6 ms·

> very few whites are as intelligent as blacks like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Barack Obama There is a stereotype of self-righteous closeted eugenics believers tha

by pqhwan 6y ago

> very few whites are as intelligent as blacks like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Barack Obama There is a stereotype of self-righteous closeted eugenics believers that I’m reminded of, when I read statements like this. But you go just short of pushing an agenda, so fine. Putting that aside, the thing that I find frustrating about people having this debate is that they never seem to ask “why would people with darker skin tones do worse at standard cognition tests?” Well, IMHO, a more plausible answer is that “populations that are treated and educated better, who encounter less barriers to privilege, enjoy relative ease of social mobility and physical safety, are more likely to spend time developing their abstract reasoning abilities”.

BoorishBears 6y ago
As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races: > Second, even IQ scores clearly respond to changes in the environment. IQ scores, for example, have risen dramatically throughout the world since the 1930s. - Pseudo-intellectual "redpilled" types like to pretend that racial conflict ended the day slavery ended, but since out redlining wasn't even fully illegal until the late 70s... it makes sense that a test highly affected by environmental factors would reflect systemic and persistent policies that were designed to destroy the environment of minorities.
- btilly 6y ago
  As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races You attribute a position to me that I did not make, and do not hold. You then criticize a straw man of your own invention. My position is that IQ scores reflect actual intelligence. However the environment that you grow up in is one of the biggest drivers of how intelligent you will become. Therefore population differences in intelligence are mostly attributable to differences in environment, not genetics. That said, the position I hold that you don't like is that there are population differences and those population differences have a significant impact on real lives. I don't like that either. However that is what the data says, and I'm strongly in favor of accepting unpleasant realities rather than sweeping them under the carpet. You will note that the article that I linked to supports all of my actual positions.
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    Let's pretend for a second, that you just don't know how to write a simple thought in a coherent way, accidentally tried to say "the stereotype blacks are stupid is true", and aren't instead just backpedaling from your original shitty comment after being called out... You say it's a difference in environment, so why use that difference to defend a statement like "blacks are stupid"?! Why try to make a try and enforce a racist statement like "blacks are stupid", that's actually _less valid_ and _much more easily disproven_ than the hypothesis you claim you're _actually_ backing, that environmental differences lead to differences in intelligence? After all, while it's trivial to find studies questioning the reliability and validity (not just statistical validity) of IQ tests... it's _more_ trivial to find studies showing the effect of different cultures on IQ tests ability to even measure intelligence: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-Fair-Cognitive-Ability-Assessment-Verney-Granholm/13925ddec275c8dbf1008b38ef76a5dc09dd9558 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-Fair-Cognitive... _The study you link is making connections to race with specific goals in mind that have nothing to do with trying to defend a stereotype as heinous as "blacks are stupid". In fact their point is literally the opposite, that what appears to be a simple gap in races, is actually a reflection of environmental differences._ It's clear to me that your own underlying bias caused you to try and draw a conclusion that literally does not exist, and you internally try to write off every single attempt to call out your own stupidity as pearl clutching. It's literally the opposite of defending a statement like "blacks are stupid" No testing gap being closed is continent on people "not sweeping under the rug the fact that blacks are stupid!" Now, let me be a little personal here, you are the worst kind of person and part of a growing plague. This new wave of people overestimating their intelligence and understanding, and undervaluing basic human decency because "it flies in the idea of logic!" and "you're only mad I said something heinous because of <insert overused logical fallacy>!!!!". There are a lot of truly awful things that you can justify if your only criteria is "I can misconstrue a study to make a shitty defense of it!" Do your friends at "Lean St" know that you spend your time defending statements like "blacks are stupid"? Maybe you should tell them?
