Political Correctness

[Johnnypenso]

What's broad-brush about the term "alt-right"? Neither the article or the video you ignored seem to be saying that all right wingers behave in this way.

Unless Buzzfeed has conducted a massive survey of those using RegressiveLeft hashtag, they have no way of knowing it's a favourite of the alt-right, whatever that is. They're using a lazy generalization to disprove another lazy generalization.

Great job dancing around the argument.

Buzzfeed is worse than Fox News. Any argument made with Buzzfeed as a source isn't an argument.

 

[UKMikey]

Unless Buzzfeed has conducted a massive survey of those using RegressiveLeft hashtag, they have no way of knowing it's a favourite of the alt-right, whatever that is. They're using a lazy generalization to disprove another lazy

I guess the examples they provided were holograms, then. It seems like poisoning the well is easier than providing concrete proof to the contrary.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Nobel Prize winner James Watson stripped of honourary titles for claiming blacks are genetically inferior in terms of intelligence:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-Watson-90-stripped-honorary-titles-lab.html

 

[Tornado]

That... uh... seems pretty fair to me...

 

[Michael88]

Nobel Prize winner James Watson stripped of honourary titles for claiming blacks are genetically inferior in terms of intelligence:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-Watson-90-stripped-honorary-titles-lab.html

So, did he back his claim with valid scientific data? He was a scientist after all, scientists should know better than spreading unfounded BS.

 

[Northstar]

Someone should tell this guy...

 

[TexRex]

Nobel Prize winner James Watson stripped of honourary titles for claiming blacks are genetically inferior in terms of intelligence:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-Watson-90-stripped-honorary-titles-lab.html

Cool.

Also...

A Noble prize-winning scientist

Way to go, Daily Mail.

 

[HenrySwanson]

So, did he back his claim with valid scientific data? He was a scientist after all, scientists should know better than spreading unfounded BS.

When this happens to people even vaguely associated with differences between races I doubt we're going to see many RCTs investigating a link between IQ and race:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/the-scandalous-shaming-of-noah-carl/

Keep in mind stories about him peddled such clickbait headlines like:

No, objecting to Cambridge’s appointment of a eugenicist is not about free speech

https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...-appointment-eugenicist-not-about-free-speech

Fair enough if you want to critique his research, but labelling him a eugenicist?

And how do we feel that Harvard has a higher cutoff for SATs for Asian-Americans than whites, followed by a higher cutoff for whites than blacks? We can blame this on various other factors but it also neatly fits the average IQs being highest in Asians, followed by whites, then blacks.

 

[TexRex]

 

[zzz_pt]

Is there even peer reviewed data on the topic at all?

As a layman looking at the world around me and observing some differences bettween different groups of people, I don't see why some of those groups, for reasons out of their control, couldn't have advantages and disavantages compared to other groups.

Edit: Just to add some info, I'm aware of The Bell Curve and I've listened to Sam Harris' conversation with Charles Murray. But I wasn't very convinced and after that, I didn't really looked into the subject. But it's comming more and more to the public sphere so it's getting to a point where, when confronted with people claiming they know something about this, I ask: "Do you have sources I can check?" and I get nothing in return. If it's false or true, I think we should know, especially if it's false (that there's a difference in IQ among different ethnic groups). Because when we know it's false, this topic can be put to rest.

 

[mustafur]

It's also quite contradictory with a claim that higher IQ equals more wealth as the supposed IQ of Subcontinent indians is supposedly less then White Americans which is lower then East Asians and Jews, yet they are on average more wealthy then all of them.

To me it looks like the research if it is even peer reviewed, hasn't even been done.

 

[Scaff]

Is there even peer reviewed data on the topic at all?

As a layman looking at the world around me and observing some differences bettween different groups of people, I don't see why some of those groups, for reasons out of their control, couldn't have advantages and disavantages compared to other groups.

Edit: Just to add some info, I'm aware of The Bell Curve and I've listened to Sam Harris' conversation with Charles Murray. But I wasn't very convinced and after that, I didn't really looked into the subject. But it's comming more and more to the public sphere so it's getting to a point where, when confronted with people claiming they know something about this, I ask: "Do you have sources I can check?" and I get nothing in return. If it's false or true, I think we should know, especially if it's false (that there's a difference in IQ among different ethnic groups). Because when we know it's false, this topic can be put to rest.

Yep lots, and the American Society of Human Genetics actually put out a debunking of it, along with links to the peer reviewed material that debunks it.

https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(18)30363-X

Fair enough if you want to critique his research, but labelling him a eugenicist?

Given that intelegence based on race is pretty much one of the cornerstones of eugenics, I don't have a major issue with it. I have far more of an issue with it being referred to as research (as its that poor), and the utterly misleading Spectator article (which is no major surprise from the publication that published a piece in praise of the Whermarcht).

