Beyond the ridiculousness of social issues, presidential nitpicking, and partisanship, there are people like Mark Daily that inspire us to be better people and live to make the world a better place.
Honestly, I just could not see a person like him emerging from France, China, India, Russia, or any other country. It is a uniquely American personality.
Sure every country has its heroes.
But to be selfless and sacrificing, while ALSO rigorously challenging the moral basis for the sacrifice, requires a type of culture that values individual liberty over all other directives.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Hitch
So, taking a break from all the bleak political turmoil, I checked out the movie Hitch which came out a few years ago and I've been meaning to see.
Roger Ebert said it best
"The premise is intriguing, and for a time it seems that the Date Doctor may indeed know things about women that most men in the movies are not allowed to know, but the third act goes on autopilot just when the Doctor should be in."
Just in case you haven't seen the movie, Will Smith may have been on to something. There is a speed dating scene in which Smith states that any guy CANNOT tell a girl that he likes her in order to get with her, and the rest of the guys agree. Then he blurts out that he gives nice guys a chance, the nice guys that women usually don't look at. And in the beginning, his advice is usually decent, and of course there has to be a token white guy/asian girl couple.
Of course, it collapses into absurdity when the usually coquettish Eva Mendez falls for the blubbering Smith, and the stocky and too nice Albert gets "Hitched" with Cole.
So, I don't know what modern dating and ubiquitous information will yield, whether the media will start to incorporate the insanity that is dating paradoxes, or they'll continue to show nice guys with no game getting laid.
I suppose that with the soon demise of commercials due to TIVO and Itunes, product placement will start to influence the movie scripts. Perhaps in order to sell more products, movies will avoid the alpha and evolutionary reality and instead stick to the traditional view that buying things for women will make them like you.
Roger Ebert said it best
"The premise is intriguing, and for a time it seems that the Date Doctor may indeed know things about women that most men in the movies are not allowed to know, but the third act goes on autopilot just when the Doctor should be in."
Just in case you haven't seen the movie, Will Smith may have been on to something. There is a speed dating scene in which Smith states that any guy CANNOT tell a girl that he likes her in order to get with her, and the rest of the guys agree. Then he blurts out that he gives nice guys a chance, the nice guys that women usually don't look at. And in the beginning, his advice is usually decent, and of course there has to be a token white guy/asian girl couple.
Of course, it collapses into absurdity when the usually coquettish Eva Mendez falls for the blubbering Smith, and the stocky and too nice Albert gets "Hitched" with Cole.
So, I don't know what modern dating and ubiquitous information will yield, whether the media will start to incorporate the insanity that is dating paradoxes, or they'll continue to show nice guys with no game getting laid.
I suppose that with the soon demise of commercials due to TIVO and Itunes, product placement will start to influence the movie scripts. Perhaps in order to sell more products, movies will avoid the alpha and evolutionary reality and instead stick to the traditional view that buying things for women will make them like you.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Pakistan
Who killed Bhutto?
I'm quite curious. As an Indian-American, my knowledge of Pakistan has been colored by growing up with very pro-Indian parents, and a concurrent severe dislike of Islam. Bhutto may have been a socialist, she may have been pro-Western, and she may be anti-extremist. But regardless of what she is, there are people in Pakistan who would lose out, ideologically, by her becoming Prime Minister.
Sure, no politician can appease everyone, which Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney seem to be trying to do.
The problem is, though, is that Pakistan is a country fundamentally lacking in any sort of national identity. The national language is split between Sindhi, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashtun, and English. The literacy rate is pitiful. There is a significant Shi'a minority, and a large extremist faction, along with the occasional Christian and Hindu. The population is just as racially diverse as India. And there is no burgeoning IT sector or call center business to take advantage of the global economy.
In short, Pakistan is the exact opposite of a country ripe for democracy.
The country was formed a mere 60 years ago. It's entire national identity is based upon the premise that Muslims in India would not be able to practice freely in India. But guess what? There are 140 million Muslims in India (freely practicing and Hajj subsidized), compared with Pakistan's population of 164 million. Not exactly the basis for a national identity.
So, on facebook or whatever, I see groups where Pakistani Americans say things like "Pakistan Zindabad."
Wtf are you talking about? It's a crap country. I don't even go around saying India is great because, damn it, my relatives migrated to the US and became citizens instead of staying in India. They did it for a reason.
But anyway, I understand that the Bush administration has to make a show of face by calling for democracy in Pakistan. But, the State Department should at least realize that this is a country where honor killings are a daily reality.
I'm quite curious. As an Indian-American, my knowledge of Pakistan has been colored by growing up with very pro-Indian parents, and a concurrent severe dislike of Islam. Bhutto may have been a socialist, she may have been pro-Western, and she may be anti-extremist. But regardless of what she is, there are people in Pakistan who would lose out, ideologically, by her becoming Prime Minister.
Sure, no politician can appease everyone, which Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney seem to be trying to do.
The problem is, though, is that Pakistan is a country fundamentally lacking in any sort of national identity. The national language is split between Sindhi, Urdu, Punjabi, Pashtun, and English. The literacy rate is pitiful. There is a significant Shi'a minority, and a large extremist faction, along with the occasional Christian and Hindu. The population is just as racially diverse as India. And there is no burgeoning IT sector or call center business to take advantage of the global economy.
In short, Pakistan is the exact opposite of a country ripe for democracy.
The country was formed a mere 60 years ago. It's entire national identity is based upon the premise that Muslims in India would not be able to practice freely in India. But guess what? There are 140 million Muslims in India (freely practicing and Hajj subsidized), compared with Pakistan's population of 164 million. Not exactly the basis for a national identity.
So, on facebook or whatever, I see groups where Pakistani Americans say things like "Pakistan Zindabad."
Wtf are you talking about? It's a crap country. I don't even go around saying India is great because, damn it, my relatives migrated to the US and became citizens instead of staying in India. They did it for a reason.
But anyway, I understand that the Bush administration has to make a show of face by calling for democracy in Pakistan. But, the State Department should at least realize that this is a country where honor killings are a daily reality.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Proof that evolution has screwed up women
This whole women being attracted to the bad boy thing is now to some degree common knowledge. But this tops it.
God is laughing.
God is laughing.
Pickup goes mainstream
While I usually think most of the dating articles on MSN or Yahoo are bs, a recent one on approaching had some decent points. Like:
Do not hesitate. They even mention the 3 second rule
And body language pointers, like don't fidget, and lean away from her.
What I don't understand, is the whole big deal over a woman catching a guy using lines she knows he learned on the internet or worse, TV show .
Basically, that tells her that the guy isn't as charismatic or interesting as she thinks. He is just faking it. In essence, he is using a fake fitness indicator to convey personality and social dominance while in fact he has none.
So, instead of enjoying the interaction, the girl discounts the guy because he revealed himself to not be the dominating charmer she thought initially. Even if the dominating charmer won't commit, won't do anything to help the world, and will likely leave her with a broken heart, she's powerless to resist him because of the way female sexual selection has evolved into modern day bimbo.
The thing that is most confusing, though, is that the woman are attracted to men BECAUSE of their aloof, interesting, funny, socially dominant personalities. So, what difference does it make to them where the guy learned it? I supposed the woman would prefer the genes of a natural rather than a keyboard jockey turned pickup artist. But still, it's not like she is going home with a guy because she thinks he's hot and then at home he takes of his mask to reveal the face of a monster.
But shouldn't women worry more about the fact that these asinine lines work in creating attraction, and that largely, their gender is devoid of anyone who can feel attracted to intelligence?
Warning: evolutionary psych makes people very disillusioned about the world. But at least we know the root of our problems. Ignorance can be bliss.
Do not hesitate. They even mention the 3 second rule
And body language pointers, like don't fidget, and lean away from her.
What I don't understand, is the whole big deal over a woman catching a guy using lines she knows he learned on the internet or worse, TV show .
Basically, that tells her that the guy isn't as charismatic or interesting as she thinks. He is just faking it. In essence, he is using a fake fitness indicator to convey personality and social dominance while in fact he has none.
So, instead of enjoying the interaction, the girl discounts the guy because he revealed himself to not be the dominating charmer she thought initially. Even if the dominating charmer won't commit, won't do anything to help the world, and will likely leave her with a broken heart, she's powerless to resist him because of the way female sexual selection has evolved into modern day bimbo.
The thing that is most confusing, though, is that the woman are attracted to men BECAUSE of their aloof, interesting, funny, socially dominant personalities. So, what difference does it make to them where the guy learned it? I supposed the woman would prefer the genes of a natural rather than a keyboard jockey turned pickup artist. But still, it's not like she is going home with a guy because she thinks he's hot and then at home he takes of his mask to reveal the face of a monster.
But shouldn't women worry more about the fact that these asinine lines work in creating attraction, and that largely, their gender is devoid of anyone who can feel attracted to intelligence?
Warning: evolutionary psych makes people very disillusioned about the world. But at least we know the root of our problems. Ignorance can be bliss.
Can Rushton be proved more right?
Phillipe K. Rushton's view of human nature is, well, controversial, to say the least. However, it has been phenomenally useful in understanding the differences between races .
Japan is so far confirming his results along with africa .
Japan is so far confirming his results along with africa .
Sunday, December 16, 2007
NYT Fallacies
So the letters are in on the Genes and IQ editorial which was easily debunked in the last entry.
Now I'll focus on some of the letters that bring out more bs:
"If we want intelligence tests, we need to devise new ones based on actual scientific theory rather than Victorian and Progressive Era puffery. Until then, at the very least, we should have a healthy agnosticism about who is smarter than whom."
Alright, back again to the rehashed debate on the validity of IQ tests. Look, IQ works better than ANY other demographic indicator in terms of correlation with income, crime, and health). And the army uses it religiously to determine who's going to be in the infantry and who's going to do logistics. It works, regardless of where/when it was conceived.
"Between the early 1970s and 2004, the reading and math scores of black children have risen faster than the scores for white children. Among 9-year-olds, black children have closed more than a third of the black-white gap that existed in the early 1970s. Progress has also been made by 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds."
This is just isolated incidents. The simple fact remains that the IQ gap between blacks and whites has remained a robust one standard deviation. Unless you're measuring the scores in terms of standard deviation, changes in test score gaps have no relevance. Black 13 year olds still read at an 10 year old level and the average 17 year old black reads at a 13 year old level. That's the sad truth.
"I.Q. tests are notoriously biased against anyone who is not white, male and middle class. Numerous studies have shown that it is not a valid measure of intelligence and, indeed, even white people who come from other cultures score poorly on the tests."
Uh, which explains why Asians tend to have 4 points higher on IQ tests than whites, right? And why male and female IQ scores are almost exactly equal, and only differ on the sub tests that measure either spacial reasoning or verbal ability.
Whites from other cultures score poorly on the test? International IQ scores beg to differ.
"The real point of interest is why people do this research in the first place. These studies tell us nothing about intelligence, black people, white people, genetics or environment. What they really show is the inherent racism of the ones doing the research."
You're kidding, right? The point of these studies is, as Watson said, that all our public policy is based on equal intelligence between races. And that is why economic development, and no child left behind have been abject failures.
"We now know enough about the fine structure of the brain, the proteins involved and the roles they play in learning, cognition, memory and other components of intelligence to understand that the DNA of genes are, generally, many steps removed from determining these capacities. Any study of the genetics of possible racial differences in intelligence must be based not on genes but on knowledge of the fine structure and proteins of the brain. These can provide objective, quantifiable measures."
This objection is more scientific in origin, but still out of touch with reality. Even within families, differences in intelligence between non-identical siblings can largely be traced to different sets of genes going to each kid. Why can't animals ever become as intelligent as humans? It's in the genes, dude. And I give guys like these maybe 10 or 15 years. After that, the genetics will be in and we'll know the truth. Complex interactions between genes and environment won't be so complex anymore.
"As heartening as I found Richard E. Nisbett’s arguments against a correlation between race and intelligence, I find it difficult to overlook the fact that one of the world’s most eminent scientists, James D. Watson, recently lost his job for taking the opposite position.
Under such circumstances, essays like Professor Nisbett’s take on the air of dogma. One is left to wonder what researchers might find or say if their careers and reputations weren’t threatened by academic McCarthyism."
I give credit where it's due. Even though the NY Times is supporting bunk opinions, at least they're willing to acknowledge the taboo atmosphere around such research.
"Perhaps Richard E. Nisbett’s report on studies that show the effect of environment on I.Q. scores has provided an answer to a question I have pondered for many years. When I was in high school, I scored 115 on an I.Q. test, but when I had another I.Q. test many years later, I scored over 130. Why the increase?
My skin color hadn’t changed, but my environment certainly had. I grew up in a small town with a father who had dropped out of school in the sixth grade and a mother who was the only one of six children who graduated from high school.
When I took the second I.Q. test some 30 years later, I was living in Baltimore because my husband was a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University. I had just completed a master’s degree and was thinking of applying for admission to a doctoral program."
My god, what a scientific opinion! Does anyone know the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific studies anymore, or has reality TV fried our brains too much? Look, almost all psychologists have agreed that, at least for whites, IQ is 70-80% genetic, based on twin studies in different countries. That's old news.
I thought that the editorial, since it didn't discount the notion of IQ or the genetic determination of it, was a step forward. Apparently people have the need to continually bring out already debunked arguments against IQ.
Got to keep up the fight. The starving kids in Africa and the innocent children getting shot daily in our inner cities suffer because we're to afraid to confront the truth.
Now I'll focus on some of the letters that bring out more bs:
"If we want intelligence tests, we need to devise new ones based on actual scientific theory rather than Victorian and Progressive Era puffery. Until then, at the very least, we should have a healthy agnosticism about who is smarter than whom."
Alright, back again to the rehashed debate on the validity of IQ tests. Look, IQ works better than ANY other demographic indicator in terms of correlation with income, crime, and health). And the army uses it religiously to determine who's going to be in the infantry and who's going to do logistics. It works, regardless of where/when it was conceived.
"Between the early 1970s and 2004, the reading and math scores of black children have risen faster than the scores for white children. Among 9-year-olds, black children have closed more than a third of the black-white gap that existed in the early 1970s. Progress has also been made by 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds."
This is just isolated incidents. The simple fact remains that the IQ gap between blacks and whites has remained a robust one standard deviation. Unless you're measuring the scores in terms of standard deviation, changes in test score gaps have no relevance. Black 13 year olds still read at an 10 year old level and the average 17 year old black reads at a 13 year old level. That's the sad truth.
"I.Q. tests are notoriously biased against anyone who is not white, male and middle class. Numerous studies have shown that it is not a valid measure of intelligence and, indeed, even white people who come from other cultures score poorly on the tests."
Uh, which explains why Asians tend to have 4 points higher on IQ tests than whites, right? And why male and female IQ scores are almost exactly equal, and only differ on the sub tests that measure either spacial reasoning or verbal ability.
Whites from other cultures score poorly on the test? International IQ scores beg to differ.
"The real point of interest is why people do this research in the first place. These studies tell us nothing about intelligence, black people, white people, genetics or environment. What they really show is the inherent racism of the ones doing the research."
You're kidding, right? The point of these studies is, as Watson said, that all our public policy is based on equal intelligence between races. And that is why economic development, and no child left behind have been abject failures.
"We now know enough about the fine structure of the brain, the proteins involved and the roles they play in learning, cognition, memory and other components of intelligence to understand that the DNA of genes are, generally, many steps removed from determining these capacities. Any study of the genetics of possible racial differences in intelligence must be based not on genes but on knowledge of the fine structure and proteins of the brain. These can provide objective, quantifiable measures."
