Killing bright rat babies

The late Professor Hans Eysenck once told me about an experiment in which a population of rats was divided into ‘bright’ and ‘dull’ on some criterion for rat intelligence. The rat offspring were then switched to different parents, in such a way that the bright rats were given the offspring of the dull rats to bring up, and vice versa. It was found that the bright rats brought up the dull rat babies successfully, while the dull rats killed the bright rat babies which they were given.

As Richard Dawkins points out in The Selfish Gene, natural selection encourages forms of behaviour which secure favourable conditions for the descendants of the individual in subsequent generations. So it looks as if it may be advantageous for the survival of a rat if the number of rats in the population it has to compete with, which are descended from parents cleverer than its own, is minimised.

The experiment suggests it may have become programmed into the genetic constitution of rats that they should kill, if possible, young rats which are cleverer than themselves. On the other hand, it appears rats have no programming to kill young rats which are less clever than themselves, presumably because their presence in future populations would pose no serious threat to their own offspring.

If natural selection has favoured such behaviour in rats to the point of modifying their genotype, we may speculate that it is even more likely to be present in the human constitution, since the range of opportunities present in human society, and the ways in which advantage may be taken of them, are even more varied, and offer greater potential advantages to those able to make use of them, than the variety of circumstances which may be made use of by rats of differing abilities.

Someone who becomes aware of this experiment may well be shocked by the result, and protest that it could not possibly be applied to humans. Professor Eysenck himself seemed to have resistance to the implication. He told me that anti-high-IQ behaviour would only prove adaptive for people in more developed societies, and thus could not have had time to modify the human genotype. His argument was that only in developed societies, with extensive business and finance activities, would having a higher IQ give the owner a sufficient advantage, to motivate other people to be hostile to him, or even kill him. This argument did not, however, make much sense to me, given that rats can scarcely be said to have ‘developed societies’ in this sense.

If there is a tendency in humans corresponding to the desire of rats to kill young rats cleverer than their own offspring, it would certainly help to explain the way the education system has developed as society has become progressively democratised. In spite of occasional nods to the supposed special needs of the ‘gifted’, the system is clearly geared (and increasingly so) to promoting the interests of the low-IQ population, and to making life well-nigh impossible for those of exceptional ability.

There is evidently a resistance to considering the possibility that the average human being may have hostile (potentially to the point of murderous) attitudes, whether conscious or not, to individuals of exceptional ability. Professor Eysenck told me that the results of this experiment became unavailable soon after it had been carried out – though he didn’t explain why – so it may be that they have never been published.

A cruel pretence

There is a cruel pretence that the outcast professor (me) is not suffering from being deprived of an institutional (i.e. hotel) environment and social recognition as a leading intellectual, that is to say as a person with a salaried and prestigious professorship.

When I was thrown out fifty years ago I accepted that there was a brick wall in front of me and that all I could do was scrape at it, trying to make a tunnel through it. Everyone promoted the fiction that I was being ‘free to follow my interests’. This was the worst possible slander of someone in my terrible position, because it represented me as not needing help in the form of money and people, or needing support for my attempts to get such help.

How do you suppose it feels, after fifty years of totally unrewarding toil in bad circumstances, trying to work towards an institutional (hotel) environment and an Oxbridge professorship, to be told by a philosopher at Somerville College that, if I got back onto a salaried career track which could lead to a professorship, I would be ‘less free’! It feels like the most violent possible rejection of all that constitutes one’s individuality. The worst insult possible, to add to grievous injury. And she (the philosopher), and many others at Somerville, have slandered and even libelled me in this terrible way.

There should be recognition of this as a criminal act with a legal penalty. Suitable redress would be that she should be condemned to come and work in my incipient and downtrodden independent university, doing whatever she can most usefully do, probably helping with the domestic and menial necessities which arise from the lack of staff from which I am always suffering grievously. Also she should forfeit her assets to contribute towards the funding that I need to build up the capital endowment of my university, which is still too painfully squeezed for me to be able to make use of my ability to do anything.

