SubscribeIn the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)
I know it's not politically correct to point this out, but people who equate IQ test results with intelligence tend to be, like Mensa members, self-absorbed social retards. Go ahead, villify me for speaking truth to power.I'm not going to vilify you for speaking truth to power.
The concept of "race" is virtually meaningless scientifically.I've often heard this, but I'm not really sure what it's supposed to actually mean.
Whatever behavior or ability we see as desirable, we designate as an element of intelligence.That's simply not true. IQ tests don't include, for example, questions about how often you should brush your teeth, nor do they include punt, pass, and kick tests.
Flunkie, I am "white" and my wife is "Asian". But if anyone ever called our son "mixed-race" I would punch them in the nose.Good for you. But that really has nothing to do with what I said.
"So tonight, I would like to announce, categorically, and for the last time, that, and I am not being coy, I am not running for president. I know these lumps are trying to tell me something. Phrenology is study of the lumps on your head. It’d be another good campaign slogan."*
You're testing What Joe Average Thinks About Race, not the scientific concept of race.What "scientific concept of race"?
2. A thought experiment is by definition non-scientific.Fine, I concur to that. You didn't answer whether you doubted it or not.
3. Falsificationism is a refuted methodological theory. (See Feyerabend, Against Method).Sorry, I'm not going to "see" your reference during this casual conversation. I'm honestly not sure what you're getting at here, though; I believe that falsification is at the very heart of science.
You haven't defined what "scientific" means, and you have a very Vanity Fair definition of science.Please stop trying to draw broad conclusions about me based upon ten sentences that you've seen me write. "Scientific" as in "the scientific method".
5. I take "scientifically valid" to mean "there are more genetic differences on average between races than there are within them."By this definition, I strongly suspect that the concepts of "tall" or "prone to heart disease" are not "scientifically valid".
6. The proposed experiment does not test that hypothesis at all.So what? It tests whether something that people mean by "race" can be measured.
7. The hypothesis in #5 has been refuted by anthropological studies.Good. I don't doubt it, and I'm glad to hear it.
So that means there is a big-nosed race?No, it would mean that the concept of big-nosedness as an inheritable thing that people can detect is scientifically meaningful.
All your test demonstrates is the inheritance of physical characteristics.Why do you think that I disagree with this?
It doesn't demonstrate the scientific validity of cordoning off groups of humans with similar characteristics into "races"Why do you think I think it does?
If you're going to link race and intelligenceWhich I didn't, don't, and which I've explicitly tried to say many times that I don't.
Well, shit dude, maybe you had better learn to write a little better so you can get your point across.Exactly what in anything that I said led you to believe that I disagree with the idea that all my proposed test would show is that physical characteristics are inheritable?
If you want to show the existence of race, you have to define race properly.I didn't explicitly define it there, of course, but I thought that it should have been clear from my original post that I was defining "race" as in "the general consensus of whether a person is 'white' or 'black' or whatever".
Delete this thread and Flunkie with it.What offensive thing did I say? Seriously?
You just don't get it, do you? "General consensus" doesn't prove jack squatExcuse me, but you seem to "not just get" that I'm not trying to "prove" anything except that one poster's claim that "the concept of race is virtually scientifically meaningless" doesn't seem entirely accurate to me.
Well, race is meaningless scientifically. In debating that point you come off as advocating the idea that race is a measurable, scientific categoryDo you think that that experiment would not measure it?
and as such you are lending validity to the racial correlations with intelligence.No I'm not.
I don't care if you think racial intelligence differences exist. You claimed "Race exists and it is scientifically meaningful." You defined race as "General consensus." That does not constitute adequate proof, because in order to test for the existence and significance of something you need criteria independent from the assumptions you are trying to test. What you are doing is constructing an ad hoc hypothesis.The fact that the general consensus is (I strongly believe) inheritable, in a scientifically measurable way, is what I am pointing out.
Didn't I also read that the 100 point on IQ tests is set at the median and that it is adjusted every few years?
I'm also in more of the camp that critical thinking can be taught (Edward de Bono) and that by training the specific skills/questions that they test for in IQ tests you will simply score higher on them.
posted by so_ at 11:55 AM on November 18, 2007