james_nicoll ([info]james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2008-05-16 10:53:00
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Discover Institute pundit recapitulates bad SF.
Are (white) Americans a super-race bred for risk taking? One film critic thinks so!

A godless biologist is less keen on the idea.

ObSF: Any one of Heinlein's books where he talks about pioneering versus In the Wet, where we learn that colonials are general second-raters who prosper because of an advantageous set of circumstances (1). Amazingly, Heinlein was a colonial while Shute was British.

1: This is FILTH, isn't it? "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"?

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[info]kristine_smith
2008-05-16 03:09 pm UTC (link)
1: This is FILTH, isn't it? "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"?

Love this.

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[info]del_c
2008-05-16 03:35 pm UTC (link)
Heinlein was a colonial while Shute was British.

Non sequitur. The relevant descriptions are "stay-at-home descendant of colonists" (Heinlein) and "colonist" (Shute, who emigrated to Australia).

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-16 03:39 pm UTC (link)
It's not a non sequitur. It's inaccurate, which now that I think about it is worse.

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[info]yorksranter.wordpress.com
2008-05-18 09:43 pm UTC (link)
The problem with this argument is that the Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service, and later the Colonial Administrative Service, all got to pick the young'uns passing out of Sandhurst and passing the Civil Service exams *before* the Home Civil Service or the British Army. Further, the pay was better.

It may have been different in the private sector. But FILTH is the economic version of "No Dogs, No Chinese"; everyone knows it but there's no evidence it ever existed.

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[info]carloshasanax
2008-05-16 03:44 pm UTC (link)
Yup, that's FILTH.

You know, if one were to judge evolutionary fitness by comparing the number of descendants a person of reproductive age in 1850 -- the heyday of the American frontier -- would have in 1950, the winners would probably be the Irish.

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[info]akicif
2008-05-16 03:48 pm UTC (link)
Certainly true if you do the survey in mid-March, it seems!

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-16 03:51 pm UTC (link)
Go, descendents of Niall of the Nine Hostages! We rule!

Oddly, the first FILTHy SF novel that comes to mind in by Pournelle: Birth of Fire, where a terrestrial no-hoper finds a new life in the off-world colonies. He might come from the wrong class, though. For some reason, I think you need to be at least upper middle class for FILTH to apply.

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[info]carloshasanax
2008-05-16 04:30 pm UTC (link)
If memory serves, Falkenberg was one of the few upper-class Citizens, so that might be a better example.

In Pournelle's universe, the FILTH analogs would be the middle managers of the Taxpayer class running the colonies. I mean, he has American Express running one, and I still can't figure out what the hell that was supposed to imply. (It's Pournelle, so it's meant to imply something. At least it's not code for The Jews.)

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"Equities in Dallas"
[info]florbigoo
2008-05-16 05:48 pm UTC (link)
Interstellar colonies are the ultimate back office. I think that's it - the training class idiots who can't be mainstreamed into the corporate culture can air mailed where they can't do any harm.

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Re: "Equities in Dallas"
[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-16 07:43 pm UTC (link)
Hmmm. Should I be looking at the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne?

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[info]grimjiminember
2008-05-16 03:56 pm UTC (link)
I read of Whybrow's notion of the hypomanic American.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas_section2-7.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The leap to a libertarian political system is pretty flimsy. A bogus aspect of the hypomanic notion is that there's been historically a lot of migration in the past few millenia around the world.

One could also also argue that the progeny of former immigrants would be more motivated to migrate again rather than stay put if opportunities in the USA soured compared to the rest of the world, meaning they'd also discard libertarianism/capitalism if they felt they could get a better deal. This hypothesis might even "explain" the stereotype of Americans openly considering moving to Canada if things don't go their way.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the hypomatic hypothesis is valid, one can almost immediately conclude that illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are clearly genetically superior because they're part of the 2% self-selecting group that is willing to leave their homelands in difficult times. All the more reason to provide them with a fast track to citizenship and have them directly contribute to the strength of the US economy.

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-16 04:06 pm UTC (link)
This hypothesis might even "explain" the stereotype of Americans openly considering moving to Canada if things don't go their way.

Although most don't. My parents did but they were exceptional.

Canada has a larger fraction of foreign born residents, so we must be an even superer super-race.

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[info]sclerotic_rings
2008-05-16 04:10 pm UTC (link)
Well, that's a given. You wouldn't be so damn mellow if you had American-sized penises.

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-16 04:42 pm UTC (link)
Mind you, our 18+ % pales in comparison to Luxumbourg (33% foreign born).

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[info]davidwilford
2008-05-16 04:52 pm UTC (link)
I wonder how that compares to Vancouver?