In fact, of course, the negative consequences to her and the other dons at Somerville from slandering and libelling me in this way are nil. Instead, they are able to go on enjoying their advantages, and no doubt talk about helping the ‘underprivileged’ – while doing nothing to alleviate the bad condition of someone for whose downfall they were in part responsible.

This is an edited version of the text of a letter to an academic, first posted in 2007.

’People of any age are invited to come to Cuddesdon, near Oxford, initially as voluntary workers. They are expected to have enough money of their own to pay for accommodation near here, but would be able to use our canteen facilities. While here, they could gain information about topics and points of view suppressed in the modern world, as well as giving badly needed help to our organisation. From this initial association a permanent, full- or part-time career could develop.’ Celia Green, DPhil

‘We hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. We make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

The dubious value of ‘education’

Recent statements by Michael Gove (the Education Secretary) and Andrew Hamilton (Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University), among others, seem to accept the usual assumption that assessments and appointments made by agents of the collective at all levels of the ‘educational’ system are meaningful and objective, and that working for a qualification within the system is a positive advantage to all who are allowed to do so – so that receiving a grant (for example) is automatically of value to the individual receiving it.

Referring to the special type of tuition offered by Oxford, Professor Hamilton says that

Excellence in most walks of life does not come cheap ... unless we can offer the best we can’t expect to get the best.

implying that more attention from teachers (via the tutorial system) is bound to mean a better product for recipients.

Yet having to have work assessed by tutors in a one-to-one interaction is not necessarily something which recipients are going to benefit from, let alone enjoy.

Michael Gove is highly critical of some recent negative comments made by Simon Cowell about the supposed pointlessness of school. Gove claims the future belongs to

... those who work hard, enjoy the best education and pursue the most rigorous qualifications.

The truthfulness of this statement may be limited to the fact that the future belongs to those who are able to avoid being subjected to state education.

Actually, Simon Cowell makes a perfectly good point by implying that for some, school is largely an irrelevance, and they would be better off leaving it as soon as possible, to get on with what they really want to do. Unfortunately, recent legislation – which Mr Gove allowed to pass unchallenged – means non-academic types like Mr Cowell are no longer able to leave school at the age of 16, but must endure a further two years (or otherwise go on an approved ‘training’ course), by which time a vital part of their youthful energy and optimism may have been exhausted.

* * *

In any individual case, working for an examination under the auspices of an official institution may well be less efficient than working alone, and may indeed lead to a negative outcome.

What is referred to loosely as ‘education’ is not simply the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills, but usually involves the acceptance of a power-relation in which you give other people the right to make judgements and decisions about you. If you are lucky, these people may choose not to act against your interests – this is obviously more likely if there is a financial incentive, i.e. you (or your parents) are paying them, or their employer, directly.

If you are not so lucky, their actions may undermine or annul your own efforts, so that the package labelled as ‘education’ ends up being a net negative as far as you are concerned.

Yet discussions of ‘education’ invariably proceed as if any resources devoted to something falling under that heading automatically lead to an increase in benefit for would-be learners.

* * *

In my own case, accepting a grammar school scholarship meant that I would spend many years having my life run by people who had no reason to wish me well and who, in retrospect, may be supposed to have been motivated by wishing to prevent my ability from expressing itself in any way that would lead me into the sort of university career to which I was highly suited, and which I badly needed to have.

Apart from any more subjective adverse effects, one very significant negative factor was in my being pressured for years to take a degree in mathematics. There were many subjects in which, working on my own, I could have obtained a first class result easily, but if I had been working on my own, I would never have considered maths as a possible degree subject. As a result, I was thrown out at the end of the ruined education with no usable qualification at all.

