I don’t think the concern would be that “they could take over the whole society”. It would be more that smart people (more accurately: people in various groups that correlate with smartness, and perhaps more strongly with schools’ estimates of pupil-smartness) already have some tendency to interact only with one another, and segregating schools would increase that tendency, and that might be bad for social cohesion and even stability (because e.g. those smart people will include most of the politicians, and the less aware they are of what Ordinary People want the more likely they are to seem out of touch and lead to populist smash-everything moves).
that might be bad for social cohesion and even stability
This is a complicated argument. Are you basically saying that it’s “good” (we’ll leave aside figuring out what it means for a second) for people to be tribal at the nation-state level but bad for them to be tribal at more granular levels?
For most cohesion you want a very homogeneous population (see e.g. Iceland). Technically speaking, any diversity reduces social cohesion and diversity in IQ is just one example of that. If you’re worried about cohesion and stability, any diversity is “bad” and you want to discourage tribes at the sub-nation levels.
The obvious counterpoint is that diversity has advantages. Homogeneity has well-known downsides, so you’re in effect trading off diversity against stability. That topic, of course, gets us into a right into a political minefield :-/
Just to clarify, I am describing rather than making arguments. As I said upthread, I am not claiming that they are actually good arguments nor endorsing the conclusion they (by construction) point towards. With that out of the way:
that it’s “good” [...] for people to be tribal at the nation-state level but bad for them to be tribal at more granular levels?
The argument doesn’t have anything to say about what should happen at the nation-state level. I guess most people do endorse tribalism at the nation-state level, though.
For most cohesion you want a very homogeneous population [...] any diversity reduces social cohesion
If you have a more or less fixed national population (in fact, what we have that’s relevant here is a more or less fixed population at a level somewhere below the national; whatever scale our postulated school segregation happens at) then you don’t get to choose the diversity at that scale. At smaller scales you can make less-diverse and therefore possibly more-cohesive subpopulations, at the likely cost of increased tension between the groups.
(I think we are more or less saying the same thing here.)
The obvious counterpoint is that diversity has advantages.
Yes. (We were asked for arguments against segregation by ability, so I listed some. Many of them have more or less obvious counterarguments.)
The argument doesn’t have anything to say about what should happen at the nation-state level.
Concerns about social cohesion and stability are mostly relevant at the nation-state level. This is so because at sub-state levels the exit option is generally available and is viable. At the state level, not so much.
In plain words, it’s much easier to move out if your town loses cohesion and stability than if your country does.
you don’t get to choose the diversity
You don’t get to choose the diversity, but you can incentivise or disincentivise the differentiation with long-term consequences. For an example, look at what happened to, say, people who immigrated to the US in the first half of the XX century. They started with a lot of diversity but because the general trend was towards homogenisation, that diversity lessened considerably.
This again depends a lot on the specific IQ values. There are probably many politicians around the Mensa level, but I would suspect that there are not so many above cca IQ 150, simply because of the low base rate… and maybe even because they might have a communication problem when talking to an average voter, so if they want to influence politics, it would make more sense for them to start a think tank, or becomes advisors, so they don’t have to compete for the average Joe’s vote directly.
I don’t think the concern would be that “they could take over the whole society”. It would be more that smart people (more accurately: people in various groups that correlate with smartness, and perhaps more strongly with schools’ estimates of pupil-smartness) already have some tendency to interact only with one another, and segregating schools would increase that tendency, and that might be bad for social cohesion and even stability (because e.g. those smart people will include most of the politicians, and the less aware they are of what Ordinary People want the more likely they are to seem out of touch and lead to populist smash-everything moves).
This is a complicated argument. Are you basically saying that it’s “good” (we’ll leave aside figuring out what it means for a second) for people to be tribal at the nation-state level but bad for them to be tribal at more granular levels?
For most cohesion you want a very homogeneous population (see e.g. Iceland). Technically speaking, any diversity reduces social cohesion and diversity in IQ is just one example of that. If you’re worried about cohesion and stability, any diversity is “bad” and you want to discourage tribes at the sub-nation levels.
The obvious counterpoint is that diversity has advantages. Homogeneity has well-known downsides, so you’re in effect trading off diversity against stability. That topic, of course, gets us into a right into a political minefield :-/
Just to clarify, I am describing rather than making arguments. As I said upthread, I am not claiming that they are actually good arguments nor endorsing the conclusion they (by construction) point towards. With that out of the way:
The argument doesn’t have anything to say about what should happen at the nation-state level. I guess most people do endorse tribalism at the nation-state level, though.
If you have a more or less fixed national population (in fact, what we have that’s relevant here is a more or less fixed population at a level somewhere below the national; whatever scale our postulated school segregation happens at) then you don’t get to choose the diversity at that scale. At smaller scales you can make less-diverse and therefore possibly more-cohesive subpopulations, at the likely cost of increased tension between the groups.
(I think we are more or less saying the same thing here.)
Yes. (We were asked for arguments against segregation by ability, so I listed some. Many of them have more or less obvious counterarguments.)
Concerns about social cohesion and stability are mostly relevant at the nation-state level. This is so because at sub-state levels the exit option is generally available and is viable. At the state level, not so much.
In plain words, it’s much easier to move out if your town loses cohesion and stability than if your country does.
You don’t get to choose the diversity, but you can incentivise or disincentivise the differentiation with long-term consequences. For an example, look at what happened to, say, people who immigrated to the US in the first half of the XX century. They started with a lot of diversity but because the general trend was towards homogenisation, that diversity lessened considerably.
This again depends a lot on the specific IQ values. There are probably many politicians around the Mensa level, but I would suspect that there are not so many above cca IQ 150, simply because of the low base rate… and maybe even because they might have a communication problem when talking to an average voter, so if they want to influence politics, it would make more sense for them to start a think tank, or becomes advisors, so they don’t have to compete for the average Joe’s vote directly.