and to racism in general.  There is also a huge, though inarticulate, aversion to biological determinism and genetic reductionism.  

For statist, totalitarian, utopianists, stereotypes and bigotry based on stereotypes is evidence of the errors which need to be engineered out of the human system.  It is a theological conviction that not only are people created equal, they are equal.  They are identical.  The fact that this is obviously not true is merely a litmus test of one's convictions.  If you inadvertently and indirectly acknowledge differences, you reveal yourself as a heretic to be purified.  Or a racist to be condemned and punished.  

Stereotypes and bigotry are not nearly the same level of a problem for Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberals.  Classical Liberals acknowledge the evil of stereotypes and bigotry but they understand people are neither identical nor equal.  Classical Liberals believe that people are created with equal natural rights but then, through real world conditions, manifest those equal rights differently from one another.  

Unlike Totalitarians who often focus on groups and group rights, Classical Liberals always come back to individuals and individual rights.  Group differences are easier for Classical Liberals to acknowledge because for them the sin is not about group differences.  The sin is when you fail to accord individuals the respect of treating them as individuals.  

While acknowledging that there are group differences is fine, the sin occurs when you insist on applying group attributes to the individual regardless of the individual's actual attributes.  Midwesterners might be Nice but according Joe Smith from the midwest the benefits of being Nice when Joe Smith is actually a mean-spirited, crotchety old man is the sin.  The group stereotype might provide useful clues in an information poor environment, but stereotypes are no substitute for actual empirical evidence.  Joe Smith is an individual with individual attributes regardless of what might be the stereotypes of his associated groups.  Deal with him as an individual.  

The Totalitarian Statists in the US, being Social Justice Theorists, Critical Race Theorists, Postmodernists, The Woke, are obsessed with the sin of Racism.  An obsession which blinds them to the fact that almost all the stereotypes and bigotry about which they show Inquisition levels of revulsion are in fact Class and Culture stereotypes and not race stereotypes.  

This only becomes clear when you move beyond the US to countries which have strong manifestations of bigotry and stereotyping even when they are of the same race and even ethnic origin.  Such as Italy.

The stereotype in Italy is of a hardworking, tall, healthy, productive, intelligent, socially open North and a grifting, backwards, indolent, short, unhealthy, slow South.  Certainly, all of Italy is of the same race.  Even the ethnic differences aren't that great.  

Yet the regional stereotypes are strong.  

Kirkegaard is discussing a new study which affirms these regional stereotypes, the next in a series of such studies.  The study's finding is:

In Italy, there is a consistent north-south gradient in economic development, education, intelligence (IQ) and stature. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possible genetic cause of differences in educational attainment by using publicly available DNA data and recent genetic predictive models. Principal components analysis confirmed the presence of a high degree of population structure and clusters with little overlap between northern and southern Italy, corresponding to traditional macro-regions (Northern, Central, and Southern). This ancestry component correlates with the polygenic scores (PGS) for educational attainment (r = .2 to .3). The differences in the genetic scores for educational attainment and height follow the same north-south gradient and are of similar magnitude to the measured phenotypic differences (Cohen’s d is 0.5 to 0.6). Key Words: Italy, Inequality, Intelligence, Cognitive ability, Education, Genetics, Polygenic score.

Kirkegaard looks at the statistical aspects of the study and assesses its validity.  He then sets this study in the context of research over the past twenty years.  He observes how the chattering classes (the Woke) always condemn such findings as if empirical evidence were a theological issue.  Empirical evidence may be correct or incorrect but it is not good or evil.

Kirkegaard then bolsters the technical evidence from these studies with the broader context.

Coming up with historical supporting data is easy: look at origins of Italian scientists, Nobel prize winners, renaissance eminent men and so on. These are invariably more common in the north. There's a bunch of older data about regional development, and later, there's age heaping data from the 1800s too. They are available at a lower level of aggregation, provinces. Some years ago I merged these with the Italian school achievement data at the same level, and the 1800s data correlated at about .60 with the modern scores. 

He finally concludes with a series of predictions which are almost certainly going to be true.  The Puritanical Utopianists will always be revulsed by reality and the Classical Liberal will always want to explore reality.

We can confidently make some more predictions:

Future studies will confirm regional patterns in intelligence and its various downstream effects in Italy, wealth, health, education etc.

Future genetic studies will find polygenic score differences in line with the above.

These results will be denied to show what they plainly show for a while.

It will eventually be conceded as obvious. Indeed, it is obvious.

Empirical evidence always has to be scrubbed hard to confirm it.  Interpretations of empirical evidence also have to be rigorously argued.  But there is no sin in acknowledging reality.  The only sin is to deny equal rights and to fail to treat individuals as anything other than individuals.  The individual is never the average.