This objection is more scientific in origin, but still out of touch with reality. Even within families, differences in intelligence between non-identical siblings can largely be traced to different sets of genes going to each kid. Why can't animals ever become as intelligent as humans? It's in the genes, dude. And I give guys like these maybe 10 or 15 years. After that, the genetics will be in and we'll know the truth. Complex interactions between genes and environment won't be so complex anymore.
"As heartening as I found Richard E. Nisbett’s arguments against a correlation between race and intelligence, I find it difficult to overlook the fact that one of the world’s most eminent scientists, James D. Watson, recently lost his job for taking the opposite position.
Under such circumstances, essays like Professor Nisbett’s take on the air of dogma. One is left to wonder what researchers might find or say if their careers and reputations weren’t threatened by academic McCarthyism."
I give credit where it's due. Even though the NY Times is supporting bunk opinions, at least they're willing to acknowledge the taboo atmosphere around such research.
"Perhaps Richard E. Nisbett’s report on studies that show the effect of environment on I.Q. scores has provided an answer to a question I have pondered for many years. When I was in high school, I scored 115 on an I.Q. test, but when I had another I.Q. test many years later, I scored over 130. Why the increase?
My skin color hadn’t changed, but my environment certainly had. I grew up in a small town with a father who had dropped out of school in the sixth grade and a mother who was the only one of six children who graduated from high school.
When I took the second I.Q. test some 30 years later, I was living in Baltimore because my husband was a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University. I had just completed a master’s degree and was thinking of applying for admission to a doctoral program."
My god, what a scientific opinion! Does anyone know the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific studies anymore, or has reality TV fried our brains too much? Look, almost all psychologists have agreed that, at least for whites, IQ is 70-80% genetic, based on twin studies in different countries. That's old news.
I thought that the editorial, since it didn't discount the notion of IQ or the genetic determination of it, was a step forward. Apparently people have the need to continually bring out already debunked arguments against IQ.
Got to keep up the fight. The starving kids in Africa and the innocent children getting shot daily in our inner cities suffer because we're to afraid to confront the truth.
Monday, December 10, 2007
More religious hypocrisy on tragedy
Regarding the terrible church shootings .
This woman, Jeanne, is a hero. But something she said I found very off:
This is what the security guard said:
"I give the credit to god and I mean that I did it very humbly and the whole time God was with me. This has got to be God."
This is along the same lines as what Mitt Romney said in his speech:
"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God."
NO! Liberty is a gift of the men who died in the wars protecting America and the people fighting to make sure the government stays out of our lives at home.
God has NO role in this world. We, humanity, are to blame and congratulate for anything that happens.
If anything, be willing to admit that our founders had a distinctly deist perspective and realized that God wasn't going to save them if the revolution went bad.
After Virginia Tech we again saw the same religious posturing and I wrote about it before .
But again and again we always see religious nutjobs cite God as a reason for their survival while genocide occurs in the world and apparently God is too busy to do something about that. What a world we live in. Thousands of children die a day from malaria. But op! God and the religious apparently are more concerned with our beliefs on evolution instead of actual innocent children dying.
Sam Harris said it best:
"Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs."
What's infinitely frustrating about this is this woman should be lauded and praised. She RISKED HER LIFE to save the people in the church. She's a heroine, without question. And what does she do? She attributes it to God.
No, you, Jeanne Assam did it. You saved their lives. God wasn't there to save the two sisters:
"Two sisters were killed in the parking lot at New Life. Police identified them as Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, both of Denver."
Now a dad has lost his daughters, while he survived. And in his mind, he is wondering: "What did I ever do that God allowed me to live while killing my daughters? Everyone else is alive and thanking God. All I have is death."
Jeanne, inspire others to follow you and be selfless if there is an opportunity to save lives. Don't let us think that our lives are in God's hands and we are powerless.
This woman, Jeanne, is a hero. But something she said I found very off:
This is what the security guard said:
"I give the credit to god and I mean that I did it very humbly and the whole time God was with me. This has got to be God."
This is along the same lines as what Mitt Romney said in his speech:
"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God."
NO! Liberty is a gift of the men who died in the wars protecting America and the people fighting to make sure the government stays out of our lives at home.
God has NO role in this world. We, humanity, are to blame and congratulate for anything that happens.
If anything, be willing to admit that our founders had a distinctly deist perspective and realized that God wasn't going to save them if the revolution went bad.
After Virginia Tech we again saw the same religious posturing and I wrote about it before .
But again and again we always see religious nutjobs cite God as a reason for their survival while genocide occurs in the world and apparently God is too busy to do something about that. What a world we live in. Thousands of children die a day from malaria. But op! God and the religious apparently are more concerned with our beliefs on evolution instead of actual innocent children dying.
Sam Harris said it best:
"Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs."
What's infinitely frustrating about this is this woman should be lauded and praised. She RISKED HER LIFE to save the people in the church. She's a heroine, without question. And what does she do? She attributes it to God.
No, you, Jeanne Assam did it. You saved their lives. God wasn't there to save the two sisters:
"Two sisters were killed in the parking lot at New Life. Police identified them as Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, both of Denver."
Now a dad has lost his daughters, while he survived. And in his mind, he is wondering: "What did I ever do that God allowed me to live while killing my daughters? Everyone else is alive and thanking God. All I have is death."
Jeanne, inspire others to follow you and be selfless if there is an opportunity to save lives. Don't let us think that our lives are in God's hands and we are powerless.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Race and IQ in NYT
So, the NYT continues in its coverage of the racial IQ gap in this editorial
So I'm gonna take a look at some of their arguments. Remember, I'll admit that I am not 100% certain of the racial gap in intelligence being genetic, but I believe in occam's razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best. So, here we go:
First of all, the quote about Watson forgot to mention:
"there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
Huge concept that the article did not even touch.
"
"For the poor, a group that includes a substantial proportion of minorities, heritability of I.Q. is very low, in the range of 10 percent to 20 percent, according to recent research by Eric Turkheimer at the University of Virginia. This means that for the poor, improvements in environment have great potential to bring about increases in I.Q."
As you can see here
The gap remains despite changes in SES (in which the high SES parents are most likely also high IQ). In fact, a black child at the top 10% of SES is barely at the 50% for whites.
Also, as Lynn notes in his book "In the 57 studies of general population samples in Africans in 17 african countries, all of the IQ's ly in the range between 59 and 88, and in the 14 Caribbean and Latin American countries it's between 60 and 80."
Africans in Britain, Netherlands, Brazil, and the US have significant differences in IQ from the white population.
"But the brain size difference between men and women is substantially greater than that between blacks and whites, yet men and women score the same, on average, on I.Q. tests."
Actually, correcting for body size there isn't a substantial difference in IQ between men and women. Lynn also cites studies that puts the brain size-IQ correlation at .4, which is huge. A study found that a rat's ability to solve a maze is positively correlated with brain size.
"Likewise, a group of people in a community in Ecuador have a genetic anomaly that produces extremely small head sizes — and hence brain sizes. Yet their intelligence is as high as that of their unaffected relatives."
This is anecdotal, not statistical evidence. And have their IQ's been tested? Or is this as useful as Jared Diamond's assertion that the Maoris are more intelligent than westerners because of their survival skills?
"About 25 percent of the genes in the American black population are European, meaning that the genes of any individual can range from 100 percent African to mostly European. If European intelligence genes are superior, then blacks who have relatively more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s than those who have more African genes. But it turns out that skin color and “negroidness” of features — both measures of the degree of a black person’s European ancestry — are only weakly associated with I.Q. (even though we might well expect a moderately high association due to the social advantages of such features)."
The article fails to mention the Weinberg Scarr study experiment, in which mixed race children (who had no idea they were mixed race) had an intermediate IQ between total black and total white children. Also, he claims
"There is a statistically significant association between light skin and intelligence."
"During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an average of 96.5, a trivial difference."
This is absolute bullshit. All the black fathers were IQ tested and only allowed in if they had IQ at the mid 90's level. So it's not an unbiased sample.
"But when a group of investigators sought out the very brightest black children in the Chicago school system and asked them about the race of their parents and grandparents, these children were found to have no greater degree of European ancestry than blacks in the population at large."
Are you serious? How is the kid going to know the degree of white ancestry of his parents? And most of the interbreeding happened during slavery.
"Most tellingly, blood-typing tests have been used to assess the degree to which black individuals have European genes. The blood group assays show no association between degree of European heritage and I.Q. Similarly, the blood groups most closely associated with high intellectual performance among blacks are no more European in origin than other blood groups."
I'll admit, this seems odd. But, given that we can now do geographic modeling of genes, blood type studies will become irrelevant.
"The closest thing to direct evidence that the hereditarians have is a study from the 1970s showing that black children who had been adopted by white parents had lower I.Q.’s than those of mixed-race children adopted by white parents. But, as the researchers acknowledged, the study had many flaws; for instance, the black children had been adopted at a substantially later age than the mixed-race children, and later age at adoption is associated with lower I.Q."
The difference is merely that of a year or less. Are the authors really implying that black environments are that poisonous? If that's the case, why are we letting black mothers raise their kids? I have seen many a moronic woman in NYC totally clueless on how to discipline their kids. I don't think this citation is a vindication of Africans.
"A superior adoption study — and one not discussed by the hereditarians — was carried out at Arizona State University by the psychologist Elsie Moore, who looked at black and mixed-race children adopted by middle-class families, either black or white, and found no difference in I.Q. between the black and mixed-race children. Most telling is Dr. Moore’s finding that children adopted by white families had I.Q.’s 13 points higher than those of children adopted by black families. The environments that even middle-class black children grow up in are not as favorable for the development of I.Q. as those of middle-class whites."
1) Were the kids tested as adults? Heritability increases with age, so this study is not quite valid.
2) There is a good possibility that this is not an unbiased sample, as there could have been many factors which made the white families pick certain black children over the others.
And of course, the Flynn effect argument. As Flynn even points out, the differences in IQ come about because of the change in the way we view relationships between objects. Arithmetic and vocabulary scores have remained constant over the years. And honestly, looking at the speeches of Roosevelt and John Adams, do we really think that people 200 years ago were as intelligent as the average African American? I doubt it. It's just that our way of looking at the world changed, allowing us to do better on IQ tests.
"In fact, we know that the I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped to 9.5 points from 15 points in the last 30 years — a period that was more favorable for blacks in many ways than the preceding era. Black progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows equivalent gains. Reading and math improvement has been modest for whites but substantial for blacks."
This ignores the fact that the IQ gap between blacks and whites remains one standard deviation. Also, griffe demonstrates how changes in gaps between blacks and whites could be more a reflection of the test becoming easier than a relative change in intelligence.
"And it should encourage us, as a society, to see that all children receive ample opportunity to develop their minds."
I agree, but head start has tried and failed to create long lasting IQ differences.
In fact:
"White children, who were the most disadvantaged, showed larger and longer lasting improvements than African-American children."
So yeah, what we have here is some serious obfuscation. But guess what? Alot of people are gonna check out the Saletan article or the infamous watson defense
The flood continues.
So I'm gonna take a look at some of their arguments. Remember, I'll admit that I am not 100% certain of the racial gap in intelligence being genetic, but I believe in occam's razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best. So, here we go:
First of all, the quote about Watson forgot to mention:
"there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
Huge concept that the article did not even touch.
"
"For the poor, a group that includes a substantial proportion of minorities, heritability of I.Q. is very low, in the range of 10 percent to 20 percent, according to recent research by Eric Turkheimer at the University of Virginia. This means that for the poor, improvements in environment have great potential to bring about increases in I.Q."
As you can see here
The gap remains despite changes in SES (in which the high SES parents are most likely also high IQ). In fact, a black child at the top 10% of SES is barely at the 50% for whites.
Also, as Lynn notes in his book "In the 57 studies of general population samples in Africans in 17 african countries, all of the IQ's ly in the range between 59 and 88, and in the 14 Caribbean and Latin American countries it's between 60 and 80."
Africans in Britain, Netherlands, Brazil, and the US have significant differences in IQ from the white population.
"But the brain size difference between men and women is substantially greater than that between blacks and whites, yet men and women score the same, on average, on I.Q. tests."
Actually, correcting for body size there isn't a substantial difference in IQ between men and women. Lynn also cites studies that puts the brain size-IQ correlation at .4, which is huge. A study found that a rat's ability to solve a maze is positively correlated with brain size.
"Likewise, a group of people in a community in Ecuador have a genetic anomaly that produces extremely small head sizes — and hence brain sizes. Yet their intelligence is as high as that of their unaffected relatives."
This is anecdotal, not statistical evidence. And have their IQ's been tested? Or is this as useful as Jared Diamond's assertion that the Maoris are more intelligent than westerners because of their survival skills?
"About 25 percent of the genes in the American black population are European, meaning that the genes of any individual can range from 100 percent African to mostly European. If European intelligence genes are superior, then blacks who have relatively more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s than those who have more African genes. But it turns out that skin color and “negroidness” of features — both measures of the degree of a black person’s European ancestry — are only weakly associated with I.Q. (even though we might well expect a moderately high association due to the social advantages of such features)."
The article fails to mention the Weinberg Scarr study experiment, in which mixed race children (who had no idea they were mixed race) had an intermediate IQ between total black and total white children. Also, he claims
"There is a statistically significant association between light skin and intelligence."
"During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an average of 96.5, a trivial difference."
This is absolute bullshit. All the black fathers were IQ tested and only allowed in if they had IQ at the mid 90's level. So it's not an unbiased sample.
"But when a group of investigators sought out the very brightest black children in the Chicago school system and asked them about the race of their parents and grandparents, these children were found to have no greater degree of European ancestry than blacks in the population at large."
Are you serious? How is the kid going to know the degree of white ancestry of his parents? And most of the interbreeding happened during slavery.
"Most tellingly, blood-typing tests have been used to assess the degree to which black individuals have European genes. The blood group assays show no association between degree of European heritage and I.Q. Similarly, the blood groups most closely associated with high intellectual performance among blacks are no more European in origin than other blood groups."
I'll admit, this seems odd. But, given that we can now do geographic modeling of genes, blood type studies will become irrelevant.
"The closest thing to direct evidence that the hereditarians have is a study from the 1970s showing that black children who had been adopted by white parents had lower I.Q.’s than those of mixed-race children adopted by white parents. But, as the researchers acknowledged, the study had many flaws; for instance, the black children had been adopted at a substantially later age than the mixed-race children, and later age at adoption is associated with lower I.Q."
The difference is merely that of a year or less. Are the authors really implying that black environments are that poisonous? If that's the case, why are we letting black mothers raise their kids? I have seen many a moronic woman in NYC totally clueless on how to discipline their kids. I don't think this citation is a vindication of Africans.
"A superior adoption study — and one not discussed by the hereditarians — was carried out at Arizona State University by the psychologist Elsie Moore, who looked at black and mixed-race children adopted by middle-class families, either black or white, and found no difference in I.Q. between the black and mixed-race children. Most telling is Dr. Moore’s finding that children adopted by white families had I.Q.’s 13 points higher than those of children adopted by black families. The environments that even middle-class black children grow up in are not as favorable for the development of I.Q. as those of middle-class whites."
1) Were the kids tested as adults? Heritability increases with age, so this study is not quite valid.
2) There is a good possibility that this is not an unbiased sample, as there could have been many factors which made the white families pick certain black children over the others.
