A couple of weeks ago I read a post on Balkinization that raised an idea I myself have often thought would be a good starting point for all of this. We need to give up on the idea that we can rank students individually. At best, we can sort students into broad categories like “Highly qualified,” “Well Qualified,” “Marginally qualified” and “Not qualified.” Then, on the assumption that the sorting process is nevertheless biased, draw random students from each pool, with a bias towards merit. As Romney would say, pick a number: Make 75 percent of initial offers to students drawn randomly from the “highly qualified” pool, 20 percent from the “Well qualified” pool, 4 percent from the “Marginally qualified” pool, and 1 percent from the “not qualified” pool.

All so true. The real victims are those who have to live with the excruciating knowledge that not everyone is like them, and even worse, that the day has come when they can no longer compel people to pretend that they’re something they’re not. True freedom is the freedom to choose what I would choose. That’s all the rights any human needs.

Regarding TTT: it is interesting the extent to which the history of human sexuality, and of mammalian sexuality more broadly, gets left out of account in this discussion. I’ve always assumed that there are a plethora of genetic, hormonal and cultural effects going on within brains and gonads that account for sexual attraction; that sexual behavior can’t be reduced to any one thing with one set of evolutionary advantages, the way sharp teeth and powerful jaws can be (more or less).

But arguments based on the the “naturalness” of same-sex attraction cuts two ways. If it is in fact the case that the potential for same-sex attraction is latent in many or even most human males, and that it is only kept tamped down in the contemporary West by cultural forces, then conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, have a case to make that it is, indeed, important to maintain a cultural disapproval of homosexuality. Otherwise, gay behavior will in fact increase — contra gay-rights advocates who claim that people simply are what they are and no one can be “converted” to being gay.

Of course it is also difficult to argue that something that is ubiquitous in non-human mammals can be “sinful,” as animals cannot sin. I’m glad I’m not a conservative or a believer, so I don’t have to worry about which way to come down on this.

Thank you Andrew H! The purpose of the race/IQ debate is to come up with a rationale to end affirmative action. It is an analog to the climate change debate: sure, there may be historic and cultural factors (anthropogenic factors) that have influenced the relative performance of various population groups. Among those factors may be various examples of historic injustice. But any effect that those contingent factors may have had — and the injustice is all in the past anyhow — is overwhelmed by genetic factors. These are are beyond anyone’s power to ameliorate. So don’t come to me and claim that my inherited cultural and fiscal capital ought to be redistributed. I deserve everything I have, and those that don’t have it sure don’t deserve any of mine.

I have a distant cousin who, in the 1950s, succeeded in having her race legally changed from “negro” to “white,” so that she could attend a white nursing school in a southern state. For those who believe that race is real and that IQ is tied to race, did my cousin’s IQ go up as a result of that court decision?