Serpent -
And I've pointed out why the testing is not helpful in understanding this process. The time-lag. The 15 years and hundreds of other factors that intervene between prenatal conditions and IQ testing. However, the various kinds of intelligence do manifest in early childhood. Babies respond differently to different stimuli and you can tell quite a lot about their individual personality and thinking process by careful observation. A babysitter could tell which of her charges are extroverted, timid, bright, adventurous, pensive or slow.
It's not measurable yet, but it's evident.
And I've presented data and information to say quite clearly that you're wrong. Genetics are a big influence and prenatal differences have been noted and recorded as influencing IQ scores - that is just a fact whilst you're merely expressing an opinion.
Education is the only viable application of standard testing. Even in the army, it was just to sort out which recruits were suitable for educating. In other areas of life, IQ testing tells you nothing useful.
In your uninformed opinion.
That's what I haven't been able to figure out: what benefits you're talking about. And to whom?
Why does the mountaineer climb the mountain? Why do mathematicians try to solve obscure seemingly useless abstract problems? There doesn't have to be a goal for curiosity. I am a little puzzled why that idea is hard for you to absorb tbh.
That's the other thing I can't figure out. What have social activity and nutrition to do with each other (other than people like to eat together) and what either has to do with IQ scores. It seems to me, people have already got social lives and their interaction can be studied - but not measured by an intelligence test. Odds are, average people find friends and mates more readily than exceptional ones, simply due to the numbers.
I can't figure out why you are unable to grasp the idea that nutrition effects health (including brain development - especially prenatal conditions) and that social interaction factors into development too. children need interaction with a range of age ranges in order to understand their world through peers or others immediately below or above them on the developmental scale. This is nothing more than deprivation I am talking about here.
Finding mates? What are you talking about? The stereotype of higher IQ and lack of social ability? (that is not something I believe holds up, but if you've evidence to suggest it does I'd be interested to see it.)
Okay. When you decide to change the meaning of a word, you should indicate that more clearly.
At no point have I made any attempt to change the meaning of the term "race." There are two meanings already. In scientific parse we're all part of the human race, but in terms of social identity some people identify as being "black" or "white", "latin" or "Asian", etc.,. This is mostly due to humans being very visual creatures, and I'd imagine if we were blind we'd focus on other distinctions such as language and accent more than we do already.
Embedded here we can ask what human attributes contribute to a proclivity toward group identity? Are certain personal types or IQ levels more likely to fall into hard cast ideas about group identity - that was a partly loaded enquiry because I already know high conscientiousness and low openness would correspond to such an attitude (basically conservatiism.)
Maybe in sight of the recent Channel 4 exposure some people will wake from their slumber and begin to understand that it is not only possible to be puppeted, but that need to be on their guard about this when dealing with political agendas wrapped in sensationalism.
There is nothing neurotic about group identity. All social animals have it. You can't cure that - in fact, alienation is far more painful to the individual and harmful to the society.
I never said that. In fact you appear to be parroting pretty much what I said in the lead up to my open enquiry about this. Of course we're social animals. Alienation is more damaging to people who are extroverted and less damaging to people like myself. That is not to say either can survive in complete isolation, only that some people use social interaction as a crutch and are likely willing to bend to any will rather than cause disruption to their immediate world.
It's more to do with biology than either: all social animals crave companionship; require it for emotional health. But group identity doesn't depend on genetic similarity. Members of a family, cult or or fraternity can be closely bonded by other factors - including, as you mentioned, patriotism, or a belief or cause or experience or mutual dependence, or trust and affection.
That makes no sense to me because we're talking about how biological organisms experience the world and express themselves. It is more to do with biology than intelligence and personality traits? How are human characteristics not part and parcel of human biology? I am not going to look back at where you pulled that line from in what I was saying, but I can pretty much guarantee that I was referring to human behavior (something I don't regard as non-biological) as presenting a specific correlation.
Just like high IQ shows an obvious correlation with physical health and wealth, personality traits show certain proclivities too (ie. you can pretty much guess whether someone will vote for liberal or conservative candidates based only on personality traits - IQ doesn't factor in here much as far as I know?)
And that's yet another different topic.
This was in reference to the trolley problem ... yes and no. I'll go into that another time. There is an underlying theme in that there is a conflict between rational thought and ethics though. That was what I was getting at; such conflicts fascinate me no end because within them I see the general aspect of what we call volition.
note: Granted not directly important right now.
Easier than intelligence
In reference to measures of "industriousness." Incorrect. This is because IQ is measured objectively (although not perfectly by any means) whereas industriousness is measured by self assessment; subjectively.
Of all animals with a brain. It's not the presence of intelligence we're testing, but a display of that intelligence - as compared to other individuals of the same species, or of one species compared to another. It can only be measured as a blip on a graph, never as an absolute quantity.
Agreed. I would stay away from comparisons from species to species though because we're still struggling to accept the extent of environmental conditions within the human species (which happens to be genetically linear due to population size.)