And of course, the Flynn effect argument. As Flynn even points out, the differences in IQ come about because of the change in the way we view relationships between objects. Arithmetic and vocabulary scores have remained constant over the years. And honestly, looking at the speeches of Roosevelt and John Adams, do we really think that people 200 years ago were as intelligent as the average African American? I doubt it. It's just that our way of looking at the world changed, allowing us to do better on IQ tests.
"In fact, we know that the I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped to 9.5 points from 15 points in the last 30 years — a period that was more favorable for blacks in many ways than the preceding era. Black progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows equivalent gains. Reading and math improvement has been modest for whites but substantial for blacks."
This ignores the fact that the IQ gap between blacks and whites remains one standard deviation. Also, griffe demonstrates how changes in gaps between blacks and whites could be more a reflection of the test becoming easier than a relative change in intelligence.
"And it should encourage us, as a society, to see that all children receive ample opportunity to develop their minds."
I agree, but head start has tried and failed to create long lasting IQ differences.
In fact:
"White children, who were the most disadvantaged, showed larger and longer lasting improvements than African-American children."
So yeah, what we have here is some serious obfuscation. But guess what? Alot of people are gonna check out the Saletan article or the infamous watson defense
The flood continues.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
NYT heart Atheists
Apparently Romney's speech annoyed the New York Times . I hope NYT's general readership will try to prevent the evangelicals from gaining too much power.
Ah, and it seems like the NYT is starting to embrace straight talk about Islam as well as race .
Good times for journalism.
Man it also pissed my off when he mentioned the Protestant faiths, Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam, but neglected Hinduism or Buddhism.
WHAT? You include the religion of honor killings, beheading, and jihad as admirable but not peaceful Hinduism or Buddhism? I hope this guy goes down in flames. It's upsetting and insulting. I hope on the next youtube debate or whatever he gets a question from an atheist. Shame on you, evangelicals. The founders would be sick.
BUT two fascinating and disturbing comments on half sigma blog.
----------
If there is no God then there is no basis for individual liberty. The only law, if there is no God, is survival of the fittest. If the most fit can enslave the rest and thereby improve their own survival, so be it. There would be no basis for arguing otherwise.
The logical foundation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence is this opening line: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Remove that from the document and the rest of the argument falls apart. This was not an accident or just the opening sentence demanded by some religious zealots. The shift in political philosophy which ultimately resulted in the west embracing freedom, and our own revolution, was driven by and based upon Judeo-Christian thought. You cannot study the political philosophy of the period and come to any other conclusion. The arguments for individual dignity and liberty were all based on the idea that there is a God, and he loves each and every person. Your rights exist and are "rights", not privileges, because someone higher than any man, any ruler or king, gave them to you.
Our ideas of freedom and individual liberty are silly notions if there is no God. And there's no basis for judging any other system as wrong, bad, or worse if that's the case. The regime of North Korea is just as valid as our form of government so long as the most fit in their society survive. If there is no God, that is."
------
Unfortunately, I think this comment speaks alot of truth. While religion has been used to justify oppression and slavery, it is really the only think that's been used to justify the unique value of every individual human being.
And the counter:
"If you believe that without the existence of God the constitutional rights have no basis, that's your own personal conclusion. But that still doesn't prove the existence of God. This sounds like an extortion to me: believe in God or else our society is doomed. But you are not proving anything."
-------
Again, trying not to dwell on it too much, but speeches like this always bring up the hand wringing issues of those who believe in race differences in intelligence , as well as no God . There is no higher authority to say that intelligent and stupid people are equal. Just our shared values.
Doesn't seem too strong of a leg to stand on.
Ah, and it seems like the NYT is starting to embrace straight talk about Islam as well as race .
Good times for journalism.
Man it also pissed my off when he mentioned the Protestant faiths, Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam, but neglected Hinduism or Buddhism.
WHAT? You include the religion of honor killings, beheading, and jihad as admirable but not peaceful Hinduism or Buddhism? I hope this guy goes down in flames. It's upsetting and insulting. I hope on the next youtube debate or whatever he gets a question from an atheist. Shame on you, evangelicals. The founders would be sick.
BUT two fascinating and disturbing comments on half sigma blog.
----------
If there is no God then there is no basis for individual liberty. The only law, if there is no God, is survival of the fittest. If the most fit can enslave the rest and thereby improve their own survival, so be it. There would be no basis for arguing otherwise.
The logical foundation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence is this opening line: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Remove that from the document and the rest of the argument falls apart. This was not an accident or just the opening sentence demanded by some religious zealots. The shift in political philosophy which ultimately resulted in the west embracing freedom, and our own revolution, was driven by and based upon Judeo-Christian thought. You cannot study the political philosophy of the period and come to any other conclusion. The arguments for individual dignity and liberty were all based on the idea that there is a God, and he loves each and every person. Your rights exist and are "rights", not privileges, because someone higher than any man, any ruler or king, gave them to you.
Our ideas of freedom and individual liberty are silly notions if there is no God. And there's no basis for judging any other system as wrong, bad, or worse if that's the case. The regime of North Korea is just as valid as our form of government so long as the most fit in their society survive. If there is no God, that is."
------
Unfortunately, I think this comment speaks alot of truth. While religion has been used to justify oppression and slavery, it is really the only think that's been used to justify the unique value of every individual human being.
And the counter:
"If you believe that without the existence of God the constitutional rights have no basis, that's your own personal conclusion. But that still doesn't prove the existence of God. This sounds like an extortion to me: believe in God or else our society is doomed. But you are not proving anything."
-------
Again, trying not to dwell on it too much, but speeches like this always bring up the hand wringing issues of those who believe in race differences in intelligence , as well as no God . There is no higher authority to say that intelligent and stupid people are equal. Just our shared values.
Doesn't seem too strong of a leg to stand on.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Romney
From the speech of Mitt Romney.
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."
Uh, so as an atheist I don't believe in freedom?
"No movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people."
(Primary reason why HBD-religion can yield scary results)
"They are attempting a new religion in America. The religion of secularism."
(Well our secularism is exactly what the terrorists attacked us for)
"The conviction of the inherent worth of every life is the most revolutionary political proposition ever advanced."
(IQ and HBD begs to differ)
"Americans acknowledge the liberty is a gift of God."
What the hell does this mean? Have you been to Saudi Arabia lately?
"We can be thankful that reason and religion are friends in the cause of liberty."
What happened to Sam Harris or Dawkins? Both bestsellers, mind you. Have you looked at levels of faith among scientists?
14.2% of Americans define themselves has being agnostic, atheist, or having no faith (CIA). I don't know where singularitarianism fits in, but probably not with Protestants.
Oh well.
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."
Uh, so as an atheist I don't believe in freedom?
"No movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people."
(Primary reason why HBD-religion can yield scary results)
"They are attempting a new religion in America. The religion of secularism."
(Well our secularism is exactly what the terrorists attacked us for)
"The conviction of the inherent worth of every life is the most revolutionary political proposition ever advanced."
(IQ and HBD begs to differ)
"Americans acknowledge the liberty is a gift of God."
What the hell does this mean? Have you been to Saudi Arabia lately?
"We can be thankful that reason and religion are friends in the cause of liberty."
What happened to Sam Harris or Dawkins? Both bestsellers, mind you. Have you looked at levels of faith among scientists?
14.2% of Americans define themselves has being agnostic, atheist, or having no faith (CIA). I don't know where singularitarianism fits in, but probably not with Protestants.
Oh well.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Why the HBD movement scares me
Posts like these on vdare are disturbing when they begin to imply that the US is Christian, white nation and that's it.
"Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst."
My parents came over in that wave. I was born in the US and consider it my home and will die to protect it. Why do people destroy their cause by saying things like this?
I understand restricting mexican immigration because they do not have the skills necessary for our economy. I understand restricting Islamic immigration because they attacked us on 9/11. But saying that unless someone is a white Christian he won't fit in the US?
"Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst."
My parents came over in that wave. I was born in the US and consider it my home and will die to protect it. Why do people destroy their cause by saying things like this?
I understand restricting mexican immigration because they do not have the skills necessary for our economy. I understand restricting Islamic immigration because they attacked us on 9/11. But saying that unless someone is a white Christian he won't fit in the US?
Yeah...
I think the teddy bear incident speaks for itself .
I find it quite humorous that people say certain things about Islam and peace in public but what people say on the internet of in private is quite different, which has much more mixed review.
At least we have our priorities straight.
I find it quite humorous that people say certain things about Islam and peace in public but what people say on the internet of in private is quite different, which has much more mixed review.
At least we have our priorities straight.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
The cult of virginity
I've railed against the cult of virginity and the "sex is bad" movement for some time. At least some validation .
Saturday, December 1, 2007
The Flood Continues
At the times, an article discussing reactions to the Saletan piece.
Imagine what has been broiled up over the last month. I'd be very curious to see where we are in a year.
Imagine what has been broiled up over the last month. I'd be very curious to see where we are in a year.
The problem with the debates
Is that, as any polisci100 person can tell you, is that in the primaries the candidates speak to the base, and in the general election, they move to the center.
So then it becomes very difficult for moderates to get elected.
So, why not a joint Republican-Dem debate in the primaries?
McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Ron Paul and maybe Huckabee
against
Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and Biden or Kucinich?
That would be real debate instead of democrats wrangling over when we're going to pull out of Iraq and Republicans getting off on increasing the military budget.
I've seen disturbingly little debated about the patriot act in any of the debates.
So then it becomes very difficult for moderates to get elected.
So, why not a joint Republican-Dem debate in the primaries?
McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Ron Paul and maybe Huckabee
against
Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and Biden or Kucinich?
That would be real debate instead of democrats wrangling over when we're going to pull out of Iraq and Republicans getting off on increasing the military budget.
I've seen disturbingly little debated about the patriot act in any of the debates.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Love=Chemicals
From the email of badboy lifestyle:
----------------
Differences Between the Brains of Men and Women
I usually write about hard core pickup advice, however this week I will write about something that intrigues me, and because it's so cool, I wanted to share it with you..
A couple days ago, I happened upon some very interesting research. It dealt with the differences of the brains of men and women when they fall in love. Finally an explanation! What is Love? In nature everything has a specific purpose. What is the purpose of Love? For all of you who were totally in love with your girlfriend, you know the feeling. She becomes the center of your life, whole world fades out. They did CT and PET brain scans of couples who were in love longer than 6 months. They found out that when these couples are in love, the brain shut down in several areas. The things that were inactive were parts used for logical reasoning, parts that process negative emotions, social reasoning and part of the brain who's homework is reading people's intentions and emotions. It looks like love is not just blind, but dumb & retarded too! The brain shuts down the parts that use reason and logic, so you cannot make logical decisions. Nice. It looks like nature has created a protective mechanism, that will make sure that we make babies, no matter how much we don't want to. Nature made sure that we as a species continue growing. So love is going to last and make you stay around a girl enough long for the kid to grow up. I'm assuming it's around 2 years. Every long term relationship I have ever had became dry after 2 years.
There were two facts found in this research that really impressed me. That makes total sense as it's so true in the field (usually theories and real world never match).
1. They did CT scans of the brain when women and men were sexually aroused. When men get aroused, a few sections for pleasure were activated, and logic, and most other functions still worked. In the female brain, when they got aroused, their brain shut down completely (Logical reasoning, emotional control). This makes so much sense. It explains every last minute resistance I have ever had in my life. You are going through hours of Logical resistance. " we shouldn't be doing this", "Its too fast", " I am not that type of girl" and then you turn her on, and it's game over.... she is totally yours. She forgets everything and all of those excuses she used an hour before never existed. Remember this next time you are in bed with her and you are getting logical resistance.
2. That woman is more likely to mate with her partner when something wild happens. They go through something dangerous, her brain starts to produce high levels of Dopamine, which is stimulating the production of Testosterone.
This explains the experiences of all of my dates and why my dates are so successful. I usually take girls on something wild for the first date. Things like go-carts, target practice, roller coaster rides, or anything else that's fun to me. I always make my dates physical and challenge. This research shines a new light on this, and explains a lot to me. I noticed after riding go carts, how they are shaking, like adrenaline is rushing through whole her body, and you just needed to make them little bit comfortable, and they were ready to be taken home. This goes with my rule "Give her a Ride"
--------------------
----------------
Differences Between the Brains of Men and Women
I usually write about hard core pickup advice, however this week I will write about something that intrigues me, and because it's so cool, I wanted to share it with you..
A couple days ago, I happened upon some very interesting research. It dealt with the differences of the brains of men and women when they fall in love. Finally an explanation! What is Love? In nature everything has a specific purpose. What is the purpose of Love? For all of you who were totally in love with your girlfriend, you know the feeling. She becomes the center of your life, whole world fades out. They did CT and PET brain scans of couples who were in love longer than 6 months. They found out that when these couples are in love, the brain shut down in several areas. The things that were inactive were parts used for logical reasoning, parts that process negative emotions, social reasoning and part of the brain who's homework is reading people's intentions and emotions. It looks like love is not just blind, but dumb & retarded too! The brain shuts down the parts that use reason and logic, so you cannot make logical decisions. Nice. It looks like nature has created a protective mechanism, that will make sure that we make babies, no matter how much we don't want to. Nature made sure that we as a species continue growing. So love is going to last and make you stay around a girl enough long for the kid to grow up. I'm assuming it's around 2 years. Every long term relationship I have ever had became dry after 2 years.
There were two facts found in this research that really impressed me. That makes total sense as it's so true in the field (usually theories and real world never match).
1. They did CT scans of the brain when women and men were sexually aroused. When men get aroused, a few sections for pleasure were activated, and logic, and most other functions still worked. In the female brain, when they got aroused, their brain shut down completely (Logical reasoning, emotional control). This makes so much sense. It explains every last minute resistance I have ever had in my life. You are going through hours of Logical resistance. " we shouldn't be doing this", "Its too fast", " I am not that type of girl" and then you turn her on, and it's game over.... she is totally yours. She forgets everything and all of those excuses she used an hour before never existed. Remember this next time you are in bed with her and you are getting logical resistance.
2. That woman is more likely to mate with her partner when something wild happens. They go through something dangerous, her brain starts to produce high levels of Dopamine, which is stimulating the production of Testosterone.
This explains the experiences of all of my dates and why my dates are so successful. I usually take girls on something wild for the first date. Things like go-carts, target practice, roller coaster rides, or anything else that's fun to me. I always make my dates physical and challenge. This research shines a new light on this, and explains a lot to me. I noticed after riding go carts, how they are shaking, like adrenaline is rushing through whole her body, and you just needed to make them little bit comfortable, and they were ready to be taken home. This goes with my rule "Give her a Ride"
--------------------
Iraq
From today's NYtimes editorial on Iraq:
"Consider this all too familiar horror: yesterday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded."
Now, how the hell are we going to create a Western style democracy out of these barbarians? They deserved Saddam.
"Consider this all too familiar horror: yesterday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded."
Now, how the hell are we going to create a Western style democracy out of these barbarians? They deserved Saddam.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Nice try, Saletan
But the damage has been done. I doubt you now have much power to either make people forget about the genetic evidence OR make people think you gave them a fair balance of the issues. Your apology isn't very useful.
And the entire title of the piece "Created Equal." Well, what about for an atheist who thinks that humans aren't special creations of a loving God, but rather selfish genes that randomly evolved tailored to their unique environments 100,000 years ago. How can we believe that they were all created equal when the exact quality that we use to distinguish ourselves from animals (and say we're better than them): intelligence, shows huge disparities between the races
Oh well. Honestly, anyone who knows anything about these HBD guys know that they have shady backgrounds. After all, it's only people without much credibility that DON'T have anything to LOSE by talking about this stuff. Watson had credibility, he spoke, and got fried. After seeing that, are you surprised that the only people who have treaded on this territory in the past have been intellectual outcasts?