When I was ten or eleven, my father had my IQ tested by an educational psychologist who was employed by a local educational authority. He said that he had never tested a child like it before and never expected to do so again. In this he was expressing the previous ideology according to which people could be more or less exceptional, and the likelihood of their being good at anything academic was predominantly determined by a general factor in their IQ (Spearman’s g factor). There was also an idea that their IQ determined their suitability for various occupations. This psychologist told my father, with evident satisfaction, that his own (the psychologist’s) IQ was 140 and that in those days this was regarded as ‘a professor’s IQ’.

It was general knowledge at the time, and for at least a decade afterwards, that in a population of 50 million, there would be about 500 people with IQs over 180, as mine was said to be.

* * *

I have still not regained an acceptable social position. The egalitarian ideology which dominated my years at school and university was in force, and increasingly so, throughout the society within which I had to attempt to make my way, both within and outside of the university system.

I am still appealing for moral and financial support from associates of every kind, to enable me to become functional as soon as possible.

To potential supporters, and Dr Charles McCreery’s family

A property has just come on the market in Cuddesdon which would be suitable for us.

I have previously suggested that buying a house in the name of Dr McCreery would indicate a wish on the part of his family to start making reparation to him for the damage to his prospects that was done, and continues to be done, by slander and disinheritance. (Further information about this situation can be found at Charles McCreery and his family.)

There is also the possibility that a supporter might wish to buy such a house and allow us the use of it, as a way of allowing us to expand our operations to a more adequate level.

A need for unbiased research

Recently, both Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have raised the question of innate IQ, breaking the usual taboo on the topic.

Mr Johnson has caused controversy by saying that ‘it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130.’ In a speech given on Wednesday, he suggested that tackling economic inequality may be ‘futile’ because some people’s IQ is too low for them to compete.

We regularly appeal for sympathisers to provide us with the support that would enable us to be productive academic researchers. If Michael Gove, Boris Johnson or others wished to see the debate on IQ (and other topics) go beyond the current sterile nods to ideological correctness, would it not make sense for them to do something practical to get us set up as a fully fledged institution – which, with their contacts, they easily could?

Here is something I wrote last year about the distribution of intelligence, pointing out that a slight shift downward in the average IQ of the population can have dramatic effects on the sizes of both the high-IQ and low-IQ sections of the population:

celiagreen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/has-bell-curve-shifted

More about the sea change

Further to my post about the Hibbert Journal, one sign of the sea change that came over everybody’s outlook is provided by the fact that all the people who could be said to have supported me were at least about forty years older than I was. And all the expressions of recognition of my ability had an open-ended quality, implying that I was qualitatively different from other people in a way that suggested that I might do something a bit unprecedented, and that this made it appropriate to give me opportunity; whereas those who opposed me were generally characterised by sounding as if they had everything taped.

Nearly all of my supporters were men, and more or less upper-class. Unfortunately, not all of my acquaintances more than forty years older than me were supporters. For example, my worst anti-supporter was a woman, also upper-class and more than forty years older than me. She was not supposedly expert in any area and had no academic qualifications, but could infallibly influence those who had these things. None of the support which Rosalind Heywood got for various people other than me could be said to be motivated by interest in the area of work that was to be done. It was a case of her fishing around to find something that could be done by a statusful person, hence blocking any support for research that might otherwise have reached me. So you could say that the ‘interest’ that was being supported was an interest in blocking me from doing research.

Perhaps the support which I have sometimes got could be said to be motivated by the opposite; an interest in letting me do something which other people would not have thought of doing, and because I was exceptional. Cecil King more or less expressed this by saying to Sir George Joy that he ‘backed people, not projects’.

Seeing that interest in the work which is to be done is apparently irrelevant, and that preventing my doing anything is an effective motive, what motive would there, on the other hand, have to be for supporting my doing of anything? Apparently this would depend entirely on somebody being perceptive enough to see that I could do ground-breaking research which nobody else would think of doing. Such a person would have to be generous enough to wish to support my research, and to wish me to live in decent conditions while I was doing it.

