"If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don't congratulate yourself on your compassion."
Thomas Sowell
Classic scar experiment that is highly relevant to modern times, where people who believe that they are victims try to cash in on that purported victimization over and over, classic case of confirmation bias and WYSIATI.
More on the Dartmouth scar experiment at Psychology Today, along with commentary regarding Andy Clark's work on predictive processing, including a link to fascinating rubber hand experiments.
Pro sports: one of the few remaining high-visibility industries where merit is honored without apology, resulting in a consistently high-quality final product.
From Eli Steele:
Here are dozens of other reasons we need to refocus on merit: "In Defense of Merit in Science." Abstract:
Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non-scientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, human-centered approach to address existing social inequalities.
Matt Orfalea Tweet:
It's as if the DEI officer didn't even read the book by MLK that she's promoting, as she goes on to push blatant racism. Here's what MLK actually said in that book.
"One unfortunate thing about Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks & whites alike. In this context a slogan “Power for Poor People” would be much more appropriate than the slogan “Black Power”.
-Martin Luther King Jr, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" (1967)
Washington Post Reporter: Do you condemn white supremacy and white nationalism?
Vivek Ramaswamy: I mean, what this? Who are you with? With the Washington Washington Post? Alright, so Potato Potato, okay.
Of course, I condemn any form of vicious racial discrimination in this country. But I think that the presumption of your question is fundamentally based on a falsehood, that that really is the main form of racial discrimination we see in this country today. Institutionalized racial discrimination that we see doesn't come from somehow discriminate against people on the basis of some tentative white supremacy. It's based on affirmative action. It's based on actually discriminating against people on the color of their skin in a way that's actually institutionalized today. Was there a point in our history, a point in our prior national history where there have been vicious forms of anti-black or anti-brown discrimination throughout this country after the Civil War and otherwise? Yes. But you're looking in the rearview mirror and using that to pose a question today that is so far removed from what the reality is in America today, this myth of white supremacy. The closest you can find is Jesse Smollet, where you were all were actually speaking of trust in the media jumping up and down over some false narrative. The best way you're able to find your best instance of white supremacy was a guy who was actually paying his other fellow people to be actually staging something that didn't happen.
And so stop picking on this farce of some figment that exists at some infinitesimally small fringe of the American public today to open our eyes to the actual real threats that we face. And I think that it's frankly questions and framings like that have caused the American public to lose all trust in the mainstream media, I'm sorry to say, for good reason.
Washington Post: Can you say that you condemn white supremacy?
Vivek Ramaswamy: I'm not going to recite some catechism for you. I'm against vicious racial discrimination in this country. So I'm not pledging allegiance to your new religion of modern wokeism, which actually fits fits the test. I'm not going to bend a knee to your religion. I'm sorry. I'm not asking you to bend the knee to mine. And I'm not going to bend the knee to yours. But do I condemn vicious racial discrimination? Yes, I do. Am I going to play your silly game of gotcha? No, I'm not.