It's unfortunate that serious science can't take place because no one wants to venture there. So, we have to rely on the Rushtons, Lynns, and Jensens(who is actually well respected).
An odd world we live in.
After all, John McCain just said we're winning in Iraq, Mitt Romney said the failure of black education is a civil rights tragedy (while torture is acceptable), Mike Huckabee thinks Jesus was too smart to run for public office, Tom Tancredo thinks NASA is responsible for our deficits, Ron Paul raised a ton of money from military personnel after advocating Iraq withdrawal, Guiliani agonized over the veracity of the bible, and a former actor with no original ideas has a shot at the presidency.
If only Hillary Clinton had a chance to defend herself.
And the entire title of the piece "Created Equal." Well, what about for an atheist who thinks that humans aren't special creations of a loving God, but rather selfish genes that randomly evolved tailored to their unique environments 100,000 years ago. How can we believe that they were all created equal when the exact quality that we use to distinguish ourselves from animals (and say we're better than them): intelligence, shows huge disparities between the races
Oh well. Honestly, anyone who knows anything about these HBD guys know that they have shady backgrounds. After all, it's only people without much credibility that DON'T have anything to LOSE by talking about this stuff. Watson had credibility, he spoke, and got fried. After seeing that, are you surprised that the only people who have treaded on this territory in the past have been intellectual outcasts?
It's unfortunate that serious science can't take place because no one wants to venture there. So, we have to rely on the Rushtons, Lynns, and Jensens(who is actually well respected).
An odd world we live in.
After all, John McCain just said we're winning in Iraq, Mitt Romney said the failure of black education is a civil rights tragedy (while torture is acceptable), Mike Huckabee thinks Jesus was too smart to run for public office, Tom Tancredo thinks NASA is responsible for our deficits, Ron Paul raised a ton of money from military personnel after advocating Iraq withdrawal, Guiliani agonized over the veracity of the bible, and a former actor with no original ideas has a shot at the presidency.
If only Hillary Clinton had a chance to defend herself.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Singer on Watson
He recently commented on Watson's comments. As a bioethicist, not a psychometric expert, all he said was:
"Finally, no matter what the facts on race and intelligence turn out to be, they will not justify racial hatred, nor disrespect for people of a different race. Whether some are of higher or lower intelligence has nothing to do with that."
Which is fair. But, from an animal rights advocate, we have to question what he means by treating all races with equal respect.
"Finally, no matter what the facts on race and intelligence turn out to be, they will not justify racial hatred, nor disrespect for people of a different race. Whether some are of higher or lower intelligence has nothing to do with that."
Which is fair. But, from an animal rights advocate, we have to question what he means by treating all races with equal respect.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Singer Offers Hope
Most of us in the HBD movement have either been worried over the political implications of the recent torrent of race-intelligence media events, from Watson, to NYtimes, to Slate. Or, others have simply not cared to much and have just been happy that their viewpoint has been validated, such as on gene expression
Honestly, I haven't seen too much in terms of viable solutions, given how terrible human beings can be. But, when looking through some old animal rights propaganda, I found the old Singer essay that has the potential to SUBSTANTIALLY assist the liberals in re framing their political philosophy to deal with racial differences in intelligence. Here's a substantial chunk from his work (caps I added for relevant emphasis):
--------------
When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical, inegalitarian society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand.
This is a possible line of objection to racial and sexual discrimination. It is not, however, the way that someone really concerned about equality would choose, because taking this line could, in some circumstances, force one to accept a most inegalitarian society. The fact that humans differ as individuals, rather than as races or sexes, is a valid reply to someone who defends a hierarchical society like, say, South Africa, in which all whites are superior in status to all blacks. The existence of individual variations that cut across the lines of race or sex, however, provides us with no defense at all against a more sophisticated opponent of equality, one who proposes that, say, the interests of those with I.Q. ratings above 100 be preferred to the interests of those with I.Q.s below 100. Would a hierarchical society of this sort really be so much better than one based on race or sex? I think not. But if we tie the MORAL principle of equality to the FACTUAL EQUALITY of the different races or sexes, taken as a whole, our opposition to racism and sexism does not provide us with any basis for objecting to this kind of inegalitarianism.
There is a second important reason why we ought not to base our opposition to racism and sexism on any kind of factual equality, even the limited kind which asserts that variations in capacities and abilities are spread evenly between the different races and sexes: we can have no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are distributed evenly, without regard to race or sex, among human beings. So far as actual abilities are concerned, there do seem to be certain MEASURABLE DIFFERENCES between both races and sexes. These differences do not, of course, appear in each case, but only when averages are taken. More important still, we do not yet know how much of these differences is really due to the different GENETIC ENDOWMENTS of the various races and sexes, and how much is due to environmental differences that are the result of past and continuing discrimination. Perhaps all of the important differences will eventually prove to be environmental rather than genetic. Anyone opposed to racism and sexism will certainly hope that this will be so, for it will make the task of ending discrimination a lot easier; nevertheless it would be DANGEROUS TO REST THE CASE AGAINST RACISM AND SEXISM ON THE BELIEF THAT ALL SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES ARE ENVIRONMENTAL IN ORIGIN. The opponent of, say, racism who takes this line will be unable to avoid conceding that IF DIFFERENCES IN ABILITY did after all prove to have some GENETIC connection with race, RACISM would in some way be DEFENSIBLE.
It would be folly for the opponent of racism to stake his whole case on a dogmatic commitment to one particular outcome of a difficult scientific issue which is still a long way from being settled. While attempts to prove that differences in certain selected abilities between races and sexes are primarily genetic in origin have certainly not been conclusive, the same must be said of attempts to prove that these differences are largely the result of environment. At this stage of the investigation we cannot be certain which view is correct, however much we may hope it is the latter.
The appropriate response to those who claim to have found evidence of genetically-based differences in ability between the races or sexes is not to stick to the belief that the genetic explanation must be wrong, whatever evidence to the contrary may turn up: instead we should make it quite clear that the claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact. Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat humans.
It is an implication of this principle of equality that OUR CONCERN FOR OTHERS OUGHT NOT TO DEPEND ON WHAT THEY ARE LIKE, or what abilities they possess—although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. IT IS ON THIS BASIS THAT THE CASE AGAINST RACISM AND THE CASE AGAINST SEXISM MUST BOTH ULTIMATELY REST; and it is in accordance with this principle that SPECIESISM is also to be condemned. IF POSSESSING A HIGHER DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT ENTITLE ONE HUMAN TO USE ANOTHER FOR HIS OWN ENDS, HOW CAN IT ENTITLE HUMANS TO EXPLOIT NONHUMANS?
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? THE QUESTION IS NOT, CAN THEY REASON? NOR, CAN THEY TALK? BUT, CAN THEY SUFFER?
The capacity for suffering—or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness—is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark "the insuperable line" that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way.
The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.[4] The pattern is the same in each case. Most human beings are speciesists. l shall now very briefly describe some of the practices that show this.
our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice, and each of us has a moral obligation to cease supporting the practice. Our custom is all the support that the meat-industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?
Our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice, and each of us has a moral obligation to cease supporting the practice. Our custom is all the support that the meat-industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?
what is this capacity to enjoy the good life which all humans have, but no other animals? Other animals have emotions and desires and appear to be capable of enjoying a good life. We may doubt that they can think—although the behavior of some apes, dolphins, and even dogs suggests that some of them can—but what is the relevance of thinking? Frankena goes on to admit that by "the good life" he means "not so much the morally good life as the happy or satisfactory life," so thought would appear to be unnecessary for enjoying the good life; in fact to emphasize the need for thought would make difficulties for the egalitarian since only some people are capable of leading intellectually satisfying lives, or morally good lives. This makes it difficult to see what Frankena's principle of equality has to do with simply being human. Surely every sentient being is capable of leading a life that is happier or less miserable than some alternative life, and hence has a claim to be taken into account. In this respect the distinction between humans and nonhumans is not a sharp division, but rather a continuum along which we move gradually, and with overlaps between the species, from simple capacities for enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain and suffering, to more complex ones.
Indeed, when one thinks only of humans, it can be very liberal, very progressive, to talk of the dignity of all human beings. In so doing, we implicitly condemn slavery, racism, and other violations of human rights. We admit that we ourselves are in some fundamental sense on a par with the poorest, most ignorant members of our own species. It is only when we think of humans as no more than a small sub-group of all the beings that inhabit our planet that we may realize that in elevating our own species we are at the same time lowering the relative status of all other species.
In case there are those who still think it may be possible to find some relevant characteristic that distinguishes all humans from all members of other species, I shall refer again, before I conclude, to the existence of some humans who quite clearly are below the level of awareness, self-consciousness, intelligence, and sentience, of many non-humans. l am thinking of humans with severe and irreparable brain damage, and also of infant humans.
(my comment: or pygmies or australoids, with average IQ<60)
(A possible justification of the division between imbecile and dog)
"
. . we respect the interests of men and give them priority over dogs not insofar as they are rational, but because rationality is the human norm. We say it is unfair to exploit the deficiencies of the imbecile who falls short of the norm, just as it would be unfair, and not just ordinarily dishonest, to steal from a blind man. If we do not think in this way about dogs, it is because we do not see the irrationality of the dog as a deficiency or a handicap, but as normal for the species, The characteristics, therefore, that distinguish the normal man from the normal dog make it intelligible for us to talk of other men having interests and capacities, and therefore claims, of precisely the same kind as we make on our own behalf. But although these characteristics may provide the point of the distinction between men and other species, they are not in fact the qualifying conditions for membership, to the distinguishing criteria of the class of morally considerable persons; and this is precisely because a man does not become a member of a different species, with its own standards of normality, by reason of not possessing these characteristics.
"
The final sentence of this passage gives the argument away. An imbecile, Benn concedes, may have no characteristics superior to those of a dog; nevertheless this does not make the imbecile a member of "a different species" as the dog is. Therefore it would be "unfair" to use the imbecile for medical research as we use the dog. But why? That the imbecile is not rational is just the way things have worked out, and the same is true of the dog—neither is any more responsible for their mental level. If it is unfair to take advantage of an isolated defect, why is it fair to take advantage of a more general limitation? I find it hard to see anything in this argument except a defense of preferring the interests of members of our own species because they are members of our own species. To those who think there might be more to it, I suggest the following mental exercise. Assume that it has been proven that there is a difference in the average, or normal, intelligence quotient for two different races, say whites and blacks. Then SUBSTITUTE "WHITE" for every occurrence of "MEN" and "BLACK" for every occurrence of "DOG" in the passage quoted; and substitute "HIGH IQ" for "RETIONALITY" and when Benn talks of "IMBECILES" replace this term by "DUMB WHITES"—that is, whites who fall well below the normal white l.Q. score. Finally, CHANGE "SPECIES" to "RACE." Now retread the passage. It has become a defense of a rigid, no-exceptions division between whites and blacks, based on l.Q. scores, not withstanding an admitted overlap between whites and blacks in this respect. The revised passage is, of course, outrageous, and this is not only because we have made fictitious assumptions in our substitutions. The point is that in the original passage Benn was defending a rigid division in the amount of consideration due to members of different species, despite admitted cases of overlap. If the original did not, at first reading strike us as being as outrageous as the revised version does, this is largely because ALTHOUGH WE ARE NOT RACISTS OURSELVES, MOST OF US ARE SPECIESISTS. Like the other articles, Benn's stands as a warning of the ease with which the best minds can fall victim to a prevailing ideology.
-------------------------
So, food for though. All the hypothetical situations that Singer has given for race relations are now in front of us, and we must confront them.
Animal rights really is the natural result of the race realism movement.
I do not think oppressed minorities will be happy with this piece, but at least this natural philosophy shows we have SOME alternative to hitlerism and Jim Crow and slavery. I hope.
Honestly, I haven't seen too much in terms of viable solutions, given how terrible human beings can be. But, when looking through some old animal rights propaganda, I found the old Singer essay that has the potential to SUBSTANTIALLY assist the liberals in re framing their political philosophy to deal with racial differences in intelligence. Here's a substantial chunk from his work (caps I added for relevant emphasis):
--------------
When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical, inegalitarian society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand.
This is a possible line of objection to racial and sexual discrimination. It is not, however, the way that someone really concerned about equality would choose, because taking this line could, in some circumstances, force one to accept a most inegalitarian society. The fact that humans differ as individuals, rather than as races or sexes, is a valid reply to someone who defends a hierarchical society like, say, South Africa, in which all whites are superior in status to all blacks. The existence of individual variations that cut across the lines of race or sex, however, provides us with no defense at all against a more sophisticated opponent of equality, one who proposes that, say, the interests of those with I.Q. ratings above 100 be preferred to the interests of those with I.Q.s below 100. Would a hierarchical society of this sort really be so much better than one based on race or sex? I think not. But if we tie the MORAL principle of equality to the FACTUAL EQUALITY of the different races or sexes, taken as a whole, our opposition to racism and sexism does not provide us with any basis for objecting to this kind of inegalitarianism.
There is a second important reason why we ought not to base our opposition to racism and sexism on any kind of factual equality, even the limited kind which asserts that variations in capacities and abilities are spread evenly between the different races and sexes: we can have no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are distributed evenly, without regard to race or sex, among human beings. So far as actual abilities are concerned, there do seem to be certain MEASURABLE DIFFERENCES between both races and sexes. These differences do not, of course, appear in each case, but only when averages are taken. More important still, we do not yet know how much of these differences is really due to the different GENETIC ENDOWMENTS of the various races and sexes, and how much is due to environmental differences that are the result of past and continuing discrimination. Perhaps all of the important differences will eventually prove to be environmental rather than genetic. Anyone opposed to racism and sexism will certainly hope that this will be so, for it will make the task of ending discrimination a lot easier; nevertheless it would be DANGEROUS TO REST THE CASE AGAINST RACISM AND SEXISM ON THE BELIEF THAT ALL SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES ARE ENVIRONMENTAL IN ORIGIN. The opponent of, say, racism who takes this line will be unable to avoid conceding that IF DIFFERENCES IN ABILITY did after all prove to have some GENETIC connection with race, RACISM would in some way be DEFENSIBLE.
It would be folly for the opponent of racism to stake his whole case on a dogmatic commitment to one particular outcome of a difficult scientific issue which is still a long way from being settled. While attempts to prove that differences in certain selected abilities between races and sexes are primarily genetic in origin have certainly not been conclusive, the same must be said of attempts to prove that these differences are largely the result of environment. At this stage of the investigation we cannot be certain which view is correct, however much we may hope it is the latter.
The appropriate response to those who claim to have found evidence of genetically-based differences in ability between the races or sexes is not to stick to the belief that the genetic explanation must be wrong, whatever evidence to the contrary may turn up: instead we should make it quite clear that the claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact. Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat humans.
It is an implication of this principle of equality that OUR CONCERN FOR OTHERS OUGHT NOT TO DEPEND ON WHAT THEY ARE LIKE, or what abilities they possess—although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. IT IS ON THIS BASIS THAT THE CASE AGAINST RACISM AND THE CASE AGAINST SEXISM MUST BOTH ULTIMATELY REST; and it is in accordance with this principle that SPECIESISM is also to be condemned. IF POSSESSING A HIGHER DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT ENTITLE ONE HUMAN TO USE ANOTHER FOR HIS OWN ENDS, HOW CAN IT ENTITLE HUMANS TO EXPLOIT NONHUMANS?
