Given the orthodoxy of human neurological uniformity, it is frequently underemphasized that people are different. We are not identical social atoms who happen to be where we are merely for the accidents of birth and history, but individuals with high degrees of variance in our characteristic composition. Some people, no matter what they or anyone else do, will tend to express certain regularities of behavior that make them who they are, that give them access to or preclude certain opportunities, and will play a large role in their station in life. To a significant degree, we just can’t help but be who we are. This will ultimately determine one’s outcome in life. People who just have innately high time preference will tend to be poor; this is why welfare programs intended to lift people out of poverty are essentially futile, but then again the real reason for their existence is to buy votes per public choice theory.

This lack of emphasis on how people are different may be the fundamental error of modernity. Some people are just stupid, some people are just irascible, some people are just altruistic, some people are just confrontational. These differences don’t always matter, but roles that demand a specific personality type will rarely be occupied by people without it. When one considers the phenomenal ability of gag news sites like The Onion to illustrate a widely recognized if unarticulated stereotype of American life, it is clear that this knowledge isn’t absent, only underutilized. Why is Google so successful? It is precisely because they employ sophisticated heuristics to understand people and put them in contact with products and services they are most likely to want given their expressed preferences; in other words, Google is successful because they utilize the power of stereotyping. Any business that is successful is because they stereotype. Who are the kinds of people that want our product, and how can we market it to them?

Our education system, predicated on the notion that it is only through the instruction format individuals can learn, performs the majority of individuals a disservice. Even those who are intelligent may, for whatever reason, be unable or unwilling to learn in the way they’re “supposed to.” Our education system is, in fact, not even primarily about providing access to knowledge, but instilling particular ways of thinking and acting. The complete failure to recognize that a one-size fits all model of education consigns many to the hell of minimum wage service industries despite, or rather because, their preferred means of learning are not served. Of course, no substantial education reform will be possible until the system completely disintegrates, given the vested interests of groups such as teachers’ lobbies, university administrators, and the government in the status quo. Increasing teacher to student ratios under the pretense of being able to provide more personalized is pointless so long as there is a standardized, assembly line model of schooling in place. Besides, the argument that more highly personalized education will benefit children leads inevitably to the conclusion that homeschooling is best, as a parent is the person most likely to understand and objectively discern the qualities of their children. The correlation between higher educational attainment and successful life outcomes may indicate less that education is causative of success, but that people trust one’s scholastic ability as measured by standardized tests and university grades to indicate likely job performance. When one looks at the best and brightest, one concludes that their success has primarily to do with an innate love of learning, which they pursue freely and not because of the disincentives one faces for truancy or dropping out.

This is the fundamental lesson of human biodiversity. That race exists as a real biological category is overemphasized as the principal discovery, and not to diminish this achievement, but the most important discovery of human biodiversity is the role innate biology plays in the development and formation of an individual’s character. There is a limit to how one might be formed by environmental influences. This is proven in the way that, despite grave negative consequences for certain behaviors, some individuals persist in their destructive and anti-social behavior. Poor people who win millions in the lottery more often than not end up just as poor, if not poorer, than they were before for a simple deficit in the ability to manage their finances in a responsible and sustainable way. Lifelong criminals do not continue committing crime because of their circumstances, but because they are just innately anti-social in outlook. On the other end of the bell curve, highly successful people who could afford to lounge on the beach with their millions yet choose to continue their engagement in profitable, creative endeavors.

In the end, that’s just the way they are.