Linking to an opinion piece by Gottfredson really doesn’t help your case. As one of the leaders of the pro-testing community and author of the widely criticized “Mainstream Science on Intelligence” manifesto, naturally she can be relied on to advocate for the position that “intelligence” is meaningfully definable and measurable. But it’s the nature of the beast that the arguments are fundamentally circular.

If you really don’t understand what “construct” means in the context in which I used it, you really aren’t ready to talk seriously about social science. Surely you’ve at least heard of “deconstruction”?

So to deconstruct the notion of “intelligence”: Essentially, a test designer chooses a set of skills, abilities, talents, etc., and designates the combination as “intelligence.” Usually, the particular combination is chosen because the test designer considers them valuable or useful – and those terms are, in turn, defined in terms of value or utility in achieving “success” in the way the designer happens to define that term.

As is easy to see, if a native of Omaha and an African bushman were asked to design tests of intelligence, the two tests would be very different, and the Nebraskan probably would not score very high on the bushman’s test, or vice versa.

All of this is obvious, really, but because of the huge pile of money available from an educratic establishment that seems incapable of thinking outside the “standardization” box, there’s a major incentive to pretend otherwise.

On the unrelated topic of personalities and debating styles, I’m compelled to point out that your screen name is an example of plurium interrogationum, the fallacy of many questions, also known as the “loaded question.” I’m also compelled to point out that clearly the SPLC doesn’t consider the topic we’re discussing “verboten,” as it is in fact providing the forum where we are discussing it. And whether one agrees with aadila or not, the fact that she writes a comment you don’t agree with certainly doesn’t constitute an attempt to forbid you to write comments of your own. This is just table-pounding on your part.

Fine, let’s discuss and argue. If people like addila and the splc had their way, the entire conversation would be verboten.

If intelligence is a “construct,” whatever that means, it certainly seems to be a useful one — highly predictive of success in life.

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/u.....tfred.html

Your belief in racial bell curves notwithstanding, I regret to inform you that you rank near the lowest percentile of human intelligence.

No amount of hope that eugenics will help you win the human race should be entertained.

Your firmly worded comment would suggest that there is widespread agreement among researchers that “intelligence” is something well-understood and precisely measurable. In fact, there is widespread disagreement about whether “intelligence,” as used by you and people like Rushton and Lynn, is anything more than a construct created by designers of intelligence tests.

Attaching this dubious criterion to racial constructs that are at least equally dubious results in the creation of fictitious entities like “the average black” or “average black/white intelligence” – artifacts of the statisticalizing process.

All of which would be bad enough, but I’ll say it one more time, Rushton deliberately misrepresented other people’s research. Inexcusable.

I have nothing but contempt for the self-righteous, stone-throwing dim-bulbs who think that ridicule is sufficient response to people like Rushton and to his defenders here like Ezra.

What I would say to people who are persuaded by Rushton is this… Showing that blacks on AVERAGE are lower in intelligence than whites, and that nature rather than nurture is a significant determinant of intelligence, should not be used to determine public policy or civil rights for CITIZENS of a multi-racial democracy like the US. Citizens need to be treated like individuals, not like members of a group with certain average traits. There are in fact millions of black Americans on the “right” side of the black intelligence bell curve, who have higher intelligence than perhaps 1/2 of the white people in the United States who are on the “left” side of the white intelligence bell curve. That means 4 or so million black Americans are more intelligent than 100 million white Americans. It is immoral and irrational to treat those 4 million individuals differently from whites based on the fact that they are “outliers” of a group that they happen to belong to.

And am i the only one who keeps reading the headline to this post as “leading racist scientist dies in Canada”?

I thought of Lysenko, too, but he was such a specialist in biology that he didn’t seem to fit well with Tailgunner Joe’s generalized “what ever he said was ’science’ was science.”

Re Lamarck and scientific integrity in general: Arthur Koestler wrote an interesting book, The Case of the Midwife Toad, about Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer, who committed suicide after some other biologists accused him of faking some experiments in an attempt to find evidence supporting lamarckianism. Koestler’s theory is that Nazis at Kammerer’s university messed with his stuff (to use the technical term) because they preferred Lamarck to Darwin – no apes in the family tree.

aadila,

No, that’s the way the world ends – as some British wit said, not with a banger, but a Wimpy.

I’m fairly certain Joe McCarthy was referring to Lysenkoism (http://www.skepdic.com/lysenko.html), which was an outgrown of Lamarckianism (and they were both completely kookoobananas theories of evolution.)

As you seem to have better access to scholarly sources than I do, I’m sure you can find better articles out there. I didn’t want to link the Wikipedia or RationalWiki articles. As I’m sure you understand.

on October 21st, 2012 at 11:50 pm

“Remember in the Soviet Union when they had this scientist who would literally just make things up, and as long as the state officially approved of it, what ever he said was ‘science’ was science.
“The only thing that science demands is the truth, not a consensus.”

Mm, yeah, and maybe some facts rather than a vague quasi-anecdote about “this scientist.”