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? THE QUESTION IS NOT, CAN THEY REASON? NOR, CAN THEY TALK? BUT, CAN THEY SUFFER?
The capacity for suffering—or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness—is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark "the insuperable line" that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way.
The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race, when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.[4] The pattern is the same in each case. Most human beings are speciesists. l shall now very briefly describe some of the practices that show this.
our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice, and each of us has a moral obligation to cease supporting the practice. Our custom is all the support that the meat-industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?
Our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own. To avoid speciesism we must stop this practice, and each of us has a moral obligation to cease supporting the practice. Our custom is all the support that the meat-industry needs. The decision to cease giving it that support may be difficult, but it is no more difficult than it would have been for a white Southerner to go against the traditions of his society and free his slaves: if we do not change our dietary habits, how can we censure those slaveholders who would not change their own way of living?
what is this capacity to enjoy the good life which all humans have, but no other animals? Other animals have emotions and desires and appear to be capable of enjoying a good life. We may doubt that they can think—although the behavior of some apes, dolphins, and even dogs suggests that some of them can—but what is the relevance of thinking? Frankena goes on to admit that by "the good life" he means "not so much the morally good life as the happy or satisfactory life," so thought would appear to be unnecessary for enjoying the good life; in fact to emphasize the need for thought would make difficulties for the egalitarian since only some people are capable of leading intellectually satisfying lives, or morally good lives. This makes it difficult to see what Frankena's principle of equality has to do with simply being human. Surely every sentient being is capable of leading a life that is happier or less miserable than some alternative life, and hence has a claim to be taken into account. In this respect the distinction between humans and nonhumans is not a sharp division, but rather a continuum along which we move gradually, and with overlaps between the species, from simple capacities for enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain and suffering, to more complex ones.
Indeed, when one thinks only of humans, it can be very liberal, very progressive, to talk of the dignity of all human beings. In so doing, we implicitly condemn slavery, racism, and other violations of human rights. We admit that we ourselves are in some fundamental sense on a par with the poorest, most ignorant members of our own species. It is only when we think of humans as no more than a small sub-group of all the beings that inhabit our planet that we may realize that in elevating our own species we are at the same time lowering the relative status of all other species.
In case there are those who still think it may be possible to find some relevant characteristic that distinguishes all humans from all members of other species, I shall refer again, before I conclude, to the existence of some humans who quite clearly are below the level of awareness, self-consciousness, intelligence, and sentience, of many non-humans. l am thinking of humans with severe and irreparable brain damage, and also of infant humans.
(my comment: or pygmies or australoids, with average IQ<60)
(A possible justification of the division between imbecile and dog)
"
. . we respect the interests of men and give them priority over dogs not insofar as they are rational, but because rationality is the human norm. We say it is unfair to exploit the deficiencies of the imbecile who falls short of the norm, just as it would be unfair, and not just ordinarily dishonest, to steal from a blind man. If we do not think in this way about dogs, it is because we do not see the irrationality of the dog as a deficiency or a handicap, but as normal for the species, The characteristics, therefore, that distinguish the normal man from the normal dog make it intelligible for us to talk of other men having interests and capacities, and therefore claims, of precisely the same kind as we make on our own behalf. But although these characteristics may provide the point of the distinction between men and other species, they are not in fact the qualifying conditions for membership, to the distinguishing criteria of the class of morally considerable persons; and this is precisely because a man does not become a member of a different species, with its own standards of normality, by reason of not possessing these characteristics.
"
The final sentence of this passage gives the argument away. An imbecile, Benn concedes, may have no characteristics superior to those of a dog; nevertheless this does not make the imbecile a member of "a different species" as the dog is. Therefore it would be "unfair" to use the imbecile for medical research as we use the dog. But why? That the imbecile is not rational is just the way things have worked out, and the same is true of the dog—neither is any more responsible for their mental level. If it is unfair to take advantage of an isolated defect, why is it fair to take advantage of a more general limitation? I find it hard to see anything in this argument except a defense of preferring the interests of members of our own species because they are members of our own species. To those who think there might be more to it, I suggest the following mental exercise. Assume that it has been proven that there is a difference in the average, or normal, intelligence quotient for two different races, say whites and blacks. Then SUBSTITUTE "WHITE" for every occurrence of "MEN" and "BLACK" for every occurrence of "DOG" in the passage quoted; and substitute "HIGH IQ" for "RETIONALITY" and when Benn talks of "IMBECILES" replace this term by "DUMB WHITES"—that is, whites who fall well below the normal white l.Q. score. Finally, CHANGE "SPECIES" to "RACE." Now retread the passage. It has become a defense of a rigid, no-exceptions division between whites and blacks, based on l.Q. scores, not withstanding an admitted overlap between whites and blacks in this respect. The revised passage is, of course, outrageous, and this is not only because we have made fictitious assumptions in our substitutions. The point is that in the original passage Benn was defending a rigid division in the amount of consideration due to members of different species, despite admitted cases of overlap. If the original did not, at first reading strike us as being as outrageous as the revised version does, this is largely because ALTHOUGH WE ARE NOT RACISTS OURSELVES, MOST OF US ARE SPECIESISTS. Like the other articles, Benn's stands as a warning of the ease with which the best minds can fall victim to a prevailing ideology.
-------------------------
So, food for though. All the hypothetical situations that Singer has given for race relations are now in front of us, and we must confront them.
Animal rights really is the natural result of the race realism movement.
I do not think oppressed minorities will be happy with this piece, but at least this natural philosophy shows we have SOME alternative to hitlerism and Jim Crow and slavery. I hope.
Saletan's Failure
So his three articles are done and available here but I'm not too impressed with his social philosophy of how to get by knowing racial differences in intelligence. Steve Sailer pointed to some analysis here and I'll add some comments:
Just his title: All God's Children
That is itself immediately shows our need to justify human equality using religion.
Here are his axioms, with my comments:
1. Individual IQ can't be predicted from race.
2. Subgroup IQ can't be predicted from race.
3. 3. Whitey does not come out on top
4. Racism is elitism minus information (didn't understand what he meant by this other than allowing the use of IQ to judge people instead of their race)
5. Intermarriage is closing the gap: NOT a good thing. If all the smart people in the world intermarried with dumb people, then if you know anything about normal distributions, there will be much fewer really smart people in the next generation!
6. Environment matters (sure but that's avoiding the crucial issues)
7. IQ is like wealth: As in it's not a measure of human worth. I agree, but in a world where IQ really is crucial to job success, and we live in a world of hyper consumption, eh, things get complicated.
8. Life is more than g: Sure, I guess
9. Children are more than an investment: Sure, but tax dollars aren't infinite
10.Genes can be changed:
AH HA! NOW we get to the crux of the matter, the ENTIRE reason why I became interested in this stuff in the first place. NATURE/GOD IS CRUEL. HUMANITY IS NOT PERFECT. And we should use technology to make us the best species possible! I think that knowledge of HBD will hopefully drive is sooner towards the singularity
at which point the world will become much more interesting.
Hang tight, it should be a wild ride. Machine AI will laugh at us in 30 years for being so prudish about this topic.
Just his title: All God's Children
That is itself immediately shows our need to justify human equality using religion.
Here are his axioms, with my comments:
1. Individual IQ can't be predicted from race.
2. Subgroup IQ can't be predicted from race.
3. 3. Whitey does not come out on top
4. Racism is elitism minus information (didn't understand what he meant by this other than allowing the use of IQ to judge people instead of their race)
5. Intermarriage is closing the gap: NOT a good thing. If all the smart people in the world intermarried with dumb people, then if you know anything about normal distributions, there will be much fewer really smart people in the next generation!
6. Environment matters (sure but that's avoiding the crucial issues)
7. IQ is like wealth: As in it's not a measure of human worth. I agree, but in a world where IQ really is crucial to job success, and we live in a world of hyper consumption, eh, things get complicated.
8. Life is more than g: Sure, I guess
9. Children are more than an investment: Sure, but tax dollars aren't infinite
10.Genes can be changed:
AH HA! NOW we get to the crux of the matter, the ENTIRE reason why I became interested in this stuff in the first place. NATURE/GOD IS CRUEL. HUMANITY IS NOT PERFECT. And we should use technology to make us the best species possible! I think that knowledge of HBD will hopefully drive is sooner towards the singularity
at which point the world will become much more interesting.
Hang tight, it should be a wild ride. Machine AI will laugh at us in 30 years for being so prudish about this topic.
Monday, November 19, 2007
It's Obvious
That Barack Obama has 50% white genes in him. I guess his dancing skills came from his white side.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The end times come eventually
So, perhaps the first sign of progress at this slate article.
Anyway, I went to a gay club out of curiosity and was trying to observe the power distribution and how the game was different there compared to men and women. Very interesting.
Anyway, I went to a gay club out of curiosity and was trying to observe the power distribution and how the game was different there compared to men and women. Very interesting.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Vegetarianism and Biology
If the left is able to pre-empt the release of this racial information by NO LONGER basing their liberal ideals on human intelligence equality, then could this herald a new era in animal rights?
Peter Singer would agree. He has always contended that it is the capacity to feel pain, not intelligence, that should justify liberal ideals. Because there is a chance that racial differences could be genetic. So, why shouldn't animals, if not given any legal rights, at least be given the right to life?
I am a hardcore racist-I believe that racial differences are genetic, and significant in origin. But I am also a serious vegetarian, believing that the unnecessary slaughter of animals for food is cruel and a blight on our civilization.
The HBD community always responds: well the difference between humans and animals is, well, that we're human! That makes us better than them by default!
Uh, not really, unless you resort back to religion. Everyone in the conservative groups LOVE to bash the vegetarians. But, you know, what happens if you follow the logic of your beliefs?
Or are you trying to act all macho by chowing down on meat?
Peter Singer would agree. He has always contended that it is the capacity to feel pain, not intelligence, that should justify liberal ideals. Because there is a chance that racial differences could be genetic. So, why shouldn't animals, if not given any legal rights, at least be given the right to life?
I am a hardcore racist-I believe that racial differences are genetic, and significant in origin. But I am also a serious vegetarian, believing that the unnecessary slaughter of animals for food is cruel and a blight on our civilization.
The HBD community always responds: well the difference between humans and animals is, well, that we're human! That makes us better than them by default!
Uh, not really, unless you resort back to religion. Everyone in the conservative groups LOVE to bash the vegetarians. But, you know, what happens if you follow the logic of your beliefs?
Or are you trying to act all macho by chowing down on meat?
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Update
The DNA article is now the 2nd most emailed article on the nytimes website, and the 7th most blogged about.
half sigma has some more comments on the issue in response to his new readership.
Steve Sailer is less optimistic. Understandably so, since he's been around for most of the HBD movement and has seen little penetration into modern discourse.
We shall see. Maybe I was a little hyperoptimistic. But again, this understanding will gradually penetrate society. We won't be able to proclaim victory at a certain point in time.
However, this is a step in the right direction and the speed is even accelerating. I suppose I have to keep blogging for now!
Update:
Yeah, the reaction was a little overblown and premature. It's sometimes easy to underestimate the power of entrenched beliefs.
Don't despair, though. It's just a question of time when this information gets out. Hopefully we don't have to wait the 15 years for gene sequencing to finish.
half sigma has some more comments on the issue in response to his new readership.
Steve Sailer is less optimistic. Understandably so, since he's been around for most of the HBD movement and has seen little penetration into modern discourse.
We shall see. Maybe I was a little hyperoptimistic. But again, this understanding will gradually penetrate society. We won't be able to proclaim victory at a certain point in time.
However, this is a step in the right direction and the speed is even accelerating. I suppose I have to keep blogging for now!
Update:
Yeah, the reaction was a little overblown and premature. It's sometimes easy to underestimate the power of entrenched beliefs.
Don't despair, though. It's just a question of time when this information gets out. Hopefully we don't have to wait the 15 years for gene sequencing to finish.
The end times are coming
I think the New York Times just crossed a pretty serious line. Honestly, it will be very hard to go back from here to the old days of denying the validity of race and intelligence, and IQ.
Check it out here
----
Some notable quotes from the article:
"There are clear differences between people of different continental ancestries,”
"Last month, a blogger in Manhattan described a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to high I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he told readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in Europeans and Asians than in Africans."
"But the incident (referring to Watson) has added to uneasiness about whether society is prepared to handle the consequences of science that may eventually reveal appreciable differences between races in the genes that influence socially important traits."
"Yet even some self-described liberals argue that accepting that there may be genetic differences between races is important in preparing to address them politically."
"“Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to treat all as equal before God and before the law,” Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a New York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the pretense that inborn racial differences do not exist."
(Again, we return to the motif of RELIGION being NECESSARY to guarantee equality of humanity, but I digress)
"Race, many sociologists and anthropologists have argued for decades, is a social invention historically used to justify prejudice and persecution. But when Samuel M. Richards gave his students at Pennsylvania State University genetic ancestry tests to establish the imprecision of socially constructed racial categories, he found the exercise reinforced them instead."
-----
The most mind boggling thing about the article? The online version links to GNXP here which then links to Malloy's defense of Watson here
Also, the article links to Half Sigma
who then links to his well articulated response to the article .
Honestly, I am sitting on the edge of my seat here. A critical mass of people are going to be reading these blogs, potentially. This means that potentially millions of people are going to read Malloy's defense of Watson and confirmation of the race differences in intelligence.
Who knows, maybe we can even emerge from pseudonymity!
The next few years could potentially define us as a species by how we handle this devastating truth.
Stop watching reality TV, people. There are interesting things happening in the world.
Random thought, but what if this big revelation follows the same path as what happened when the seduction community became public? That these ideas would permeate into average minds but not stick? I doubt it. Too much riding on old ideas.
Check it out here
----
Some notable quotes from the article:
"There are clear differences between people of different continental ancestries,”
"Last month, a blogger in Manhattan described a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to high I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he told readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in Europeans and Asians than in Africans."
"But the incident (referring to Watson) has added to uneasiness about whether society is prepared to handle the consequences of science that may eventually reveal appreciable differences between races in the genes that influence socially important traits."
"Yet even some self-described liberals argue that accepting that there may be genetic differences between races is important in preparing to address them politically."
"“Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to treat all as equal before God and before the law,” Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a New York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the pretense that inborn racial differences do not exist."
(Again, we return to the motif of RELIGION being NECESSARY to guarantee equality of humanity, but I digress)
"Race, many sociologists and anthropologists have argued for decades, is a social invention historically used to justify prejudice and persecution. But when Samuel M. Richards gave his students at Pennsylvania State University genetic ancestry tests to establish the imprecision of socially constructed racial categories, he found the exercise reinforced them instead."
-----
The most mind boggling thing about the article? The online version links to GNXP here which then links to Malloy's defense of Watson here
Also, the article links to Half Sigma
who then links to his well articulated response to the article .
Honestly, I am sitting on the edge of my seat here. A critical mass of people are going to be reading these blogs, potentially. This means that potentially millions of people are going to read Malloy's defense of Watson and confirmation of the race differences in intelligence.
Who knows, maybe we can even emerge from pseudonymity!
The next few years could potentially define us as a species by how we handle this devastating truth.
Stop watching reality TV, people. There are interesting things happening in the world.
Random thought, but what if this big revelation follows the same path as what happened when the seduction community became public? That these ideas would permeate into average minds but not stick? I doubt it. Too much riding on old ideas.