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[info]keithmm
2008-05-16 07:33 pm UTC (link)
As of 2001 it was 38%.

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[info]tceisele
2008-05-16 06:46 pm UTC (link)
Of course, in Luxembourg, if you were born more than about 20 miles away in any direction, you are foreign-born. That would tend to skew the ratios a bit, I would think.

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[info]rezendi
2008-05-16 07:29 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, but most of those are from Germany, France, Belgium or Holland, no? Moving from there to Luxembourg is about as significant as moving from Toronto to Sherbrooke.

Dubai is 80% foreign-born, which I gather therefore makes its residents ultra-mega-super-dupers.

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[info]grimjiminember
2008-05-16 08:10 pm UTC (link)
Our urban centres seem particularly "fit".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Toronto
... in 2004, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranked Toronto second, behind Miami, in its "List of World Cities with the Largest Percentage of Foreign-born Population"... Data released by Statistics Canada as part of the 2006 census indicates that Toronto has surpassed Miami in this year, with 45.7% of the population of the city being foreign born.

Toronto represents a multiracial mosaic. The 2001 Canadian census indicates 42.8% of Toronto's population being of a visible minority. In March 2005, Statistics Canada projected that the visible minority proportion will comprise a majority in Toronto by 2012.
Why, it's downright peculiar that Toronto hasn't picked up and joined the USA already!

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[info]austin_dern
2008-05-18 04:23 am UTC (link)

Incidentally (as you do seem to enjoy data like this), a seminar I attended this afternoon mentioned the Singaporean workforce was approximately 30 percent foreign talent, and the nation's population was just a few percentage points less foreign-born (either people on work passes and their dependents, permanent residents, or so on). And at least official Ministry of Manpower doctrine is that more folks from overseas are welcome.

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[info]autopope
2008-05-16 06:23 pm UTC (link)
Damn you, Nicoll, you got teh stupid all over me again!

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[info]sclerotic_rings
2008-05-16 04:14 pm UTC (link)
Of course, we're talking about Michael Medved. Every time he opens his yap, he confirms that The Golden Turkey Awards were less a celebration of crap films and more a demonstration of how he was overly obsessed with Ed Wood's lingerie.

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[info]mmcirvin
2008-05-16 09:26 pm UTC (link)
Wasn't that mostly/partly written by his brother anyway?

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[info]sclerotic_rings
2008-05-16 10:41 pm UTC (link)
Part of it was written by his brother Harry, who shared with Michael a hatred of the system that allowed "those sorts" of films to be made but wouldn't buy their stuff. However, most of the Hollywood Hall of Shame was pure Michael.

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[info]rezendi
2008-05-16 06:09 pm UTC (link)
Mind you, many colonists did have to contend with some awfully strong selection pressures in the form of diseases - I've seen old British cemeteries in Belize, Calcutta, Ghana, etc., and each time been amazed by how many died so young.

Doubted it lasted long enough to have much meaningful genetic effect though.

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[info]dsgood
2008-05-16 09:13 pm UTC (link)
I've seen the "American genetic superiority" notion used as an explanation for why ADD/ADHD is diagnosed so much more often in the US than the UK.

I see Medved has neglected to notice that 80% of African-Americans are mixed-race, and therefore many of them (subtracting the ones who only have Native American other ancestry) should have those superior genes.

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[info]micheinnz
2008-05-17 05:08 am UTC (link)
I have been told by a British person with ADHD that it's more likely because UK doctors just don't have the slightest fucking clue about ADHD.

The psychologist who diagnosed my ADHD said that it's the risk-takers who went out to the colonies, which is why it's more common in the USA, Australia and New Zealand than in the UK, but didn't go that step further to say "... and that's why we're better."

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[info]rotty_0079
2008-05-17 02:29 am UTC (link)
Hrm... guys, shouldn't the issue at hand be looking into the published research by Peter Whybrow of UCLA to see if it's bunk, rather than using ad hominem on the nutty but irrelevant-to-the-hypothesis Medved?

(Speaking of nutty, why is he invoking evolutionary biology to make a political point when he's a fellow at the Discovery Institute?)

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[info]cwoolard
2008-05-17 04:23 am UTC (link)

Because if you don't have a unicorn to pull your cart, a horse will have to do?

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[info]tekalynn
2008-05-17 05:31 am UTC (link)
Oh, Michael Medved.

Dammit, at least you WARN us before the OSC links. My eyes.

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-05-17 01:13 pm UTC (link)
I thought the combination of "nutty idea" and "film critic" was enough to make it clear that it was Michael "Maple Leaf Republic" Medved.

Speaking of the MLR, I recently saw a thread in which someone argued that Canada was a republic, despite the apparently insurmountable obstacle of being something else entirely.

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