And now I'm going to be breeding some wolves into dogs, and chimps into humans.
Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
721–730 of 756 posts
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes It is by no means "the general argument" of the Bell Curve, and saying that pretty transparently shows that you have not read it. You are, of course, excused by the fact that the book has been the target of relentless smear campaign by media and many academics, which…
> The point of the book is largely that people within the same part of the world have widely varying outcomes, which, to a large degree, are explained by their IQ. Except the data they use is not IQ (they are using AFQT Score because that's the available data) and they are artificially constructing an equivalent IQ. The original data doesn't even fit a bell curve (because there's no reason a given test should). For s…
AFQT is widely accepted in the psychometric literature to be an IQ test. Military itself believes so:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/MG265/...
They literally say that they believe AFQT measures the same thing as WAIS (a standard IQ test) is measuring.
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, no such democratic socialist government ever materializes. Because all nations must allocate capital efficiently to function and resist outside hostile forces. The capitalist option is to allow people to own private property, and trust that the supply and demand of a marketplace and individuals looking out for their personal best interest will align to allocate that capital efficiently. The tradeoff is that…
Your image of socialism is so tainted by state and soviet-style socialism that I think you need to dig a bit deeper into the history of socialism before assuming so much as you do. Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920!)" is a good start, even if just the introduction. Basically that it's a really clear contemporary criticism of it from other democratic socialists. It's fascinating how uncom…
My image of socialism is tainted by history. I'm well aware that there are democratic minded socialists, but I'm also well aware that democratic minded socialists have never actually been able to establish a democratic socialist regime anywhere. At what point am I allowed to connect the dots that democracy and socialism are inherently incompatible, as nice as they sound on paper?
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even for something as clearly and uncontroversially genetically influenced as running ability, the group differences only really matter for the top 100 people out of 7 billion. Sure, but there is no social contention arising from racial differences in the world's fastest runners. What gets us in trouble are the the racial differences in high-prestige jobs. To really understand the impact of differences in distribut…
> But that reduced dominance of Europeans in total population doesn't make a lot of difference in the 135+ pool. Employers seeking these exceptionally intelligent young adults were choosing from a pool [...] This is one mistake, and the danger of using IQ as anything more than a trend indicator. Employers don't need 'people with an IQ over ${ARBITRARY_CUTOFF}'. They need 'people who can do X and Y'. And IQs over 100…
> This is one mistake, and the danger of using IQ as anything more than a trend indicator. Employers don't need 'people with an IQ over ${ARBITRARY_CUTOFF}'. They need 'people who can do X and Y'. Even exams which focus on pass/fail of an aptitude rather than excellence show little 'racial' variance in general.
The scientific literature is very clear on this point--IQ is predictive of job performance. If you need people who can do X & Y, IQ is the best predictor[0] of whether a given individual will be able to do X & Y.
> And IQs over 100 quickly stop having significant predictive power for mental abilities other than IQ tests.
I would love to see a source for this claim.
> The numbers in that paragraph also seem entirely fantastical to me. It basically claims not only that there are IQ differences between the "races", but that they are huge.
The numbers in the paragraph are partly due to differences in IQ, and partly due to the nature of distributions. IIRC, Murray claims a mean IQ difference of ~15 points between 'Africans' and 'Asians'. Here's an image[0] of two distributions with an equivalent mean difference. Note how, the farther you get from the center, the greater the proportion of red:black. At 1 standard deviation, the ratio is 3:2, at 2sds, the ratio is 4:1!
> Even granted that there are such huge differences in IQ between various "racial" groups, the social justice response won't change - we need to focus on eliminating the social and environmental causes at the root of these differences.
The point of this conversation is that, if these differences are due to genetics, then no amount of 'eliminating causes' will address the root cause of these differences.
> Murray could claim that the differences are genetic, but I am very curious what is the scientific methodology by which he defines these groups - how much genetic testing did he do determine whether one particular person is 'European', 'African', 'Latin', or 'Asian'? What genes in particular was he looking for that make someone European? (For that matter, are Italians and Spanish people "European" or "Latin"?? Is Eva Longoria, whose family came from Spain to America with a royal land grant 400 years ago "European" or "Latin"?).
All the data he uses relies on self-reporting of race. Self-reporting is always how race is assigned. Self-reporting is how we know that certain minorities are 'underrepresented' in certain jobs--folks self-report their race when hired. It's the same way we know that there are differences in incomes and in educational achievement between races--self-reporting. You can doubt the veracity of self-reporting of race, but that doubt would have to apply to all data with a racial dimension. And, anyway, if race was some sort of fuzzy, meaningless construct (as you appear to be implying), then we would expect there to be little correlation between race and anything, let alone IQ. And yet the data show these differences (according to Murray).
