Cummings protégé advocates enforced contraception.

[stockhausen]

Labour is calling for the immediate sacking of a Tory adviser over his controversial remarks about pregnancy, race and women’s sport.

Oxbridge-educated Andrew Sabisky is working as a No 10 adviser, having been appointed after chief aide Dominic Cummings put out a job description for “misfits and weirdos” to join him in trying to shake up government.

The 27-year-old, who is contracted on specific projects and is not a permanent staffer, wrote on Cummings’ website in 2014 than in order to get around unplanned pregnancies in the UK, there should be the legal enforcement of long-term contraception.

“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies, creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception and the onset of puberty,” he wrote. “Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”

In another post circulated on Twitter, Sabisky claimed black Americans had a lower average IQ than white people and were more likely to have an “intellectual disability”. He also tweeted: “I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”

What next from our unelected and unanswerable misfit and weirdo? Eugenics? Creation of a Herrenrasse?

 

[Orionaut]

What next from our unelected and unanswerable misfit and weirdo? Eugenics? Creation of a Herrenrasse?

Well, firstly he is being quoted from something he said 6 years ago, presumably while he was still at University or had only just left. Not from something he wrote last week.

Secondly, lets analyse what he did say...

“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies, creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception and the onset of puberty,” he wrote. “Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”

From a purely objective perspective. One has to go through all sorts of legal hoops in order to qualify as a foster/adoptive parent to ensure that prospective parents are fit and proper and up to the job. As a matter of principle (Ignoring the logistics of such a policy for now) Why shouldn't a similar process be required before somebody can have biological children?

In another post circulated on Twitter, Sabisky claimed black Americans had a lower average IQ than white people and were more likely to have an “intellectual disability”.

This is measurable, It is either a correct statement or it is not. My understanding is indeed that Black Americans do score significantly less (By as much as 15 points) across the board compared to White Americans (by the same token, Asiatic Americans score rather better than White Americans, so it isn't just a Black/White thing)

This also means that if you do use the crude definition that anybody scoring less than IQ70 as the cut off point for "Intellectual Disability" then yes, it will also be the case that according to that definition some 1:6 Black Americans will qualify as intellectually disbled.

Now, Personally, I think that IQ tests are not necesarrily a good test for absolute intelegence. I do not accept that 1:6 Black Americans are intellectually disabled (Though defence lawyers will happily argue this if it gets their Black criminal clients off death row! )

But what it DOES say, is that probably half of all Black Americans are unable to score better than 85 in a standardised IQ test. While this doesn't mean that they are intellectually retarded in an absolute way. It does mean that they will not have the range of intellectual tools (Including numeracy and literacy) that are required to perform well in US society.

And this in turn goes a long way towards explaining why unemployment/low pay, poverty, and violent crime is so much more of a problem for Black Americans than it is for any other group.

Now, to what extent these differences are genetic and to what extent they are as a result of cultural/educational factors I do not know. The trouble is that these days it is far too politically dangerous to even study the problem, especially if you come to the "Wrong" conclusion after having done so.

And as for...

“I am always straight up in saying that women’s sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men’s.”

On the face of it, this is a rather bizarre statment.

I suspect that (As is common with these sorts of outrage article) the context has been missed out.

He could be saying that Women Athletes simply aren't good enough to be worth watching.

Or, And to my mind, this is rather more likely,

That Women's Sports, like the Paralympics, is a niche event for a niche audience and neither are particular prime time, main stream, sporting entertainment for the mass market.

 

[doodah]

Yeah I completely believe he was talking about viewing figures and not comparing women's sports in a derogatory way to the Paralympics when you look at his history of incendiary comments. Definitely no other way to talk about this subject in regards to it being a nice/viewing figures.

And I believe it was a tweet with nothing else in it, rather than an extract from something larger (he was replying to someone though but can't find in relation to what).

I'm sure you also have a valid excuse for his attendance and presenting at that secretive UCL conference, sharing the stage with white supremacists.

 

[Roar87]

Do you get paid for being a Labour activist or is this something you do as a hobby?

 

[stockhausen]

Well, firstly he is being quoted from something he said 6 years ago, presumably while he was still at University or had only just left. Not from something he wrote last week.
. . .

Incredible!

