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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/11/1999 12:34:00 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

jbe, res- 1) It is hardly one-sided. The race=intelligence folks have a clear-cut political agenda themselves, which tends to appeal to the far-right political fringe. How would you define far right? Michael

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/11/1999 12:41:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

Intelligence has so many factors in it- that is seems like an almost impossible task to sort them out for study. Perhpas I should have made it clear, when I said that studies into sex and racial differences should be done, that I meant primarily physiological differences. Cultural differences do not have as great an influence upon the physiology as upon the intellect (imo- maybe I'm wrong here-diet certainly makes a difference in physiology and disease processes, but diet makes a difference to intelligence too- and then with intelligence EVERYTHING else becomes important as well).

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/11/1999 12:47:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

I am not surprised about the connection between the researchers and the racists. My erstwhile partner is/was a great admirer of that type of research. He and I argued about it at least weekly. I would always take the "so what" position. Me: "Let's assume for the sake of the argument that IQ tests, and ability tests, really can rank groups of people, by race, by culture, by sex, by color, whatever. That doesn't tell you anything about the abilities of any given individual within that group. So what?" He: "If, say, black people scored lower as a group on IQ tests, maybe the government should a) stop spending money on trying to give them college educations; b) concentrate on educating them for blue collar jobs; c) forget about affirmative action, it's a waste of time and money." Me: "Well, then, what if Asian people score higher than white people on IQ tests or ability tests. Should the government then do what you suggest - stop wasting money educating white people and concentrate on educating Asians?" He never would answer questions like that.

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/11/1999 12:47:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 108807

>An awful lot of charlatanry has been peddled under the name of "science." < And not all of it has been confined to the thick underbrush of the "soft sciences". There's a fellow called Velikovsky who's been hyping some truly outrageous theories about the planets interacting. They're amusing, and it's sorta too bad the fellow was serious.

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/12/1999 4:39:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<<<). IQ tests, for example, do not measure "intuition" -- i.e., the ability to see connections that are not obvious -- which is in turn related to that non-measurable (or at least non-measured faculty, "creative ability.">>> I'm of Cobe's So What School on this. But the above statement of yours struck me as dubious. Are you sure that IQ tests do not measure an ability to see connections that are not obvious? Can you provide any evidence of that? If they don't measure that, they measure nothing at all, do they? And they do measure something. It may be a So What, but it's something.

To: jbe who wrote (44849)	7/13/1999 11:21:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Dear Joan, The whole discussion of race and IQ is impossible to resolve because the people who do the work cannot yet measure the genetic component of their experimental subjects. Until it is possible to distinguish the particular alleles carried by one person from those carried by another, they are simply guessing that subject 1324 is "black" or "white." No one I know working on subjects where "race" is important is satisfied with the definitions. All human populations are descended from different human strains. Very few populations have been isolated for long enough to be genetically different enough to matter except with some genes more related to appearance than functionality. We know, of course, that particular populations display marked superiority in certain functions are obvious. Polynesians are genetically superior to Japanese in Sumo (or to anyone else, for that matter). But I think it will turn out that the genes that allow them to have thick strong bones and bulk up very large and still be able to move will turn out to be more important than the whole set of genes that they have. I also believe that if we could get a gorilla reclassified as "man" that the average full-grown adult male gorilla could easily be trained into a Yokozuna. It is not the 96 percent of genes that men and gorillas have in common that matters, but a very small set particularly suited to the task that make the difference.