Longoria would be 'Latin' (Hispanic). The whole race vs. ethnicity thing is weird, but he explains it well in the book.
[0]https://www.jstor.org/stable/20182140 [1]https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/shiftmean.jpeg
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's a deluded fantasy which 100 years of disastrous policy catastrophes have disproved It's disrespectful to throw Chomsky in together with something that he's spent his entire life to very prolifically oppose, namely authoritarianism.
He opposes it when it turns up. But for example, he was frightfully keen on Venezuela's "21st century socialism" until it predictably, and predictedly, became yet another authoritarian failure: https://iea.org.uk/but-that-wasnt-real-socialism-part-3-vene...
What a ridiculously biased Fox News level link. Clearly no room for a fruitful discussion here.
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t know what an ad hominem is. You are incorrectly applying the definition. It is not an argumentative fallacy to ask the basis by which a person’s assertions have been formed. You’ve made lots of claims about teaching but clearly you have no experience to back it up and (this is important) you have not provided any citations to back up your assertions. People have to make judgments with imperfect knowledge. I…
I didn't say it was an argumentative fallacy to ask the basis by which a person's assertions have been formed, I said it was a fallacy to say a person's assertions are wrong because of some aspect of themselves, which is what's taken place here by insisting I must be a calculus teacher in order to challenge your assertion that IQ is the primary source of the problems your students have with learning in your classroom…
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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People should be given equal opportunity to succeed That is the old dogma. Today progressives insist on giving certain classes of people more opportunity than others. That is why "equality" has been replaced by "equity" in progressive propaganda.
The important point of all this really was the vast american history of racism, not comparing dogma or "propoganda" to what i think about treatment of others. Also, FWIW you're wrong. Progressives are not about giving more opportunity, they're just ensuring that opportunity is received by the people who historically did not have opportunity. --- --- --- America has a vast history of racism that is providing people wi…
Giving disproportionate advantage to minorities because minorities of the past several hundred years had disadvantage is not justice or even logical. It's just racism.
I don't ask for anything special despite my ancestors being treated like crap. My ancestors were discriminated against, yet now my children are seen as benefactors of a "history of racism" despite our ancestors being literally subject to that racism.
It's a farce, and a thinly veiled excuse for modern racism.
...and it's very telling that progressives have abandoned the notion of equality.
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't, but it's clear that there were societies where the vast majority of the political power served capital, so from then on you can say that they were unhindered capitalism. Of course, there is always some political power that is not wielded by capitalists, even merely because the state requires a military and capitalism requires the state, but since that is inherent to capitalism it can still be said to be part…
‘ but since that is inherent to capitalism it can still be said to be part of capitalism without any restraint.’ It certainly seems like your assigning 100% of it.
It is inherent to capitalism that not 100% of political power belong to capitalists, yes. That's not equivalent to what you claim I said.
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that the argument Chomsky makes about the fact that this research would have no purpose in a society that treats people as individuals, ie not a racist society, is certainly valid, but the current progressivism is to do the opposite, ie to define people by their race/sex, and to count the number of people of each race or sex in organisations, and to call racism/sexism if it is not exactly the population distri…
I wonder if a society that treats people as individuals is even possible? To me that sounds like reasoning along the lines of the physics professors answer: "First, let's assume that all cows are spherical..." Not always a useful assumption. Generalizations are necessary for a human to function. Something like 90% of all daily activities are repetition and you would become psychotic if you tried to make a conscious e…
Treating everyone as an individual is exactly the opposite of “assume all cows are roughly spherical”. It means judge someone with the highest resolution information available. The fact that perfect information is not always available, doesn’t mean you can’t still have the maxim of making the best of the information you have / can acquire.
Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your image of socialism is so tainted by state and soviet-style socialism that I think you need to dig a bit deeper into the history of socialism before assuming so much as you do. Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920!)" is a good start, even if just the introduction. Basically that it's a really clear contemporary criticism of it from other democratic socialists. It's fascinating how uncom…
My image of socialism is tainted by history. I'm well aware that there are democratic minded socialists, but I'm also well aware that democratic minded socialists have never actually been able to establish a democratic socialist regime anywhere. At what point am I allowed to connect the dots that democracy and socialism are inherently incompatible, as nice as they sound on paper?
> At what point am I allowed to connect the dots that democracy and socialism are inherently incompatible, as nice as they sound on paper?
When what's tried is not fundamentally (authoritarian vs democratic) different from the start.