And how do we feel that Harvard has a higher cutoff for SATs for Asian-Americans than whites, followed by a higher cutoff for whites than blacks? We can blame this on various other factors but it also neatly fits the average IQs being highest in Asians, followed by whites, then blacks.

That it's being challenged in court as it has no place.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Is there even peer reviewed data on the topic at all?

As a layman looking at the world around me and observing some differences bettween different groups of people, I don't see why some of those groups, for reasons out of their control, couldn't have advantages and disavantages compared to other groups.

Edit: Just to add some info, I'm aware of The Bell Curve and I've listened to Sam Harris' conversation with Charles Murray. But I wasn't very convinced and after that, I didn't really looked into the subject. But it's comming more and more to the public sphere so it's getting to a point where, when confronted with people claiming they know something about this, I ask: "Do you have sources I can check?" and I get nothing in return. If it's false or true, I think we should know, especially if it's false (that there's a difference in IQ among different ethnic groups). Because when we know it's false, this topic can be put to rest.

https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) presented general readers an update of the evidence for the hereditarian position along with several policy recommendations and an original analysis of 11,878 youths (including 3,022 Blacks) from the 12-year National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It found that most 17-year-olds with high scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, regardless of ethnic background, went on to occupational success by their late 20s and early 30s, whereas those with low scores were more inclined to welfare dependency. The study also found that the average IQ for African Americans was lower than those for Latino, White, Asian, and Jewish Americans (85, 89, 103, 106, and 113, respectively; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, pp. 273–278). Currently, the 1.1 standard deviation difference in average IQ between Blacks and Whites in the United States is not in itself a matter of empirical dispute. A meta-analytic review by Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, and Tyler (2001) showed it also holds for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT; N 2.4 million) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE; N 2.3 million), as well as for tests for job applicants in corporate settings (N 0.5 million) and in the military (N 0.4 million). Because test scores are the best predictor of economic success in Western society (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), these group differences have important societal outcomes (R. A. Gordon, 1997; Gottfredson, 1997). The question that still remains is whether the cause of group differences in average IQ is purely social, economic, and cultural or whether genetic factors are also involved. Following publication of The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association (APA) established an 11-person Task Force (Neisser et al., 1996) to evaluate the book’s conclusions. Based on their review of twin and other kinship studies, the Task Force for the most part agreed with Jensen’s (1969) Harvard Educational Review article and The Bell Curve, that within the White population the heritability of IQ is “around .75” (p. 85). As to the cause of the mean Black–White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: “There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation” (p. 97).

 

[SestoScudo]

Not really. If they use facts in their articles, they are not biased. But then there is a problem for some of you: what is a fact? From the Cambridge English dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fact
"Something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information: "

Kotaku and Polygon are for example heavily biased because they use the social justice propaganda in their articles and they have been caught lying on several occasion.



I said one source, I'll update this post today with more. I have a feeling though that you won't accept any of it no matter what I post. Post me this many (or at least 5) article or video of the right doing the censorship. I can post many more of the far-left doing it.

Sony headquaters moving to California causing censorship:

Spoiler

Superchat bans:

Spoiler

Patreon deplatforming of Sargon of Akkad over saying several non-pc words:

Spoiler

"Game journalists" defending chinese censorship in Rainbow Six Siege:

Spoiler

Richard Dawkins event cancelled:

Spoiler

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...ncelled-over-his-abusive-speech-against-islam
btw this is a great video from him on the regressive left:

Sex robot convention cancelled over Steve Bannon guest speaker slot: (notice that Steve Bannon caused the outrage, isn't the sex robots, so you can't say it was the right who was against this event)

Spoiler

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/79684...n-cancelled-steve-bannon-campaigners-protest/

Bloomberg article on free speech:

Spoiler

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-07-05/free-speech-divides-the-left-and-the-right

Souther Poverty Law Center declaring Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as anti-muslim(sic!) extremist:

Spoiler

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...ajid-nawaz-splc-anti-muslim-extremist/505685/

Ayaan al Hirsi is so progressive that she advocates for genocide that if Muslims do not reform and they should be bombed for it.

To be honest what she adovcates is no different than terrorists.

Not to mention building a career built on lies.

 

[zzz_pt]

Yep lots, and the American Society of Human Genetics actually put out a debunking of it, along with links to the peer reviewed material that debunks it.
https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(18)30363-X

https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(18)30363-X

That debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined, which anyone with a basic knowledge of biology and genetics should know by now. All of us have genes from everyone and everywhere. But it doesn't address the studies made with people from different ethnic backgrounds in different parts of the world and IQ.

@Johnnypenso shared a link that has some data reletive to that.