You suggest that he should be forgiven for something he put out into the public domain whist whilst an Oxbridge student - presumably whatever he was studying didn't involve either ethics or humanity beyond the ancient Greek or Latin era

. . .
From a purely objective perspective. One has to go through all sorts of legal hoops in order to qualify as a foster/adoptive parent to ensure that prospective parents are fit and proper and up to the job. As a matter of principle (Ignoring the logistics of such a policy for now) Why shouldn't a similar process be required before somebody can have biological children?
. . .

You are seriously suggesting that some person or people should be determining who is and is not allowed to have children?

Have you ever read anything by Aldous Huxley? Since it seems probably not, I suggest you start with Brave New World, you could then move on to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.


I can only assume that your post was tongue-in-cheek?

 

[dowie]

Firstly this bloke does seem like a bit of a weirdo but not in a good way, he's definitely got more than a few gaps - he's some sort of "superforecaster" with some link to some organisation making rather bold claims about forecasting etc.. (that seems like a bit dubious tbh... dunno what this guy's background is but presumably economics or something else other than actual statistics - I've got a low opinion of people who get a bit too carried away with their forecasting abilities).

He's also a "high anglican" - bit of a blind spot to still believe in god - especially if you're supposedly going to be some super smart forecasting chap...

And he's making some dodgy claims using IQ tests - a fundamentally flawed measure. Sure IQ tests can perhaps be used to identify people who have some mental deficiency, they perhaps have some correlation with people who can perform well in some analytical job and... well they can tell you that how good you are at taking IQ tests (though not all that well as there can be plenty of variance between tests for the same individual!!!).

It should be pretty self evident without any arguments re: flawed stats that trying to encapsulate a score of "intelligence", something inherently multi dimensional, into a single value is a load of balls in the first place.

A white person with a -2 standard deviation IQ is generally quite noticeably a "retard" (to use the old technical term!), now supposedly a significant portion of African Americans also have that same score... yet they're not noticeably "retards" - something ain't quite right - firstly, the tests are only measuring a small portion (arbitrarily chosen) of our cognitive abilities. Secondly IQ is frequently linked to by its proponents to some real world performance - problem is real world performance in various areas often has a skewed distribution with a long tail to the right hand side... yet IQ is constructed to follow a Gaussian... ergo these people who promote IQ end up with some meaningless correlations. Not to mention if there are population differences then there are likely different underlying distributions in terms of performance in different areas etc.. and comparisons of this single score (which again just crudely measures some arbitrarily chosen traits) across populations while attempting to link to performance in some areas is kinda BS too. What other traits are they not measuring that might also explain performance in some area they've chosen?

Not to mention that there has historically been plenty of cultural bias in IQ tests... now assuming you remove the obvious cultural bias you're still left with the fact that IQ is measuring arbitrarily selected traits/performance in some particular areas/tasks chosen by some westerners because they subjectively (and rather arbitrarily) believe them to be useful.

But this guy, this "super forecaster" seemingly doesn't let major flaws (including statistical ones) bother him... I'm going with he's got some softer economics, psychology or computer science (perhaps fancies himself as a "data scientist") background, if he turns out to be a mathematician or stats guy then he needs a slap.

Re: contraception - well he's not promoting government policy there - and I doubt forced sterilisation or long term contraception is on the horizon - certainly encouragement for people not to pop out kids when they're barely in any position to afford them isn't a bad thing, especially if they're from a demographic that might not give them the best start in life but beyond that - this is some guy pondering stuff online - some of it is worrying (re: his actual competence and seemingly inflated opinion of his abilities re: forecasting, other stuff is kinda valid to ponder and doesn't imply that he'd be advising on that as actual government policy).

 

[BowdonUK]

I'm just going off the Guardian link OP posted and the other posts on the thread.

The bit about;

“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies, creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception and the onset of puberty,” he wrote. “Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”

Don't a lot of people these days prefer the pill? That is a form of long term treatment, definately longer than using a condom. He's right about the vaccination laws. This positioning he's doing was already predictable for those that can see past immediate reactionary views. Giving in to the principle of allowing a government to enforce medical procedures was always going to be a very serious principle to set.

As for the part about IQ. My personal view is that IQ only plays a role in certain situations and shouldn't be used as a lone principle to judge a person. It would be like saying if you're not smart then your useless. This isn't right. But there as been a lot of studies of IQ and they are fairly consistant in how IQ is distributed amongst the races. To call it claptrap is undermining the studies. The data results aren't the issue. It's how we use that information that can be either a good or bad thing.

