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Mainstream Scholars Attend Racist Conference Hosted By Jewish Astrophysicist
Seventy people, including a few well-known mainstream academics, joined prominent white nationalists and academic racists gathered in the Four Points Sheraton at the Baltimore/Washington International airport last month for the first-ever “Preserving Western Civilization Conference.” Its aim: to defend “America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity.” But not much civilized was said there. Rather, the discussion centered around claims that blacks are not as intelligent as whites, immigrants are destroying America, and Islam is no religion of peace — it’s expansionist, intolerant, militant, and seeks to destroy.
The conference was convened by Jewish astrophysicist Michael Hart, author of the racist book Understanding Human History, which focuses on alleged differences in intelligence between various ethnic and racial groups. In the past, Hart was a regular at the biannual conferences put on by American Renaissance, a racist publication that wrote, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that “[w]hen blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.” Though few in number, Jewish academic racists were active in American Renaissance right from the start, welcomed by that group’s leader, Jared Taylor, who even once arranged for kosher meals. But Taylor has also welcomed as speakers outspoken anti-Semites, including Holocaust denier Sam Dickson and neo-Nazi activist Steven Barry, making for a potentially volatile situation.
In 2006, the explosion went off, and the façade of civility that Taylor had tried to maintain by requiring polite language and professional attire shattered. The conflict was trigged by former Klan boss and professional anti-Semite David Duke, who attacked Jews, telling the crowd, “There is a power in the world that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and spirit.” Though Duke didn’t directly say Jews were that power, everyone in the crowd, which included several members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, knew exactly who he meant, and many cried for more.
Hart couldn’t take it. He stood up and yelled at Duke, “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!” and stormed out. As many as 50 people at the conference then began to jeer and point at the rapidly disappearing Hart.
Hart and other Jewish academic racists left American Renaissance shortly thereafter, when Taylor declined to explicitly ban anti-Semites. But Hart was apparently not ready to give up public discussion of the superiority of the white race. Hence, “Preserving Western Civilization,” Hart’s Jewish-friendly replacement for the American Renaissance conference.
Hart’s event drew some heavy hitters from mainstream academia. Among the speakers was Lino Graglia, the current A. Dalton Cross Professor of Law at the University of Texas. A longtime critic of affirmative action, Graglia contends that the children of undocumented workers born in the U.S. should not be granted American citizenship. According to Graglia, making an argument popular in white nationalist circles, the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted civil rights to former slaves, was not meant to grant citizenship to children of the undocumented.
Graglia also said that the Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t properly ratified, because the Southern states were coerced into passing it after the Civil War. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment’s clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” Graglia alleges that since the parents are subject to the jurisdiction of the Mexican government, so, too, should their children be. A one-time attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Graglia suggested that birthright citizenship is subject to challenge in the courts and that Congress can revoke it by statute.
Roger McGrath, a former professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and commentator for History Channel documentaries, also talked about the evils of illegal immigration. A native Californian, McGrath depicted California as “paradise lost” and the U.S. as suffering “nothing less than a foreign invasion.”
McGrath, who claimed whites were being ethnically cleansed from their own country, blamed the civil rights laws of the 1960s for driving whites into the minority. And with non-whites come trouble, said McGrath, citing California’s collapsing bond rating, state prisons crowded with “illegal aliens,” and billions a year in benefits to immigrants. Recalling the good old days of the infamously named Operation Wetback, McGrath pointed out that back then “we rounded up and deported illegal aliens back to where they came from.”
“Do we not have a right to preserve our way of life?” McGrath asked, reflecting a common sentiment at the conference.
The Latino bashing was rounded out with a presentation by Peter Brimelow, who runs the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com, named for the first white child born in the English colonies, Virginia Dare. “There is no benefit to the native-born from immigration,” Brimelow said, adding without a hint of irony that immigration “only destroys national community.” (Brimelow is himself a naturalized immigrant from Britain.) Calling the Obama administration an “occupation government,” Brimelow warned darkly of a future in which the First Amendment would be abrogated in the name of curtailing hate speech and secession movements would arise throughout the country. Brimelow had one suggestion for putting a stop to this possible future: a new, all-white political party.
Some of the most inflammatory presentations of the conference came from regulars on the academic racist circuit, particularly those into race and IQ studies. Steve Farron, author of The Affirmative Action Hoax: Diversity, the Importance of Character, and other Lies, is a former classics professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nowadays he specializes in “proving” the inferiority of blacks. According to Farron, “Any black 12th grader solves problems at the same level of a 6th grade white child.” Farron alleges that blacks with post-graduate degrees have IQs equal to whites with high school diplomas. Farron said his “research” showed that only 18% of blacks understand bus schedules, while just 14% can make change or figure a tip on a simple luncheon bill. Farron also claimed that another study had shown more black police officers means more violent crime in a community.
Farron’s claims were abetted by J. Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, who also heads the New York City-based Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation set up in 1937 to funnel money to the study of “race betterment.” Hauling out his PowerPoint presentation on “The Heritability of IQ Differences,” which he also used at the 2008 American Renaissance conference, Rushton said that IQ research is an important part of science and claimed that IQ tests can predict almost everything — the speed of learning a new job, job performance, dropout/welfare rates, brain size, and longevity. But his main interest is his claim that the average IQ of whites is substantially higher than that of blacks. Bringing up age-old and thoroughly debunked assertions, Rushton also claimed that brain size and IQ are related and that blacks have smaller brains. And he asserted that blacks are more aggressive than other races and that aggressive, closed-minded people have lower IQs.
It wasn’t just minorities who were slammed at Hart’s conference. Muslims came in for some serious drubbing, too. Brenda Walker, an anti-immigrant activist in California who writes frequently for VDARE.com, warned that Western civilization is being destroyed by “immigrants and multiculturalism.” She argued that Islam suppresses women’s rights and that Islamic culture includes honor killing, wife beating, female circumcision, and the production of deformed babies because of marriages between cousins. Walker then spread out to describe the abominable aspects of various other immigrants, saying that “sex with children in Mexico is accepted,” the Chinese kidnap and sell women, and East Asian Indians practice indentured servitude and dowry murders.