That it's being challenged in court as it has no place.

I'm curious to see what will happen in the long run if the court decides the different standards are illegal. Will most of Harvard and other top Universtities be mostly teaching to asians? That will raise other questions for sure.

https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

I've read that part and the following text. After the sentence "There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation", they say "Among the factors contributing to the longstanding lack of resolution of this important and controversial issue are the difficulty of the subject matter, the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse, and the different meta-theoretical perspectives of the experimental and correlational methodologies." Which means, "no support for a genetic interpretation" is founded on the bases of lack of conclusive data that genes are the main reason for what researchers find, as opposed to environment.

It seems that that there is data relating different ethnic groups / populations and IQ tests. There are different questions the authors raise too, including precisley the one related to Harvard (which is in court atm).

In bold: This is for sure what makes the topic so sensible. With white supremacists, racialists, people who call for eugenicts, etc, anyone who approaches the topic with a ten foot pole, risks getting labeled as racist and all the other adjectives.

Ayaan al Hirsi is so progressive that she advocates for genocide that if Muslims do not reform and they should be bombed for it.
To be honest what she adovcates is no different than terrorists.
Not to mention building a career built on lies.

Do you have a source for that? Those are some serious accusations, especially to someone who has s fatwa to his name for leaving and criticizing Islam, who lost a friend to jihadists because he made a video about Islam, and who has to go around with bodyguards because there are some extremists who want here head on a plate.

 

[Scaff]

That debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined, which anyone with a basic knowledge of biology and genetics should know by now. All of us have genes from everyone and everywhere. But it doesn't address the studies made with people from different ethnic backgrounds in different parts of the world and IQ.

Yes it does, you can replace the term 'race' with 'ethnic' and claim its a different point.

It also doesn't "debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined", it flat out states that race is a social construct not a genetic factor.

Numerous studies have shown that as much genetic difference exists within any given population/ethnic grouping as across it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4687076/
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/
https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/supplements/popstructSupp.pdf
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

One case study even used Watson to debunk his own claim:

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

"It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

"Essentially, I could not agree more with the authors," said Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who worked on the Neanderthal genome but was not involved with the new paper.

"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."

@Johnnypenso shared a link that has some data reletive to that.

Ah 'The Bell Curve'

Lets list the inherent issues that exist with it:

• It was never peer reviewed prior to publication
• It was not published in a scientific journal
• Peer review after publication has pointed out the massive flaws and contradictions with it
• The authors themselves never stated race and IQ were singularly linked factors (and have since been shown in peer review to be incorrect in regard to even a partial link

You also seem to have misinterpreted the last part of @Johnnypenso quote from the APA task force report on the book, which clearly rejects the race based link:

"As to the cause of the mean Black–White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: “There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation""

That rejection is based on evidence and repeated peer review, now even if it wasn't that doesn't (scientifically) support inserting anything you like into it.

Its also missleading to suggest that science has avoided the area in terms of research and debate, the evidence exists by the boat-load to show that its been discussed and researched massively. Its a line rolled out by the far-right and white supremacists (that has unfortunately gained ground in the mainstream) to try and support the debunked while ignoring the massive body of peer-reviewed evidence and discussion debunking the link.


So, no 'The Bell Curve' isn't evidence to support a link between race and IQ at all, and to interpret as such is to ignore a massive body of evidence that has been presented in peer review, to ignore the inherent flaws in the basic pillars its based upon (the main one being to assume the data is sound to start with and that IQ can be measured accurately via a single test) and to ignore the limitations te work itself put on the link (and have been further refuted - to the point that they are simply not correct).

In short you have to cheery pick from an already massively flawed source, created using flawed data and concepts, and ignore every single piece of peer review in order to draw a conclusion that 'The Bell Curve' supports such a link.

In short, genetic traits and abnormalities can influence intelligence (however how to accurately measure intelligence consistently is itself open to debate) Down's Syndrome is one such example. However genetic variation is so vast, both within population/ethnic groups as well as across them, that it isn't and can't be linked to one of the seven social construct groups described as 'race' in any unique way.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yes it does, you can replace the term 'race' with 'ethnic' and claim its a different point.

It also doesn't "debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined", it flat out states that race is a social construct not a genetic factor.

Numerous studies have shown that as much genetic difference exists within any given population/ethnic grouping as across it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4687076/
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/
https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/supplements/popstructSupp.pdf
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

One case study even used Watson to debunk his own claim:

View attachment 792835
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

"It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

"Essentially, I could not agree more with the authors," said Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who worked on the Neanderthal genome but was not involved with the new paper.

"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."