In fact, some such motive was often implied by my supporters when I had any. I have already mentioned Cecil King. Another such person was the Reverend Mother of the convent school who said when I was thirteen that I was ‘more than merely talented: I was certain to contribute to the intellectual life of my time’. She tried to give me a chance by arranging to let me take the School Certificate exam when I was thirteen.

‘Celia Green is a person of exceptional gifts. She should be given the funding to work on the many topics she has been prevented for decades from developing. I make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to exceptional individuals.’
Charles McCreery, DPhil

The Hibbert Journal

My colleague Dr Charles McCreery recently mentioned to me something interesting about the Hibbert Journal (a philosophy journal), which he had read, including back numbers, soon after finishing his first degree.

He said that he noticed a sea change in the contents round about 1946-47 – they became more vacuous, less meaningful. It is not that the contributors started to clearly say things that he found he disagreed with, or that it was obvious that they were promoting a point of view that he found claustrophobic. It was more subtle than that, but the change was definitely there.

Charles said it was strange that a philosophical journal could in any way be affected by the socialist ideas that became dominant with the end of World War II, but this indeed seems to have been the case.

I myself noticed a marked change in the attitudes of my teachers at about this time (i.e. around 1946-7). In my schools, and in other organisations, the ‘old guard’, who were more likely to be sympathetic, and in some cases even positively helpful to me, were retiring and being replaced by those who espoused the now dominant socialist, egalitarian ideology.

Addendum:
text of a letter to a senior academic by Christine Fulcher, Research Officer at Oxford Forum
I am writing to say that I think you have a duty to put pressure on your academic colleagues and contacts to give financial support to Celia Green.
Of course, I also think you have a duty to give Celia financial support yourself, as someone who knows her and has a clear picture of her situation; to help enable her to set up the university department with residential college which would provide her with the hotel environment and scope to do research that she needs, to relieve her frustration.
The constriction of our situation affects all of us, Celia in particular, as she is the person with the greatest need for intellectual activity and for an expanding situation. Charles and Fabian also ought have professorial appointments as heads of departments, and no doubt all three of my colleagues would be well-known and well-financed professors if the University of Oxford and the academic world in general were not so hostile to real ability.
The fact that Celia had to try to set up her own university department on being thrown out of Oxford University fifty years ago is an indictment of the standards and motivation of the University. The fact that after all this time our academic organisation is still supported solely by us is a clear indication that the standards and motivation of the academic world (as exemplified by Oxford) are still deplorable.

Michael Gove, Robert Plomin and heredity

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, appears to be paying some attention to the possibility of heredity as a factor in intelligence. He has been having talks with Professor Robert Plomin, who has done research on the heritability of intelligence, and who is said to believe that ‘genetics, not teaching, plays a major part in the intelligence of schoolchildren.’

One may wonder why it is of any interest to attempt to evaluate the relative importance of heredity and environmental factors on functionality. It only becomes of interest, surely, when opportunity of various kinds is not paid for directly by the individual, or his parents or guardian, but supplied by the state.

At present, many people, or at least many among the most influential, seem to wish to believe that there is no such thing as innate ability, and that there should be equality of opportunity (and hence equality of outcome). But what are we to understand by equality of opportunity? In practice, this is taken to mean that resources should be applied lavishly to those whose performance is below the average. Thus children with ‘special needs’, for example, are to be sent in taxis, accompanied by social workers, to special schools. And, although this is less explicitly advocated, those who are far ahead should be held back.

Most current discussion of educational issues, such as the distribution of above-average ability in different sectors of the population, is wildly fictitious. The online comments on educational articles in the Guardian, for example, show a persistent belief in the inferior average intelligence of middle-class children, and the superior average intelligence of working-class children, who are supposedly prevented by bad circumstances from showing their ability.