I think of it as being measured with a ruler, but we need to be cautious about the margin of error. Measuring my height suffers from an insignificant margin of error. Combined with this we have the political history of this subject and eugenics leading to previous regimes of sterilization and genocide by misusing and sensationalizing the data. Plus many people seem to think that IQ is a measure of who they are (which is nonsense, and nasty idea that needs to be flushed out rather than ignored IMO.)
Is there any reason you consider adequate to decide on an abortion? If not bringing a handicapped child into a world in which they can't compete is inhumane, consider the inhumanity of bringing a physically and mentally perfect child into a world where they will have no food.
Of course this is a very nuanced and difficult subject. As for your question and I can simply turn it back on you, do you think it is absolutely okay to abort a child because they exhibit Downs syndrome? I don't think it is, but like I said I understand why some people would and I am not saying they do so because they are inhumane only that I believe, in the wider picture of things, it is inhumane to abort a life because of IQ. I thought you'd agree with that?
Would you abort an unborn child if you knew the IQ was likely to be no higher than 80? Or as you proclaimed earlier to Wolf, if so would you also be willing to abort if your potential child would likely have an IQ in excess of 150?
note: Abortion is primarily the choice of the mother to be in my view. Luckily I am a man so when it comes to such a decision in reality I will never be faced with such a difficult choice - and I imagine many women who proclaim staunch views either for or against may find themselves in reality acting out against their previous views. I do happen to know the amount of psychological support given to women in such positions is woefully inadequate. btw in no mood for a debate about abortion, go to the other forum for that ongoing back and forth if you wish.
But you do expect them to compete for demanding technological jobs.
Obviously, if that is all that is available. Plus, IQ is not 100% accurate, it is an estimate that works best at the extreme ends and as an approximation of large samples of people. When it comes to increased technological application in the work place people with IQs of 80 or lower (which is a considerable number) are likely going to struggle in some areas more than others. Maybe society will learn to deal with this in the near future and maybe it will become more and more of a problem so that we'll have to do something about it.
When humans have understood something, did they handle that in a responsible manner?
Ever?
I admire pessimism. We're still here and we're still trying. For me that is good enough, but I certainly don't think we can pat ourselves on the back just yet.
To paraphrase (badly) Confucius from The Anelects:
"The person who attains virtue is not virtuous; yet the person who always pursues virtue is."
Sorry, my memory fails me but that is the gist.
You might as well admit it, because it has always been true.
No problem. The thing is I don't see scientific evidence as anything other than humanity striving for identity - meaning a sense of place and perspective that is open to further exploration.
We'll never know.
Opinion. I am inclined to say we don't yet know. We can, and do, hypothesize about various outcomes and prepare ourselves.
You're never short on videos and references. I have no ready means of evaluating their accuracy or reliability. I don't particularly care about them: there is always a range of opinion "out there" to support any position you choose to take.
I didn't say crazy.
I said unclear. I asked simple questions to which i got complicated answers that seemed not entirely, and sometime not even nearly, on topic, so I have never been clear on exactly what you were asking, or even what the central subject was. Is.
Oh. Should I ignore you then and/or stop trying to explain or offer evidence to back up what I am looking at and the points I am making not being based on mere opinion? Or should I from now on offer no context and simply say what I think about this or that subject without doing any kind of research?
I am not here to offer simple answers, or any answers for that matter. I was asking questions about intelligence and race in todays world in terms of how to assess these things on a biological basis. Given that there is string resistance to except that there is a means to measure intelligence, strong disagreement about what "intelligence" is, and a lack of interest to actually look at the subject in term of how psychological studies have come to delineate difference in human characteristics and set up way to measure personality traits, intelligence and make distinctions between talents and intelligence; meaning a talent for dancing is not an "intelligence", it is a talent. This is why we don't tend to talk about physical strength as being a kind of "muscle intelligence", because to do such may sound slightly plausible, but it is to distract from what is meant by "intelligence" - that is a mental capacity, one of reasoning, abstract thought and speed of thought.
Hyksos -
However, we are in possession of landmark experiments with mice showing that behaviorism cannot be true.
Behaviorism cannot be true? Meaning what exactly? I think if you took the time to look behavioral biology does not necessarily adhere to some set boundary between Nature and Nurture. Some biologists likely lean more one way than the other, but over all their all pretty aware that the complexity of the situation shows that it depends on the scale of reference. The limits are set in order to find certain patterns that work within those limits, but that may not necessarily work on other scales, but do have some effect - given your inclination toward what I regard as the "primary" science of physics I thought you'd be able to grasp that easily enough.
We have very good experiments showing that there is probably a type of memory called "Episodic Memory" that is operated by completely different mechanisms in the brain than the memory identified by behaviorism and classical conditioning.
No probably about it last I heard? Old news. There are many different terms though, such as "procedural memory" and "non-procedural memory", "implicit" and "explicit", "declarative memory", etc.,. Episodic Memory is certainly not a recent discovery (or term) so what do you mean by this? References if you have them would be VERY much appreciated (Miller?)
Other landmark experiments show that mice can compare-and-contrast episodic memories. That is, they reason logically about the past and draw conclusions from that reasoning.
Can I see references please? Was the study by Swanson by any chance, he's done a lot of studies about rat brains so I am guessing maybe not?