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James Watson has died

nytimes.com

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Re: James Watson has died

#121

Post by edmundsauto »

kulahan wrote: post #109
sega_sai wrote: post #105

He clearly was an exceptional scientist, but also likely an a*hole. Also unfortunately when people get older, many people's negative qualities are amplified. That seem to have happened with Watson and has tarnished his legacy.

Who cares? Lots of assholes have done lots of great things. Some of the most important people in history have been assholes.

I care. His legacy is tarnished by being a bad human being, when it is pretty easy to be a decent person. It’s worth recognizing the accomplishment without lauding the person.

Especially when the accomplishment is built on basically stolen/unacknowledged work. I’d rather have more Rosalynd Franklin in the world than more James Watson.

Re: James Watson has died

#122

Post by manquer »

moralestapia wrote: post #98
Aurornis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Pauling's obsession with Vitamin C is a famous case of an accomplished scientist getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery. Even during his lifetime there were clinical trials including by the Mayo Clinic that failed to support his claims, but he rejected them all because he was convinced he was right and they were wrong. Linus Pauling was also famously in favor of eugenics directed at African American…

>an accomplished scientist getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery I would still take that over being an unaccomplished nobody getting sidetracked with baseless medical quackery.

Arguably it is worse.

Society tends to transfer skills/talent/achievement/luck in one field and assume those attributes hold good in all fields because they were successful in one area, even if there is no justification, so their beliefs tend to carry lot more weight and influence than the average joe and hold the field back.

Talented people when sidetracked may no longer be as effective contributors, for example Einstein's dogmatic beliefs in aspects of quantum mechanics or similar other topics likely partially contributed to his diminished contributions in later part of his life.

Ideally the best case is balance between being courageous to hold any kind of belief strongly even if its not conventional wisdom, but also at the same be willing to change in the face of strong evidence.

Re: James Watson has died

#123

Post by balamatom »

sparkie wrote: post #106
krapp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Race isn't biological, it's a social and political construct. The social and political construct known as "Asians" comprises about 60% of the global population. Also, IQ is not a measure of intelligence. There are cultural reasons why some people in some "Asian" countries may do better on average in academics, such as stronger familial bonds, peer pressure and a greater cultural value placed on scholastic achieve…

It's most likely a combination of both genetics and society - neither are absolutes. There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic. We simply don't know. People get cancelled not for saying that it is genetic, but for questioning whether it may be. Of course, we will never know if we're not allowed to ask. Cancel culture is anti-science. Watson may have been raci…

>There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic.

There isn't even any concrete evidence that it's a good thing.

Re: James Watson has died

#124

Post by prmph »

clueless wrote: post #110
lordnacho wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder with that kind of racist explanation, how the line of reasoning goes. Suppose for the sake of argument, there's a place where everyone has 10 IQ points less, on average, than the West. The Flynn effect is about 14 points over a few decades. How do you square those things? Did the West not have a society a few decades ago? Is there some reason you can't have civilization with slightly dumber people? Th…

In a clean game-theoretic terms, without making any moral or ideological claims about “who is smarter”, we’ll treat underlying advantage as any positional asset (intelligence, wealth, charisma, skill, social capital, etc.). The question is: If a subset of players has an advantage in a repeated, large-group game, how do they best play to maximize payoff and stability? Here's the strategy chatgpt came up with (amongst…

Hmmm, let's see.

How many people died in wars in the 20th century? How many of them did NOT originate in Europe and Asia?

How much of climate change that has fouled up the earth we depend is NOT attributable to economic activity in the west?

Is there a western/Asian country where late-stage capitalism and the devaluation of of the common has not taken hold?

I could go on...

Are these evidence of intelligence? This is not a rhetorical question.

Re: James Watson has died

#125

Post by JuniperMesos »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #55
flkiwi wrote: post #38

[flagged]

> Wow, good genes! Said with irony? I mean, the guy was into eugenics—thought some races are smarter than others.

A huge amount of American public school policy is grounded in noticing that there are massive and systemic discrepancies in academic achievement between students of different racial backgrounds, and trying to figure out what to do about that. If you paid any attention to the Algebra I controversy in San Francisco public schools recently, that was largely driven by bureaucrats and activists within the public education system who were concerned by racial discrepancies in the ability to do Algebra I work. "some races are smarter than others" is too reductive a claim, but claims pretty closely related to that are relevant to a lot of things in American life. I don't think anything Watson said about racial differences existing was obviously incorrect, regardless of whether you use the word "eugenics" to describe it or not.

Re: James Watson has died

#127

Post by Teever »

kulahan wrote: post #109
sega_sai wrote: post #105

He clearly was an exceptional scientist, but also likely an a*hole. Also unfortunately when people get older, many people's negative qualities are amplified. That seem to have happened with Watson and has tarnished his legacy.

Who cares? Lots of assholes have done lots of great things. Some of the most important people in history have been assholes.

Because there are lots of people who do great things who aren't assholes.

We as a society should prioritize valourzing the non-assholes who do great things over the assholes who do great things.

Re: James Watson has died

#128

Post by JuniperMesos »

krapp wrote: post #117
sparkie wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's most likely a combination of both genetics and society - neither are absolutes. There is no concrete evidence that intelligence is purely a social construct, nor that it is genetic. We simply don't know. People get cancelled not for saying that it is genetic, but for questioning whether it may be. Of course, we will never know if we're not allowed to ask. Cancel culture is anti-science. Watson may have been raci…

We are allowed to ask this question, and we have asked it, and we've found that the evidence does not validate the premise of inherent racial intelligence or other racial essentialist views[0]. Claims like "Asians have the highest IQ" are not meaningful or scientifically valid. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Research...

This (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171) US-government provided table of average SAT scores in the United States in 2023, which has breakdowns by race/ethnicity of the test-taker, and clearly shows Asians with the highest average score out of any of the racial categories in the chart, is evidence for something that you could pithily summarize as "Asians have the highest IQ". The relationship between SAT scores and IQ and intelligence in an everyday sense; and how representative people whose racial categorization went into this chart are of everyone on the planet who could also be grouped into that racial category; are more complicated questions. Nonetheless, the hypothesis that there are genetic differences between people of different racial groups that affect their intelligence in a similar way to how they affect more obvious racial correlates such as hair and skin color, is not obviously wrong.

Re: James Watson has died

#129

Post by bdangubic »

Teever wrote: post #127
kulahan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? Lots of assholes have done lots of great things. Some of the most important people in history have been assholes.

Because there are lots of people who do great things who aren't assholes. We as a society should prioritize valourzing the non-assholes who do great things over the assholes who do great things.

why?

Re: James Watson has died

#130

Post by throwawaymaths »

thot_experiment wrote: post #36
throwawaymaths wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW watson was incredibly racist against scots-irish americans, repeatedly calling them dumb in his lectures. that doesn't necessarily excuse his casual racism, but i would assume he meant to imply that people can overcome their genetic ingroups' statistical predilections

lmao that's an extremely charitable take that doesn't comport with other racist bullshit he said

have you actually been to a talk he's given or are you just aping what other people report?
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