How to create artificial scarcity
Girls are master social manipulators. While us guys were playing sports as kids, they were gossiping. Because, from an evolutionary perspective, the main value the women bring to the table is eggs, they are experts at making guys clingy and extracting resources from them. I got an email from badboy lifestyle with some examples:
-------
Make Her Clingy
There's a great quote that people use in show business "Always leave them wanting more." Think about all of the best movies you've seen, the best rides at the amusement park, the best clubs you've ever been to. Was it easy to get in? Did you get in right away? Was the wait sometimes longer than the event? This leads to my next topic. Make her clingy.
Girls are Masters of doing this. They are able to make any guy desperate and needy for more. Actually not any, but most of them.
They simply have skills to make guys wait.
Did ever happened to you that for some reason, you feel needy during date with her?
That’s how they create feeling of value and control. They make you clingy, needy, desperate, then they realize how needy you are, and then they dump you. Go figure.
You as a player, you must take control over this, and make her needy.
You must turn the tables on her.
Yes, that is big secret of all players around world. Did you notice how some guys are able to make woman chase them? I will reveal you secret that Is going to make them chase you.
It’s a time for you as a man, to start making them crazy about you.
I am not going to give you the secret so easily. You will need to think about it for a second.
Tell me,
-When you are with a girl on a date, who is the one who says “I must go home now” (first one who end date? You or she?
-When you are kissing her during first few dates, who stops kissing? Let me guess she?
-When you are Text-messaging back and forth, who is the one who ends?
She?
I hope you can see what I want to say here. They are smart, they are sneaky. Its very powerful weapon.
---------
It's just as simple as artificial scarcity.
DHV-neg-time constraint - the holy grail of the initial pickup, according to Mystery Method.
It even works for guys with little social value, but for those with it, it's devastating.
----------
So your 3 new rules you going to use on first date are >
1)When you kiss her for very first time, be the one who pulls back first (stops kissing)
You can kiss her again later, but try to be the one who is putting on the brakes first. Remember, give a little, and then pull away. Almost like a game of tag--once you've tagged them, retreat.
Basically, you kiss her for first time, kiss her very good for few minutes, and then slowly stop kissing her, pull away, and keep smile on your face while still looking in her eyes. Ask her, so what kind of music you listen? Continue conversation. Keep her hungry for more kissing.
2) Don’t be too available. So even you are enjoying date with her, but you see its almost not possible you going to get her home that night, end a date, and make her clingy for more. But make sure she was enjoying date a lot. Then end it.
This kind of behaviour drives them crazy. Basically, you are sending message to her brain, you need me, more then I need you!
Friend of mine had this problem that he was milking dates. He would stay with girl forever and chat for 3 hours with her, and did nothing. Eventually, date became boring, and she decided to go home. He never got chance to see them again. In almost a year, he wasn’t able to get the second date. I told him to try this: When date is on Peak (peak of fun & energy) end it. Just tell her something urgently came up, and you must go.
If you look at core of this method, its push-pull. You give her something (fun) and then you take it away.
People go crazy when you do this kind of stuff to them.
----------------
The theory is really quite simple. Sometimes it can get a little depressing that all these social phenomena are easily explained with selfish gene theory. But hey, what can you do?
-------
Make Her Clingy
There's a great quote that people use in show business "Always leave them wanting more." Think about all of the best movies you've seen, the best rides at the amusement park, the best clubs you've ever been to. Was it easy to get in? Did you get in right away? Was the wait sometimes longer than the event? This leads to my next topic. Make her clingy.
Girls are Masters of doing this. They are able to make any guy desperate and needy for more. Actually not any, but most of them.
They simply have skills to make guys wait.
Did ever happened to you that for some reason, you feel needy during date with her?
That’s how they create feeling of value and control. They make you clingy, needy, desperate, then they realize how needy you are, and then they dump you. Go figure.
You as a player, you must take control over this, and make her needy.
You must turn the tables on her.
Yes, that is big secret of all players around world. Did you notice how some guys are able to make woman chase them? I will reveal you secret that Is going to make them chase you.
It’s a time for you as a man, to start making them crazy about you.
I am not going to give you the secret so easily. You will need to think about it for a second.
Tell me,
-When you are with a girl on a date, who is the one who says “I must go home now” (first one who end date? You or she?
-When you are kissing her during first few dates, who stops kissing? Let me guess she?
-When you are Text-messaging back and forth, who is the one who ends?
She?
I hope you can see what I want to say here. They are smart, they are sneaky. Its very powerful weapon.
---------
It's just as simple as artificial scarcity.
DHV-neg-time constraint - the holy grail of the initial pickup, according to Mystery Method.
It even works for guys with little social value, but for those with it, it's devastating.
----------
So your 3 new rules you going to use on first date are >
1)When you kiss her for very first time, be the one who pulls back first (stops kissing)
You can kiss her again later, but try to be the one who is putting on the brakes first. Remember, give a little, and then pull away. Almost like a game of tag--once you've tagged them, retreat.
Basically, you kiss her for first time, kiss her very good for few minutes, and then slowly stop kissing her, pull away, and keep smile on your face while still looking in her eyes. Ask her, so what kind of music you listen? Continue conversation. Keep her hungry for more kissing.
2) Don’t be too available. So even you are enjoying date with her, but you see its almost not possible you going to get her home that night, end a date, and make her clingy for more. But make sure she was enjoying date a lot. Then end it.
This kind of behaviour drives them crazy. Basically, you are sending message to her brain, you need me, more then I need you!
Friend of mine had this problem that he was milking dates. He would stay with girl forever and chat for 3 hours with her, and did nothing. Eventually, date became boring, and she decided to go home. He never got chance to see them again. In almost a year, he wasn’t able to get the second date. I told him to try this: When date is on Peak (peak of fun & energy) end it. Just tell her something urgently came up, and you must go.
If you look at core of this method, its push-pull. You give her something (fun) and then you take it away.
People go crazy when you do this kind of stuff to them.
----------------
The theory is really quite simple. Sometimes it can get a little depressing that all these social phenomena are easily explained with selfish gene theory. But hey, what can you do?
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Iraq's Potential
Can anyone really be surprised that Iraq is a mess after watching this video?
What a terrible combination: neocons + political correctness.
What a terrible combination: neocons + political correctness.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Denial of Watson deeply disturbing
From today's NYT editorial in the times:
----
"Africa is still dirt poor — with an average annual income per capita of merely $600 and 300 million people living in poverty. Every year, nearly a million children die of malaria and more than two million die before they are a month old.
Nobody can know for certain whether Africa south of the Sahara might be on the cusp of shaking its endemic destitution and starting up the ladder of development. But it has its best chance in decades, and it would be a crime not to try to grasp this opportunity."
----
Can you comprehend that statistic? By the time you finish reading this blog, 10 more children will be dead because of malaria. And guess what? High commodity prices aren't going to do it. Increasing our aid budget won't do it. The peace corps won't do it. Africa will not grasp this opportunity. And it is a crime, just not in the way the NYT sees it.
Well, Watson was the one who said it best (taken from the interview ):
-------
He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.
-------
Yeah, that's the truth, and it's a sad, politically incorrect, taboo truth.
But it must be said, and children are dying now from very preventable diseases because Africa does not have the intellectual power to cure them. Infants, who have no knowledge of political correctness or Gould's straw men - are the ones who suffer because Jeffrey Sachs and the ivory tower can't bring themselves to realize that IQ matters.
To anyone who reads this and becomes upset, like many haters in the past: do yourself a service and read the full defense of Watson's statements here.
Then, I'm willing to take all criticisms. Only after you have read the science behind race.
To anyone who doesn't agree with me but thinks their time is too precious to waste on "racist" propoganda:
Villify and hate me all you want (which is the reason us HBD have been driven to pseudonymity).
But realize, that kid is going to DIE. And all your conferences and hate mail is not going to do a god damn thing about that.
Do you really give a shit about those dead children? I really don't think so. I really think that you're more concerned with creating the APPEARANCE of caring about them than actually giving a shit about them by shouting down Watson and preaching hope and social engineering at conferences and in development class. You preach hatred towards those who ask the difficult questions.
In fact, your hatred actually CONDEMNS the child to death because you are not willing to ask the hard questions about africa. Therefore, we get stuck with the status quo. China moves in and africa probably will soon be worse off (if you have any doubts, ask the Darfur victims, who constantly get attacked by military hardware financed by China).
The children die, you can go home and go christmas shopping guilt free because you've done you're daily dose of spouting PC rhetoric and shouting down those who think otherwise.
Shame on you.
----
"Africa is still dirt poor — with an average annual income per capita of merely $600 and 300 million people living in poverty. Every year, nearly a million children die of malaria and more than two million die before they are a month old.
Nobody can know for certain whether Africa south of the Sahara might be on the cusp of shaking its endemic destitution and starting up the ladder of development. But it has its best chance in decades, and it would be a crime not to try to grasp this opportunity."
----
Can you comprehend that statistic? By the time you finish reading this blog, 10 more children will be dead because of malaria. And guess what? High commodity prices aren't going to do it. Increasing our aid budget won't do it. The peace corps won't do it. Africa will not grasp this opportunity. And it is a crime, just not in the way the NYT sees it.
Well, Watson was the one who said it best (taken from the interview ):
-------
He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.
-------
Yeah, that's the truth, and it's a sad, politically incorrect, taboo truth.
But it must be said, and children are dying now from very preventable diseases because Africa does not have the intellectual power to cure them. Infants, who have no knowledge of political correctness or Gould's straw men - are the ones who suffer because Jeffrey Sachs and the ivory tower can't bring themselves to realize that IQ matters.
To anyone who reads this and becomes upset, like many haters in the past: do yourself a service and read the full defense of Watson's statements here.
Then, I'm willing to take all criticisms. Only after you have read the science behind race.
To anyone who doesn't agree with me but thinks their time is too precious to waste on "racist" propoganda:
Villify and hate me all you want (which is the reason us HBD have been driven to pseudonymity).
But realize, that kid is going to DIE. And all your conferences and hate mail is not going to do a god damn thing about that.
Do you really give a shit about those dead children? I really don't think so. I really think that you're more concerned with creating the APPEARANCE of caring about them than actually giving a shit about them by shouting down Watson and preaching hope and social engineering at conferences and in development class. You preach hatred towards those who ask the difficult questions.
In fact, your hatred actually CONDEMNS the child to death because you are not willing to ask the hard questions about africa. Therefore, we get stuck with the status quo. China moves in and africa probably will soon be worse off (if you have any doubts, ask the Darfur victims, who constantly get attacked by military hardware financed by China).
The children die, you can go home and go christmas shopping guilt free because you've done you're daily dose of spouting PC rhetoric and shouting down those who think otherwise.
Shame on you.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Getting out of my head
So partying for Halloween last night, I realized something disturbing. I do terribly with women when I am actually thinking. I just don't know what happens, when I down those drinks and all of a sudden I'm spontaneous and my game is on and I can say what needs to be said in the right timing and all of that stuff.
What is it about sarging girls that getting out of one's head is so critical to the process? And makes it infinitely more enjoyable? And how does one get out of one's head without the aid of alcohol? If I can figure that one out, then I would have hit the sweet spot.
What is it about sarging girls that getting out of one's head is so critical to the process? And makes it infinitely more enjoyable? And how does one get out of one's head without the aid of alcohol? If I can figure that one out, then I would have hit the sweet spot.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Atheism
This is why I don't believe in a benevolent, omnipotent god (except maybe a posthuman universe simulation):
Apparently this guy believes that yes, Watson has a point. However, he makes a point that:
------
"In terms of natural endowment, Africa ought to be the richest of the continents but see the mess we have made of the potential for greatness which God in his infinite wisdom has bestowed upon us."
"As I write this, I do so with great pains in my heart because I know that God has given intelligence in equal measure to all his children irrespective of the colour of their skin. The problem with us black people is that we have refused to use our intelligence to organise ourselves socially and politically."
-------
That's just not true. Brain size has a .4 correlation with intelligence, beyond a doubt, and it's also proven, beyond a doubt, that Africans have smaller brains. That's a problem that is attributable to biology, not discrimination.
The ONLY rationale for denying HBD comes from believing in creationism. Because think about it. If someone believes that the human race emerged from natural selection, then the selection didn't magically turn off 150,000 years ago when humans left east africa. It continued.
From wikipedia's entry
"In the late 20th century United States, unequal reproductive rates favoring the less intelligent would have lowered the IQ of the population by anywhere between 0.35 and 0.8 points per generation had the environment remained unchanged over time. In order to create an IQ difference of 15 points between two populations in 100,000 years, natural selection would have to drive their IQs apart by only 0.004 points every generation – about 1% of the selective pressure in late 20th-century America. [135] Meisenberg argues that measurements of genetic diversity by the population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza indicate that the difference in “genotypic” intelligence between the most divergent human populations caused by random genetic drift should be about 12 IQ points.[136]"
Can you imagine what non random drift would have done? Like the selection pressures of an ice age or technology? Or disease? Or sexual selection?
So yeah, this is why I don't feel comfortable with either conservatives or liberals. Religious conservatives can't admit the role of evolution in creating human differences, while the liberals can't admit the possibility of evolution to create human biological differences. Both sides like to deny science when it's convenient for them.
Anyway, why would God create a race with an average IQ or 70, which basically prevents the majority of them from truly understanding God? How the hell can they really understand what it means to say" Jesus is my savior" if they have the mental age of a 10 year old? Can't happen. A 10 year old saying it has no idea what he's saying unless he's pretty bright.
It's a tough world out there. Liberals isolate themselves in their ivory towers and suburban bubbles, so they allow themselves to get deluded with visions of equality instead of of confronting the truth, because they don't have to suffer from their delusions. I consistenly find myself feeling guilty for my racial attitudes even though I know they are right.
To be truly compassionate and to truly understand the suffering of Africa and blacks is to acknowledge racial differences and make realistic policies. Building a well in a village, setting up a microfinance fund, or donating 10,000 mosquito nets WILL NOT CUT IT.
To an atheist, we just have this world. That's it. We have to make it the best, most just, and fairest world possible for everyone. Because when we die, that's it. So why not make the earth a better place? Why not give up your ideology and look hard at truths in order to really make a difference?
You World Bank people know what's up. Why don't you put your taboo ideas into practise instead of living in lavish hotels and preaching privatization with no regard for human ability? You like to think that you are great people because you're working to solve the problem of world poverty.
I'm sure it sounds great to starry eyed liberal co-eds when you tell them about the "passion" and "idealism" in the young africans you meet on trips.
You are truly scum if, knowing that your ideas will fail and that kid who'se smiling today could be dead from malaria in a year, CONTINUE to justify your fat expat salaries with standard economic theory with lots of formulas.
Wake up people. Life isn't all about fitting in, being liked, and having the best car or fanciest myspace page or the most amount of wall postings on facebook.
Do something with your god damn life.
Apparently this guy believes that yes, Watson has a point. However, he makes a point that:
------
"In terms of natural endowment, Africa ought to be the richest of the continents but see the mess we have made of the potential for greatness which God in his infinite wisdom has bestowed upon us."
"As I write this, I do so with great pains in my heart because I know that God has given intelligence in equal measure to all his children irrespective of the colour of their skin. The problem with us black people is that we have refused to use our intelligence to organise ourselves socially and politically."
-------
That's just not true. Brain size has a .4 correlation with intelligence, beyond a doubt, and it's also proven, beyond a doubt, that Africans have smaller brains. That's a problem that is attributable to biology, not discrimination.