Overall, your argument is somewhat puzzling. What you were responding to was Mitch’s statement that “there is no scientific consensus on what race is or who belongs to what racial group.” But you’re responding as if he’d said there IS a scientific consensus about those things. As a result, you’re attacking a phantom, the nonexistent consensus.

This isn’t too surprising, because attacking the notion of scientific consensus is a favorite tactic for pseudoscientists and their supporters; it’s almost the default first move. And yes, Galileo is a favorite example of the bold thinker persecuted by the narrow-minded guardians of dogmatic belief, no matter how inappropriate a comparison it may be – for example, the idea that J.P. Rushton is in any way comparable with Galileo is, to borrow your phrase, “absolutely laughable.”

Having said all that, I do not dispute the idea that a consensus is not proof; to say it is would be to advance an argumentum ad verecundiam, a classic logical fallacy. However, in the modern era, in which science is largely a matter of methodology, there certainly is a consensus, and a necessary one, about what constitutes valid methodology. And as I noted repeatedly in my earlier comments, with a link to the details, Rushton’s methodology was deeply flawed, to the point (in my opinion) of being deliberate falsification.

More generally, real scientists do challenge the consensus – an example that springs to mind is the recent proliferation of theories questioning the Big Bang – but they do so with the understanding that the integrity of their research and reasoning must be flawless. Contrast this sort of thing with, say, the writings of Graham Hancock or Zechariah Sitchin. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Remember in the Soviet Union when they had this scientist who would literally just make things up, and as long as the state officially approved of it, what ever he said was “science” was science.

The only thing that science demands is the truth, not a consensus.

There was no consensus in Galileo’s day. But Galileo still was the one who had the truth.

The entire system of science was designed for that. A consensus is an absolutely laughable excuse for why something is true or isn’t.

That is exactly the way they thought in the Dark Ages.

In the Dark Ages the priests had control over truth.

Not anymore.

Please go back to the Dark Ages and leave us curious humans alone.

The Pionner Fund has been tied to almost every single racsist white supremist group alive today. Founded by Wickliffe Preston Draper, a racsist from Tennesse, who credited his pure family lineage as being ” The true Americans.”,

They were heavily involved in giving grants to the authors of The Bell Curve, who said that they had through science, proven the blacks were, “genetically inferior to whites.”

They have convened with prominant racist groups such as The John Birch Society, The Council for National Policy, The Council of Conservative Citizens, The Ku- Klux- Klan, etc…

I think that minorities all over the U.S can rest a little easier know that they don’t have to worry about being attacked from race scientists such as Rushton.

I think Jason/Annie/Ezra is the same person, and he’s less than age 20…his writing style never changes, and he’s indecisive, shrill, and whiny. I get the sense that he’s genuinely astonished and upset that people smarter than him are so effectively smacking down the bill of goods he bought from his neo-Nazi gurus. He bought into that stuff because it enabled him to figure out, in his own head, why he’s such a failure in the world. It’s not because he’s dumber than a bag of hammers, it’s because of the “Communists.” Never mind that Stalin has been discredited even among Communists since 1956 and that the only places that support Communism are Cuba, North Korea, and the History Department at City College.

I think he’s lost and immature…maybe even about his sexuality…but he provides me with good laughs. Almost as good as Bungalow Boob. He’s back on his old thread, by the way, but I’m letting him rant to an empty room.

Coral Sea: Cheddar Man.
Parts of us are of old souls: first people.
Fun… aside from the Dalhmer-esq joke in (of) poor taste… MY neighbors I wouldn’t feed to anything, and just my thought of it made my cat gag in the other room.
I better go look.
Another aside:
“Me Yello like cheeese!, and you can rock me any way that you pleeeze… Don’t cha know?”
YellowMan. Circa 1980’s. One of my favorites.

Yeah, I have some of that Nordic also although none of the berserker.
Norwegian, Dutch, and Koniag/Yup’ik (Alutiiq, if you prefer)… and yeah, my teeth are crooked and Yello Like Cheese!… and a moderate epicanthic fold.
Swiss or string cheese, depends on the amount of coffee…
Enough.:)
I’m way off topic.
Thank You for the Friday smiles.

Maybe “tasty” is over-stating it. Okay for famine purposes is probably the best way to describe my neighbors.

Still, I quite enjoyed the Witchcraft/Paganism special interest group, which allowed people who weren’t Mensa members to belong as well. (I never asked at the time — but I rather believe that one of the reasons why they did this was because the members of the group JOINED when they were in Mensa, but then didn’t really want to stay in Mensa, but did like the Witchcraft/Pagan SIG. I also continued with that group for well over a decade after I let my Mensa membership lapse.

Still, I do know some cool people who belonged, and I met them through Mensa, so I don’t want to bash the organization. Not everyone is a male convenience store clerk who believes that his sperm should be used to impregnate supermodels.

Of course, when you resign, they repossess your IQ, but since I took so many tests, I still had plenty. (That was a joke.)