Ah 'The Bell Curve'

Lets list the inherent issues that exist with it:

• It was never peer reviewed prior to publication
• It was not published in a scientific journal
• Peer review after publication has pointed out the massive flaws and contradictions with it
• The authors themselves never stated race and IQ were singularly linked factors (and have since been shown in peer review to be incorrect in regard to even a partial link

You also seem to have misinterpreted the last part of @Johnnypenso quote from the APA task force report on the book, which clearly rejects the race based link:

"As to the cause of the mean Black–White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: “There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation""

That rejection is based on evidence and repeated peer review, now even if it wasn't that doesn't (scientifically) support inserting anything you like into it.

Its also missleading to suggest that science has avoided the area in terms of research and debate, the evidence exists by the boat-load to show that its been discussed and researched massively. Its a line rolled out by the far-right and white supremacists (that has unfortunately gained ground in the mainstream) to try and support the debunked while ignoring the massive body of peer-reviewed evidence and discussion debunking the link.


So, no 'The Bell Curve' isn't evidence to support a link between race and IQ at all, and to interpret as such is to ignore a massive body of evidence that has been presented in peer review, to ignore the inherent flaws in the basic pillars its based upon (the main one being to assume the data is sound to start with and that IQ can be measured accurately via a single test) and to ignore the limitations te work itself put on the link (and have been further refuted - to the point that they are simply not correct).

In short you have to cheery pick from an already massively flawed source, created using flawed data and concepts, and ignore every single piece of peer review in order to draw a conclusion that 'The Bell Curve' supports such a link.

In short, genetic traits and abnormalities can influence intelligence (however how to accurately measure intelligence consistently is itself open to debate) Down's Syndrome is one such example. However genetic variation is so vast, both within population/ethnic groups as well as across them, that it isn't and can't be linked to one of the seven social construct groups described as 'race' in any unique way.

The APA, after review, does not dispute the findings. There may not be evidence to conclude a genetic link but the differences in IQ between blacks and whites in the study is legitimate.

The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.

 

[Scaff]

The APA, after review, does not dispute the findings. There may not be evidence to conclude a genetic link but the differences in IQ between blacks and whites in the study is legitimate.

The APA report was published in 1996, and I've already linked to a massive volume of far more recent peer reviewed papers that debunk that notion utterly and repeatedly.

You're also ignoring every single piece of critical peer review carried out on 'The Bell Curve' itself, which to be blunt odd given that it undermines utterly the legitimacy of the 'study' (and given that it wasn't peer reviewed prior to publishing or published in a know journal is a generous term to say the least).

You see the 'at present' bit you quoted? That was 22 years ago, a good deal of research has been carried out since then that does change it. Well, unless I'm 26 again and writing this via dial-up.

Edited to add that you also missed the other issues and unanswered questions they had with the book.

1. Differences in genetic endowment contribute substantially to individual differences in (psychometric) intelligence, but the pathway by which genes produce their effects is still unknown. The impact of genetic differences appears to increase with age, but we do not know why.
2. Environmental factors also contribute substantially to the development of intelligence, but we do not clearly understand what those factors are or how they work. Attendance at school is certainly important, for example, but we do not know what aspects of schooling are critical.
3. The role of nutrition in intelligence remains obscure. Severe childhood malnutrition has clear negative effects, but the hypothesis that particular "micro-nutrients" may affect intelligence in otherwise adequately-fed populations has not yet been convincingly demonstrated.
4. There are significant correlations between measures of information processing speed and psychometric intelligence, but the overall pattern of these findings yields no easy theoretical interpretation.
5. Mean scores on intelligence tests are rising steadily. They have gone up a full standard deviation in the last fifty years or so, and the rate of gain may be increasing. No one is sure why these gains are happening or what they mean.
6. The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.
7. It is widely agreed that standardized tests do not sample all forms of intelligence. Obvious examples include creativity, wisdom, practical sense and social sensitivity; there are surely others. Despite the importance of these abilities we know very little about them: how they develop, what factors influence that development, how they are related to more traditional measures.

Now in scientific terms unanswered questions call for hypothesis, not conclusion (and conclusion is what the book does - hence the reason in the last 22 years peer review has ripped it apart). In the last 22 years many of these questions, and specifically the genetic ones, have been answered, and the answers don;t support the hypothesis or (incorrectly framed) conclusions of the book.

Cherry picking from one part of the APA report isn't a great idea when the material is in the public domain, and analysis of its key points include:

As for specific assessments of The Bell Curve, the findings of the task force can be summed up in three points:

• Much of the book's data are accurate, especially when addressing the fundamentals of intelligence and IQ testing. One of the stated purposes of the book was to serve as an introduction to the topic, and in this respect the book succeeded. Stephen Ceci, Ph.D., said that despite Herrnstein and Murray's political agenda, they have been "the clearest and most comprehensive writers" on the topic to date. (6)
  
• However, much of the data are also wrong, and analysis of it severely flawed. Halford Fairchild, Ph.D., who led one of the panels assessing the scientific accuracy of the book, summed up their conclusions this way: "The scientific basis of The Bell Curve is fraudulent." (7) Indeed, some of the errors were so large as to be attributable to non-experts attempting to write in the field.
  