    - btilly 6y ago
      I've read your rant multiple times. You haven't exactly demonstrated good reading comprehension. Nor do I believe your personal attacks are justified. If you wish to argue that blacks do not score over a standard deviation lower on IQ tests, you're arguing against a mountain of evidence. If you wish to argue that this difference doesn't have pretty serious real-world consequences, you're arguing against another mountain of evidence. You can choose to argue that IQ is culturally biased. I have to admit that culture affects people's IQ. But in turn IQ measures mental abilities that will help you do well in a technologically based society. So if particular cultural ideas help kids grow up with better IQs, those ideas are worth adopting. If specific family interventions have a positive impact, they are worth considering as well. And if you refuse to do that for kids, you bear a share of the responsibility for their future failures. Seriously. IQ is a better predictor of your future success than your socioeconomic background. It is a better predictor than the color of your skin. The good side of that is that people are being judged more on their abilities than their background and race. That's good. But the bad side is that every year in which we see a large gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites, we are looking a future economic gap that will last decades. As a society, we refuse to even think about that. Which means that we choose to continue the problem.
btilly 6y ago
Yes, I did not push an agenda. I also linked to an article that was all about how we can reduce the gap. But the very first step is to admit that said gap actually exists. But my point is that people's current experience is going to be based on the reality that the tests reveal. Which is that the average black that they meet will, statistically, be noticeably less intelligent than the average white. And experience is going to lead to prejudices. And the fact that these prejudices are shocking and horrifying to people is obvious from the comments.
- pqhwan 6y ago
  I take it that you find this frustrating. But in this political climate, I find it understandable that people are “triggered“ when you put emphasis on the current state of things, even if it is a fact, than how we ended up here. Underneath those statistics is an injustice at a large scale that span generations, and many people don’t want to build a society on top of injustice, without addressing it first. That’s not a matter of statistics, it’s a matter of values. So when you put emphasis on statistics, people will suspect that you don’t share those values.
  - btilly 6y ago
    Yes. I get that. And they are about half wrong when it comes to me. I actually have similar values. But I have very different beliefs about how to achieve those values. And as a result, I disagree with most of the agendas being pushed to try to address the problems left by the awful history. Yes, I want equality. But I want it to be obtained with a hand up, not a handout. We cannot successfully mandate equal outcomes for populations with unequal abilities. We've done that for 60 years and it has not worked. In California today, black kids score a standard deviation lower than whites, and graduate high school with reading skills matching the average white 8th grader. We can't even talk about that fact. But IQ is a better predictor of your future life trajectory than the color of your skin. And those test scores guarantee that decades from now, those white kids will be enjoying better lives than those black kids. Not because of something that someone in the past did, but because opportunity is available to all, and the benefits accrue to those who are capable of more. This isn't actually a hopeless fact of nature. Thanks to the Flynn effect, the black-white IQ gap is roughly the same magnitude as the IQ gap between white kids today and their Boomer grandparents. If black parents could learn what white parents have learned in the last 50 years, and receive support to help actually raise their kids well, I believe that in one generation we could erase the IQ gap, and most of the wealth disparity afterwards. But nobody is chanting, "We need parenting classes!" And suggesting anything like that will get you accused of victim blaming. So we're going to double down on the same basic ideas that have failed to solve the problem for 60 years now. Is there any reason to believe that it will start working at any point in the next 60 years?

