[jmorphy88]

> From there, the implication of your view is that perhaps we should just place all the people with down syndrome in ghettos and leave them there. After all, they can never compete in the modern world. Do you think that's acceptable social policy? That that's an acceptable way to treat your fellow human beings, no matter how disadvantaged they are?

He was making much the same point, at least before the post was flagged... the point being that we must take these perhaps unpleasant facts into account when making social policy, rather than maintaining elaborate fictions that force us to disregard reality in favour of expediency.

And as far as I'm aware, we don't place people with Down syndrome into ghettoes, nor do we harbour illusions that with the right environment they will all be future neurosurgeons...

[noselfrighteous]

My point is that offering up IQ as an explanatory variable which alleviates any obligation to help another group is cowardice. Even accepting that IQ difference is an irrevocable consequence of genetics (which I don't), the next step is not "so it's their fault and we should not help them because they don't help themselves".

Which is the point of the DS analogy. It was an appeal to what I consider fundamental humanity. Perhaps it was a waste of time as an argument. Perhaps I should have just stuck to pointing out how fundamentally flawed the idea is; of formulating social policy on a metric as flexible as IQ.

[DanBC]

> And as far as I'm aware, we don't place people with Down syndrome into ghettoes

You may want to spend some time investigating the human rights abuses that people with Down's Syndome (and other learning disabilities) endure.