Our Founding Myth Of Equality

The need for people to believe in this one huge laughable falsity, a falsity that coats our culture in a thick sugary HR-mandated happy-goo, is so strong that they will torture and twist their minds into impossible shifting shapes to accommodate it.

The falsity is egalitarianism, or Equality. The ridiculous belief that all people are, in direct and hostile opposition to all observation in all time, really the same.

There is only one thing in which we all share, and that is having the same essence: we are all man, a rational-spiritual animal. After that slim form of equalness, we are all everywhere different. There are similarities and groupings inside man, of course, most obviously in the sexes and in age. Are there are just as obviously gross equalities, like how some people live in the same state or nation and the others live elsewhere. But people themselves? All different. Even identical twins are different, given the impossibility—I mean this word in its strict sense—of them having the same experiences.

We talked of this last week on the Myth of the 20th Century podcast. The hosts asked me about kids going to college, and I said that no more than 5% or so should. The idea that all should, or, worse, could, is the result of The Great Leveler, which is to say, Equality. Incidentally, you should give this podcast a listen. They rarely slip so badly as to have someone like Yours Truly, and you will enjoy their other guests.

Equality is like the worm that bored through RFK Jr’s brain. It has been eating away at our minds since the badly misnamed Enlightenment, and it now so well fed it is now extraordinarily difficult to get past equalitarian thought-blocks formed by the worm’s tunnels.

Many will grant small inequalities, like how Joe prefers his Funko Pops to be of Marvel characters, whereas Sally enjoys DC. Or it is recognized that newborns are not as tall and engaging as adults.

But there are at least two areas where all mention of obvious inequalities is verboten, real thought crimes, and where even thinking about them causes shame. These are intelligence and beauty.

Equality in attractiveness is held mainly by women. No woman believes it, though. They just say they do. It accounts for “fat acceptance” and the like, and for how they lie (a real skill in women) about how beautiful men pretending to be women are.

But that Equality pales next to Equality in intelligence. All are equally intelligent, says the funding Myth, but they might not have had the same opportunities to express their same-intelligences. Once we force Equity, the equal treatment of all, then the Equality of intelligence will be manifest even to deniers.

Which is great nonsense. The Myth fellows asked me about women in science (this will be tomorrow’s subject, incidentally). I brought up David Stove’s essay The Intellectual Capacity Of Women. Among a host of other points, Stove said that throughout all history women have been in a myriad, and more than a myriad, different situations, such that if they had the same intellectual capacity as men, it would have revealed itself by now. It hasn’t, therefore it is rational to conclude they will not and cannot.

If the difference in intellectual capacities between the sexes—and do note we allow the for differences between age groups—is a forbidden subject, the differences in intellectual capacities between the races is a “hate crime” worthy of the harshest punishments.

Suppose, as has been observed everywhere and everywhen, there are differences between intellectual capacities between East Asians and American blacks. This difference will be, and is, on average. Which means there is a distribution of intelligences in Asians, and a different distribution in blacks. Both distributions are roughly symmetric about their averages, and the Asians have a higher average.

There are several common fallacies, or errors, associated with this difference. And one new one I myself met only just last Friday.

The first error is to suppose that because a person is in one of the groups, that they therefore have an intelligence at the average of their group. Which, when stated so plainly, is clearly false. So if you are a woman concerned with the statement women have a lower intellectual capacity than men, and you view this as an accusation of your own low intelligence, you have made an error. (And, alas, gone some way to confirm the statement!)

This first error is not an error at all if you are making judgments about the groups themselves, or large collections of individuals from those groups. If all you know about two people is that one is Asian and one is black, bet that the Asian is more intelligent than the black.

The second error is symmetric. It is to say that because here is a black who is obviously more intelligent than this particular Asian, that therefore there is no difference between the groups. Or you say that you know lots of blacks who are just as intelligent as Asians, that therefore all the other evidence of difference is wrong.

The third error, also known as Lewontin’s Fallacy, we covered in Class. It is to claim that because the difference between the averages of groups is smaller than the within-group differences, that therefore the groups are ackshually equal. This might be the dumbest error (the others have the tendency to become personal), because it’s equivalent to saying that because 110 – 90 = 20 (group-average difference, say), and that 160 – 80 = 80 (within-Asian difference, say), that therefore 110 = 90.

The last error, which I graciously name for its inventor, is the Stone Fallacy, from the performance of one Lyman Stone on Twitter last week. I admit to being taken by surprise by this one: I did not see it coming. At all.

It is to suppose that because one can discover an equalness between two people or two groups, then even if the people are otherwise different, because of this one equalness, they are therefore Equal in all, especially intelligence. It is equivalent to saying “They are not the same so they are equal.”

I don’t how else to describe it except to show you examples, like this one from Stone:

Consider for a moment a 50 lb explosive and 50 lbs of bricks.

they are equal.

they are not the same.

I pointed out that this means unequal, not equal, and Stone replied, “no, you just enjoy larping about enjoying inequality. we are equal. we have non-identical traits, which nonetheless do not threaten our equality.” And that “equality does not imply identicality”.

Somebody else joined the conversation and said, by Stone’s definition, “By this logic, 16 and 10 are equal because they’re both even”. To which Stone replied, “this is a reasonable statement. they are indeed identical in the particular trait of even-ness, and to the extent we assess (e)quality on even-ness, it would be reasonable to call them equal.”

It’s similar to Lewontin’s 110=90, but more so.

I then asked Stone to provide a definition of equality. And this happened:

This is the kind of exchange you will have at your trial as they justify your execution.

(Incidentally, Stone also said “I believe people all men are created equal. You don’t believe that, go ahead and leave your citizenship at the door. It’s part of the criteria of American nationhood.”)

One last error, implied by and symmetric to Stone’s Fallacy, would be to suppose that because we accept two groups are acknowledged to be different in one aspect or trait, they are therefore identical or equal in all others. No one (except equalitarians) would say they only differences between Asians and blacks is in intelligence, or that only intelligence is important.

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