Original thread.

It's chock full of bad!

So I stumbled across a review of Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance by Walter Block. If you are unfamiliar with Wade's book, it is yet another attempt to revive racialism and explain world history through bastardized biology. Here is a review by geneticist Marcus W. Feldman:

https://stanfordcehg.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/echoes-of-the-past-hereditarianism-and-a-troublesome-inheritance/

For even more, here is a webinar done by the AAA in which Wade gets slapped down by Agustin Fuentes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90tJ7w6rwvk

Here are some choice quotes from Block's generally positive review. First up, those durn librul perfessers:

Wade (2014) severely criticizes such politically correct scholars as Darren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson,1 Franz Boas, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Ashley Montague [sic], Karl Marx, Steven Pinker,2 Jeffrey Sachs, George Bernard Shaw, and such groups as the American Anthropological Association.

A criticism of Wade here, he's just not racist enough:

From the libertarian (Rothbard 1982) perspective, since racism does not necessarily violate the non-aggression principle (NAP) of this philosophy, it should be legalized. Williams (2003) and Sowell (1983, 1994, 1995) support discriminatory behavior as a right, and deny that it has any serious deleterious effects on its targets.

Now for a battle of the bad pop science books:

Wade supports Pinker’s (2011) view that violence has been on a decreasing trajectory; I have only slight problems with that claim (Block 2014). He also buys into Pinker’s notion that the source of this welcome trend is, of all things, the government. With this I have great difficulties (Block 2014). Writes Wade (170): “Pinker agrees ... that the principle drivers of the civilizing process were the increasing monopoly of force by the state which reduced the need for interpersonal violence.” But Block (2014) argues that this diminution of crime, warfare, cruelty, if such really exists, occurred in spite of the increasing power of the government,7 not because of it, and all the statistics in the world cannot say nay to this claim. Wade (2014) does not consider this possibility, nor does Pinker (2011).

Wade’s demolition of Diamond (1999) is masterful. States the former (222): “If in the same environment, that of Australia, one population can operate a highly productive economy and another cannot, surely it cannot be the environment that is decisive, as Diamond asserts, but rather some critical difference in the nature of the two people and their societies. Diamond himself raises this counterargument, but only to dismiss it as ‘loathsome’ and ‘racist,’ a stratagem that spares him the trouble of having to address its merits.” Yes, Wade lands a bull’s eye shot at Diamond for his violation of the importance of the open debate strictures of Mill (1859); “racist” indeed.

To wrap up:

Despite my reservations about this book, I am a great supporter of it. Not just because Wade is a magnificent contrarian. Not merely because he ruffles feathers that are in sore need of such treatment. Not only because of his undoubted courage in taking on, fearlessly, politically correct shibboleths of the left. But also because this is a scholarly book, replete with great imagination, important examples and magnificent insights. I learned a lot from it, and I imagine most people will, too.