The ONLY rationale for denying HBD comes from believing in creationism. Because think about it. If someone believes that the human race emerged from natural selection, then the selection didn't magically turn off 150,000 years ago when humans left east africa. It continued.
From wikipedia's entry
"In the late 20th century United States, unequal reproductive rates favoring the less intelligent would have lowered the IQ of the population by anywhere between 0.35 and 0.8 points per generation had the environment remained unchanged over time. In order to create an IQ difference of 15 points between two populations in 100,000 years, natural selection would have to drive their IQs apart by only 0.004 points every generation – about 1% of the selective pressure in late 20th-century America. [135] Meisenberg argues that measurements of genetic diversity by the population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza indicate that the difference in “genotypic” intelligence between the most divergent human populations caused by random genetic drift should be about 12 IQ points.[136]"
Can you imagine what non random drift would have done? Like the selection pressures of an ice age or technology? Or disease? Or sexual selection?
So yeah, this is why I don't feel comfortable with either conservatives or liberals. Religious conservatives can't admit the role of evolution in creating human differences, while the liberals can't admit the possibility of evolution to create human biological differences. Both sides like to deny science when it's convenient for them.
Anyway, why would God create a race with an average IQ or 70, which basically prevents the majority of them from truly understanding God? How the hell can they really understand what it means to say" Jesus is my savior" if they have the mental age of a 10 year old? Can't happen. A 10 year old saying it has no idea what he's saying unless he's pretty bright.
It's a tough world out there. Liberals isolate themselves in their ivory towers and suburban bubbles, so they allow themselves to get deluded with visions of equality instead of of confronting the truth, because they don't have to suffer from their delusions. I consistenly find myself feeling guilty for my racial attitudes even though I know they are right.
To be truly compassionate and to truly understand the suffering of Africa and blacks is to acknowledge racial differences and make realistic policies. Building a well in a village, setting up a microfinance fund, or donating 10,000 mosquito nets WILL NOT CUT IT.
To an atheist, we just have this world. That's it. We have to make it the best, most just, and fairest world possible for everyone. Because when we die, that's it. So why not make the earth a better place? Why not give up your ideology and look hard at truths in order to really make a difference?
You World Bank people know what's up. Why don't you put your taboo ideas into practise instead of living in lavish hotels and preaching privatization with no regard for human ability? You like to think that you are great people because you're working to solve the problem of world poverty.
I'm sure it sounds great to starry eyed liberal co-eds when you tell them about the "passion" and "idealism" in the young africans you meet on trips.
You are truly scum if, knowing that your ideas will fail and that kid who'se smiling today could be dead from malaria in a year, CONTINUE to justify your fat expat salaries with standard economic theory with lots of formulas.
Wake up people. Life isn't all about fitting in, being liked, and having the best car or fanciest myspace page or the most amount of wall postings on facebook.
Do something with your god damn life.
1.4 Trillion
For what, exactly? With that money we can have alternative energy and a moon colony in 10 years. What a shame. If only more Steve Sailers spoke up in 2002.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Saw IV
Very interesting serious of movies. I admit it, I'm a saw addict. Last night I went to a saw marathon starting from the beginning and culminating in the midnight showing of Saw IV. Anyway, there are some interesting quotes:
"Congratulations. You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore."
" Live or die, make your choice. "
"Those that do not cherish life do not deserve life."
Sounds creepy, I know. But, what is Jigsaw, ultimately? He is a premature eugenicist. He's culling the population of undesirables who don't want to live. Because think about it. In our modern welfare state it is easy to live. People do not have to struggle to survive. Hence dysgenics. But, what if you created someone who made people struggle in order to stay alive?
Anyway, a movie. A little gory, but that's ok. Some people need to be reminded that the human body is just a biological machine.
I <3 moral ambiguity.
"Congratulations. You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore."
" Live or die, make your choice. "
"Those that do not cherish life do not deserve life."
Sounds creepy, I know. But, what is Jigsaw, ultimately? He is a premature eugenicist. He's culling the population of undesirables who don't want to live. Because think about it. In our modern welfare state it is easy to live. People do not have to struggle to survive. Hence dysgenics. But, what if you created someone who made people struggle in order to stay alive?
Anyway, a movie. A little gory, but that's ok. Some people need to be reminded that the human body is just a biological machine.
I <3 moral ambiguity.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Watson
Very interesting scenario with this Watson character. Either this can scare those who are HBD aware, or make them infuriated.
Or, people on the fence, like in the World Bank, or psychologists who have done serious research on this, will think differently. I wonder if anyone has seen a sympathetic review of his ideas from any non-traditional sources of HBD information.
Or, people on the fence, like in the World Bank, or psychologists who have done serious research on this, will think differently. I wonder if anyone has seen a sympathetic review of his ideas from any non-traditional sources of HBD information.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Who sees the contradiction?
So apparently the Islamic Republic of Iran is making war on porn
and conservatives continue to condemn the regime. Is anyone going to ever point out that the hardline stance on Islamic regimes that the right takes is quite hypocritical given their agreements with many of them over social policy?
Then again, though, it's just as hypocritical for liberals to join forces with Muslim sympathizers. By not acknowledging the uniquely Islamic threat, Democratic candidates are giving credit to Rudy Guiliani.
and conservatives continue to condemn the regime. Is anyone going to ever point out that the hardline stance on Islamic regimes that the right takes is quite hypocritical given their agreements with many of them over social policy?
Then again, though, it's just as hypocritical for liberals to join forces with Muslim sympathizers. By not acknowledging the uniquely Islamic threat, Democratic candidates are giving credit to Rudy Guiliani.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Difficulties of Human Nature and Race
In Bob Herberts's post today in the nytimes, he claims
"The most important step toward ending the tragic cycles of violence and poverty among African-Americans also happens to be the heaviest lift — reconnecting black fathers to their children."
Unfortunately, what makes husbands stick with wives and fathers stick with children? Don't over think this one. It's simple - love.
Don't think I'm getting all fuzzy on you. Just in case you forgot, we have experiments addressing the chemical roots of love, the prairie vole experiment:
-------
Almost a decade ago, Thomas Insel, Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University, and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health and the University of Maryland implicated vasopressin and oxytocin in controlling the preference for particular partners in both male and female prairie voles. These investigators found that giving a male vasopressin causes it to stay with its mate, whereas blocking this hormone prevents a pair-bond from forming. The scientists saw similar effects in female prairie voles, with oxytocin determining the extent of pair-bonding. In contrast, the administration of these substances had no influence on social interactions in the promiscuous montane voles. Surprisingly, vasopressin and oxytocin are naturally found at similar levels in both prairie and montane voles.
-------
Now, would it really be such a huge shocker to say that this chemical may not have uniform distribution throughout all races? That because most mammals are NOT monogamous, perhaps western society is the exception? That expecting monogamy from African American households (absent the extreme economic pressure that forced such association prior to the welfare state) is doomed to failure?
Tierney's blog on the nytimes has the occasional interesting article on gossip. Here is a clip:
-------------------
The researchers set out to test the power of gossip, which has been exalted by theorists in recent decades. Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential for animals to live in groups.
Apes and other creatures solidify their social bonds by cleaning and stroking one another, but the size of the group is limited because there’s not enough time in the day to groom a large number of animals.
Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours untangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation (“Your hair looks so unmatted today!”) or by picking apart someone else’s behavior (“Yeah, he was supposed to share the wildebeest, but I heard he kept both haunches”).
Gossip also told people whom to trust, and the prospect of a bad reputation discouraged them from acting selfishly, so large groups could peacefully cooperate. At least, that was the theory: gossip promoted the “indirect reciprocity” that made human society possible.
-------------------
So, if there is a connection between large societies and the evolution of altruistic, behavior, could we now have evolutionary reasons to the dysfunction of most african societies? Remember, most African tribes were small and gatherer(minimal hunting).
Or, am I grasping at straws?
Until someone offers good, coherent, reasons for dysfunctional phenomena in the African AND African American community, I will continue to parse through evolutionary psychology literature and try to gain insight into peculiarities of race differences in behavior. To not explore these possibilities would be suppressing possible knowledge.
"The most important step toward ending the tragic cycles of violence and poverty among African-Americans also happens to be the heaviest lift — reconnecting black fathers to their children."
Unfortunately, what makes husbands stick with wives and fathers stick with children? Don't over think this one. It's simple - love.
Don't think I'm getting all fuzzy on you. Just in case you forgot, we have experiments addressing the chemical roots of love, the prairie vole experiment:
-------
Almost a decade ago, Thomas Insel, Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University, and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health and the University of Maryland implicated vasopressin and oxytocin in controlling the preference for particular partners in both male and female prairie voles. These investigators found that giving a male vasopressin causes it to stay with its mate, whereas blocking this hormone prevents a pair-bond from forming. The scientists saw similar effects in female prairie voles, with oxytocin determining the extent of pair-bonding. In contrast, the administration of these substances had no influence on social interactions in the promiscuous montane voles. Surprisingly, vasopressin and oxytocin are naturally found at similar levels in both prairie and montane voles.
-------
Now, would it really be such a huge shocker to say that this chemical may not have uniform distribution throughout all races? That because most mammals are NOT monogamous, perhaps western society is the exception? That expecting monogamy from African American households (absent the extreme economic pressure that forced such association prior to the welfare state) is doomed to failure?
Tierney's blog on the nytimes has the occasional interesting article on gossip. Here is a clip:
-------------------
The researchers set out to test the power of gossip, which has been exalted by theorists in recent decades. Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential for animals to live in groups.
Apes and other creatures solidify their social bonds by cleaning and stroking one another, but the size of the group is limited because there’s not enough time in the day to groom a large number of animals.
Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours untangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation (“Your hair looks so unmatted today!”) or by picking apart someone else’s behavior (“Yeah, he was supposed to share the wildebeest, but I heard he kept both haunches”).
Gossip also told people whom to trust, and the prospect of a bad reputation discouraged them from acting selfishly, so large groups could peacefully cooperate. At least, that was the theory: gossip promoted the “indirect reciprocity” that made human society possible.
-------------------
So, if there is a connection between large societies and the evolution of altruistic, behavior, could we now have evolutionary reasons to the dysfunction of most african societies? Remember, most African tribes were small and gatherer(minimal hunting).
Or, am I grasping at straws?
Until someone offers good, coherent, reasons for dysfunctional phenomena in the African AND African American community, I will continue to parse through evolutionary psychology literature and try to gain insight into peculiarities of race differences in behavior. To not explore these possibilities would be suppressing possible knowledge.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Lighter
I'm actually pretty happy that Gore won the Nobel Prize. It's not something that can really be denounced by mainstream conservatives, and it also makes the US look better in international eyes.
Now, if only he would run. Then I wouldn't have to choose between a fear monger and someone slightly more appealing but ultimately uninspirational.
Now, if only he would run. Then I wouldn't have to choose between a fear monger and someone slightly more appealing but ultimately uninspirational.
Monday, October 1, 2007
A hidden gem
From the NY times article on affirmitive actions
------------------
Black students at better high schools have a much easier time, but it’s not as if they are keeping up with their peers. Even if U.C.L.A. tried to get around Proposition 209 by giving a big leg up to low-income applicants, it wouldn’t increase its black population very much. At every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, the academic record of black students is worse than that of other groups. As Taylor says: “There is a great deal of pressure to look for a proxy for race. There is no proxy for race.”
He and many other defenders of affirmative action consider this to be a self-evident fact, but there has also been a good deal of social science to support the view that the specific problems surrounding race — including discrimination — endure. One illustrative study found that résumés with typically black names are less likely to lead to job interviews than those with typically white names. Other recent studies have looked at intelligence testing. There have long been two uncomfortable facts in this area: Intelligence, indisputably, is in part genetic; and every intelligence test shows a gap between black Americans and others. For a long time, scientific research wasn’t very good at explaining this gap. But it has gotten better lately. For one thing, the gap between white and black adults has narrowed significantly since 1970, according to work by the noted researchers William Dickens and James Flynn. Four decades is too short a time period for the gene pool to change, but it’s not too short for environment to improve. Most intriguing, Roland Fryer and Steven D. Levitt, two economists (the latter is one of this magazine’s Freakonomics columnists), have found there to be essentially no gap between 1-year-old white and black children of the same socioeconomic status.
There are still vigorous debates about all this work — intelligence tests of 1-year-olds are iffy, for instance — but it points in one direction. Innate intelligence may be partly genetic, but it doesn’t seem to vary by race. So while race may not be the only source of disadvantage in today’s society, it is certainly one of them.
--------------------
I think the author set up the genetic straw man and took it down with weak evidence.
Steve Sailer has some good points, but I'd make some additional notes:
-He says that after correcting for socio economic status, there is no gap between one year olds.
Obviously an IQ test for 1 year olds is really suspicious. But, he also before says
-"At every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, the academic record of black students is worse than that of other groups"
How can you reconcile those two?
The way you reconcile that is that HERITABILITY OF IQ INCREASES WITH AGE. Yeah, seems counter-intuitive, right? But actually, twin adoption studies show that the highest correlation between twins (.6-.8) usually occurs in adulthood.
So, anyone that points to infant IQ tests to show that black children are just as capable as whites are truly being misinformative.
Also, there is another race issue here. I know Rushton gets alot of criticism, but his r-K is useful occasionally. African babies tend to develope faster than other babies in terms of coordination development and Asian babies lag the most. So, any study that compares babies is actually going BACKWARDS, as African children have an advantage in the studies at an earlier age.
Anyway, take it for what its worth. It would be nice to talk about things not dealing with race, but there is just too much absurdity and pop anthopology in mainstream media.
------------------
Black students at better high schools have a much easier time, but it’s not as if they are keeping up with their peers. Even if U.C.L.A. tried to get around Proposition 209 by giving a big leg up to low-income applicants, it wouldn’t increase its black population very much. At every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, the academic record of black students is worse than that of other groups. As Taylor says: “There is a great deal of pressure to look for a proxy for race. There is no proxy for race.”
He and many other defenders of affirmative action consider this to be a self-evident fact, but there has also been a good deal of social science to support the view that the specific problems surrounding race — including discrimination — endure. One illustrative study found that résumés with typically black names are less likely to lead to job interviews than those with typically white names. Other recent studies have looked at intelligence testing. There have long been two uncomfortable facts in this area: Intelligence, indisputably, is in part genetic; and every intelligence test shows a gap between black Americans and others. For a long time, scientific research wasn’t very good at explaining this gap. But it has gotten better lately. For one thing, the gap between white and black adults has narrowed significantly since 1970, according to work by the noted researchers William Dickens and James Flynn. Four decades is too short a time period for the gene pool to change, but it’s not too short for environment to improve. Most intriguing, Roland Fryer and Steven D. Levitt, two economists (the latter is one of this magazine’s Freakonomics columnists), have found there to be essentially no gap between 1-year-old white and black children of the same socioeconomic status.
There are still vigorous debates about all this work — intelligence tests of 1-year-olds are iffy, for instance — but it points in one direction. Innate intelligence may be partly genetic, but it doesn’t seem to vary by race. So while race may not be the only source of disadvantage in today’s society, it is certainly one of them.
--------------------
I think the author set up the genetic straw man and took it down with weak evidence.
Steve Sailer has some good points, but I'd make some additional notes:
-He says that after correcting for socio economic status, there is no gap between one year olds.
Obviously an IQ test for 1 year olds is really suspicious. But, he also before says
-"At every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, the academic record of black students is worse than that of other groups"
How can you reconcile those two?