Lawrence Auster, a right-wing blogger and essayist who has spoken in the past to American Renaissance and who is of Jewish descent, told the audience that the U.S. needs a constitutional amendment to prohibit Islam, which would encourage Muslims to leave on their own. Auster’s other suggestion for our nation’s leaders: “Go to Saudi Arabia, seize the oil, operate the oil fields and adjacent transportation facilities until we get our own energy.” For Auster, Islam, political correctness and multiculturism are a toxic trio. “If a society can’t distinguish itself, it will not continue to exist,” he told those assembled. “If we open ourselves to threats, we go out of existence.”
Hart, having compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and Islam to Nazism, no doubt agreed with Auster.
The lowlight of the conference was a banquet on Saturday night featuring entertainment in the form of Jewish comedienne Julia Gorin, a self-proclaimed “conservative” joker who also writes for Jewish World Review. Gorin’s routine was filled with anti-Muslim and anti-Obama jokes, which were real crowd pleasers. To wit: “But you see, to a Jew there is no greater accomplishment than getting a black man into the White House. The thinking goes: ‘Our work is done. It’s OK if the Muslims come kill us now.’” In another skit, Gorin joked that Osama bin Laden was probably already dead — “from laughing his ass off.” Fittingly, many of Gorin’s jokes are featured in the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes.
on March 18th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Some folks just don’t get it. To many, many professional racist organizers any publicity is good publicity. To be outrageous in a public setting is exactly what they plan for.
These folks are very professional in what they do. They actually plan to say things that they would not necessarily say on a one to one basis for they know that outrageous public displays gets the attention of the public & within that public is the disenfranchised – especially in tough economic times.
They get a platform and they’re going to preform: no question. This is never a question of whether they actually (gut level) believe that minorities are what they paint them as. Certainly to a greater extent many DO believe it, but they are going to use that media exposure to rant at an even higher level of intensity because that is what gets emotions high & appeal to those who are either inactive or will add to their mass appeal.
If someone intends to actually deal with racism, giving the organizers a platform is not the way to accomplish that. These folks are professional. They know very well what gets the blood boiling & what happens when it does.
Anyone who “represents” an organized racist group, etc – are in that position because they have EARNED their stripes. They know exactly how to peak to a crowd. They know exactly what it does when someone responds with any intensity to a exaggeration: a percentage of people in that crowd become interested in their rhetoric. That’s the goal!
There are specific ways that this is accomplished & it’s learned & used by many elements. Black Separatists, Neo-Nazis, anti-Islamic elements, you name it – any color or shade of racists extremism uses these techniques, be they White, Black, Jewish, Islamic, Latino, whatever….Racism comes in all forms and color & the techniques to attract more people are the SAME – from George Lincoln Rockwell, Mier Kahane, to Lewis Farikan & David Duke.
Anyone who reads about these “leaders” sees the same crap used to get headlines……No news there. Get used to it if you’re going to give them a microphone..
on March 18th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I am appalled by the comments of Professor Hart beliefs regarding intelligence are appalling. As a Jew and academician, I know the arguments he puts forth about the various levels of intelligence are very old and worn out assertions as mythical and biased as the canard that African Americans are better suited to athletics because they have longer arms, looser joints, larger muscles, et al. The truth is intelligence as marked by IQ is in itself a misnomer because the equation of chronological age divided by mental age (CA/MA = IQ) does not take into account the many factors that contribute to a person intellectual capacity and a person’s response to her environment and within the context of her cultural experiences. His assertion does not include the many ways by which we are intelligent and talented. Hart’s thesis is no better then Hitler’s theory of the Arian Race. As Hitler did, Hart disgraces humanity and academic pursuits by the drivel he espouses and bases on inaccurate data, inaccurate assumptions, and biased data. I have neither time nor inclination to debunk his thesis. He would not be able to complete his doctorate at my institution because he works from faulty assumption to which is he too blinded by his hatred and biases to see. Next he will want the enactment of laws limiting public access and privilege based on racist “intelligence”. Wasn’t that the Third Reich’s reasoning in the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws. Professor Hart does not belong in the same academy as I and my other colleagues who have a clearer understanding of what it means to be human.
on March 18th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
“Hosted By Jewish Astrophysicist”? What in the world is the SPLC labeling a speaker in such a manner? This is an anti-semitic characterization on the face of it.
What next? Are we going to read of “Jewish financiers”? Or maybe “Jewish media moguls?
on March 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am
I happen to agree with Wanda. I re-read the article & it struck me that she did have a point. She brings up a very salient perspective! Is Hart claiming to be an active practicing Jew, speaking for the Jewish population?
” Though few in number, Jewish academic racists were active in American Renaissance right from the start…..” The descriptor “Jewish academic racists” is a very interesting designator. Something like “Finnish Christian Identity practitioners”.
I seriously doubt the percentage of that population in Academia is large enough to warrant a demographic element. What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be a point in describing the religious backgrounds of the proponents of racism UNLESS the concept is to CREATE more divisiveness.
The Polish person said something about the Jew.
The Catholic speaker said something about the Methodist.
The Inuit speaker said something about the Blacks.
One of the most frequent criticisms of some of the SPLC is that they live from the very divisiveness they claim to work against. If this is, in fact, a continued style of reporting from the SPLC, then I would need to re-think my contributions over the years. I would indeed be very saddened to learn that perhaps I was conned (?)….
I believe many of the non-racist contributors expect a MUCH more mature quality of reporting. But the racists may come to expect a less transparent method of rousing anger. They hear that technique quite often!
How many Angles can dance on the head of a pin & how many Jewish academic racists does it take to make a class designator?
on March 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I’m aware of Dr. Hart’s academic credentials, Mr. Hess. What are yours, if you don’t mind my asking?
on March 19th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Wanda: That’s what I thought at first, but then I bothered to read the full post.
on March 19th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Even blacks who are raised by whites in white neighborhoods have lower IQs than whites. Arab Muslims in Holland who where born and educated there only have an IQ average of 3pts higher that Arab Muslims in the middle east. IQ differences exist because differences in intelligence exist. It’s just the way it is. SPLC is a money factory thriving off of white guilt. As a white person its not my fault that 70% of back children are born out of wedlock, and it’s not my fault that black kids have a 50% high school drop out rate.
