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This is really a rationality test, not an intelligence test. And I 'failed', because I answered Yes to question 4. By the common usage of the word 'racist', Jo

This is really a rationality test, not an intelligence test. And I 'failed', because I answered Yes to question 4. By the common usage of the word 'racist', John Derbyshire is pretty clearly a racist. Though that of course has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of the statements in this article.

jonnathanson 14y ago
"This is really a rationality test, not an intelligence test." Yes. This seems to be a test of your ability to gauge, be aware of, and override your first emotional reactions to material. That process, which is driven primarily by the prefrontal cortex within the brain, is correlated with intelligence -- but it is not the sole basis of intelligence. "...I answered Yes to question 4." Questions 4 and 5 are the most problematic on the "test," precisely because they require us to make or withhold judgments based on something we can't verify: what John believes about race, what motivated him to write the article, etc. John Derbyshire is still likely to be a racist even if every statistic he cited is true, just as it's possible for him to be a racist if nothing he cited is true. Labeling him a racist, or not a racist, is our best attempt at guessing his views on race based on the text he's written. Arriving at the conclusion that he is racist, based solely on reading his text, is fairly rational -- regardless of whether or not we're open-minded w/r/t to what his article says, and regardless of whether or not we consider the label of "racist" to be a good, neutral, or bad thing. I suppose the answer that the author wants us to arrive at for Question 4 is "We can't know for sure." And, while that's true in some respects, the available evidence points us in a direction that we'd be silly to disregard.
- robertskmiles 14y ago
  Right, that's a pretty accurate clarification of my position. The implicit assumption in question 4 is that people will be unwilling to apply the label 'racist' to a position they believe to be true. Here I get to quote Paul Graham[1]: "In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not." [1]: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html

jonnathanson 14y ago

"This is really a rationality test, not an intelligence test." Yes. This seems to be a test of your ability to gauge, be aware of, and override your first emotional reactions to material. That process, which is driven primarily by the prefrontal cortex within the brain, is correlated with intelligence -- but it is not the sole basis of intelligence. "...I answered Yes to question 4." Questions 4 and 5 are the most problematic on the "test," precisely because they require us to make or withhold judgments based on something we can't verify: what John believes about race, what motivated him to write the article, etc. John Derbyshire is still likely to be a racist even if every statistic he cited is true, just as it's possible for him to be a racist if nothing he cited is true. Labeling him a racist, or not a racist, is our best attempt at guessing his views on race based on the text he's written. Arriving at the conclusion that he is racist, based solely on reading his text, is fairly rational -- regardless of whether or not we're open-minded w/r/t to what his article says, and regardless of whether or not we consider the label of "racist" to be a good, neutral, or bad thing. I suppose the answer that the author wants us to arrive at for Question 4 is "We can't know for sure." And, while that's true in some respects, the available evidence points us in a direction that we'd be silly to disregard.

robertskmiles 14y ago
Right, that's a pretty accurate clarification of my position. The implicit assumption in question 4 is that people will be unwilling to apply the label 'racist' to a position they believe to be true. Here I get to quote Paul Graham[1]: "In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not." [1]: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html