• The policy recommendations suggested at the end of the book do not follow from the book's own arguments on genes and IQ. On this point the task force was emphatic: it called The Bell Curve a "political" work, not a "scientific" one. (8)

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bellcurvescience.htm



However feel free to ignore 22 years of peer-reviewed work, the professional body of 8,000 US geneticists, and actual science because it doesn't support the conclusion you want.

 

[SestoScudo]

That debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined, which anyone with a basic knowledge of biology and genetics should know by now. All of us have genes from everyone and everywhere. But it doesn't address the studies made with people from different ethnic backgrounds in different parts of the world and IQ.

@Johnnypenso shared a link that has some data reletive to that.



I'm curious to see what will happen in the long run if the court decides the different standards are illegal. Will most of Harvard and other top Universtities be mostly teaching to asians? That will raise other questions for sure.



I've read that part and the following text. After the sentence "There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation", they say "Among the factors contributing to the longstanding lack of resolution of this important and controversial issue are the difficulty of the subject matter, the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse, and the different meta-theoretical perspectives of the experimental and correlational methodologies." Which means, "no support for a genetic interpretation" is founded on the bases of lack of conclusive data that genes are the main reason for what researchers find, as opposed to environment.

It seems that that there is data relating different ethnic groups / populations and IQ tests. There are different questions the authors raise too, including precisley the one related to Harvard (which is in court atm).

In bold: This is for sure what makes the topic so sensible. With white supremacists, racialists, people who call for eugenicts, etc, anyone who approaches the topic with a ten foot pole, risks getting labeled as racist and all the other adjectives.



Do you have a source for that? Those are some serious accusations, especially to someone who has s fatwa to his name for leaving and criticizing Islam, who lost a friend to jihadists because he made a video about Islam, and who has to go around with bodyguards because there are some extremists who want here head on a plate.

She said we are at war with Islam until they change they deserve what they get.

Not to mention she seems to be a big fan of Martin Luther.

She seems like a classic case of being a neo colonist.

"When I speak of assimilation", Ali clarifies, "I mean assimilation into civilization. Aboriginals, Afghanis, Somalis, Arabs, Native Americans—all these non-Western groups have to make that transition to modernity".

If she lived in the colonial era you really think she would be treated any less even if she wasnt Muslim

 

[G.T.Ace]

The APA report was published in 1996, and I've already linked to a massive volume of far more recent peer reviewed papers that debunk that notion utterly and repeatedly.

You're also ignoring every single piece of critical peer review carried out on 'The Bell Curve' itself, which to be blunt odd given that it undermines utterly the legitimacy of the 'study' (and given that it wasn't peer reviewed prior to publishing or published in a know journal is a generous term to say the least).

You see the 'at present' bit you quoted? That was 22 years ago, a good deal of research has been carried out since then that does change it. Well, unless I'm 26 again and writing this via dial-up.

Edited to add that you also missed the other issues and unanswered questions they had with the book.

1. Differences in genetic endowment contribute substantially to individual differences in (psychometric) intelligence, but the pathway by which genes produce their effects is still unknown. The impact of genetic differences appears to increase with age, but we do not know why.
2. Environmental factors also contribute substantially to the development of intelligence, but we do not clearly understand what those factors are or how they work. Attendance at school is certainly important, for example, but we do not know what aspects of schooling are critical.
3. The role of nutrition in intelligence remains obscure. Severe childhood malnutrition has clear negative effects, but the hypothesis that particular "micro-nutrients" may affect intelligence in otherwise adequately-fed populations has not yet been convincingly demonstrated.
4. There are significant correlations between measures of information processing speed and psychometric intelligence, but the overall pattern of these findings yields no easy theoretical interpretation.
5. Mean scores on intelligence tests are rising steadily. They have gone up a full standard deviation in the last fifty years or so, and the rate of gain may be increasing. No one is sure why these gains are happening or what they mean.
6. The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.
7. It is widely agreed that standardized tests do not sample all forms of intelligence. Obvious examples include creativity, wisdom, practical sense and social sensitivity; there are surely others. Despite the importance of these abilities we know very little about them: how they develop, what factors influence that development, how they are related to more traditional measures.

Now in scientific terms unanswered questions call for hypothesis, not conclusion (and conclusion is what the book does - hence the reason in the last 22 years peer review has ripped it apart). In the last 22 years many of these questions, and specifically the genetic ones, have been answered, and the answers don;t support the hypothesis or (incorrectly framed) conclusions of the book.

