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--I could believe in a connection between vegetarianism and intelligence That is because intelligence is measured in the eye of the beholder and the intelligen
by kls 17y ago
--I could believe in a connection between vegetarianism and intelligence
That is because intelligence is measured in the eye of the beholder and the intelligence that the author was measuring was an intelligence that coincides with a cross section of people who tend to hold this belief in the social circle.
The article is so obviously subjective to the results the author wants based on the intelligence he is looking for.
For example I could argue that artistic expression is a sign of intelligence, i would be right and if i weighted my measures with that measure, I can guarantee you I could come back and correlate a high prevalence of vegetarianism to that measure.
- gaius 17y agointelligence is measured in the eye of the beholder and the intelligence that the author was measuring was an intelligence that coincides with a cross section of people who tend to hold this belief in the social circle Exactly. It's like ESR's assertion that "a good hacker is someone who is just like me".
- techiferous 17y agoAgreed. You have to be careful to remove bias. For example, if I set up a scientific study that compares the intelligence of vegetarians to meat-eaters I may find vegetarians scoring higher on intelligence than meat-eaters but that wouldn't necessarily prove the points that I speculated about above. That's because meat is subsidized, so people in poverty would have a harder time being vegetarian, and I would think that poverty is correlated with education level which would be correlated with intelligence. (See http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html)