on March 19th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
This thing is so exhausting and old, I wonder how someone can live their life with that negativity day in and day out. The people I don’t like, go don’t go to meeting and talk about them all day. The people I don’t like I don’t think about all day. The people I don’t like I don’t create a website to not liking them. If you don’t like me why do go through so much to let everyone know you don’t like me? I really don’t care for you but I don’t go(nevermind)
on March 19th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Academic racists – what an oxymoron! The description of the confrontation between Jewish racists and David Duke is worthy of a sketch on Saturday Night Live – hysterical.
on March 19th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
@WandaB
Let me guess. You also believe that anti-Zionism equates to antisemitism as well, right?
on March 19th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Actually it is good to point out those academic racists who are Jewish- if only because it blows anti-Semite Kevin MacDonald’s theory out of the water- namely that Jews conspire to conceal the “reality” of race.
on March 19th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Wanda,
Is that the only thing you took away from this report? And I believe the point is that he is not a WASP as would presumed.
on March 19th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Peter,
I think that Neil deGrasse Tyson’s IQ could kick YOUR IQ’s butt.
on March 19th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Also participating in the PWC conference was anthropology professor Henry Harpending, coauthor of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion, which has received favorable reviews in Seed Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Harpending and Gregory Cochran are two of the major proponents of the theory of accelerated human evolution, which in Harpending’s view shows that human races are diverging.
on March 19th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
So how on earth was the author supposed to convey the irony of having a Jewish racist yet somehow avoid pointing out that he was Jewish? All you’ve done is to shows your own desperation to say something is wrong with the article. Or don’t you find anything curious about the image of having a blind black man whose extraordinary ignorance finds him at a similar convention as this here but who is literally covering up the fact by appearing under the hood of a Klansman ? (eg. Clayton Bigsby)
What you are doing by suggesting we not look at his Jewishness is precisely the same as Bigsby’s handlers who claimed he was “too important to the movement” to let anyone else know what his true race was. It’s about equally as funny too! .
on March 20th, 2009 at 5:41 am
One of the many frightening facts about this article is that Lino Graglia, Professor of Law at the University of Texas, had been employed at the federal law enforcement agency (the U.S. Department of Justice) that prosecutes federal hate crimes. It is difficult to believe that someone who so stridently believes that those born in the United States could somehow be stripped of their U.S. citizenship could have ever worked for an agency whose public duty it is to prosecute those who commit hate crimes. His employment at the DOJ begs this question: how many other attorneys at the DOJ share Graglia’s anti-immigrant stance (which is really probably more accurately a racist belief since I would imagine that Graglia, like most anti-immigrant folks, would never speak out against the children of white illegal immigrants)?…and how do we get them OUT of the DOJ?
on March 20th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Snaggle-Tooth Jones asked about my credentials. I have a Ph D with an emphasis into the literacy needs of young children. I have extensively studied linguistics, have published a book of readings in diagnosis and instruction of children who struggle learning to read and write, and I am writing a second book at this moment on the same topic. I have in the process my studies on linguistics and literacy, investigated multiple concepts of intelligence. Hart’s arguments regarding the “racial nature of intelligence” are no different from those proffered by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structures in American Life. Herrnstein and Murray’s thesis has been overwhelmingly rejected by the professional and academic community as a racist and classist prejudiced discussion of intelligence. Murray continues to crusade with their assertion and has made considerable wealth for himself by using persons’ and societal biases to parade his beliefs and prejudices before the reading public. Hart is not different and his assertions have not and will not be accepted by academes as sound rational understanding of intelligence. I recommend S T Jones and others that they read about how the concept of intelligence quotient came about and how it has been used by multiple persons academic and nonacademic to “prove” a thesis of one group being either more or less intelligent than another when their “proof” is nothing more than another iteration of their prejudice. I recommend Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man as a source of informative reading and an intellectual discussion of just what “intelligence” is. Finally, I do not understand my S T Jones uses a psuedonym rather than his/her birth name.
on March 20th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I don’t mean to speak for her but what I believe Wanda was suggesting was Janet Smith’s writing style of using an Individual example as a class designator.
Example:
“Hart, who happens to be of Jewish extraction…” vs “Jewish academic racists”.
It’s not even a matter of Politically Correct speech; it’s simply too small a number to be of significance other than to sway the thinking of a reader who wants to find group-think in any level of numeric representation. Catholic polygamists & Islamic Alcoholics Anonymous members most likely exist but to use that as a class designator makes little sense contextually except to point to an under-current of group think mentality.
Therefore the examples of those Polygamists & AA members really don’t carry much weight with their extractive groups.
What I had HOPED Janet Smith was attempting was the refutation of Hart’s structured material. When reading The Bell Curve, the first thing that comes to mind is the manipulation of statistics & the accuracy of the “IQ” testing in general. The importance exists THERE!
What’s more, who DOES represent a group? Is not the essence of a people their collective diversity? Are we to make the thinking or actions of a sample, the defining whole or are we to step away from labels based on samples defining the larger population?
{However, I accept responsibility for expecting more from Janet Smith’s article.}
One of the reasons I dislike the term “Islamo-Fascist” is that it promotes group-think bigotry. What’s more it’s incorrect: Core concepts of Fascistic thinking is Nationalism. I believe the wording of Theocracy might have more accuracy…..However “Islamic Theocracy” isn’t insulting enough for the masses, so some Herculean intellect makes up a word. But even so the group thinking is what’s striven for & bigotry, the end result.
on March 20th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Finally, I do not understand my S T Jones uses a psuedonym (sic) rather than his/her birth name.
Here’s part of the answer: http://coloradoconfederatarian.....m/welcome/
As the exceedingly intelligent and erudite black conservative Tom Sowell once put it, “There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.” And if writing under a pseudonym was good enough for “Cato”, it’s good enough for “Snaggle-Tooth Jones.”
As to the response you give here regarding your academic credentials, well, let me say at the outset that one of the reasons I asked about it is that a Google search reveals no information about you that I can see. Did I miss something? Do you teach somewhere? What is the title of your book?
Secondly, let me say that although I have done next to no reading in the areas you reference, I am familiar enough with academia to know that claims such as the ones you make about Dr. Hart can be just as much ideologically driven as they are by the actual facts of the matter. And to be perfectly frank, your emotional tirade against Dr. Hart indicates to me that you aren’t very dispassionate in your approach to the subject matter, which in turn seems to indicate that it may very well be ideological concerns rather than factual ones that drive you. I’ve seen it all before in other settings.
