Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?
James Watson has died
201–210 of 303 posts
Re: James Watson has died
#202Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?
Probably not, because the evidence itself is not created in a vacuum. There is no objective way to measure IQ "stuff", so depending on the methods picked you get wildly different results
Re: James Watson has died
#203Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?
Given he said it in 2007, pretty much no evidence to back it up. Genetic differences between races are small compared to those within races, so much so that the concept of races does not really stand up scientifically.
He seemed to have been basing the comments on IQ tests, which are not really a good way of comparing groups of people with different cultures or education. They score an individual within a group of comparable individuals.
It is worth noting that if he had made the same statement in the first half of the 20th century it would have been mainstream science, but even then it was not so much supported by evidence but supported by a lack of evidence showing otherwise.
Re: James Watson has died
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is this abomination? "Fact-checked by Grok" So... it's a rip-off of Wikipedia edited by an LLM that was specifically designed for misinformation by the world's richest troll? Do I have that right? Cancer.
Care to point out anything on the page that’s factually incorrect? It sounds like you consider it to be cancer because someone with whom you don’t agree is involved with it, but that doesn’t really provide a good reason why the article should be dismissed without even reading it.
I can't read the link, as the post has been deleted, but even when everything in a text is factually correct, it still can be misleading.
Fact-checking by an LLM is however not acceptable to many. They have no responsibility, and Grok is known to have explicit biases.
Re: James Watson has died
#205Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?
He probably made up his own 'evidence', like white boys performing better than black boys when ignoring socioeconomic background. Today, I, as a geneticist, am not aware of any links between race (in the american sense) and intelligence.
Jim Watson was, from my view, emotionally stuck in the fourties. Even if it was true, you wouldn't tell a female grad student to their face that they belong in the kitchen. Yet he did say that (less than 15 years ago) to one of my former colleagues.
Re: James Watson has died
#206It is sad, however, that he stole the research of Franklin and by today standards should be stripped from his honors. And by today's standards, I mean those applied to everyday scientists, not the "important" ones that should not be disturbed. A terrible person indeed.
One hundred percent agree with you. This is a perfect example where what's remembered as history is largely influenced by what was told by the victor.
Re: James Watson has died
#207Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?
thanks graemep andand patall for taking the time. It is amazing to see a man of high intelligence like Watson is not able to base is views on the evidence.
For me, I work usally with the assumption: "Even if there existed small differences IQ between races explained by genetics, it never tells you something about the individual before you."
Would you say this is a valid belief?
Re: James Watson has died
#208Earlier 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…
Sounds pretty similar to the program of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim with respect to generic diseases common in Jewish populations like Tay-Sachs. Dor Yeshorim is Hebrew for "upright generation" (a reference to a Psalm), and I always thought that was a pretty eugenics-y sounding name. Of course attempting to influence which people have children with which other people in order to avoid genetic problems…
Is not being allowed to have children with close relatives also eugenics?
They also don't get it tattoed on their forehead against their will.
Re: James Watson has died
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to point out anything on the page that’s factually incorrect? It sounds like you consider it to be cancer because someone with whom you don’t agree is involved with it, but that doesn’t really provide a good reason why the article should be dismissed without even reading it.
I can't read the link, as the post has been deleted, but even when everything in a text is factually correct, it still can be misleading. Fact-checking by an LLM is however not acceptable to many. They have no responsibility, and Grok is known to have explicit biases.
> Grok is known to have explicit biases
And of course a pro-white-supremacist biased LLM is going to falsely exonerate a racist like James Watson with the same pro-racist biases that Elon Musk programmed it with.
And timonoko also regularly posts Grok generated AI slop bullshit, and even pretends to be a FORTH programmer by having Grog generate code that doesn't do anything like what he claims it does, which should be obvious if he even glanced at the code he was posting. I'd hate to see the kind of Grok-generated buggy crap he unwittingly checks into source code control.
It's strange that timonoko is so compelled to virtue signal so often that he shares Musk's and Grok's racist views. But at least now we know what kind of person he is.
Re: James Watson has died
#210[flagged]