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Rich, Black, Flunking

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Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#61

Post by hyperbovine »

natrius wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first boss was a black guy who graduated from Yale. It took 7 years before I was making more money than he did. I tried to get him to move to a new company, so I could get a signing bonus, and he could get a 30k raise, but had little interest. My father grew up as a poor white guy and had the same attitude. "I make a lot of money why strive for more?" The people I work with have this attitude that 300k/year is exp…

A family income of $300k is upper class, by the way. No one likes to call themselves rich, but $300k is at least in the top 10%, which is decidedly not middle.

If you're making 300k you're in the top one percent, or very near: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new06_000.htm

There's a lot of room at the bottom.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#62

Post by TheElder »

cousin_it wrote: post #49
TheElder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory isn't my own. High IQ among East Asians is fascinating. The fact that they can migrate to the US, and perform as well or better than others, even if they are in the lower socioeconomic tier, tends to make me think that genetics does play a large part in IQ. I do not believe that it is the sole factor though. This is my take on it. If your child has a really low IQ, then it will be a hard life for your chi…

If your child has an average or higher IQ, then IQ stops being a factor and attitude, values, and work ethic play a bigger role. No. If you're willing to believe IQ is genetic, you must also believe IQ is is a stronger factor than work ethic - otherwise Jews would've been selected for work ethic instead. It certainly sounds like an easier variable for evolution to optimize. Not sure if you got my point about Koreans.…

I don't know.

One thing that we all must keep in mind, not all Jews are smart and intelligent, as with any other group. It just happens that of the extremely smart people in the world today making breakthrough advancements, there's a good chance that they are Jewish.

>If you're willing to believe IQ is genetic, you must also believe IQ is is a stronger factor than work ethic (How do you make italics/quotes on HN)

A stronger factor contributing to what?

Doing well, being able to provided for yourself and your family doesn't require a high IQ. One can do that merely with an average IQ, and do well in life, as long as on has a good work ethic.

Having said that, it isn't very likely that a person with a slightly above average IQ will be able to produce the type of works of say a Newton or Einstein. That requires a genius IQ which almost nobody has, of any ethnic group.

Although East Asians have one of the highest average IQ's, they have not dominated intellectually in the same way as Europeans. It's fascinating to me, asking why Europeans and not Asians, dominated the world, especially given the huge population of East Asians. It's a very complicated and touchy subject, but fascinating nonetheless.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#63

Post by gruseom »

dpatru wrote: post #12

Reminds me of a passage from Philip Greenspun's article, How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates, http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ : When I arrived at MIT as a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, I asked a professor for help with a research problem. He said "The reason that you've having trouble is that you don't know anything and you're not working very hard." A friend of mine was…

I don't think your two stories are the same thing. The MIT professor was being blunt, but not rude, and providing helpful advice (if not in a pleasant form). The medical professor was being rude to the point of abuse, and was not being helpful so much as an enforcer of the insane culture of medical training that causes residents to have to stay up for several nights in a row in the first place. (IIRC, sleep deprivation has been shown to lead to increased medical errors.)

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#64

Post by [deleted] »

thras wrote: post #58
jbm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, by all means, elucidate your "non-PC" ideas, with relevant, broad-based (not cherry-picked) evidence.

Human beings are still evolving. Much or most of what's been changing in recent evolutionary history have to do with brain development. When you examine things like the HapMap, you find that the gene distribution of these changes is different in different places. Yes, I mean different in that non-PC way. Are a couple of recent papers from Science good enough? http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5741/17…

[deleted]

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#65

Post by davidw »

ErrantX wrote: post #56
davidw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if you're doing things like operating on people:-/ No restoring from backups, or rolling back to the latest working version if you fuck up.

That's the exact reason they push interns beyond breaking point. My friend regularly made silly, dangerous mistakes when tired - every time he did a serious dressing down ensued. Because he was an intern a qualified doctor always double checked him so none of the mistakes were enacted. But he learned his limits and how far it was safe to go. People put their lives in the hands of doctors; they are under pressure, ove…

What you say is logical, but doesn't quite square with the macho attitude described in the other comment. If you're tired and you realize you're going to do stupid stuff - that you're past your limit, you've learned that lesson, it sounds like.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#66

Post by yardie »

miloshh wrote: post #31
thras wrote: post #20

Biological explanations, while non-PC, do a rather good job of explaining the available evidence.

