5 ms·

" . . . studies Gladwell obviously doesn't mention, as they show exactly what everyone knows, that intelligence is largely inherited. You're misconstruing Glad

by pius 19y ago

" . . . studies Gladwell obviously doesn't mention, as they show exactly what everyone knows, that intelligence is largely inherited. You're misconstruing Gladwell's position. He's not arguing against inheritance of intelligence; he's arguing against a biologically innate and immutable race-based component to intelligence. "Anyway, he's the one making a claim, and he's the one who needs to show that the methodology is sound, not me." Actually, you made the latest claim. You set up a somewhat absurd strawman for what Gladwell argued and then tried to lampoon it and make his position look illogical when, in fact, the interpretation you constructed relies on the researchers literally ignoring the most basic of statistics. That needed to be pointed out, lest people buy the strawman and actually get swayed to believe that black people are biologically less intelligent than whites.

mynameishere 19y ago
I hardly made a "strawman", which would require a construction of the form, "Gladwell said XYZ", which I did not do. Rather, I showed a single example of how different kinds of pairings could result in different kinds of results. Here is an example of a strawman argument, for your reference: There are a lot of pseudo-scientists out there who claim that IQ tests are perfectly accurate, not at all culturally biased, and are in fact objective, innate measures of intelligence. Anyway, as for researchers literally ignoring basic statistics Their statistics may be pure as a mountain spring. It doesn't matter. What I suspect is that there are factors they completely didn't account for--something that happens to every scientist. It tends to happen more to scientists trying to prove political points. he's arguing against a consistent, innate, statistically significant, race-based component to intelligence He needs to quit picking-and-choosing studies then. I've seen the German study, and I'm glad to take it into account, and if there are repeated examples, I'll take them into account also. Well, here's something most of us have probably seen already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations ...the thing to reflect upon here isn't that innaccuracies exist (because they do). Rather, the gross consistency of the results--why do poor countries like Thailand and Malaysia have passable scores compared to Africa? Do Africans suffer from a particularly racist sort of poverty? Why does a country like Iraq--living under a dictator, facing decades of war and mass starvation and international isolation have a higher average IQ than every African country? More racism? Why would China, a country that still has hundreds of millions of peasants score much better than every African country? Compare China to Hong Kong--areas with racial similitude, but vastly--diametrically--different histories and circumstances, with every advantage going to Hong Kong. Should not the difference be greater than 7 points? Eventually, the question is, "How much evidence does it take?" and the answer is obviously, "No amount of evidence is enough". It's an idealogical question. Let me present the inevitable extremes. The list of Jewish scientists (which wikipedia warns is "incomplete") is broken down into numerous sections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_scientists_and_philosophers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_scientists_and_p... The list of African Americans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_African_Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_African_Americans ...contains no scientists at all. Yes, I know some exist, but no one thought well enough to add any. Blame the community, I guess. Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..?
- pius 19y ago
  You pretty clearly set up a strawman by saying that Gladwell ignored a study because it supports the idea that intelligence is largely inherited, a position he's not at all trying to refute. Then, you took the position you manufactured and discredited it in hopes that people would get confused and dismiss his real argument. That's the textbook definition of attacking a strawman. The statement of mine that you quoted, ironically enough, is not a strawman. It may be an ad hominem attack, but it's definitely not a strawman. ;) Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..? Thanks for revealing what you believe. I respect the fact that you're willing to come out and admit that you think blacks just aren't as smart as whites. Now we're getting somewhere! You're allowed to believe that without needing to justify it with pseudo-science. I'll let this sit for a while -- hopefully you've got the courage not to delete it -- and I'll finish my coding tonight. Tomorrow, if I'm up to it, I'll retort. ... You know, on second thought, I don't think I will. I can't help my position anymore than you already have. -You practically conceded (or at least haven't adequately rebutted) the points I brought up against your characterization of Gladwell's article as illogical. -You've weakened your position in an argument about the measure of biologically innate and immutable intelligence by resorting to bringing up a bunch of cultural phenomena that anyone on this board can easily rebut using vast socioeconomic factors. (If you really want to take it there, by the way, you can repost this to a new YC discussion thread questioning the legitimacy of the claimed non-biological factors that have stunted the economic growth of African-Americans and I'll address it there.) -Most importantly, you've shown the people reading this that, indeed, there exist people who think that blacks are intellectually inferior to other races by their very biology. This is useful evidence I can point to every time someone says that racism no longer exists except amongst the most uneducated segments of society.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    vast socioeconomic factors Snore. Sub-sahara Africa has been near-100 percent black for many millenia. There's no one else to stick the blame on, even if you want to bring up "society" and "economics". Hell, the only country whose socio-economics can be traced to white people is the only one with a decent economy. And, what do you know, another one, Zimbabwe, took a nose dive right after its ethnic cleansing of whites. Shock. Horror. Thanks for revealing what you believe. I believe the facts, sure. If there is anybody here who thinks that blacks and Jews are genetically equivilent in intelligence, raise your hands. Please, I beg you. But you have at least 2500 years of evidence fighting against you, so bring some counter-evidence first...unlike pius.
vitaminj 19y ago
In any case, he's not even arguing about intelligence per se. Rather, he's supporting James Flynn's argument that IQ tests are flimsy instruments for measuring intelligence. Flynn's argument is that kids from societies/households which require high abstract cognition (read: modernness) will score better on some of the IQ sub-tests (eg. similarities and abstract taxonomy). This suggests that kids can be "trained" to score well on IQ tests. There is more than socioeconomic factors at work here, and cultural factors (particularly those that influence cognitive modes of thought) are important. But ultimately, IQ tests are probably a dubious measure of someone's general intelligence anyway.

