What about a labourer arguing for the case that there should be an influx of labourers from Mexico? It's the same pattern everywhere. When people argue for high IQ being superior, they have high IQs. When they argue for immigration, it's because they are not affected, when they argue for more police on the streets, it's because they are not criminals.
I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are rationally correct, but that do not favour them.
It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.
I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are rationally correct, but that do not favour them.
I've been arguing for a long time that universities should take fewer students and technical training schools should be expanded. Given that I hope to end up with a faculty position at a university, I'd say that this isn't a position which particularly favours me.
It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.
I wouldn't argue for cutting myself out of the gene pool, since I think the genes I have which are responsible for my intellect are worth keeping (both of my parents have doctorates, so I think it's safe to say that there's a strong genetic component in my case); but there is strong evidence that I have genes which predispose for autoimmune conditions, and if I'm ever in a position to have children I'd strongly support using genetic testing to eliminate zygotes with those genes.
You can't draw that conclusion unless he has an adopted sibling or a biological sibling that was put up for adoption. Normal unadopted children share both their genes and their environment with their parents.
When studies have been done on identical twins raised apart, they've shown that genetics matters far more than parental environment, with genes being responsible for close to 40% of the variance in a wide array of personality traits, parental nurturing responsible for about 10%, and the child's peer group responsible for the remaining 50%.
Actually, the first argument favours you because then you would be one of a smaller elite. The second argument also favours you, because you don't want to be responsible for the caretaking of a sick child, and you don't want your offspring to have problems.
I guess if you look at things closely enough, anything I could ever argue for would favour me somehow.
If I want to see more students in university, it favours me because I want to be hired to teach them; if I want fewer students, it favours me because I remain part of a smaller elite.
If I think computer scientists should be paid more, it benefits me because I would earn more; if I think computer scientists should be paid less, it benefits me because it means that fewer people would enter the field and I'd have less competition.
Somehow I get the feeling that we'd get more done if we stuck to arguing about policies rather than spending time dissecting the possible motives of their proponents.
But certain arguments do favor the proponent, even if they do not appear to.
For example, I'm irreligious, so I should be in support of the world becoming religion free, right? I'm not. I know that I don't need it, but I think people, generally, are not morally enlightened enough to deal with a world without religion.. ergo, I want it to stick around!
I guess this is a bit like a master criminal being in support of more policing because they think they can get away with it while lesser crooks are put off by the extra policing. I believe this sort of reasoning is quite common - but it goes against your pattern, I think.
Yes, but in your examples, even though the argument on the surface seems to be against you, in actuality, you are making an argument that benefits you.
Just so there is no wandering from my main argument - what I am saying is that everytime we read one of these 'controversial' argument, the opinion of the article writer is almost always an opinion that directly benefits him or some group he identifies with. Rarely do we get a controversial article where the person discovers something that turns out to be totally against what he is or stands for.
That's not actually true. What happens in such a case is an author write about how he discovered something and changed.
If you discover something that is against what you stand for, almost everyone will change to match it. So you'll never see someone say: look I found this, but I won't do it.
Instead you'll see someone say: look I was a, but I found b, and now I'm b.
The Bell Curve is probably the most misrepresented book ever. Indignant liberal weenies turned it into some sort of white supremacist book about race and IQ.
It's actually about how high IQ people have systematically reorganized society to their benefit, isolated themselves, and stripped lower IQ people of the sorts of employment and social systems where they do best.
> When they argue for immigration, it's because they are not affected
High IQ people argue for the liberal immigration policies that hurt laborers. Murray is opposed to such policies.
I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are rationally correct, but that do not favour them.
It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.