29 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 181st comment:
Votes: 0
Personally, I think Sandi's on to something here…
30 Jun, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 182nd comment:
Sandi said:
Eugenics is widespread, perfectly natural, and some might argue, instinctual. The problem is the practice of guys getting girls drunk….
Living in a place with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, I disagree. It's a lack of common sense and terrible parenting practices.
30 Jun, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 183rd comment:
Ssolvarain said:
Soylent green rears its nutritious head once moar! :alien:
Spoiler
But…but…Soylent Green is…people!
Ssolvarain said:
Living in a place with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, I disagree. It's a lack of common sense and terrible parenting practices.
Sandi said:
Eugenics is widespread, perfectly natural, and some might argue, instinctual. The problem is the practice of guys getting girls drunk….
Living in a place with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, I disagree. It's a lack of common sense and terrible parenting practices.
That's definitely part of the problem. Maybe we can isolate those common sense and parenting genes, though. :biggrin:
30 Jun, 2009, shasarak wrote in the 184th comment:
Cratylus said:
Word of caution, though. I hope Aidil doesn't engage Scandum directly. They're
each other's antiparticle :(
each other's antiparticle :(
You mean if they come into contact with each other they will both permanently dissappear in a burst of gamma rays? Oh please, please, please make it so! :lol:
30 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 185th comment:
Hey now, that wouldn't be very eugenic. :cry:
30 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 186th comment:
Post #186 brings you the complaint that gamma rays are bloated and unreliable. I think we should go back to beta rays.
30 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 187th comment:
No, we should stick with gamma rays, don't make me turn green on y'all!
30 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 188th comment:
Lyanic said:
Maybe we can isolate those common sense and parenting genes, though. :biggrin:
Seems to me, all too often those genes are isolated from each other.
30 Jun, 2009, Ssolvarain wrote in the 189th comment:
^ This.
30 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 190th comment:
Sandi said:
Seems to me, all too often those genes are isolated from each other.
I've observed that good mothers tend to be overly emotional, which gets in the way of common sense, while sensible women tend to not have children, which goes back to the whole IQ and fertility issue.
30 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 191st comment:
Scandum said:
while sensible women tend to not have children
Sorry, this cracked me up. :biggrin:
30 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 192nd comment:
David Haley said:
Sorry, this cracked me up. :biggrin:
Scandum said:
while sensible women tend to not have children
Sorry, this cracked me up. :biggrin:
Very true though! :)
01 Jul, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 193rd comment:
Scandum said:
Most people are too set in their world view to make sense of this. You need to pretty much accept that 1) intelligence is genetic, 2) that intelligent (particularly women) people have less children, 3) The difference between 1st and 3rd world nations is roughly 20 IQ points. 4) That this implies that human races aren't equal in average intelligence. 5) That the egalitarian dream is a lie.
shasarak said:
Scandum may be tiresome, but he is quite right when he points out that less intelligent people tend to have more children than intelligent people do; and intelligence has a strong genetic component. The consequence of this trend continuing unchecked is really quite scary.
Most people are too set in their world view to make sense of this. You need to pretty much accept that 1) intelligence is genetic, 2) that intelligent (particularly women) people have less children, 3) The difference between 1st and 3rd world nations is roughly 20 IQ points. 4) That this implies that human races aren't equal in average intelligence. 5) That the egalitarian dream is a lie.
Why do you value intelligence so much? I never had much use for it myself, a little is alright, too much is annoying and freakish. But presuming one did, how come nobody is intelligent enough to figure out that however one measures it, there ain't a whole lotta difference between points on overlapping bell curves, notwithstanding the small differences in the linear scoring to begin with. I think Alexander Hamilton said it best, "Men are as different as dogs".
Anyway that brings me round to the point of this egalitarianism and liberals/socialist/progressives versus conservatives/libertarians, well American ones at least. I guess I'd be considered a paleo conservative myself. The general difference is we hold a very different view of the nature of man (one thing among others that strongly influence our conclusions). Conservatives by and large believe that man hasn't changed much over thousands of years, especially in regards to man's moral and intellectual abilities. The conservative egalitarian view is of social processes, not social results. We accept that stupid men will succeed where intelligent men will fail. On the other end, liberals or progressives generally believe in the perfectability of man. They view the intellectual and moral gap between men as pretty wide (wide as yourself) and as a problem to be solved. Their egalitarian view is one of social results, rather than social processes.
