Why is the Fundamental Constant of Sociology so fundamental?
29th July 2009
Steve Sailer isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.
La Griffe du Lion’s great term for the one standard deviation gap between whites and blacks in just about any measurement that’s related in some way to cognition — the Fundamental Constant of Sociology — is actually rather mysterious.
Another reason, however, is that, for a black or Hispanic, taking an FDNY test is like buying a very, very long-lived lottery ticket.
If the damages in Vulcan Society are set at, say, $20 million, the contingency fee lawyers will presumably grab about $7 million, and several hundred or more black and Hispanic test-takers who came close enough on the test so that they would have been hired if there had been no disparate impact will get checks in the mail adding up to $13 million.
Wouldn’t it be totally awesome to get a five-figure check in the mail for something you wasted time on and failed at a decade ago? So, you can see why so many minorities who didn’t have a chance of getting a good score took the firefighters test — because there was always a sizable chance under Disparate Impact theory that a judge would change the rules years after the game was played and send them money.