One thing you can bet on: in my own research I will read – dispassionately – both sides of the issue, including the work of scholars such as Murray and Hart. Just because some radical lefties don’t like their conclusions is no reason for my to ignore them. Quite the contrary, in fact.
on March 20th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
In response to Snaggle-Tooth Jones allow me to state the following: If my commentary is a tirade, which I believe it is not, then the rant is in mind of the reader. In all respect I believe each reader takes onto her or himself an interpretation such as a tirade because it is impossible as much as any of us would like to believe to read dispassionately. If that were so, then we all could not find within that which we read points of view of which we agree or disagree. I refer all the readers to investigate further the relationship of the impassioned and dispassionate by considering the ideas put forth by Louise Rosenblatt in Making Meaning with Texts and “The Aesthetic Mind of Louise Rosenblatt” by Alan C. Purves, no “radical” thinker in John Clifford’s The Experience of Reading. Rosenblatt posits in her theories of reading that the interpretation of text is a result the use of one’s background of experiences including the affective domain of one’s life. If after reading Rosenblatt’s smallish yet thorough discussion of her theory of reading, Snaggle-Tooth Jones and others of similar thinking are still of the mind that the criticisms of Herrnstein, Murray and Hart are a response by “radical” ideologues then it is of no use to ask her/him to reconsider the position taken.
As far as not being able to find me on Google, I can only say that not everything worth knowing is on Google. My book is Readings in Diagnosis and Instruction in Literacy published by Kendall/Hunt Publishers. I am on the faculty of Kennesaw State University and an Associate Professor of Language Arts and Literacy in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education.
on March 20th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
As a white person its not my fault that 70% of back children are born out of wedlock, and it’s not my fault that black kids have a 50% high school drop out rate.
And as a Black man and an Iraqi combat vet, it’s not my fault that the WHOLE world not just the U.S. is waking up and seeing through the BS of what racist Whites tell them. Racist Whites will tell Mexicans and hispanics you’re less than NOTHING. Racist Whites will tell a Muslim he’s a terrorist, just on the fact he’s a Muslim. Racist Whites will tell Blacks they contribute nothing to society, never have and never will. But racist Whites seem to forget these serial killers. These school shootings. This guy in Austria who raped his own daughter. Gary Helms in Alabama,who raped his own mother. All of the dirt that was sanctioned in the past by the government. State sanctioned racism and genocide. Look at what happened in the Philipines. So please save that “holier than thou” crap for someone who’s ignorant of US history. It’s okay when Whites rape kill and murder, EVERYBODY seems to ignore THAT. But let a Black or Latino gangbanger shoot another one, then EVERY Black or Latino person is an animal. Do you really think the world doesn’t notice that? Do you really think the world is not fed up? Do you really think the world loves you? LMAO! They love your MONEY and then they buy ARMS and kill you with them! LOL!!
on March 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
While your point is well taken Chris, I must point out that not “every” white person ignores or does not notice the tendency for whites to be serial killers, to engage in genocide, or any of the other crimes against humanity and our sense of decency and justice. Going down that road is the start of a path that the racists at the convention are well down.
That said, STJones iterates the common mistake that conservatives of all flavors must do in order to justify their own position on matters That being that he conflates deliberate lying with honest opinions on matters of science.
To take the work of those who espouse his own ideas and then pretend that these authors have any standing whatsoever in their respective fields, is to lie to oneself at a subconscious level, or to deliberately lie to us all. The argument that these people are marginalized because all the others merely don’t like what they are saying – or too scared to speak out, etc. etc. – is itself another lie of the sort just mentioned.
They are marginalized because their work contains serious flaws in empirical calculations, data collection techniques, data interpretation or other aspects that reveal their desire to support a preconceived idea rather than letting the data inform the final interpretation,…which is the way that not only proper science is done, but any intellectual endeavour mankind puts his mind to. We go where the facts lead us, We do not adhere to one path, cherry picking whatever info we can find that supports the conjecture that this is the proper path to follow.
Which brings up the mention of Sowell. Here is a man who continually whines about the rough treatment conservatives receive from other academics. He too supposes it’s because liberals don’t like to be presented with other points of view than their own, the same point made above and is typical from them in general. It is, of course, false. It’s another attempt to delude themselves by finding another reason not to accept the simple fact that they are being rejected because they cannot accept that they are wrong about many of their assertions.
Repeatedly they are shown why they are wrong, but their prematurely halted social development — which is, after all, the very source of conservative ideology — does not allow them to see any other POV than those professed by the persons whom they accept as an authority on such subjects. And who they accept as such is a choice made using criteria that the rest of the world does not…cannot accept due to evidence that their authority is colored by prejudice or faulty reasoning. Dr. Altemeyer, a leading social scientist quoted extensively by DHS counter-terrorism panel and other post-grad research teams, has done extensive work on the subject of RW conservativism (= authoritarians). He explains their motives in great detail in a free e-book placed on the web under the title “The Authoritarians”. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
And as Oklahoma Corrections points out in another online paper, http://www.doc.state.ok.us/off.....50725C.HTM, conservatism is a source of great concern to the penal system because their intransigence makes it almost impossible to teach them to at least consider another perspective, let alone change their views. the fact that the guards themselves are often conservative as well makes it difficult for psychologists to tell them they should not behave with the same righteousness in their own lives.
But it is this very set of symptoms resulting of a poorly socialization that leads to low empathy and overall lack of sympathy for others. ..a factor clearly evidenced by their positions on war, poverty, minority rights, women’s rights, etc. Their heightened sense of fear leads to unusually high aggression. This and a lack of empathy combine to create an individual who is of great concern to criminologists and counter-terrorism agencies alike.
Unfortunately, their numbers in society are such that our attempts to reveal their presence are stymied by those in positions of power and/or influence (media eg.) who cannot accept the clear evidence researchers have found. Even many liberals find it difficult to consider their brothers and co-workers could instead be reflecting a POV that arises from brains that have failed to successfully complete the later stages of social-ethical development than be simply reiterating a POV they agree with after careful consideration of it’s merits. This “careful consideration” did not take place (unlike the POV of those who have decided to buck tradition or authority). But if they do consider it they will find that this concept explains their behavior so well that the many, many previously ineffable behaviors and actions that conservatives routinely perform will suddenly become clear in that “Of course!” kind of way that life seldom offers up.
on March 20th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Thank you, Mr. Hess. I did indeed find your book in the interim, but no reviews anywhere. Any peer review information to which you could point me?