by pqhwan 6y ago

BoorishBears 6y ago

As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races: > Second, even IQ scores clearly respond to changes in the environment. IQ scores, for example, have risen dramatically throughout the world since the 1930s. - Pseudo-intellectual "redpilled" types like to pretend that racial conflict ended the day slavery ended, but since out redlining wasn't even fully illegal until the late 70s... it makes sense that a test highly affected by environmental factors would reflect systemic and persistent policies that were designed to destroy the environment of minorities.

btilly 6y ago
As a black person I'm going to swallow my disgust at the fact I had to read that this drivel evening and point their own study is clearly stating the opposite point they made, that IQ tests are not measuring some sort of inherent intelligence difference in races You attribute a position to me that I did not make, and do not hold. You then criticize a straw man of your own invention. My position is that IQ scores reflect actual intelligence. However the environment that you grow up in is one of the biggest drivers of how intelligent you will become. Therefore population differences in intelligence are mostly attributable to differences in environment, not genetics. That said, the position I hold that you don't like is that there are population differences and those population differences have a significant impact on real lives. I don't like that either. However that is what the data says, and I'm strongly in favor of accepting unpleasant realities rather than sweeping them under the carpet. You will note that the article that I linked to supports all of my actual positions.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  Let's pretend for a second, that you just don't know how to write a simple thought in a coherent way, accidentally tried to say "the stereotype blacks are stupid is true", and aren't instead just backpedaling from your original shitty comment after being called out... You say it's a difference in environment, so why use that difference to defend a statement like "blacks are stupid"?! Why try to make a try and enforce a racist statement like "blacks are stupid", that's actually _less valid_ and _much more easily disproven_ than the hypothesis you claim you're _actually_ backing, that environmental differences lead to differences in intelligence? After all, while it's trivial to find studies questioning the reliability and validity (not just statistical validity) of IQ tests... it's _more_ trivial to find studies showing the effect of different cultures on IQ tests ability to even measure intelligence: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-Fair-Cognitive-Ability-Assessment-Verney-Granholm/13925ddec275c8dbf1008b38ef76a5dc09dd9558 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Culture-Fair-Cognitive... _The study you link is making connections to race with specific goals in mind that have nothing to do with trying to defend a stereotype as heinous as "blacks are stupid". In fact their point is literally the opposite, that what appears to be a simple gap in races, is actually a reflection of environmental differences._ It's clear to me that your own underlying bias caused you to try and draw a conclusion that literally does not exist, and you internally try to write off every single attempt to call out your own stupidity as pearl clutching. It's literally the opposite of defending a statement like "blacks are stupid" No testing gap being closed is continent on people "not sweeping under the rug the fact that blacks are stupid!" Now, let me be a little personal here, you are the worst kind of person and part of a growing plague. This new wave of people overestimating their intelligence and understanding, and undervaluing basic human decency because "it flies in the idea of logic!" and "you're only mad I said something heinous because of <insert overused logical fallacy>!!!!". There are a lot of truly awful things that you can justify if your only criteria is "I can misconstrue a study to make a shitty defense of it!" Do your friends at "Lean St" know that you spend your time defending statements like "blacks are stupid"? Maybe you should tell them?
  - btilly 6y ago
    I've read your rant multiple times. You haven't exactly demonstrated good reading comprehension. Nor do I believe your personal attacks are justified. If you wish to argue that blacks do not score over a standard deviation lower on IQ tests, you're arguing against a mountain of evidence. If you wish to argue that this difference doesn't have pretty serious real-world consequences, you're arguing against another mountain of evidence. You can choose to argue that IQ is culturally biased. I have to admit that culture affects people's IQ. But in turn IQ measures mental abilities that will help you do well in a technologically based society. So if particular cultural ideas help kids grow up with better IQs, those ideas are worth adopting. If specific family interventions have a positive impact, they are worth considering as well. And if you refuse to do that for kids, you bear a share of the responsibility for their future failures. Seriously. IQ is a better predictor of your future success than your socioeconomic background. It is a better predictor than the color of your skin. The good side of that is that people are being judged more on their abilities than their background and race. That's good. But the bad side is that every year in which we see a large gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites, we are looking a future economic gap that will last decades. As a society, we refuse to even think about that. Which means that we choose to continue the problem.

btilly 6y ago

Yes, I did not push an agenda. I also linked to an article that was all about how we can reduce the gap. But the very first step is to admit that said gap actually exists. But my point is that people's current experience is going to be based on the reality that the tests reveal. Which is that the average black that they meet will, statistically, be noticeably less intelligent than the average white. And experience is going to lead to prejudices. And the fact that these prejudices are shocking and horrifying to people is obvious from the comments.

pqhwan 6y ago
I take it that you find this frustrating. But in this political climate, I find it understandable that people are “triggered“ when you put emphasis on the current state of things, even if it is a fact, than how we ended up here. Underneath those statistics is an injustice at a large scale that span generations, and many people don’t want to build a society on top of injustice, without addressing it first. That’s not a matter of statistics, it’s a matter of values. So when you put emphasis on statistics, people will suspect that you don’t share those values.
- btilly 6y ago
  Yes. I get that. And they are about half wrong when it comes to me. I actually have similar values. But I have very different beliefs about how to achieve those values. And as a result, I disagree with most of the agendas being pushed to try to address the problems left by the awful history. Yes, I want equality. But I want it to be obtained with a hand up, not a handout. We cannot successfully mandate equal outcomes for populations with unequal abilities. We've done that for 60 years and it has not worked. In California today, black kids score a standard deviation lower than whites, and graduate high school with reading skills matching the average white 8th grader. We can't even talk about that fact. But IQ is a better predictor of your future life trajectory than the color of your skin. And those test scores guarantee that decades from now, those white kids will be enjoying better lives than those black kids. Not because of something that someone in the past did, but because opportunity is available to all, and the benefits accrue to those who are capable of more. This isn't actually a hopeless fact of nature. Thanks to the Flynn effect, the black-white IQ gap is roughly the same magnitude as the IQ gap between white kids today and their Boomer grandparents. If black parents could learn what white parents have learned in the last 50 years, and receive support to help actually raise their kids well, I believe that in one generation we could erase the IQ gap, and most of the wealth disparity afterwards. But nobody is chanting, "We need parenting classes!" And suggesting anything like that will get you accused of victim blaming. So we're going to double down on the same basic ideas that have failed to solve the problem for 60 years now. Is there any reason to believe that it will start working at any point in the next 60 years?