It has become fashionable among certain sectors of society to be very aware of the possibility of working-class children with high IQs getting no opportunity of using their intelligence to attain the academic and career success of their middle-class peers. Arguably, these sectors of society should also be aware of the possibility of high-IQ adults whose educations were ruined and who have had (and still have) no opportunity to enter high-status academic careers, which they need to have, so as to be in a position to use their abilities to the full. In practice, however, people claiming to be concerned for the plight of the unfortunate do not show any sympathy for those whose education has been ruined in this way.

When I was growing up in East London, my parents and their friends, being teachers working in schools where their undoubted hard work was rewarded with substandard results in the achievements of their pupils, never appeared to be concerned that the pupils were being unfairly deprived of opportunity. It seems quite possible that this did not reflect ideologically unsound attitudes on their part, but a genuine awareness of underlying abilities and the limits of what education can do.

In classical Greece, the belief in hereditary ability seems to have been much as it was in this country seventy years ago.

Much education would have taken place in an aristocracy informally through institutions like the symposium ... backed up by the old assumption that the aristocracy possessed inherited, not instructed, excellence.*

Now the concept of hereditary ability is described as old-fashioned, implying that it has been dismissed from consideration; or is even regarded as taboo. And indeed, most ‘research’ in education and related areas now simply assumes that ability is not inherited, without even bothering to state the assumption.

* ‘Education, Greek’, Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2003, p.506

Message to the Education Secretary from Andrew Legge, Research Officer at Oxford Forum:
‘We strongly recommend that you appoint Dr Celia Green as your chief educational advisor, either in a consultancy role or as the head of an independent education department. Her experiences of both state and private education, combined with her unique psychological observations, would provide you with a source of incisive pedagogical insight distinct from any others that are available.
If you are sincere in your efforts to understand the true causes underlying Britain’s deteriorating education system, then arguably you have a duty to support us. No one else is going to penetrate to the realities of the situation in a way that is free from ideological baggage.’

Collectivism and old-fashioned morality

[The Home Secretary] Theresa May last night called on a chief constable to apologise after an explosive report suggested senior officers had lied to blacken the name of former Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell.

In a devastating judgment, the Independent Police Complaints Commission indicated that an inquiry by West Mercia Police which cleared [the three senior officers] of misconduct was a whitewash.

Mrs May called for disciplinary action against the officers, who are accused of giving a false account of a private meeting with Mr Mitchell as part of a ‘wider agenda’ to heap pressure on him to resign. (Daily Mail, 15 October 2013)

Many primitive and communist countries are said to have corrupt and persecutory police forces.

I am reminded of many incidents in my life and those of my associates which demonstrate the same indifference to objective reality, and to the rights of the individual to use his own judgement within the area of legality.

Examples: 1) persecution of my father by the local authority, to prevent him from allowing me to take the School Certificate exam, when there was no need for the local authority to have any opinion about this; 2) Charles McCreery’s father (General Sir Richard McCreery), and senior academics, slandering him when he had done nothing to justify this.

It appears that once there is a concept of responsibility to the collective, previous standards of individual morality, and respect for the individuality of others, lapse, even in the case of highly respectable individuals who might not be expected to be particularly identified with the collectivist ideology.

Over the past fifty years, a new area of quasi-crimininality seems to have been created, in which it has become an offence (punishable by extra-legal means) to attempt to do something that does not receive the approval of collectivist society. Opposition to those now regarded as quasi-criminal seems to involve abandoning respect for old-fashioned morality. Yet there is apparently universal acceptance of this state of affairs, or at least no murmur of opposition.

Thus it is apparently acceptable for respectable middle-class families to slander and disinherit offspring who had done nothing illegal, and nothing even a trifle wild or demoralised, but were supporting the setting up of an independent organisation for academic research and publishing, but without having been appointed to do so by officially recognised agents of the collective.

This would not previously have happened. If it had, people would have been shocked if they had been told about it.

