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Escape the echo chamber

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Re: Escape the echo chamber

#51

Post by arkh »

primitur wrote: post #37
arkh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If IQ is closely related to genetics and IQ is important for your society (two bold assumptions) you could argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction. But as you say it could go really bad really fast. Especially if some of those high IQ genes are linked to some illness. For your question about why some people are focused on ethnicity? As usual: people's appearance are easier to discriminat…

>argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction See .. I find this line of thinking heinous. Why do you not instantly trip up when you type this?

It is. But if you close your mind enough you can't even think about those kind of argument and follow the kind of thinking some people do, how can you mount a valid argument against it?

It's heinous! Eugenics bad! Are not good arguments. You have to try and follow thoughts along ways you (and most people you know) don't or you end-up creating your own echo chamber. Try playing devil's advocate sometimes you may learn a lot about how you think and why.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#53

Post by throw2016 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #6

Look at the many stories of people leaving cults and echo chambers. Take, for example, the story of Derek Black in Florida – raised by a neo-Nazi father, and groomed from childhood to be a neo-Nazi leader. Black left the movement by, basically, performing a social reboot. He completely abandoned everything he’d believed in, and spent years building a new belief system from scratch. He immersed himself broadly and ope…

Do we really need 150 pro and opposing studies to understand?

For instance if a society import a minority white population, enslave and oppress them for hundreds of years and then conduct IQ tests to declare they are somehow deficient. How would the rest of the world look at that? Would they simply look at the IQ test results, or have deeper questions?

First people are enslaved and segregated for hundreds of years and just when the courts start enforcing hard fought equality laws in society, economic discrimination takes over via 'free markets' that as an 'outcome' limits access to housing, education, employment, financial services to people who have not had an opportunity to build wealth over generations like the rest. And then resurrect quasi eugenics and go out of the way to try to prove with IQ tests they are somehow deficient.

There is something extremely malicious and insidious about this obsession which fails to recognize others as fully functioning human beings and simply ignores the entirety of history, actions and consequences. And the only reason this can continue uninterrupted for hundreds of years is because in any other context the World would have intervened to stop this kind of sustained assault.

We do not understand fully how the brain works or the dimensions of human intelligence yet many are so confident to build truths and definitive conclusions on top of it.

Even if we for arguments sake accept IQ as some sort of indicator it is dishonest to diminish the impact of environment in the same indicator. As if a seed will thrive whatever the environment. This seems to be a transparently ideological position.

The idea that a rich or middle class upbringing with access to excellent education and resources will somehow produce the same outcomes as a poor family that cannot provide a stable home, proper nutrition, nurturing environment, educational resources and good schools is not logical and cannot be made in good faith.

Yet people with seemingly high IQs continuously make this claim. Suggesting perhaps that IQ is not everything. And maybe we should include tests for prejudice and bigotry in IQ tests that seem to reduce intelligence and promote a irrational mindset.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#54

Post by kazinator »

> Notice that the logic of the echo chamber depends on the order in which we encounter the evidence.

That proves it is in fact bad logic; the victims of the echo chamber are not rational to the point of behaving in a logically sound way.

In actual logic, the order among a set of prepositions makes no difference and they can be evaluated in parallel also to the extent that they are independent; there are no side-effects.

If two propositions A and B contradict each other, that one of them you heard first isn't necessarily the true one.

If everyone is working in good faith (mistakes are acknowledged and fixed) then rather chronologically later propositions should be more trustworthy. People who are not willing to replace old propositions with new ones that contradict them are making themselves impervious to the good-faith improvement in understanding.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#55

Post by kwhitefoot »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #5
hawktheslayer wrote: post #2

To try and escape both pitfalls I attempt to follow Altucher's advice to have less opinions. https://jamesaltucher.com/2012/12/ten-reasons-i-dont-have-op...

I know I'm not supposed to just say "+1" here, but that was and awesome read. Perfect timing for me, especially J.

I'm probably not supposed to say "Me too" either, but it is good timing for me too.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#56

Post by rapnie »

icebraining wrote: post #49
rapnie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting downvoted, but this is honest feedback. Points for improvement.