As for my characterization of your first post, well, you’ll excuse me if I stand by it. I believe it speaks for itself.
And I missed this before: “He would not be able to complete his doctorate at my institution. . . ”
I guess he’s just going to have to settle for his PhD from Princeton University.
;)
on March 20th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Wm George Hess said,
on March 18th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
“I am appalled by the comments of Professor Hart beliefs regarding intelligence are appalling [sic].”
And what comments might those be? You have no idea what Michael Hart has written, because you were too lazy to bother reading his work.
You say you’re a professor of literacy, Mr. Hess. How can that be, when you are yourself not literate? If, however, you told me that you were a professor in a Department of Redundancy Department, I could get my mind around that. You really should take your irony supplement; your posts are full of iron!
“As a Jew and academician, I know the arguments he puts forth about the various levels of intelligence are very old and worn out assertions as mythical and biased as the canard that African Americans are better suited to athletics because they have longer arms, looser joints, larger muscles, et al. The truth is intelligence as marked by IQ is in itself a misnomer because the equation of chronological age divided by mental age (CA/MA = IQ) does not take into account the many factors that contribute to a person [sic] intellectual capacity and a person’s response to her environment and within the context of her cultural experiences.”
Why do you claim to be a Jew? It’s one thing for you to claim to be an academic; it’s impossible, at this stage in the game, to libel the professoriate, but please do not embarrass Jews, by insisting on your membership among them.
By the way, the routine socialist/communist/black supremacist/whatever talking point against the science of intelligence is that it is somehow “culturally biased.” You now suggest that it is insufficiently “culturally biased.” Where, pray tell, did you get your talking point? I know that it isn’t your own thought, because you have none.
Was the following bombast supposed to cow people? “[T]he many factors that contribute to a person [sic] intellectual capacity and a person’s response to her environment and within the context of her cultural experiences.” How the hell is that supposed to be a criticism of IQ? (Relax; the question was rhetorical. I know you were just trying to sound smart.)
“His assertion does not include the many ways by which we are intelligent and talented.”
What assertion?
“Hart’s thesis is no better then [sic] Hitler’s theory of the Arian [sic] Race.”
What thesis? And what theory might that be? You’ve never read Hitler, either!
“As Hitler did, Hart disgraces humanity and academic pursuits by the drivel he espouses and bases on inaccurate data, inaccurate assumptions, and biased data.”
What thesis? What “inaccurate data, inaccurate assumptions, and biased data”?
“I have neither time nor inclination to debunk his thesis.”
Of course, not. How can you debunk someone who writes on fields about which you know nothing, and whose work you’ve never read?
“He would not be able to complete his doctorate at my institution because he works from faulty assumption [sic] to which is he too blinded by his hatred and biases to see.”
What “assumption”? And what institution would award a doctorate to an intellectual fraud like you? As for “hatred and biases,” pot, kettle, Mr. Hess, pot, kettle.
“Next he will want the enactment of laws limiting public access and privilege based on racist ‘intelligence’. Wasn’t that the Third Reich’s reasoning in the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws. [sic]
Actually, no.
“Professor Hart does not belong in the same academy as I and my other colleagues who have a clearer understanding of what it means to be human.”
So, you question Michael Hart’s humanity, too, do you? Well, why not? Why not go for the trifecta, while you’re at it, eh, “Professor” Hess?
Here’s what I know about Michael Hart. (We’ve met three times, are cordial, and have mutual friends, but do not know each other well.)
1. He’s a polymath, and one of the towering intellects of his generation;
2. Morally, he’s about as close to fearless as a man can be, without being a danger to those around him. He stood up to David Duke, who is at least one foot taller than him, in a room containing many of Duke’s friends;
3. When it comes to arguing his beliefs, he is willing to put his own time, money, and reputation on the table, whether it is writing and publishing his work, or producing a conference.
Here’s what I know about “Wm George Hess.”
1. Intellectual fraud: Claims to be a professor of literacy, while himself being of dubious literacy. Claims expertise in fields which he has never studied, and about writers whom he has never read. Calls world-class scholars frauds, based on the authority of an academic hoax (Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man);
2. Moral fraud: Condemns the humanity of one of the most courageous intellectuals of his day. Jumps on the bandwagon with other liars, morons, and cowards to persecute their betters. Demands that other critics sign their real names, so that he and his comrades can destroy their lives.
Were my Hungarian-born Nana (1893?-1976) still alive, she would call you a liar, Hess. She’d say that it’s impossible for a man so lacking in intelligence and literacy to be both a Jew and a professor. And indeed, in her day, it was impossible. Unfortunately, I know that we live in an age of Jewish mediocrity. But that is the fault of you and your ilk, Hess, not Michael Hart. It is Michael Hart whom my Nana would have recognized, for in his intellectual and moral excellence, he is a throwback to her age.
To impale you on your own words, Hess, you and your colleagues do “not belong in the same academy” as Michael Hart.
on March 20th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Chris, I think your point is that you have to look at the issue statistically and not anecdotically, right? Do you have any statistics?
Because Phillip Rushton has lots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.....d_Behavior
Jared Taylor too: http://www.vdare.com/taylor/050913_crime.htm
on March 20th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
All the comments seem to be who can put together the most intelligent sentences,why can’t we meet faces to faces and have the same civility?
on March 21st, 2009 at 12:24 pm
“unlike the POV of those who have decided to buck tradition or authority.”
You succeed here in expressing belief in the very hubris you accuse your conservative opposition, a sort of personalized foe, of using in its stand against the rest of the world. Had it never occurred to you that many abandon default liberalism because they are bucking *that* authority that is now “tradition”?
You damage your credibility of argument with this one stroke and at the same time demonstrate your apparent inability to conceive that your worldview could have its own serious flaws.
The good news is that in America we have managed in spite of any political and social vitriol to avoid the extremes of anarchy or tyranny. By virtue of that fact alone we have a particular heritage and nation worth understanding and protecting. But those are probably signal words of hate and authoritarianism to you– this makes the dividing line easier to see but all the more appalling to consider.
on March 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
It is said white nationalist circles in America (in fact there are few white nationalists outside America*) are so fractious because they consist of 50 percent of neo-Nazis and 50 percent of Jews. While this is certainly an exaggeration, it’s true that a lot more Jews are into white nationalism than what you’d expect. I think this is because Jews have for some reason a general tendency towards political radicalism.