As for teeth–it is my understanding that prenatal vitamins and nutrition have something to do with the proper “arch” of the upper and lower jaw that influences tooth alignment (I read that somewhere, but it was long ago, so it may be wrong). I personally don’t care for the Laser white, Chicklet teeth that some people have (bright white, like a well-scrubbed toilet). My teeth are great on top (except for “the Cumberland Gap” — the first molar on the left side, which I had removed because it was all icky and simply haven’t had “bridged” or implanted, because with the way I smile, you don’t really see it.) On the bottom, I have a hint of a snaggle up front, but I don’t care — it’s just the way I am.

Yes — it is weird how some people think everything has to be perfect. Although perfection is a useful guide, it is often simply a waste of time and gets in the way of actually getting anything done or living your life.

MRJ — On my mother’s side, (the mitochondrial DNA), we go back to some guy called Cheddar Man, who was some stone aged Britain. They were also cannibals, but we haven’t kept up the tradition! (Although some of my neighbors look tasty — if we ever run into a famine or something.)

Explains a great deal! Bournemouth is renowned in The UK as a town that is, Both small and large “c” conservative.

On another note, ever since i have first heard about Mensa as a child i always wondered how insecure a person has to be to join a “genius” group which does not require any sort of academic or professional achievement to join. That is an obvious receipe to attract insecure losers who have underachieved in everything

After reading your long list of falsehoods, I was naueseous and didn’t feel like eating lunch. Therefore, I am still at my desk, and the donation request email I just got from the SPLC a couple of minutes ago came at the PERFECT time. I just made a donation in your honor. Cheers!

This whole theory of brain size vs. intellect or IQ being related to races/melanin content again reminds me that it really took far, far more time for these physical diversities to manifest than touted by some of the blond haired, blue eyed types and certain books severely edited/annotated by eras of unwashed men, living in dark, cold cells in hair shirts, who might have engaged in self flagellations or mortification, were woken up at all hours of the night to engage in rituals, on restrictive diets….

B.I.T.E methodology for cult practices and determination comes of age.

An aside: having once heard tell of how a false eye is/was hand painted, enameled, what have you, I am reminded that there is/are absolutely no blue pigments in the human body: and that blue eyes are recessive.
Every blue eye you see is compiled of grays, browns, greens, yellows, etc. and the interaction or reflection of light from the iris: and to the eye of the beholder as the beholder might actually not be able to see certain colors of the spectrum, or any at all for that matter.
Blind people cannot see shapes, skin, hair, or eye color.
Let’s ask them.
It might be an interesting study on acceptance due to perceived differences in regards to “race” relations if it has not already been done.
There is somebody’s first million/Nobel.:)

Shy of the Cain/Able/Garden of Eden/Tower of Babel stuff it should be obvious to even the most devout that there is something amiss about the so called superiority of any due to body shape, size, color, geographic location, societal, educational, language… the list goes on and on.

Phrenology and “nasal indexes” have been debunked: yet it still keeps rearing its “ugly” head… :)
“Infallible” genetic predisposition to any type of behavior can be dismissed shy of actual chemical differences only now being understood by scientists due to genome mapping, polymerase chain reaction and nucleotide tagging.

Burn The Books! Well… not the ones from Texas… or the Bible…

God Forbid(!)(?) we learn, through genome mapping, that there is Cro Magnon DNA in many of the “nordic” races, and that an average WASP male has more in common genetically with an indigenous African than his/her “superior” white neighbor.
Did you also know that follicle per follicle a theoretically “white” female has as many hairs as a mountain gorilla whereas many of the supposed “inferior” races have less or are unable to grow beards/facial hair?
Where then is this “genetic” superiority if they are known for their hirsute attributes more akin to the bovid, simian, etc. as pointed out above?
Not to mention supra orbital ridges and “jutting, square jawed” stereotypes as seen primarily in posters around Germany in 1938.

Sorry, shy of some here, I realize I’m preaching to the choir.

This thread also brings to mind the concept of previously labeled “Idiots” Savants.
This encompasses all races, creeds, religions, geographic locations… the power of the mind to overcome or to specialize, or to function at it’s highest (and often well beyond comprehension of us lesser, laden mortals) no matter what handicap or disability due to all of the above, and, or, including trauma is fantastic.
Some cultures previously put those who would be now “labeled” as “slow” on pedestals for their seizures, fits, or seemingly (again: now “labeled”) “erratic” behaviors.
Some of it was also societally adored/instigated: I’m not quite sure what the criteria for the selection of the Oracles at Delphi actually were (was it suggestibility, “seeing things”, hearing “voices”, how pretty, etc..), or whether it was induced by the poisonous volcanic gasses they were forced to inhale and drugged potions….
Joan of Arc comes to mind as well.
By today’s standards: Cross dresser/transvestite, possible lesbian or “gender identity” questions, magical thinking, aural hallucinations, visual hallucinations, tendency to violence….
What would now be “labeled” as Schizotypal Personality Disorder and possibly forcibly medicated or “locked up” by what have been historically religious “mental” institutions.
Then again, she was burned for wearing pants, using weapons, and heresy.
Apparently: tactically brilliant.
A Woman.
Go figure.
:)