01 Jul, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 194th comment:
Tyche said:
Why do you value intelligence so much? I never had much use for it myself…
Is this just too easy of a joke? Should we let him get away with saying something like this and not have a wise crack about it? Meh… I don't have the energy to point and laugh right now, someone else do it for me.
[edit to add] yes this is a flagrant case of trolling but I don't get to do that very often.
01 Jul, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 195th comment:
Igabod said:
Is this just too easy of a joke? Should we let him get away with saying something like this and not have a wise crack about it? Meh… I don't have the energy to point and laugh right now, someone else do it for me.
Don't worry about it.
I won't get the joke anyway.
01 Jul, 2009, shasarak wrote in the 196th comment:
Scandum said:
Most people are too set in their world view to make sense of this. You need to pretty much accept that 1) intelligence is genetic, 2) that intelligent (particularly women) people have less children, 3) The difference between 1st and 3rd world nations is roughly 20 IQ points. 4) That this implies that human races aren't equal in average intelligence. 5) That the egalitarian dream is a lie.
shasarak said:
Scandum may be tiresome, but he is quite right when he points out that less intelligent people tend to have more children than intelligent people do; and intelligence has a strong genetic component. The consequence of this trend continuing unchecked is really quite scary.
Most people are too set in their world view to make sense of this. You need to pretty much accept that 1) intelligence is genetic, 2) that intelligent (particularly women) people have less children, 3) The difference between 1st and 3rd world nations is roughly 20 IQ points. 4) That this implies that human races aren't equal in average intelligence. 5) That the egalitarian dream is a lie.
It would be helpful if you could cite a source for some of this. I am aware that some studies have suggested that East Asians have higher IQ's than whites, and whites higher than blacks, but I'm not aware of any study which has established quite such a large difference. It would also be helpful to know whether those studies have made any attempt to eliminate environmental influences (such as nutrition) - if not, then the conclusion that the difference is purely genetic is "unsafe" to put it mildly.
The thing is, though, even if there are minor genetic differences between races in that respect, that doesn't come anywhere near justifying "eugenic" selection on the basis of race; selection on the basis of race is simply far too blunt an instrument. Even if it is true that (say) blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites, there are still going to be plenty of individual blacks who are a great deal more intelligent than some individual whites. If your stated eugenic goal is to select on the basis of intelligence then you should be selecting intelligent people regardless of the ethnic group they belong to. There may, perhaps, be a slightly smaller percentage of blacks to choose from, but you'd be crazy to ignore those who do meet the criteria merely because other some people of the same race do not.
And that's before you even start to think about whether there may be other genes associated with certain races that are advantageous and which it would be unwise to lose access to.
01 Jul, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 197th comment:
Tyche said:
Why do you value intelligence so much? I never had much use for it myself, a little is alright, too much is annoying and freakish.
Being too different from the norm is generally not a good thing. I think the following article describes that quite well.
http://www.prometheussociety.org/article...
But as to the value of intelligence, in order to do good you must know what is good, and to know what is good you need intelligence, hence intelligence can be seen as valuable from a moral perspective.
Tyche said:
Anyway that brings me round to the point of this egalitarianism and liberals/socialist/progressives versus conservatives/libertarians, well American ones at least. I guess I'd be considered a paleo conservative myself. The general difference is we hold a very different view of the nature of man (one thing among others that strongly influence our conclusions). Conservatives by and large believe that man hasn't changed much over thousands of years, especially in regards to man's moral and intellectual abilities. The conservative egalitarian view is of social processes, not social results. We accept that stupid men will succeed where intelligent men will fail. On the other end, liberals or progressives generally believe in the perfectability of man. They view the intellectual and moral gap between men as pretty wide (wide as yourself) and as a problem to be solved. Their egalitarian view is one of social results, rather than social processes.
It's been my observation that socialists believe in the moldability of the individual where as hereditarians do not. Conservatives are flexible in this regard, they don't believe in the moldability of the individual, but they do believe the true nature of an individual cannot be measured till maturity. Which is why conservatives agree with liberals on the importance of education and other forms of socialism involving children, yet aren't opposed to the death penalty for adults. So I'd say that conservatives are centrists in the egalitarian matter.
Communism believes in the economic moldability of society, where as capitalism believes that people should have free reign economically. Liberals don't believe in the moldability of morality, where as conservatives do.