On the women issue, I'm using the thread comments on this. I guess he's saying that its like in boxing, everyone wants to see the heavyweights. Any class under them aren't going to get top billing unless its a special event. It's just a different way of looking at things.

Though based off some of this thinking, especially this;

In an interview he did in 2016 Sabisky said he was interested in narcolepsy drug modafinil, which also cuts the need for sleep in healthy people by two-thirds and potentially helps brain function.

There is also evidence of a higher risk of people getting Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a life-threatening skin condition. “From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year,” he said.

He seems to be emotionally detached from what he's saying. It appears people are just numbers on a spreadsheet to him. I can't imagine he's the kind of person people would want helping to set policies for the population. For him to be even given the job, knowing what we know, says a lot about the people hiring him.

 

[dowie]

To call it claptrap is undermining the studies.

So what?

A big chunk of Psychology in general is likely a load of horse **** given they struggle to replicate a lot of it.

 

[krooton]

Don't a lot of people these days prefer the pill? That is a form of long term treatment, definately longer than using a condom.

No, a lot of women hate the pill and its side-effects. Interestingly enough, when trials for a male version of the pill started, the men complained about the side-effects and research pretty much stalled. Funny that.

 

[TJM]

From a purely objective perspective. One has to go through all sorts of legal hoops in order to qualify as a foster/adoptive parent to ensure that prospective parents are fit and proper and up to the job. As a matter of principle (Ignoring the logistics of such a policy for now) Why shouldn't a similar process be required before somebody can have biological children?

Because it would require forced medical intervention.

Not caring about the emotions of others is a fairly common trait among 'alternate thinkers' but being in favour of a physically invasive policy is something else. I wonder if he fully realises that the people he is/was in favour of sterilising are actually individual human beings.

 

[ron3003]

There's been plenty of posts on this very forum over the years advocating enforced sterilisation of certain sections of our population.

 

[dowie]

There's been plenty of posts on this very forum over the years advocating enforced sterilisation of certain sections of our population.

Would solve our chav problem perhaps... they reproduce more frequently and at a younger age + the outcomes for their offspring tend not to be too great given the environment they’re brought up in.

Then again posting in GD about forcing chavs to take contraceptives or get sterilised isn’t really a serious proposal.

 

[stockhausen]

The bits that I think some people may be missing here are:

• the problems of creating a permanent underclass

and

• there should be the legal enforcement of long-term contraception

These observations do sound positively Orwellian; I wonder who prepares Master Sabisky's luncheon when mummy isn't about?

 

[Skillmister]

Doesn't seem like a bad idea to me considering some of my neighbours..

 

[peterwalkley]

.......

Then again posting in GD about forcing chavs to take contraceptives .....

I think it was tried, but the pills kept falling out.

 

[Roar87]

No, a lot of women hate the pill and its side-effects. Interestingly enough, when trials for a male version of the pill started, the men complained about the side-effects and research pretty much stalled. Funny that.

Oh yeah research has pretty much stalled, except for the fact the male pill is in trials

 

[dowie]

The bits that I think some people may be missing here are:

• the problems of creating a permanent underclass

and

• there should be the legal enforcement of long-term contraception

These observations do sound positively Orwellian; I wonder who prepares Master Sabisky's luncheon when mummy isn't about?

Are you worried that your people will cease to exist?

Don't need to force it necessarily - just link it to benefits - no more UC unless you get the new 2 year contraceptive implant Sharon....

 

[robgmun]

No, a lot of women hate the pill and its side-effects. Interestingly enough, when trials for a male version of the pill started, the men complained about the side-effects and research pretty much stalled. Funny that.

I did wonder what happened to the male pill, it was just around the corner 10 years ago and i didn't hear anything much since.

 

[NVP]

I think it was tried, but the pills kept falling out.

 

[stockhausen]

Boris Johnson’s spokesman has refused to say whether the prime minister thinks black people have lower IQs on average, or agrees with eugenics, after No 10 hired an adviser with highly controversial views.

In a tense briefing with the media, the prime minister’s deputy official spokesman declined several times to distance Johnson from the views of his adviser, Andrew Sabisky, who has suggested “enforced contraception” be used to prevent the creation of a “permanent underclass”. (LINK)

Quelle surprise

Johnson gets all coy when asked a question about the ethical position of one of his "advisers"