Cherry picking from one part of the APA report isn't a great idea when the material is in the public domain, and analysis of its key points include:

As for specific assessments of The Bell Curve, the findings of the task force can be summed up in three points:

• Much of the book's data are accurate, especially when addressing the fundamentals of intelligence and IQ testing. One of the stated purposes of the book was to serve as an introduction to the topic, and in this respect the book succeeded. Stephen Ceci, Ph.D., said that despite Herrnstein and Murray's political agenda, they have been "the clearest and most comprehensive writers" on the topic to date. (6)
  
• However, much of the data are also wrong, and analysis of it severely flawed. Halford Fairchild, Ph.D., who led one of the panels assessing the scientific accuracy of the book, summed up their conclusions this way: "The scientific basis of The Bell Curve is fraudulent." (7) Indeed, some of the errors were so large as to be attributable to non-experts attempting to write in the field.
  
• The policy recommendations suggested at the end of the book do not follow from the book's own arguments on genes and IQ. On this point the task force was emphatic: it called The Bell Curve a "political" work, not a "scientific" one. (8)

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bellcurvescience.htm



However feel free to ignore 22 years of peer-reviewed work, the professional body of 8,000 US geneticists, and actual science because it doesn't support the conclusion you want.

 

[zzz_pt]

Yes it does, you can replace the term 'race' with 'ethnic' and claim its a different point.

It also doesn't "debunks the concept of race as something that can be clearly defined", it flat out states that race is a social construct not a genetic factor.

Numerous studies have shown that as much genetic difference exists within any given population/ethnic grouping as across it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4687076/
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/
https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/supplements/popstructSupp.pdf
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

One case study even used Watson to debunk his own claim:

View attachment 792835
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

"It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

"Essentially, I could not agree more with the authors," said Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who worked on the Neanderthal genome but was not involved with the new paper.

"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."



Ah 'The Bell Curve'

Lets list the inherent issues that exist with it:

• It was never peer reviewed prior to publication
• It was not published in a scientific journal
• Peer review after publication has pointed out the massive flaws and contradictions with it
• The authors themselves never stated race and IQ were singularly linked factors (and have since been shown in peer review to be incorrect in regard to even a partial link

You also seem to have misinterpreted the last part of @Johnnypenso quote from the APA task force report on the book, which clearly rejects the race based link:

"As to the cause of the mean Black–White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: “There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation""

That rejection is based on evidence and repeated peer review, now even if it wasn't that doesn't (scientifically) support inserting anything you like into it.

Its also missleading to suggest that science has avoided the area in terms of research and debate, the evidence exists by the boat-load to show that its been discussed and researched massively. Its a line rolled out by the far-right and white supremacists (that has unfortunately gained ground in the mainstream) to try and support the debunked while ignoring the massive body of peer-reviewed evidence and discussion debunking the link.


So, no 'The Bell Curve' isn't evidence to support a link between race and IQ at all, and to interpret as such is to ignore a massive body of evidence that has been presented in peer review, to ignore the inherent flaws in the basic pillars its based upon (the main one being to assume the data is sound to start with and that IQ can be measured accurately via a single test) and to ignore the limitations te work itself put on the link (and have been further refuted - to the point that they are simply not correct).

In short you have to cheery pick from an already massively flawed source, created using flawed data and concepts, and ignore every single piece of peer review in order to draw a conclusion that 'The Bell Curve' supports such a link.

In short, genetic traits and abnormalities can influence intelligence (however how to accurately measure intelligence consistently is itself open to debate) Down's Syndrome is one such example. However genetic variation is so vast, both within population/ethnic groups as well as across them, that it isn't and can't be linked to one of the seven social construct groups described as 'race' in any unique way.

First, I didn't ignore that sentence in bold. It's in my freaking post! I seriously think you don't read what you're replying to or deliberaty pretend to do it to annoy people.

What comes after that sentence though reads "Among the factors contributing to the longstanding lack of resolution of this important and controversial issue (...)". When I looked at the date of the article, I saw "2005", so I assumed it wasn't a claim from the Bell Curve (and it isn't because there's no reference at the end of it and it's not in quotations).

I also didn't claim "Science" has avoided the area. I wrote that the topic is sensible because of the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse. And I added why: "With white supremacists, racialists, people who call for eugenicts, etc, anyone who approaches the topic with a ten foot pole, risks getting labeled (and I'll add now percieved) as racist and all the other adjectives."