by pius 19y ago

mynameishere 19y ago

I hardly made a "strawman", which would require a construction of the form, "Gladwell said XYZ", which I did not do. Rather, I showed a single example of how different kinds of pairings could result in different kinds of results. Here is an example of a strawman argument, for your reference: There are a lot of pseudo-scientists out there who claim that IQ tests are perfectly accurate, not at all culturally biased, and are in fact objective, innate measures of intelligence. Anyway, as for researchers literally ignoring basic statistics Their statistics may be pure as a mountain spring. It doesn't matter. What I suspect is that there are factors they completely didn't account for--something that happens to every scientist. It tends to happen more to scientists trying to prove political points. he's arguing against a consistent, innate, statistically significant, race-based component to intelligence He needs to quit picking-and-choosing studies then. I've seen the German study, and I'm glad to take it into account, and if there are repeated examples, I'll take them into account also. Well, here's something most of us have probably seen already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations ...the thing to reflect upon here isn't that innaccuracies exist (because they do). Rather, the gross consistency of the results--why do poor countries like Thailand and Malaysia have passable scores compared to Africa? Do Africans suffer from a particularly racist sort of poverty? Why does a country like Iraq--living under a dictator, facing decades of war and mass starvation and international isolation have a higher average IQ than every African country? More racism? Why would China, a country that still has hundreds of millions of peasants score much better than every African country? Compare China to Hong Kong--areas with racial similitude, but vastly--diametrically--different histories and circumstances, with every advantage going to Hong Kong. Should not the difference be greater than 7 points? Eventually, the question is, "How much evidence does it take?" and the answer is obviously, "No amount of evidence is enough". It's an idealogical question. Let me present the inevitable extremes. The list of Jewish scientists (which wikipedia warns is "incomplete") is broken down into numerous sections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_scientists_and_philosophers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_scientists_and_p... The list of African Americans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_African_Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_African_Americans ...contains no scientists at all. Yes, I know some exist, but no one thought well enough to add any. Blame the community, I guess. Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..?

pius 19y ago
You pretty clearly set up a strawman by saying that Gladwell ignored a study because it supports the idea that intelligence is largely inherited, a position he's not at all trying to refute. Then, you took the position you manufactured and discredited it in hopes that people would get confused and dismiss his real argument. That's the textbook definition of attacking a strawman. The statement of mine that you quoted, ironically enough, is not a strawman. It may be an ad hominem attack, but it's definitely not a strawman. ;) Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..? Thanks for revealing what you believe. I respect the fact that you're willing to come out and admit that you think blacks just aren't as smart as whites. Now we're getting somewhere! You're allowed to believe that without needing to justify it with pseudo-science. I'll let this sit for a while -- hopefully you've got the courage not to delete it -- and I'll finish my coding tonight. Tomorrow, if I'm up to it, I'll retort. ... You know, on second thought, I don't think I will. I can't help my position anymore than you already have. -You practically conceded (or at least haven't adequately rebutted) the points I brought up against your characterization of Gladwell's article as illogical. -You've weakened your position in an argument about the measure of biologically innate and immutable intelligence by resorting to bringing up a bunch of cultural phenomena that anyone on this board can easily rebut using vast socioeconomic factors. (If you really want to take it there, by the way, you can repost this to a new YC discussion thread questioning the legitimacy of the claimed non-biological factors that have stunted the economic growth of African-Americans and I'll address it there.) -Most importantly, you've shown the people reading this that, indeed, there exist people who think that blacks are intellectually inferior to other races by their very biology. This is useful evidence I can point to every time someone says that racism no longer exists except amongst the most uneducated segments of society.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  vast socioeconomic factors Snore. Sub-sahara Africa has been near-100 percent black for many millenia. There's no one else to stick the blame on, even if you want to bring up "society" and "economics". Hell, the only country whose socio-economics can be traced to white people is the only one with a decent economy. And, what do you know, another one, Zimbabwe, took a nose dive right after its ethnic cleansing of whites. Shock. Horror. Thanks for revealing what you believe. I believe the facts, sure. If there is anybody here who thinks that blacks and Jews are genetically equivilent in intelligence, raise your hands. Please, I beg you. But you have at least 2500 years of evidence fighting against you, so bring some counter-evidence first...unlike pius.

vitaminj 19y ago

In any case, he's not even arguing about intelligence per se. Rather, he's supporting James Flynn's argument that IQ tests are flimsy instruments for measuring intelligence. Flynn's argument is that kids from societies/households which require high abstract cognition (read: modernness) will score better on some of the IQ sub-tests (eg. similarities and abstract taxonomy). This suggests that kids can be "trained" to score well on IQ tests. There is more than socioeconomic factors at work here, and cultural factors (particularly those that influence cognitive modes of thought) are important. But ultimately, IQ tests are probably a dubious measure of someone's general intelligence anyway.