*) This is because in Europe, for example, racially-conscious nationalists are English, French, Swedish, Polish etc. nationalists, i.e. they identify with an ethnicity, not with the entire white race. In fact, it’s typical for European nationalists that they dislike certain other white ethnicities due to historical grievances. Nazis, for example, were not white nationalists but German nationalists bent on the extermination or subjugation of other white ethnicities.
on March 21st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
tyrone mixon raises a good point about communication. I would submit that the problem, if it is a problem, is that people concerned enough to even consider constructing thoughtful blog comments are actually rare in the general population. Certainly they are uncommon enough that the likelihood of them forming viable groups is remote, let alone expecting such expression of thought in our general everyday experience.
Indeed we should be able to discuss disparate political ideas face-to-face with confidence and in good faith. With failing to tepid schools and a media that alternates between hype and pallid drivel, where do we find such an environment? Maybe by holding our representatives to account more responsibly and regularly? They should be the principal targets of our desire for better understanding and results.
on March 21st, 2009 at 7:30 pm
The I.Q. tests have a measure of reliability in predicting success in a specific kind of environment — one that culturally favors “white” children. But the tests do not measure “intelligence” as we better understand, today, in its full complexity of traits and variables, and relative to the environments people learn in. That is, I.Q. test questions have been shown to be culturally biased. One’s ability to answer the question rests not on intelligence so much as experience with a certain type of phenomena that is limited to one group being tested, but not another.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 7:10 am
The success of a democracy depends altogether on the quality of the people who compose it; if they be of a common mind as to the main purposes of the state, sufficiently educated, mutually helpful and considerate, seeking good government, in a word, truly patriotic, the commonwealth will be strong; if there be an admixture of people who do not have these qualities in direct proportion to the amount of the uncitizenly element, the political life will be weakened, and at a certain stage in the degradation the state will cease to have the characteristics of a government for and by its true people. It is this general truth that makes the question of immigration of great interest to all Americans, for into their country there is now pouring a great tide of folk gathered from nearly all the states of the civilised world, and some that are not, in one sense of the word, civilised at all.
At first sight there is much to please us in this spectacle of folk who have suffered from the political oppression which other lands inflict upon them, seeking a refuge in the ample room of our national domain; to them and their children this country is a land of promise and often of ample fulfilment. It is indeed a noble thing for a state to be, as our own is, a place of safety to millions of shipwrecked persons. There is, however, another and very practical side to the question which every citizen must consider. These foreign people are principally from countries whose speech, customs, and ideas of government are very different from our own. This difference is not a matter of the moment; it has existed for the centuries during the time in which our ideas of democracy have been slowly forming and working into the life-blood of our folk. The greater part of the people whence our immigrants come have been blindly submissive to the will of others and are thus without any experience in selfgovernment. Coming to us, they are not only foreign, but in a way permanently so. Except so far as we can make them over, — as it were, melt them down and recoin them with the stamp of our country, — they will remain aliens for generations to come.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 8:13 am
Janet Smith: If genomic research determines that there are actual “differences in intelligence between various ethnic and racial groups,” will Michael Hart’s book cease to be “racist”?
We are only at the beginning of our understanding human beings at the genomic level. Only in the past couple of years have the first African genome and the first Chinese genome been mapped.
And only in recent months have scientists claimed to located specific regions on the human genome that account for variations in intelligence.
Just sayin’…
on March 22nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
The people I don’t like, go don’t go to meeting and talk about them all day.
I think most white separatists/nationalists would like to be able to do that, tyrone. Unfortunately, we can’t. Mass immigration is transforming almost every white (or European-descended or whatever you want to call it). Bussing and other forms of forced intergration are removing our ability to separate ourselves. Block voting by so-called ‘minorities’ is ensuring that we cannot rule ourselves. Basically we want to be left alone — we don’t think we need blacks or others.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Agreed, it’s an exaggeration….It’s more like 50% INFORMANTS. Frankly I have never heard of a less devoted “political movement” [than white nationalism]. Filled with turn-coats & freaks, degenerates, & ill-educated losers so easily lead by any “leader” who gathers a collection of the drama-hungry, is bound to fail.
However true Nationalism is one of the criteria for Fascistic political thinking. In some “non-white” countries (Japan to an extent), racist thinking is more the norm than the exception as it has cultural imperatives.
And while the expression “white nationalism” was coined via the statement “my race is my nation” it also leads to the convention that it is not true Nationalism in the appropriate political sense. Therefore there is a obvious difference between Nationalism and the “white nationalism” that is merely a catch phrase for modern white bigotry.
The “white nationalist” is actually someone who cannot be said to love his country before his “love” of a bizarre conviction that those with the same level of melanin in their skin color represent a finite collective.
Since this is a discussion of the scientific worth of the “IQ Test”, I would be interested in the results of those white nationalist members (not leaders) test results.
It appears no accident that effective leaders of WN organization either have a formal education (William Pierce) or maintain the appearance of formal education (David Duke).
Without that “intellect” or the cunning leadership skills of those who use “religion” to maintain an aura of legitimacy, it seems the common “member” is a rudderless boat adrift in a sea of fear.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Well “Old Boy”, I have a bone to pick with some of these arguments.
stari_momak said,
“I think most white separatists/nationalists would like to be able to do that, tyrone. Unfortunately, we can’t. Mass immigration is transforming almost every white (or European-descended or whatever you want to call it). ”
Whose fault is mass immigration? If you enjoy the capitalist system, or private enterprise, you are supporting massive immigration, the natural outgrowth of capitalism.
“Bussing and other forms of forced intergration are removing our ability to separate ourselves”
Bussing was largely a flop and isn’t practiced widely now.
“. Block voting by so-called ‘minorities’ is ensuring that we cannot rule ourselves.”
Why do you write “so-called” minorities? Are you seriously suggesting that blacks or Mexicans aren’t minorities in the US?
And despite voting in blocs, did you notice that they have been voting for overwhelmingly white candidates for decades? Most politicians, especially on the national level, are white. If these people only think about race, why do they seem to have no problem voting en bloc for white candidates for decades? Why not hold out for more black or Latino candidates?
