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'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

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Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#161

Post by spicymaki »

barry-cotter wrote: post #99
dtoma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... Not to mention, what's the point of IQ anyway? Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

If we’re not going to find research because it’s useless that’s the humanities gone. All of the topics you mentioned have been done and are being done. The point of IQ research is that it effects real life outcomes that we care about, like health, education, social status, criminal behavior, STI status, having children outside marriage, many others. If two groups are assumed to be identical but they have different ou…

Funny how environment is continually dropped from the conversation of race in favor of heritability. You note that there is now East African dominance in marathon running. That has not always been the case however. As East Africans were provided opportunity to compete on a level playing field their talents whether inherited, conditioned by demand, and/or environmental were demonstrated. Now there is intense competition and selection pressure for the fastest East African runners. West Africans and East African are of the same race, but differ in the case of marathon outcomes. Why can’t this be true for intellect?

Discrimination is not some leftist fantasy. Black Americans have been systematically deprived of quality environments for over 400 years. I am talking about truly horrific intellectual deprivation from making it illegal to read during slavery to living in highly polluted sections of segregated cities today.

When we talk about intellectual disparities history needs to be part of the conversation.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#162

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

alasdair_ wrote: post #56
allovernow wrote: post #19

While this explicit cancel culture has been slow to arrive, this is exactly the kind of traditionally left leaning activism which has gradually come to infest almost all of academia (and to a lesser but growing extent, industry). The result is an extremely strong, emergent cultural pressure against certain results and certain questions, which has been holding back a wide range of fields and ensuring pursuit of severe…

>I'm not suggesting choosing between left and right, only pointing out that the bias is pervasive and undeniable. Can you point to specific examples of this where the science is actually robust and well documented but has somehow been blocked from being published or otherwise stopped due to this pervasive bias?

One example is unconscious bias training. Modern meta-analyses strongly suggest that it doesn't work at all, that whatever the IAT is measuring is unrelated to patterns of discriminatory behavior. This is well-documented in the literature, and by a subset of news sites including some left leaning ones. But it would be completely impossible for a big company's HR department to say "we are cancelling our unconscious bias training because it doesn't do anything".

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#163

Post by tasogare »

Fishysoup wrote: post #108
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

Yes, intelligence is 100% environmental and cultural factor, that’s why genetic affliction such as the Down syndrome has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the subject intelligence... It’s incredible how far some people will bury their head from evidences because of their ideological beliefs.

On the contrary, when some facts put a positive light on certain groups (for instance the better maximal physical performance) there is magically no taboo about it at all, and no pressure groups asking for "affirmation action".

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#164

Post by [deleted] »

Fishysoup wrote: post #108
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

[deleted]

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#165

Post by jdauriemma »

barry-cotter wrote: post #119
Fishysoup wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

> Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. This isn’t true. Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians have higher IQ scores than whites. Male and female scores on IQ tests are identical by construction. They have different scores on the component sub tests. http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea... Mainstream Science on Intelligen…

Those bell curves don't control for environmental and other non-genetic factors, making your statements - insofar as they are based on the document you linked - irrelevant to the conversation.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#166

Post by steveeq1 »

Fishysoup wrote: post #108
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

"Two and two may equal four" being a bunch of nonsensical racist slandering based on no evidence. Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are equally "intelligent" and well-suited to the same tasks. And trust me, there's been no lack of racist scientists. It's just that bullshit doesn't stick.

Ok, someone's a racist. So what? At the end of the day, it's a belief system. As long as that person treats people with respect, I have no problem with it.

For example, if you are, say, a Christian and some other guy is a Muslim and your offended by that belief, well, that's on you. It shouldn't discredit a scientific theory. Evidence is supposed to do that.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#167

Post by deogeo »

wdbbdw wrote: post #150
allovernow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, look at the insane , wholly unscientific public crucification of James Watson for commenting, totally reasonably, on this very subject. Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four. Find me one credible media outlet which even questioned such treatment! Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.

'Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said that most experts on intelligence “consider any black-white differences in I.Q. testing to arise primarily from environmental, not genetic, differences.” Dr. Collins said he was unaware of any credible research on which Dr. Watson’s “profoundly unfortunate" statement would be based.' [0] I think this video [1], does a good job of attacking…

Dr. Francis is either unfamiliar with, or being profoundly misleading of, expert opinion, as surveys show:

"In the current study, EQCA experts wereasked what percentage of the US Black-White differences in IQ is, in their view, due to environment or genes. In general, EQCA experts gave a 50–50 (50% genes, 50% environment) response with a slight tilt to the environmental position (51% vs. 49%; Table 3). When EQCA experts were classified into discrete categories (genetic, environmental, or 50–50), 40% favored an environmental position, 43% a genetic position, and 17% assumed 50–50." - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2019.101406

> I think this video [1], does a good job of attacking a lot of race science and intelligence

'Attacking' is a good description, as the author of that video went to great lengths to mislead. For example, he says the author of The Bell Curve doesn't understand what 'hereditary' means. But the definition the video author gives for 'hereditary', and the definition given in the book he's reviewing, match almost perfectly. So how did he come to that conclusion? He went out of his way to find a live interview where the book author fumbled his answer, instead of giving the definition from the book he's reviewing, or as you more accurately put it, attacking.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#168

Post by jdauriemma »

triceratops wrote: post #142
overgard wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your side is failing to convince people, the solution shouldn’t be “shut up the other side”, no matter how right you may be. It’s intellectually dishonest. By engaging in cancel culture, it gives the silenced side way more credibility, because they can say “why are they afraid to let us speak?” It’s not just that cancel culture is morally bad, its also ineffective.

When the "other side" is arguing in bad faith, you're damned if you let them speak and damned if you don't. Someone like that isn't going to play by the rules of logical, rational discourse - such as sticking to the facts - so there isn't much to be gained by letting them speak versus not giving them a platform. I point you to Holocaust denialism, which has a long, rich tradition of ignoring, obfuscating, or concocti…

An analogous historic example can be found in lead toxicity denial and denial of the harmful effects of tobacco. It took generations to chase away the bad-faith actors in the scientific and medical communities.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#169

Post by JamesBarney »

threatofrain wrote: post #156
traverseda wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well IQ is an attempt to measure the mythical G (general intelligence, if there is such a thing), and more studies in that direction would allow you to better control for various factors relating to G, and figure out what interventions are best for increasing G. I'd personally consider those other studies to be more important than race and IQ, and certainly more palatable. I think it's possible that the race/IQ facto…

General intelligence is as dubious as general AI in that performance in one domain can predict performance in other domains, and the degree to which that’s possible is attributed to general intelligence.

General intelligence was a statistical artifact discovered from testing. It basically a theory that if you do well on a history test you'll probably do well on a math test.

Re: 'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?

#170

Post by MaysonL »

beaner wrote: post #14
alevskaya wrote: post #4

Some relevant context here contesting this view: https://twitter.com/lteytelman/status/1216770668475252738

This guy's Twitter thread doesn't seem like a great defense, because he doesn't make any specific scientific claims. It's all just ad-hominem that this org are "climate deniers." More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag? If you're worried that reproducibility poses a problem for something, doesn't that mean you might just a little bi…

Why are they calling themselves NAS? No reason suggests itself except deception. Name another?
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