And that seems to be exactly what you did, looking at the patronizing and condescending tone you used. It looks ridiculous to be honest. I didn't claim to have any knowledge or position about this topic, didn't say The Bell Curve is the sheet and didn't claim the book is scientific or even accurate. In fact I didn't use the book for anything. If there's something I know from the podcast Sam Harris had with Murray is that the book is polical and the IQ issue is a small chapter - I have no idea if it's true but I have no reason to belive otherwise.

From what you've posted though, it seems that you've encounter some people who think race and IQ is a real scientific, cut and dry, thing, and you lash out whenever someone who's a layman on this topic asks about it.

In any case, thanks for the links. I'll look into those when I can.

She said we are at war with Islam until they change they deserve what they get.

Not to mention she seems to be a big fan of Martin Luther.

She seems like a classic case of being a neo colonist.

"When I speak of assimilation", Ali clarifies, "I mean assimilation into civilization. Aboriginals, Afghanis, Somalis, Arabs, Native Americans—all these non-Western groups have to make that transition to modernity".

If she lived in the colonial era you really think she would be treated any less even if she wasnt Muslim

Nothing of this is calling for a genocide. And if you think bringing people with backwards practices and beliefs into the 21st century is a bad thing, than I don't know what you'd call me, because I agree with her.

Also, what's the problem with being a fan of Martin Luther? I find that wird, would need more context.

 

[Scaff]

First, I didn't ignore that sentence in bold. It's in my freaking post! I seriously think you don't read what you're replying to or deliberaty pretend to do it to annoy people.

I didn't say you ignored it, I said (and you quoted) that you "seem to have misinterpreted", which is quite a different thing.

As such to try and claim I don't read what I am replying to is rather ironic.

What comes after that sentence though reads "Among the factors contributing to the longstanding lack of resolution of this important and controversial issue (...)". When I looked at the date of the article, I saw "2005", so I assumed it wasn't a claim from the Bell Curve (and it isn't because there's no reference at the end of it and it's not in quotations).

The very first words in JP's post after the link are "The Bell Curve presented".

How on earth did you manage to miss that?

I also didn't claim "Science" has avoided the area. I wrote that the topic is sensible because of the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse. And I added why: "With white supremacists, racialists, people who call for eugenicts, etc, anyone who approaches the topic with a ten foot pole, risks getting labeled (and I'll add now percieved) as racist and all the other adjectives."

I didn't say you had. YOu did however say it was a topic that people avoided due to the negative lables that can get applied to them (your inference - not mine), I simply pointed out (and provided sources to support) that this is not the case and that a great deal of research has been carried out in this area, it just debunks what was claimed in 'The Bell Curve'.

And that seems to be exactly what you did, looking at the patronizing and condescending tone you used. It looks ridiculous to be honest. I didn't claim to have any knowledge or position about this topic, didn't say The Bell Curve is the sheet and didn't claim the book is scientific or even accurate. In fact I didn't use the book for anything. If there's something I know from the podcast Sam Harris had with Murray is that the book is polical and the IQ issue is a small chapter - I have no idea if it's true but I have no reason to belive otherwise.

From what you've posted though, it seems that you've encounter some people who think race and IQ is a real scientific, cut and dry, thing, and you lash out whenever someone who's a layman on this topic asks about it.

Nope.

I used peer reviewed sources to show that the data JP provided was not 'relevant to that', but rather is inaccurate and has been debunked repeatedly.

Please also keep in mind that while I quoted you, I also tagged JP in my reply, as such it was aimed at addressing point you both raised.

In any case, thanks for the links. I'll look into those when I can.

No problem

Also, what's the problem with being a fan of Martin Luther? I find that wird, would need more context.

Well assuming its in refernce to the original one and not the 20th century one, then the rather rabid antisemitism would be the first issue that springs to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism

 

[TenEightyOne]

The APA report was published in 1996, and I've already linked to a massive volume of far more recent peer reviewed papers that debunk that notion utterly and repeatedly.

Further to that... in a long discussion with @HenrySwanson in a previous incarnation a lot of evidence was raised about damage to potential IQ levels in malaria zones, something which has been far more well-understood in the last twenty years. Exposure to malaria has significant long-term effects on childrens' development.

 

[Dobermann92]

Ayaan al Hirsi is so progressive that she advocates for genocide that if Muslims do not reform and they should be bombed for it.

To be honest what she adovcates is no different than terrorists.

Not to mention building a career built on lies.

Evidence please?

What lies? She received female genital mutilation at a young age and left from home when her parents tried to arrange her marriage. I think this is enough reason to advocate for a reform. Or for example in the recent news there is a saudi girl who escaped to Thailand because her parents arranged her a marriage which she doesn't want. But with her act she is the target of the family, because in Saudi-Arabia there is a thing called honour killing where the father and the brothers of a family member can (and propagated by culture to) kill a disobeying family member without receiving harsh treatment for it. I don't understand how can anyone defend this horrid system.