As for voting in blocs, it’s quite simple. Due to systematic discrimination, as well as other historical factors, a larger portion of the black and Hispanic communties are working class or lower working class. For some bizarre reason which I still can’t understand- the Democratic party is still associated with labor and the working class. Minorities are basically voting their class interests.
Now what does the large white working class tend to do? They vote for the party that openly supports big business, the latter being responsible for many of America’s problems, all because they are overly concerned about other people having the opportunity to get an abortion. or if gays can get married. In other words, they vote against their best interests due to trivial matters.
” Basically we want to be left alone — we don’t think we need blacks or others.”
Most white folks don’t seem to share that opinion.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Therefore there is a obvious difference between Nationalism and the “white nationalism” that is merely a catch phrase for modern white bigotry.
Think, Carter, and stop with the name calling. Think of pan-Arab nationalism — that was love of people who generally share a phenotype — a race if you will. Likewise pan-Africanism basically focussed on blacks — sub-Saharan Africans. How about Garveyism? Again focussed on blacks, and yet again ‘Negritude’ — the movement among French speaking blacks in Africa and the West Indies. Were these movements bigotry? No, they simply recognized that biological race was a big part of they people they were. Likewise with White Nationalists.
The European descended peoples not only share biological traits in common — that we don’t share with other groups — but are in similar circumstances as far was mass migration. No other peoples are in the situation. The Japanese, the Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Han Chinese of Singapore, none of these people have any compunction about maintaining their demographic position in their lands. Only White folks. Given this common situation, it makes sense for us who resist this state of affairs to unite. This does not mean we do not love our individual cultures less, but it does mean that we see unity as a way to help preserve them in their diversity.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
How ironic it is to see one racist get upset with another over they same thing that they’re both dabbling in. Surely, the Jewish Astrophysicist, Michael Hart,who was there to exult in inferior black intelligence, shouldn’t have been upset with David Duke. The myopic hypocrite. Both of them disgust me.
on March 23rd, 2009 at 8:20 am
Ohhhh …. I am thinking. “White” means NOTHING. “White” skin coloration is such a wide sweeping term it has no meaning except to the uneducated. Even the term Caucasian is inaccurate when used as a descriptor of the “white” Americans that make up the common WN gatherings.
As for name calling, I’m just calling it like I see it. You see “the mud races, scrounging welfare”: I see a collection of ill educated, easily lead wonders masturbating to pictures of 14yr old twins. The knife cuts two ways on this one. The “master race” is laughable & that may be the biggest impediment to WHY the “WN movement” has done damn little in the USA (& why a great percentage are informants). The public sees who IS at the heart of those rallies and is disgusted & repulsed by the membership. The truth hurts sometimes. The WN element is low functioning other than at the leadership level (& even there it’s questionable). I can’t do anything about that. Perhaps if the message were a well defined positive & intelligent one than benefits mankind & has more incentive than posturing in relic Nazi uniforms or sheets, then perhaps the appeal would be broader to the American productive class. As it is you have trailer-park losers & lost souls looking for direction in their lives. Instead of productive, contributory, functional working Americans in that “movement”. The informant level is SO out of control that even the wildest supporters will consistently admit the problem is a serious one, that’s been with the groups for decades.
Why do you suppose that is? All the “Blood & Honor” garbage falls to shambles when a member has to do time for hurting someone.
.
on March 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 am
stari momak… that sir is TRUTH that seemingly very few are prepared to accept…however, not accepting the biased agenda’s of the groups you mention does not persuade one to disbelieve the same type ethnic superiority does not exist in the group of which you are a proponent.
on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 am
I didn’t see my writing as being a proponent of any group….(?)
I also find it difficult to define “Ethnic Superiority”. Perhaps you’d like to take a shot at such a definition.
on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
———————
AP said,
The I.Q. tests have a measure of reliability in predicting success in a specific kind of environment — one that culturally favors “white” children. But the tests do not measure “intelligence” as we better understand, today, in its full complexity of traits and variables, and relative to the environments people learn in. That is, I.Q. test questions have been shown to be culturally biased.
—————————
I think we all agree that that eye color is a poor predictor of life outcomes, at least among whites in the USA.
Among rich people, businessmen, scientists, top politicians, famous writers we find individuals with eyes in very different color.
If IQ is a poor predictor of life outcomes, we should find many, many rich, scientists, top politicians, businessmen, etc with LOW IQ.
Please give me a few in each category. Obviously no athletes, actors, rock musicians and the like.
Please. Just 2 – 3 LOW IQ Math professors in top 20 schools.
Please.
My fantasies about the real world are about to be shattered.
Please. Just 2 – 3 top science professors who are also stup… I mean have totally irrelevant low IQ.
on March 23rd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
“Bringing up age-old and thoroughly debunked assertions, Rushton also claimed that brain size and IQ are related”
There is a slight correlation, this has never been debunked (note according to Rushton, those of Chinese or Japanese descent actually have the highest average). I think you’re referring to the comments from ‘Mismeasure of Man’? See the paper by JS Michael (1988) where he found Gould had actually been mistaken in his comments about Morton’s data.
Also, there are some physical correlates with cognitive ability:
See Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2007), 30:135-154 Cambridge University Press:
“Overall, we conclude that modern neuroimaging techniques are beginning to articulate a biology of intelligence. We propose that the P-FIT provides a parsimonious account for many of the empirical observations, to date, which relate individual differences in intelligence test scores to variations in brain structure and function.”
Also, EEG studies show increased neural efficiency in the cortex of ‘brighter’ individuals:
“In the field of physiological study of human intelligence, strong evidence of a more efficient operation (i.e., less activation) of the brain in brighter individuals (the neural efficiency hypothesis) can be found”
Cognitive Brain Research, Volume 25, Issue 1, September 2005, Pages 217-225
There is also circumstantial evidence from twin studies & transracial adoption studies on the hereditability of IQ:
“A substantial body of literature from twin, family and adoption studies documents significant genetic effects on human intelligence. Heritability estimates range from 40 to 80% and meta-analyses suggest an overall heritability of around 50%” Dick et al, (2006) “Association of CHRM2 with IQ: Converging Evidence for Genes Influencing Intelligence.” Behavioral Genetics.
“Multivariate genetic analyses indicate that general intelligence is highly heritable, and that the overlap in the cognitive processes is twice as great as the overall phenotypic overlap, with genetic correlations averaging around .80.”