It appears to be the case that as socialist or communist ideology becomes dominant, previous standards of individual morality are abandoned even by the formerly respectable; and new standards of individual morality are accepted, which make it acceptable to oppose individuals whose IQs are very much above the average or who show signs of independence and initiative.

This is what underlies both the taboo against complaining of being badly treated by the educational system, and the demands for a ‘level playing field’ in the educational system.

'There are many other examples of abandonment of principles which could be subjected to critical analysis if Oxford Forum were provided with adequate funding, We appeal for such funding to enable us to write and publish analyses of issues which are currently being ignored in favour of the usual pro-collectivist arguments.' Charles McCreery, DPhil

Chicken research versus significant progress

Further to my post No need to be ‘committed’, there is much more that should be said about the impossibility of getting a supporter for:
(a) research in general
(b) research by those trying to regain access to a university career (I do not use the expression ‘academic career’ because people are liable to say, ‘Oh but you are doing academic research,’ regardless of the fact that we do not have the living conditions which a university career might, at least to some extent, provide.)
(c) research done by people with high IQs
(d) research taking into account factors which are habitually omitted from consideration.

What is the motivation underlying research that is provided with funding which is often lavish? For example, £2 million is reportedly to be devoted to investigating the historical development of the relationship between humans and chickens. Meanwhile, individuals who could be making significant advances in understanding of key topics are kept out in the cold.

Apart from the fact that all academics should feel a responsibility for taking an interest in, and supporting, academics or potential academics struggling in conditions far worse than their own, they should also feel a sense of responsibility for finding out about the circumstances of modern life for people in disadvantaged positions. As it is, there is sometimes an interest taken in the difficulties of the disadvantaged low-IQ population, but not of the disadvantaged high-IQ population.

It is of the utmost importance to us to gain ground financially as we continue to work towards the capital endowment necessary to set up even the smallest independent research department with dining hall facilities and domestic and administrative staff. At the same time we are, and always have been, determined never to get into debt.

In the past, when we still went in for making grant applications on normal terms, we used to be told that we might get a modicum of finance for capital equipment or specific research expenses, but we would not get our living expenses paid. This, of course, is ludicrous. You cannot do research unless you are paid a salary for doing research.

Some attitudes to doing research demonstrate a degree of unrealism even more extreme than this. According to some people, it ought to be possible to do ‘research’ without any money at all, just by living on the breadline and thinking profound thoughts. Some of these people, I suppose, even imagine that they themselves are actually doing research under such conditions.

However, if you look at actual results, a clear correlation emerges which contradicts this. The most significant of the research that gets done (though even that, these days, is usually not very significant) tends to be associated with the largest sums of money spent. And in those cases, nobody bothers to inconvenience themselves with the assumption that the bulk of the money should go to anything other than salaries for researchers and research assistants, and basic background property and other administrative expenses; in other words, things that would have to be paid regardless of whether or not anything that looks to outsiders like research actually takes place. Moreover, those leading the research are liable to be living comfortable, well set-up lives, with infrastructure and administration being taken care of by others, and with the equivalent of a hotel environment in terms of domestic support within a college.

At least, that is the case in the sciences, which is the only area in which I have any serious desire to do research. Other people may like to describe me as a philosopher, but I actually have little interest in the questions that are normally considered under that heading. My interest in lucid dreams and out-of-the-body experiences is purely in terms of the progress that could be made by studying these phenomena in the context of a sophisticated electrophysiological laboratory.

I cannot of course prove that I am more likely to make important progress, given a high-grade research and college environment, than someone with a conventionally illustrious CV; without actually being given funding to provide such an environment. However, a wealthy individual who wanted to make progress happen should consider the factors mentioned above, namely:

- that a high IQ and a high degree of motivation may count for more, in certain contexts, than any amount of experience or prestige;

- that a relatively high level of progress is likely to be made by taking factors into account which are usually omitted from consideration;

- that someone desperately trying to regain access to a university career after having had their education ruined by a hostile state education system should be supported.