Not really - blacks from Africa and the Carribean do very well academically. It is only the American blacks that do poorly. They have the same biology and often a better starting line than the immigrants. Why is that?

I believe social factors play the biggest role and not biology. An example would be me. I am the last person in my family from the Caribbean islands. Academically, I am successful, my brother and sister (both US citizens) are wandering in and out of college. Because I was always treated different from them, socially and academically, I grew up with a different mindset.

It was drilled into my head that I should feel lucky to be in the US. My siblings don't have that problem, they are part of the US. I notice that these social changes can happen to any group and is not specific to black/asian/hispanic. One of my high school friends, 2nd-generation India-American, is going to be in jail for a long time. He has fully absorbed the gangster culture even though according to most race-based sociological studies he shouldn't be in jail.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#67

Post by Tichy »

yardie wrote: post #52
Tichy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning." I hope they would learn interesting stuff, but if they don't, should I really try to make them believe it is interesting? I personally hated school for most of my life, and I have a hard time putting my kids through the same thing. Maybe it would help them more if I told them that I understand why they hate school so much. My goal would be to teach…

"My goal would be to teach them how to get through school with the minimum possible effort" This is commendable. You don't have to agree with what they are teaching, but declaring school as evil sets a bad tone. Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity. Unless you enjoy homeschooling* then schools will always have aspects of it you won't like. You don't practice the same learning…

"Instead of learning from your mistakes, your kid(s) just inherit the animosity."

True, that needs to be avoided. I guess I hope they would have a good time at school - basically, that they would figure out how to make the best out of a miserable situation.

Even most of the stuff that is being taught can be interesting or useful - just not always in the way it is being taught. I guess going away from "I have to learn this to get good grades" to move to "hm, while I have to do this, I might as well have fun and learn as much as I can" is what I really have in mind. I just wouldn't count on schools getting this right. So the kids would have to find a way to learn independently of school.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#68

Post by Tichy »

kingkongrevenge wrote: post #28
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first boss was a black guy who graduated from Yale. It took 7 years before I was making more money than he did. I tried to get him to move to a new company, so I could get a signing bonus, and he could get a 30k raise, but had little interest. My father grew up as a poor white guy and had the same attitude. "I make a lot of money why strive for more?" The people I work with have this attitude that 300k/year is exp…

I've seen the claim that black academic test scores are consistently one standard deviation below the norm regardless of the test: sat, gre, lsat, mcat, erb, afqt, whatever. Always one standard deviation. Unfortunately, that lends weight to the genetic argument.

Why would that lend weight to the genetic argument?

Also, I have seen a lot of claims. I have seen claims that IQ is not even distributed in a bell curve.

In the actual book "The bell curve" there is also a small (non-normal) spike for very intelligent blacks, if I remember correctly.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#69

Post by joshwa »

It seems to me that a much of the criticism could have been defused with some slightly different methodology. Some statistics that might been good ammunition (each gathered with rates of several different cohorts: white, black-non-immigrant, black-immigrant, non-black-immigrant)

  * # of hours spent on homework
  * # of hours parents spent with children on school-related activities
  * Rate of parental participation in school activities
  * Absenteeism rates
  * rates of student failure to complete homework
  * rates of student participation in school-related activities
  * all of the above plotted across grade levels (do any of these statistics vary over time as children become more susceptible to cultural forces from peers?)

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#70

Post by buckler »

jdminhbg wrote: post #57
martincmartin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I moved from Canada to the U.S., I was surprised how segregated the country still is. It's not legally enforced, of course. It's just that there are black parts of town and white parts of town. So although I've lived in both Pittsburgh and Boston for a total of 16 years now, including grad school where I was very social, I haven't had much of a chance to have African American friends because I've met almost no A…

I would note that I think Pittsburgh and Boston are both more segregated than the average American city -- Boston famously so.

For some reason, I've heard the exact same thing from residents of Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, etc.

So does "average" exclude major (maybe East Coast) U.S. cities? Should I look at cities of smaller scale... say Oxnard, CA? Which criteria should one consider when deciding a city is "normally" segregated? Just want to know how things are different in the average American city with a significant number of ethnic minorities.

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