Plomin et al (2004) “A functional polymorphism in the succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase genes is associated with cognitive ability,” Molecular Psychology 9, 582-586.
Genetics of Brain Fiber Architecture and Intellectual Performance. The Journal of Neuroscience, February 18, 2009, 29(7):2212-2224;
“In a cross-trait mapping approach, common genetic factors mediated the correlation between IQ and white matter integrity, suggesting a common physiological mechanism for both, and common genetic determination. These genetic brain maps reveal heritable aspects of white matter integrity and should expedite the discovery of single-nucleotide polymorphisms affecting fiber connectivity and cognition.”
on March 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 pm
“I recommend Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man as a source of informative reading and an intellectual discussion of just what “intelligence” is”
Except that Gould is quite mistaken about a number of points.
Even Professor James Flynn, who argues for an environmental explanation for group differences, notes that Gould avoided most of Arthur Jensen’s main arguments.
Gould repeats the old canard about Jew’s doing poorly as a group in the 1920′s on psychometric tests. Actually, Henry Goddard tested a small group of migrants suspected of being mentally handicapped. The results were never seen as representative of the entire groups. At that same time Ashkenazi Jews in the UK were already noted to be outperforming other groups even adjusting for economic background. Ivy League Universities were also about to implement the infamous ‘Jewish quotas’ because Jewish students were overrepresented. The idea that Jews as a group did poorly is false.
Gould also tries to link this to the passing of the 1924 Immigration Act, but Snyderman & Herrnstein (American Psychologist 1983) found this was incorrect.
Gould spends a lot of time attacking old testing methods while avoiding more sophisticated tests that strongly predict academic performance (and that the army still uses). For instance, East Asians (eg Japanese & Chinese tend to do very well on the non-verbal section of the tests, which is consistent with their above average performance in math/science subjects – see Dan Seligman’s “A Question of Intelligence”).
Gould also says “Thurstone dispersed g as an illusion” but this is misleading (see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 (1995), (also, Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.)
David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has writtena textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” where Gould goes wrong in this area.
Gould states that Morton “doctored” his collection of results on cranial size, but J. S. Michael (1988) remeasured a random sample of the Morton collection he found that very few errors had been made, and that these were not in the direction that Gould had asserted.
on March 24th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Morton’s skull work is not supported by the scientific community. It’s absolutely bogus. Here’s a more recent article than your selected reference.
http://www.asamst.ucsb.edu/cou.....menand.pdf
If you can’t see why Morton is rubbish then I’d say you are just uncritically grasping at anything that supports your preconceptions.
on March 24th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I couldn’t see any reference to the Michael study in that article? In any case, there are more up to date studies using MRI imaging that are obviously more useful than a crude collection taken over 100 years ago.
on March 24th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
John,
A more recent study, not in terms of race, but in terms of brain volume & IQ is this one by ‘A genetic analysis of brain volumes and IQ in children’ in Volume 37, Issue 2, March-April 2009, Pages 181-191
Intelligence and the Brain:
Marieke van Leeuwena, , , Jiska S. Peperb, Stéphanie M. van den Bergc, Rachel M. Brouwerb, Hilleke E. Hulshoff Polb, René S. Kahnb and Dorret I. Boomsmaa
“In a population-based sample of 112 nine-year old twin pairs, we investigated the association among total brain volume, gray matter and white matter volume, intelligence as assessed by the Raven IQ test, verbal comprehension, perceptual organization and perceptual speed as assessed by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III. Phenotypic correlations between the brain volumes and intelligence traits ranged between .20 and .33. Processing speed and brain volume did not correlate. The relation between brain volume and intelligence was entirely explained by a common set of genes influencing both sets of phenotypes.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s.....04a4a5f66b
on March 25th, 2009 at 8:09 am
It’s a very weak correlation that you are pointing to. As far as statitistical analysis goes it’s virtually meaningless. The co-efficient of determination r^2 would be about 11%. That means 89% of intelligence is explicable by other factors.
Keep clutching at straws, Brian.
on March 26th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Simplistic cranial size may have little impact on intelligence (primate vs bovine). Brain structure, environmental, nutritional, learning methods, social dynamics, & learning/teaching methods & opportunities MAY have some impact. The subject is much too complex to encapsulate in simplistic unit-element conformity measurements. Thus the “IQ” test results may yield a higher IQ in an individual that does not progress beyond a certain level due to influences beyond that expected [of him or her].
Semites (Arabs & Jews) were dealing with Geometry thousands of years before Christ. At a time when peoples on the British Isles were living in caves & painting themselves blue & had no written language. Inuit & American Indian tribes had no written language but had amazing capacity to adapt to changing living condition in terms of survival. The “intelligence” to adapt & survive & the “intelligence” to write & conceptualize building structures may be measured differently but both produce a positive result for their respective peoples.
Subjective interpretation of intelligence based on what are abstractions in today’s society may be useful but if it ends there the mathematician can not repair his car & society eventually comes to a stop.
Intelligence does not stop where the pencil hits the paper. It can’t, because if we did not share our individual abilities we could not function as a society.
The “Puzzle” of the internal combustion engine & the “Puzzle” of the trigonometric equation are different in format but both demand certain forms of intelligence that much standardized testing does not encompass.
on March 26th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
John,
You seem to be beating a strawman. I said in my initial post there was only a slight positive correlation. However, the original poster above said that the relationship between brain size & IQ was “thoroughly debunked”. It hasn’t. There is a statistically significant correlation (I agree it doesn’t helpt to predict much). Correlation does not prove cause, but, just as zero correlations provide no support for a hypothesis of cause and effect, nonzero correlations do provide support.
And as I noted above, more sophisticated scanning is helping to understand brain functioning and cognitive abilities. See the recent paper: ‘Genetics of Brain Fiber Architecture and Intellectual Performance. The Journal of Neuroscience, February 18, 2009, 29(7):2212-2224;
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/c...../29/7/2212
on April 9th, 2011 at 2:23 am
Females have smaller brains, but are not inferior in IQ. It is about ratio, not brain size,..proportion. Brian……..you should learn more;)
on April 15th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Hart’s thesis is no better then Hitler’s theory of the Arian Race.
I didn’t know that believing that Christ is a created being was a racial characteristic.
on April 16th, 2011 at 9:08 am
Anthropologist,
Females actually have about 2-2.5 points less IQ than males.