Are you sure you've posted on the right thread? You've probably been downvoted because those questions are either easily answerable or simply don't make sense (what app?).

Wow, thanks for pointing that out. This is my mistake! I was commenting on gnicholas above, and this link:

http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com/

My bad, everyone :(

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#57

Post by mr_overalls »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #45
4bpp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot I am tempted to call out in this post, but just for a particularly glaring example, > It's important to stress that the differences between members of the perceived groups ("ethnicities", "country of origin", "mother tongue", "a certain look") are much larger within that group than any measurable differences between averages of those groups. Surely the differences in income, the binary variable of bein…

No, I didn't, as I made very clear in the post. (keyword: "policy making") I also hope that you don't believe that intelligence and salary are in any way on a par. Intelligence is at least partly genetically inherited (notwithstanding other factors). Salary is not. To make your analogy correct, consider someone who claims that women are less intelligent than men. That person is most likely a sexist, even though I do…

> Intelligence is at least partly genetically inherited (notwithstanding other factors). Salary is not.

Studies show that salary is, in fact, quite heritable.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases/2...

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#58

Post by lopmotr »

scatters wrote: post #50
lopmotr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with racial purism? We do it with dog breeding. What are the ethical problems?

Purebred dogs suffer a host of genetic diseases resulting in considerable suffering.

I realize you're not the same person, but I'd still like to find out if people are against racial purity or eugenics for a real reason or just "because Nazis". The whole idea of eugenics is to reduce genetic diseases and suffering. Surely, if diseased children started to appear, the same program would stop them from reproducing and spreading it. Low intelligence humans already have considerable suffering too because modern economies don't have much use for them so they often live in poverty. Wouldn't it be nice to prevent that suffering by making them smarter?

Indigenous people all over the world had racial purity before contact with outsiders. Is that a bad thing? Is it good that native Americans are essentially extinct by interbreeding? Should Americans try to mix their black and white people to reduce the racial purity of both, or is the current state of a little bit of mixing already the perfect balance? In that case, Japan, which is very racially homogeneous, must be suffering from too much racial purity and we should try to impose interbreeding on them for their own good.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#59

Post by lopmotr »

drjesusphd wrote: post #30
lopmotr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Even worse though, is the fact that ivy league colleges aren't growing much bigger. If they're so good at educating people, and have so much donation money, why not expand? I think they intentionally limit their size to maintain their elite status, which shows they're more of a zero-sum selection filter than simply good at educating.

How is MIT's Open Courseware and the many programs like it not exactly such an expansion in line with the mission to educate? The idea that success == expansion is a capitalist (or even more narrowly, Wall Street) ideal and Universities should not be run like businesses.

That's certainly good but you can't get an MIT degree with Open Courseware, so it's not providing the same value that being a proper student does. I don't see how having more of the best is a capitalist thing and not generally good no matter how you look at economics. It's not about MIT gaining market share, but about them giving better education to more people so the overall good to the students is higher.

Perhaps there's a practical reason - maybe they can't find enough professors of the quality they want to teach any more students, but last I heard, professors weren't in short supply, especially not when you have $15 billion like MIT does.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#60

Post by dragonwriter »

lopmotr wrote: post #27
arkh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You see the exact same thing in STEM: anything but a 50/50 representation of gender is an indicator of discrimination. The 'cure' is to roll out the red carpet with biased programs, so that you actually get lower qualified and less interested people working side by side with others who receive no special provisions and worked hard to get there. It's associated with a moral panic that very noticeably makes the relat…

Absolutely. Even worse though, is the fact that ivy league colleges aren't growing much bigger. If they're so good at educating people, and have so much donation money, why not expand? I think they intentionally limit their size to maintain their elite status, which shows they're more of a zero-sum selection filter than simply good at educating.

> Even worse though, is the fact that ivy league colleges aren't growing much bigger. If they're so good at educating people, and have so much donation money, why not expand?

Maybe what makes them good isn't scale independent.

Functional features of human organizations generally aren't, after all.

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