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A Woman’s Story

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Re: A Woman’s Story

#131

Post by lhnn »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

Too bad more places don't use skills based tests like the LSAT. If THAT'S not acceptable... I'm sorry if requiring intelligence is racist.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#132

Post by philwelch »

kahirsch wrote: post #42
rmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

> That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks…

> They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites.

Now, now now. You've forgotten Political Logic.

Political Premise: There are no significant differences in intelligence between blacks and whites. Empirical Premise: Blacks score lower than whites on IQ tests. Conclusion: IQ tests are biased.

The first rule of Political Logic is to never question the political premise!

Re: A Woman’s Story

#133

Post by MarkMc »

I love this story because it shows how important it is to be persistent and stand up to authority. Lois had to challenge the principal not once but TWICE, and she was smart enough to get her male relatives involved. Gwen had to fight for her job application TWICE - once to receive the test paper and again to be credited for her answers. This persistence is even more impressive because in each case it involved personal confrontation with someone in authority.

This cultural element of success is underrated. People understand the importance of intelligence, hard word and luck, but don't realise that 'culture' is also vital. Without a family culture of standing up to authority going back three generations, Gwen would not have got that great job. (Malcolm Gladwell devotes much of his book, 'Outliers' to this theme).

Re: A Woman’s Story

#134

Post by philwelch »

mistercow wrote: post #107
timwiseman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an excellent point, but I think it may be dangerous to conflate race and culture. I suspect for instance that a person of Japanese heritage that grew up in the US and spoke only English might have almost as much trouble with the Kanji characters as I would.

Well in this case, the conflation of race and culture is virtually a requirement. As far as we know, you can't do much really to bias an aptitude test in terms of biology because there is little correlation between race and biology¹. On the other hand, culture and race are relatively tightly correlated, so if you want to bias an aptitude test with respect to race, the surest way to do it is to bias it with respect to…

> A black southerner of voting age was usually either a former slave, or the child of a former slave, and slaves did not have access to basic education. So a literacy test was, at that time, a racially biased test.

That wasn't the whole problem. The literacy tests were only administered to black voters in the first place because of a "grandfather clase"--anyone whose father and grandfather both had the right to vote had the right to vote automatically, and since the literacy tests were only implemented at the end of slavery, in practical terms they only applied to the black population. Naturally, since the test itself wouldn't disenfranchise whites (except for immigrants, but fuck them too) they were free to make it as difficult as possible.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#137

Post by andrewflnr »

Does anyone else think it's weird that the principal seemed to have authority over where she could go to secondary school? Was that standard? Is it still true today?

Re: A Woman’s Story

#138

Post by moldbug »

moldbug wrote: post #87
rmc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't it "look good?" Oh, noes - am I a witch? Witch, no. Racist, maybe.

Or a fascist, possibly? Which is worse - a racist, or a fascist? Discuss. I'll give you my standard deal - I'll admit to being a fascist, if you'll admit to being a communist. I haven't gotten any takers yet but I'm looking forward to the first.

Apparently fascist is even worse!

You know what - if someone, anyone, can tell me why it's absolutely necessary to persecute racists and fascists, yet utterly and completely wrong to persecute communists, I'll go whole hog and buy the R-word. Operators are standing by...

Re: A Woman’s Story

#139

Post by comicjk »

moldbug wrote: post #109
egiva wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great summary you've written here and worth a second read. In deed there are confounding cultural factors built into standardized IQ testing. You wouldn't expect a white European student, even from another English-speaking country like the UK, to arrive at one of our school and test as highly as children born in the US. There will always be some exceptional cases, but in general environmental and cultural f…

Don't be too optimistic: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/us/21latina.html As I said, the confounding factors exist, but they seem relatively minor. Attempting to effectively homogenize the diverse human gene pool through education is anything but a new effort. If it was possible to educate the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo into the cognitive equivalent of Great Neck Jews, don't you think someone would have tried this…

I have another rational question for you: if an Ashkenazi family adopted a Pygmy baby and raised her, how smart would she be?

Re: A Woman’s Story

#140

Post by chrismealy »

mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

You're an asshole.
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