 

[Dennisch]

I don't understand how can anyone defend this horrid system

Being brainwashed into believing fairytales at an early age does help a lot.

 

[UKMikey]

I'm not sure how saying to wipe out Islam en masse and crush 1.5 million Muslims under our boot is an extreme viewpoint equals defending honour killings and FGM. Is there anyone here who says they are a good thing?

[EDIT: added link]

 

[Dobermann92]

I'm not sure how saying to wipe out Islam en masse and crush 1.5 million Muslims under our boot is an extreme viewpoint equals defending honour killings and FGM. Is there anyone here who says they are a good thing?

[EDIT: added link]

Can you read in context please? She did not say it, your source is proving that.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?


Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.


Reason: Militarily?


Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Which means she does not advocating for genocide at all. All is she saying that we have to fight back. Have to spread radical islamisation. She said that we have a duty to fight against islam spreading in the West. It includes wars if we have to, but she mentions other methods first. There is no mention of mass genocide in this article, nor was she advocating for it.

If you read the whole interview you see what is her point in all of this, why is she saying that.
Another great speaker in this topic is Douglas Murray, I'm reading his book The Strange Death of Europe in my free time.

 

[UKMikey]

Hirsi Ali: There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.


Reason: Militarily?


Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Which means she does not advocating for genocide at all. All is she saying that we have to fight back.

You'll have to explain a little more because it sounds like she is saying that Islam is the enemy and has to be crushed in all forms. Not sure where the word genocide was mentioned.

At least you aren't saying that people on this board are supporting honour killings and FGM any more which is progress of a kind I guess.

 

[Dobermann92]

You'll have to explain a little more because it sounds like she is saying that Islam is the enemy and has to be crushed in all forms. Not sure where the word genocide was mentioned.

At least you aren't saying that people on this board are supporting honour killings and FGM any more which is progress of a kind I guess.

Yes, she is saying it, but not in the literal sense. Crushing=defeating=overcome. So for example if a university student is propagating islamic propaganda in a university, they should be stopped and we have to explain to the students why it is bad, harmful to do such behaviour.
We should try to eliminate (I don't know a better word for it, but I mean "get rid of") the radical islamic groups in Europe and in the US in the poorest districts and educate those young radicalised believers how to behave in the West and if they want to be welcomed here they should obey our laws.
And if we are in war with an islamic state (like ISIS) then we have to do everything to stop them, even if this means that we have to lock up or liquidate their leaders (which I don't support, however I can get behind how somebody can feel that a person who think they can do anything and they reach their goals by harming a large group of people and deceiving others should be killed, however these organizations usually has multiple leaders, so it would only handicap them for a limited time period). I'm pretty sure Ayaan Hirsi Ali would never advocate killing or even jailing those who did not harm anybody, especially women and children. She is very open about her reasons and reading the interview about her clarify what is her goal. But she is just one person, maybe she is a bit radical for some, but she (unlike me, who was raised in Europe in a secular family) has personal experience in this, so I think her view of it is much closer to the truth than ours.

I know a person who supports FGM although with medical supervisory, which is somewhat understandable, but I still think he is wrong. He thinks banning is too radical, but I think it is a very harmful act on a woman and it affects her sexual life very drastically so in my opinion no woman should suffer from it.
(little personal note: I'm circumcised because of a medical problem and it doesn't affect my sexual life at all, so in males it isn't as drastic as with females, although doing it for religious reasons feels odd, so I would oppose it as I would oppose the female version)

Defending honour killings or any other type of murder (even executions) feels very bad, (for me at least) and most of the people aren't supporting that. It is against good morals to defend that, I think most of the sane people would not go this far if thinking logically.

By the way, English isn't my native language, so writing in this topic requires a lot of translation work for me, so I'm sorry if I was vague in some of the explanations.

 

[UKMikey]

I'm pretty sure Ayaan Hirsi Ali would never advocate killing or even jailing those who did not harm anybody, especially women and children. She is very open about her reasons and reading the interview about her clarify what is her goal. But she is just one person, maybe she is a bit radical for some, but she (unlike me, who was raised in Europe in a secular family) has personal experience in this, so I think her view of it is much closer to the truth than ours.

There is no moderate Islam and the only good Muslims are bad Muslims, is how the following page of the interview looks to me. She may not be jailing or killing the moderates whose existence she denies but it sounds like they wouldn't have the right to worship if she were running things. It sounds like a pretty hardline stance.

Reason: George Bush, not the most conciliatory person in the world, has said on plenty of occasions that we are not at war with Islam.
Hirsi Ali: If the most powerful man in the West talks like that, then, without intending to, he’s making radical Muslims think they’ve already won. There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.
Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?
Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.