So at one extreme you have the capitalist liberal hereditarian, at the other extreme you have the communist puritan socialist.
shasarak said:
It would be helpful if you could cite a source for some of this. I am aware that some studies have suggested that East Asians have higher IQ's than whites, and whites higher than blacks, but I'm not aware of any study which has established quite such a large difference. It would also be helpful to know whether those studies have made any attempt to eliminate environmental influences (such as nutrition) - if not, then the conclusion that the difference is purely genetic is "unsafe" to put it mildly.
I'm well read on the subject and this issue is so controversial that most scientists wouldn't touch it with a 48 foot pole. But here are the hard facts: In the USA East Asians have an average IQ of 105, Whites 100, and blacks 85. These averages show up in pretty much every large scale study, for the past 70 years, and they've also showed up in adoption studies where black and white children were adopted by middle class white people. That this gap in IQ exists isn't controversial, though most people would rather not talk about it, the controversy is what causes the gap.
The following article by Jensen and Rushton is quite good in summing up the hereditarian stance: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushton...
It should be noted that 9 months old black children are more intelligent than 9 months old east Asian children, for the hereditarian explanation for that you'd want to read 'race, evolution, and behavior'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolu...
shasarak said:
The thing is, though, even if there are minor genetic differences between races in that respect, that doesn't come anywhere near justifying "eugenic" selection on the basis of race; selection on the basis of race is simply far too blunt an instrument.
If you'd sterilize everyone with an IQ below 100 you'd end up sterilizing 84% of the black population and 50% of the white population. An argument could be made that it'd be easier to just sterilize all blacks, but that'd be an argument of economy, not a eugenic argument. But I agree, selection by race is a blunt instrument.
It should be noted that IQ measures problem solving and not intelligence as a whole. There are indications that creativity (which is hard to measure) depresses IQ.
01 Jul, 2009, aidil wrote in the 198th comment:
Scandum said:
Being too different from the norm is generally not a good thing. I think the following article describes that quite well.
http://www.prometheussociety.org/article...
But as to the value of intelligence, in order to do good you must know what is good, and to know what is good you need intelligence, hence intelligence can be seen as valuable from a moral perspective.
Tyche said:
Why do you value intelligence so much? I never had much use for it myself, a little is alright, too much is annoying and freakish.
Being too different from the norm is generally not a good thing. I think the following article describes that quite well.
http://www.prometheussociety.org/article...
But as to the value of intelligence, in order to do good you must know what is good, and to know what is good you need intelligence, hence intelligence can be seen as valuable from a moral perspective.
That statement nowhere qualifies how much intelligence is needed, or what kind of intelligence.
Then, there is a difference between knowing and understanding. Little intelligence is needed for knowing, more for understanding. This still doesn't anywhere qualify what amount of intelligence would be needed.
Bottomline, intelligence doesn't make for knowing what is good and bad, but it may help understanding such knowledge IF you happen to have the knowledge to begin with.
Beyond that, a world where everyone has the intellect to be a university professor will soon find itself in need of people willing and able to do normal work.
For the rest, you claim that:
Scandum said:
Which is why conservatives agree with liberals on the importance of education and other forms of socialism involving children,
So.. education is a form of socialism?
Ah well, lets review your sources instead…
Scandum said:
The wiki page you point at says:
In Race, Evolution and Behavior, Rushton uses a methodology he calls "aggregation" of evidence, in which he averages hundreds of studies, modern and historical, with equal weight regardless of the quality of the data to demonstrate the racial patterns he asserts. He says that by averaging many studies the results one gets can be very accurate.
A number of scientists however find sufficient problems with his methodology to completely dismiss his conclusions. Douglas Wahlsten, a biologist, criticized Rushton's book in a review writing:
averaging does nothing to reduce bias in sampling and measurement, and such flaws are abundant in the cited literature. For example, among the 38 reports on brain weight, all but two gave figures for only one group, with most cases being people living in the nation of their ancestors, such as an article on Japanese living in Japan and another on Kenyans living in Kenya. The obvious differences in environment make all of these data of dubious worth for testing hypotheses about genetic causes of group differences.[5]
Which basicly reduces that to a nice hypothesis and a work of fiction, not something of scientific value.
scandum said:
It should be noted that IQ measures problem solving and not intelligence as a whole. There are indications that creativity (which is hard to measure) depresses IQ.
Considering that 'out of the box thinking' requires creativity, your statement seems more then a bit odd.
01 Jul, 2009, Guest wrote in the 199th comment:
200 :)
So what do I win here for having the great luck and fortune of being the one?
So what do I win here for having the great luck and fortune of being the one?
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