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Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#51

Post by youdontknowtho »

lwhalen wrote: post #48
dominotw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1488 types whats that?

Chalk this up to 'things I wish I didn't know', but it's a neo-nazi slogan/concept of 'fourteen words' (something about 'saving the future for white children', yada yada) and 'heil hitler' - 'H' being the 8th letter of the alphabet. '1488-types' are a reference to the type of folks who buy into that horsepuckey.

Right there with you on the wishing I had never heard of it.

I actually started referring to them this way because of an email from Curtis Yarvin to Milo Y. He was giving Milo advice about dealing with 1488 types in a way that doesn't alienate them as an audience.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#52

Post by youdontknowtho »

1000units wrote: post #33
youdontknowtho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories? I'm really skeptical about IQ in general, but anyone popular with the far right really makes me suspicious. I'll take a look at the link you provided...But man, there are an awful lot of 1488 types that support this guy. It really makes me question where he is coming from.

He's a psychology professor, formerly at Harvard now at UoT. He knows about IQ, and he's not far right. You should convert some of that politically biased 'skepticism' into dispassionate inquiry.

Yeah, it's ok to just "ask questions" about black people being subhumans. Right?

The appeal to authority is cute, though.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#53

Post by bqe »

1000units wrote: post #33
youdontknowtho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories? I'm really skeptical about IQ in general, but anyone popular with the far right really makes me suspicious. I'll take a look at the link you provided...But man, there are an awful lot of 1488 types that support this guy. It really makes me question where he is coming from.

He's a psychology professor, formerly at Harvard now at UoT. He knows about IQ, and he's not far right. You should convert some of that politically biased 'skepticism' into dispassionate inquiry.

Here's some dispassionate inquiry: he leans on IQ far too heavily to explain how the brain works. While there is correlation between jobs and IQ and some research that shows a mild inverse relationship between IQ and crime, it's not the end-all-be-all of psychology, as he claims, "If you don’t buy IQ research, then you might as well throw away all of psychology."

What of all of the other areas of psychology? If IQ was found to be completely spurious, we'd still have other psychological research. IQ is not foundational like he claims.

It's like Peterson has never read the criticisms[1] of the Bell Curve and believes it in its entirely. His lectures and interviews on the subject are really just a rehashing of the same, mostly discredited arguments. Even Charles Murray has stepped back from a single number determinant of a single kind of intelligence[2].

[1]: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.htm...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20050205010706/http://www.skepti...

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#54

Post by bufferoverflow »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #30
DeusExMachina wrote: post #9

Not a single talk, but a series: Jordan Peterson’s Psychological Significance of the Bible Stories. As an atheist I found his explanations extremely interesting. Peterson is a brilliant scholar and draws connections between psychology and brain structures, human evolution, and religion. I don’t believe in any trascendental being, but listening to these lectures made me understand better the psychological and moral va…

Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories? I'm really skeptical about IQ in general, but anyone popular with the far right really makes me suspicious. I'll take a look at the link you provided...But man, there are an awful lot of 1488 types that support this guy. It really makes me question where he is coming from.

IQ does negatively correlate with race, that's a fact. The point he (and others) make is that we shouldn't treat low-IQ people as subhumans, just because they lost in the genetic lottery.

There are many other things that correlate with race, both phenotypically and genetically, there advantages and disadvantages to different ethnicities and races. Why is it so radical to say that IQ is different between races? Is it really different from saying that the fastest runners are black?

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#55

Post by Reedx »

skrebbel wrote: post #38
youdontknowtho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories? I'm really skeptical about IQ in general, but anyone popular with the far right really makes me suspicious. I'll take a look at the link you provided...But man, there are an awful lot of 1488 types that support this guy. It really makes me question where he is coming from.

I usually employ the same rule of thumb (although I don't know who "1488 types" are - my rule of thumb is that if a gamergater is passionately defending an opinion I default to the opposite until I learn more). But I've made an exception for Peterson. He's not as super left wing as much university staff, sure, but to call him extreme right is very far fetched. My impression, if this means anything to you, is that his…

Well, the 1488 types and the alt right are mistaken in their support.

They see a professor making headlines because he's vocal about the problems with the alt left. That's all they know and they're assuming that means he's on their side (the alt left also makes this mistake). But that's absolutely not the case and is clear to anyone that actually watches his lectures.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#56

Post by 1000units »

bqe wrote: post #53
1000units wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a psychology professor, formerly at Harvard now at UoT. He knows about IQ, and he's not far right. You should convert some of that politically biased 'skepticism' into dispassionate inquiry.

Here's some dispassionate inquiry: he leans on IQ far too heavily to explain how the brain works. While there is correlation between jobs and IQ and some research that shows a mild inverse relationship between IQ and crime, it's not the end-all-be-all of psychology, as he claims, "If you don’t buy IQ research, then you might as well throw away all of psychology." What of all of the other areas of psychology? If IQ wa…

He does not use IQ to explain how the brain works, in any way whatsoever.

Can you link to (or synthesize) a criticism of something the man has said himself?

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#58

Post by bqe »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #54
youdontknowtho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories? I'm really skeptical about IQ in general, but anyone popular with the far right really makes me suspicious. I'll take a look at the link you provided...But man, there are an awful lot of 1488 types that support this guy. It really makes me question where he is coming from.

IQ does negatively correlate with race, that's a fact. The point he (and others) make is that we shouldn't treat low-IQ people as subhumans, just because they lost in the genetic lottery. There are many other things that correlate with race, both phenotypically and genetically, there advantages and disadvantages to different ethnicities and races. Why is it so radical to say that IQ is different between races? Is it…

To those wondering why alt-right/neo-nazi/1488-type people are flocking to Jordan Peterson: this comment accurately describes both Peterson's views and the alt-right view on race. Many alt-right people claim they acknowledge "factual differences" of race, which is the basis for their ethno-nationalist views.

Here's a discussion on the alt-right following of Peterson on his subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/7gb5af/is_j...

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?

#59

Post by azangru »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #52
1000units wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a psychology professor, formerly at Harvard now at UoT. He knows about IQ, and he's not far right. You should convert some of that politically biased 'skepticism' into dispassionate inquiry.

Yeah, it's ok to just "ask questions" about black people being subhumans. Right? The appeal to authority is cute, though.

Are you of the opinion that some questions should not be asked (even if they can be formulated in a testable, formalized way) no matter what?

Also, would you consider that it's all right to ask questions about correlations between race/ethnicity and the incidence of heart disease / hypertension / sickle-cell anemia etc., but not about correlations between race/ethnicity and IQ?

(I don't have a dog in this fight, and I understand that IQ measurement is a very unreliable and culturally predicated way of measuring intelligence; I am just curious about the way that people who are indignant about such inquiries think.)

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