The way you reconcile that is that HERITABILITY OF IQ INCREASES WITH AGE. Yeah, seems counter-intuitive, right? But actually, twin adoption studies show that the highest correlation between twins (.6-.8) usually occurs in adulthood.
So, anyone that points to infant IQ tests to show that black children are just as capable as whites are truly being misinformative.
Also, there is another race issue here. I know Rushton gets alot of criticism, but his r-K is useful occasionally. African babies tend to develope faster than other babies in terms of coordination development and Asian babies lag the most. So, any study that compares babies is actually going BACKWARDS, as African children have an advantage in the studies at an earlier age.
Anyway, take it for what its worth. It would be nice to talk about things not dealing with race, but there is just too much absurdity and pop anthopology in mainstream media.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Shocker!
So, who won the Pickup Artist? A Latino actor. Oh man, yeah, I'm sure he was a real nerd before that.
So I guess since none of the really nerdy guys came close to winning (except Joe, but he wasn't a nerd, he just wasn't confident) does that cement the role of genetics and the ability to be alpha? I hope not. Otherwise, there are going to be alot of pissed off Asian men in the coming decades.
So I guess since none of the really nerdy guys came close to winning (except Joe, but he wasn't a nerd, he just wasn't confident) does that cement the role of genetics and the ability to be alpha? I hope not. Otherwise, there are going to be alot of pissed off Asian men in the coming decades.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Female Sexuality
The fight goes on. Free people's minds. Let them realize that a slutty woman is NOT a bad person. Unfortunately, I'm not winning the fight. On Dusk in Autumn's blog the comments are not entirely friendly to abject promiscuity.
Apparently honor killings are still in vogue
What will it take for people to gain sanity in this age where feminists team up with Islamists to tackle the Christian right? God damn it, I want to have sex with someone from the middle east - I find Persian girls extremely attractive. But no, it won't happen anytime soon, or at least with my level of game and economic resources. Not fair!
What the hell is so wrong about women putting out when billions live on less than a dollar a day, global warming threatens the environment, soldiers die in Iraq, genocide in darfur, billions of animals slaughtered in the meat industry.
And yet, the most pressing concern for the average Islamic family is the protection of their "honor." Disgusting.
Apparently honor killings are still in vogue
What will it take for people to gain sanity in this age where feminists team up with Islamists to tackle the Christian right? God damn it, I want to have sex with someone from the middle east - I find Persian girls extremely attractive. But no, it won't happen anytime soon, or at least with my level of game and economic resources. Not fair!
What the hell is so wrong about women putting out when billions live on less than a dollar a day, global warming threatens the environment, soldiers die in Iraq, genocide in darfur, billions of animals slaughtered in the meat industry.
And yet, the most pressing concern for the average Islamic family is the protection of their "honor." Disgusting.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Does God Exist?
Best proof yet against intelligent design:
http://mojoflix.com/Video/Worst-face-tumor-you-will-ever-see.html
http://mojoflix.com/Video/Worst-face-tumor-you-will-ever-see.html
Monday, September 17, 2007
Brooks and IQ
I felt quite upset when I read David Brook's post on IQ in the NYT and realized the hogwash that was being sprouted by a guy that has the occasionally interesting column.
------------
A nice phenomenon of the past few years is the diminishing influence of I.Q.
For a time, I.Q. was the most reliable method we had to capture mental aptitude. People had the impression that we are born with these information-processing engines in our heads and that smart people have more horsepower than dumb people.
And in fact, there’s something to that. There is such a thing as general intelligence; people who are good at one mental skill tend to be good at others. This intelligence is partly hereditary. A meta-analysis by Bernie Devlin of the University of Pittsburgh found that genes account for about 48 percent of the differences in I.Q. scores. There’s even evidence that people with bigger brains tend to have higher intelligence.
But there has always been something opaque about I.Q. In the first place, there’s no consensus about what intelligence is. Some people think intelligence is the ability to adapt to an environment, others that capacity to think abstractly, and so on.
Then there are weird patterns. For example, over the past century, average I.Q. scores have risen at a rate of about 3 to 6 points per decade. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn effect, has been measured in many countries and across all age groups. Nobody seems to understand why this happens or why it seems to be petering out in some places, like Scandinavia.
I.Q. can also be powerfully affected by environment. As Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and others have shown, growing up in poverty can affect your intelligence for the worse. Growing up in an emotionally strangled household also affects I.Q.
One of the classic findings of this was made by H.M. Skeels back in the 1930s. He studied mentally retarded orphans who were put in foster homes. After four years, their I.Q.’s diverged an amazing 50 points from orphans who were not moved. And the remarkable thing is the mothers who adopted the orphans were themselves mentally retarded and living in a different institution. It wasn’t tutoring that produced the I.Q. spike; it was love.
Then, finally, there are the various theories of multiple intelligences. We don’t just have one thing called intelligence. We have a lot of distinct mental capacities. These theories thrive, despite resistance from the statisticians, because they explain everyday experience. I’m decent at processing words, but when it comes to calculating the caroms on a pool table, I have the aptitude of a sea slug.
I.Q., in other words, is a black box. It measures something, but it’s not clear what it is or whether it’s good at predicting how people will do in life. Over the past few years, scientists have opened the black box to investigate the brain itself, not a statistical artifact.
Now you can read books about mental capacities in which the subject of I.Q. and intelligence barely comes up. The authors are concerned instead with, say, the parallel processes that compete for attention in the brain, and how they integrate. They’re discovering that far from being a cold engine for processing information, neural connections are shaped by emotion.
Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California had a patient rendered emotionless by damage to his frontal lobes. When asked what day he could come back for an appointment, he stood there for nearly half an hour describing the pros and cons of different dates, but was incapable of making a decision. This is not the Spock-like brain engine suggested by the I.Q.
Today, the research that dominates public conversation is not about raw brain power but about the strengths and consequences of specific processes. Daniel Schacter of Harvard writes about the vices that flow from the way memory works. Daniel Gilbert, also of Harvard, describes the mistakes people make in perceiving the future. If people at Harvard are moving beyond general intelligence, you know something big is happening.
The cultural consequence is that judging intelligence is less like measuring horsepower in an engine and more like watching ballet. Speed and strength are part of intelligence, and these things can be measured numerically, but the essence of the activity is found in the rhythm and grace and personality — traits that are the products of an idiosyncratic blend of emotions, experiences, motivations and inheritances.
Recent brain research, rather than reducing everything to electrical impulses and quantifiable pulses, actually enhances our appreciation of human complexity and richness. While psychometrics offered the false allure of objective fact, the new science brings us back into contact with literature, history and the humanities, and, ultimately, to the uniqueness of the individual.
--------------
Beyond just the sheer usefulness of IQ in predicting life outcomes for large groups of people, this guy is really trying to bring the fuzzy back into human sciences. Apparently he hasn't been keeping in touch with cognitive science, which really IS reducing people to impulses. Combine that with research on animal intelligence, and humans really aren't these special creatures after all - we're selfish genes.
Anyway, here are some refutations
Steve Sailer has a column with some good comments
------------
A nice phenomenon of the past few years is the diminishing influence of I.Q.
For a time, I.Q. was the most reliable method we had to capture mental aptitude. People had the impression that we are born with these information-processing engines in our heads and that smart people have more horsepower than dumb people.
And in fact, there’s something to that. There is such a thing as general intelligence; people who are good at one mental skill tend to be good at others. This intelligence is partly hereditary. A meta-analysis by Bernie Devlin of the University of Pittsburgh found that genes account for about 48 percent of the differences in I.Q. scores. There’s even evidence that people with bigger brains tend to have higher intelligence.
But there has always been something opaque about I.Q. In the first place, there’s no consensus about what intelligence is. Some people think intelligence is the ability to adapt to an environment, others that capacity to think abstractly, and so on.
Then there are weird patterns. For example, over the past century, average I.Q. scores have risen at a rate of about 3 to 6 points per decade. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn effect, has been measured in many countries and across all age groups. Nobody seems to understand why this happens or why it seems to be petering out in some places, like Scandinavia.
I.Q. can also be powerfully affected by environment. As Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and others have shown, growing up in poverty can affect your intelligence for the worse. Growing up in an emotionally strangled household also affects I.Q.
One of the classic findings of this was made by H.M. Skeels back in the 1930s. He studied mentally retarded orphans who were put in foster homes. After four years, their I.Q.’s diverged an amazing 50 points from orphans who were not moved. And the remarkable thing is the mothers who adopted the orphans were themselves mentally retarded and living in a different institution. It wasn’t tutoring that produced the I.Q. spike; it was love.
Then, finally, there are the various theories of multiple intelligences. We don’t just have one thing called intelligence. We have a lot of distinct mental capacities. These theories thrive, despite resistance from the statisticians, because they explain everyday experience. I’m decent at processing words, but when it comes to calculating the caroms on a pool table, I have the aptitude of a sea slug.
I.Q., in other words, is a black box. It measures something, but it’s not clear what it is or whether it’s good at predicting how people will do in life. Over the past few years, scientists have opened the black box to investigate the brain itself, not a statistical artifact.
Now you can read books about mental capacities in which the subject of I.Q. and intelligence barely comes up. The authors are concerned instead with, say, the parallel processes that compete for attention in the brain, and how they integrate. They’re discovering that far from being a cold engine for processing information, neural connections are shaped by emotion.
Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California had a patient rendered emotionless by damage to his frontal lobes. When asked what day he could come back for an appointment, he stood there for nearly half an hour describing the pros and cons of different dates, but was incapable of making a decision. This is not the Spock-like brain engine suggested by the I.Q.
Today, the research that dominates public conversation is not about raw brain power but about the strengths and consequences of specific processes. Daniel Schacter of Harvard writes about the vices that flow from the way memory works. Daniel Gilbert, also of Harvard, describes the mistakes people make in perceiving the future. If people at Harvard are moving beyond general intelligence, you know something big is happening.
The cultural consequence is that judging intelligence is less like measuring horsepower in an engine and more like watching ballet. Speed and strength are part of intelligence, and these things can be measured numerically, but the essence of the activity is found in the rhythm and grace and personality — traits that are the products of an idiosyncratic blend of emotions, experiences, motivations and inheritances.
Recent brain research, rather than reducing everything to electrical impulses and quantifiable pulses, actually enhances our appreciation of human complexity and richness. While psychometrics offered the false allure of objective fact, the new science brings us back into contact with literature, history and the humanities, and, ultimately, to the uniqueness of the individual.
--------------
Beyond just the sheer usefulness of IQ in predicting life outcomes for large groups of people, this guy is really trying to bring the fuzzy back into human sciences. Apparently he hasn't been keeping in touch with cognitive science, which really IS reducing people to impulses. Combine that with research on animal intelligence, and humans really aren't these special creatures after all - we're selfish genes.
Anyway, here are some refutations
Steve Sailer has a column with some good comments
Friday, September 14, 2007
Same Old
Was at a club the other day and I heard someone make a comment about asian girls going out with ugly white guys because of their status. I then turned to the Asian girl next to me and asked her about it. She said yeah, it happens, and then took a distinctly anti-white guy tone while discussing the phenomena. So, I asked her whether an asian girl would chose an asian hot guy over a white hot guy.
Her answer? "There are no Asian hot guys."
The truth comes out. Asian Playboy has his work cut out for him.
Well, the last minority was kicked off of Pickup Artist. That's not surprising. And the three guys left are pretty much who I expected to get there.
The fat guy is a little surprising, but a tall good looking guy and a Latino are doing well in a pickup artist competition. How is that a shocker? Come on, if you compare the first Asian dude in the beginning with a Latino guy that's just not fair. I'm yet to see mainstream pickup address the race question.
Her answer? "There are no Asian hot guys."
The truth comes out. Asian Playboy has his work cut out for him.
Well, the last minority was kicked off of Pickup Artist. That's not surprising. And the three guys left are pretty much who I expected to get there.
The fat guy is a little surprising, but a tall good looking guy and a Latino are doing well in a pickup artist competition. How is that a shocker? Come on, if you compare the first Asian dude in the beginning with a Latino guy that's just not fair. I'm yet to see mainstream pickup address the race question.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Partition Iraq
There is, honestly, no other solution than splitting Iraq into different zones- Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd.
Otherwise, we risk genocide. Some think that we're ruining the Iraqi national identity. What Iraqi national identity?
Honestly, the Iraqis are incapable of getting along with one another. So, split them up and let's get the %^&* out. My idealism died a very long time ago when I saw them parading through the streets with the dead bodies of American contractors. Disgusting.
The iraqi people do not deserve American blood. All they have shown is sectarianism and incompetence.
I've been saying this for a LONG time (though not on this blog). People should just look at R. Lynn's IQ data.
Otherwise, we risk genocide. Some think that we're ruining the Iraqi national identity. What Iraqi national identity?
Honestly, the Iraqis are incapable of getting along with one another. So, split them up and let's get the %^&* out. My idealism died a very long time ago when I saw them parading through the streets with the dead bodies of American contractors. Disgusting.
The iraqi people do not deserve American blood. All they have shown is sectarianism and incompetence.
I've been saying this for a LONG time (though not on this blog). People should just look at R. Lynn's IQ data.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
How can feminism deal with this?
From David Deangelo
's mailbag
-------
Hey David;
I'm an older guy and not in a great
hurry to double my dating but I do enjoy your
newsletter. I am analyzing this wuss thing that
men seem to do mainly because I am was so guilty
of it myself. It is through your newsletter that I
am managing to control it. Why is it that so many
men seem to do this? They treat women like gods
or queens and that is not how they want to be
treated!........
I did what you tell all the guys. I stopped calling
everyday and snuck in chauvinistic jabs. One
example was her relating to me that her son wants
to attend a co-ed college or dorm because he wants
to room with a girl that will take care of him
while he is away from home. Before reading your
newsletter I would not have responded with "well
that's what they are for isn't it?" I got the
smack on the arm and a warning to watch it but we
seem to be relating a lot better than we did
before.
--------------
REALLY think hard about this. On the Fallout Central podcasts, commentators always complain about the jokes about Asian Americans, and that the jokes lead to stereotypes and discrimination, and even violence against Asian Americans.
Extract this rationale to "flirting" above, PRAISED by a top seduction guru. Men joke, and then men internalize these jokes. In such a situation, where women's attraction switches are triggered by men acting chauvinistically, then what is the future for feminism?
's mailbag
-------
Hey David;
I'm an older guy and not in a great
hurry to double my dating but I do enjoy your
newsletter. I am analyzing this wuss thing that
men seem to do mainly because I am was so guilty
of it myself. It is through your newsletter that I
am managing to control it. Why is it that so many
men seem to do this? They treat women like gods
or queens and that is not how they want to be
treated!........
I did what you tell all the guys. I stopped calling
everyday and snuck in chauvinistic jabs. One
example was her relating to me that her son wants
to attend a co-ed college or dorm because he wants
to room with a girl that will take care of him
while he is away from home. Before reading your
newsletter I would not have responded with "well
that's what they are for isn't it?" I got the
smack on the arm and a warning to watch it but we
seem to be relating a lot better than we did
before.
--------------
REALLY think hard about this. On the Fallout Central podcasts, commentators always complain about the jokes about Asian Americans, and that the jokes lead to stereotypes and discrimination, and even violence against Asian Americans.
Extract this rationale to "flirting" above, PRAISED by a top seduction guru. Men joke, and then men internalize these jokes. In such a situation, where women's attraction switches are triggered by men acting chauvinistically, then what is the future for feminism?
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