GEDANKENEXPERIMENT

According to the web this interesting nonce word was first used by Hans Christian Oersted, whereas I first learned it in relation to Ernst Mach – as in velocities relative to the speed of sound – who popularized it.

The translation is simply “thought experiment,” and the definition is “a mental exercise performed when an actual, physical experiment is impossible or impracticable.” As an example, suppose one has an idea for constructing a space vehicle to travel near the speed of light. Clearly, he can’t try out the scheme, but he can test the principles – vis-à-vis known physical laws – in his mind. Thus, he gets an idea about what might be correct and what wrong in his plans. It’s a simple concept, right?

What I want to propose to you is a Gedankenexperiment that is conceptually easy to perform and not awfully difficult physically but which, for social reasons, one might say, would meet with opposition. It follows below.

Pick a random age in years between 7 and 70 and a random sample, world-wide, of 500 each of white males, white females, black females, and black males.

The concept of true randomness is everyday stuff to statisticians, and this would be conceptually simple, but the samples must be random; i.e., drawn without any sort of bias. I admit that making the selections world-wide might be a bit tricky, as there are no lists of everyone in the world, but I rely upon statistics to proceed in an impartial and mathematically reasonable way.

Insofar as “black” and “white” are concerned, the samples must exclude people of mixed races, and capable molecular biologists can examine DNA and, relative to the present state of knowledge, make this judgement. Thus, in reality, our experiment becomes more costly to perform, but we operate here on the plane of thought.

Next, each person in each group is given two tasks; he or she takes a standardized IQ exam and runs 50 yards.

Don’t worry about a random person’s being physically unable to take an IQ exam, as, for example, by reason of blindness or of being incapable of moving 50 yards, as for a crippled person. We simply eliminate those people from the tests, and since statistics tells us that samples of size 30 almost certainly suffice for drawing conclusions about averages, we’ll have more than enough if we begin with 500.

Therefore, we perform the tests, and the reader’s Gedankenexperiment is to decide how the average results for the groups appear. Before looking down the screen or page, stop and give this some thought. Further, tell why you answered as you did.

Personally, I believe the black males and females would show lower average running times as well as lower average IQ scores. Why do I conclude that? It is simply because of a lifetime of observing various athletic contests and achievements and from a lifetime of observing intellectual contests and achievements.

Next, do the whole experiment 500 times; i.e., select a random age, pick the four random samples, do the tests, and examine the average performance figures. How do you suppose those results would look? I think that blacks would prevail in running times a significant number of times and that whites would do the same in the IQ tests.

If it turned out the way I predict, then Science would have demonstrated ways to improve certain aspects of everyday life. Consider the following scenario. The school board sits discussing the latest achievement scores. Why the devil is it that District W, predominantly white children, scored higher than those of District B, mostly black? They scratch their heads and decide it MUST be a difference in the quality of teaching or the quantity of something and that increased expenditure in B is the sole recourse. Does this occur frequently? Does Barack Obama change his tune often?

If it’s been proven that the difference is attributable to factors beyond the power of dollars to eliminate, then let’s save money. Another healthy implication would be that we could stop the harmful nonsense of lowering standards so that EVERYBODY scores x%, which implies pitching education to the bottom students, and allow the best students to reach their potentials. They, after all, will be the ones that have to accomplish things for us. We don’t neglect or deny resources to less capable students, whatever their races or other attributes, but, simultaneously, we don’t draw others down to that level. Neither do we spend disproportionate quantities of present resources in attempts to make improvements we know to be impossible.

At least two Nobel Prize winners have alluded to a genetic difference in the respective intellectual capacities of those two races. William Shockley, who helped invent the transistor, was rather blunt and mentioned explicitly the OBSERVED differences in standardized intelligence test scores. Naturally, there was a terrific furor over this, but those assailing him were not in his mental class and could hardly refute the statistical evidence. (Apparently simplified versions of our experiment have already been conducted.) More recently James Watson, who did most of the work in deducing the shape of the DNA molecule was admonished and punished for his well-reasoned comments on the topic. That’s the way of uneducated, American liberals, right? If one can’t argue intelligently against a point, try to discredit the person that made it and wail “Foul Play” as loudly as possible. Does that happen frequently in America? Does Jeremiah Wright hate his country?

Their models of the world, however unsupportable, MUST be correct; there MUST be some inscrutable factor that justifies their position, and if they can’t identify it exactly, well, so what? They MUST be right, anyway.

There are other cases of known intellectual differences between groups of mammals. For example, the marsupials, the pouched animals, are demonstrably less intelligent than the placentals. Therefore, why the big deal?

If my series of experiments, performed objectively and according to my specifications, turned out to show blacks’ average intelligence higher than that of whites, it wouldn’t affect my activities, accomplishments, or frame of mind any more than if I learned that most blacks my age can run faster than I. I consider myself an individual, able to influence my future and make of myself the best that I can. I am not roped to any properties of a group to which I happen, beyond my control, to belong.

At any rate, if you doubt my predicted experimental results, why don’t we get out of the realm of Gedanken, ja?