Posted on 10/01/2007 7:13:21 PM PDT by jazusamo
One of the longest-running controversies in history has been that between those who believe intelligence to be inherited and those who see it as determined by environment.
If time has not resolved that question, it has at least led to sharper definitions of the question and a muting of some of the dogmatism among those on both sides of this issue.
The eugenics movement of the early 20th century was based on the fear that, since people of lower mental ability tended to have more children than people of higher mental ability, the average level of the nation's intelligence would tend to decline over time.
It is hard to escape the logic of that argument. But that logic could be its undoing.
The research of Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate living in New Zealand, has revealed that the number of questions answered correctly on IQ tests has risen very substantially in more than a dozen nations, in just one generation.
Such a thing should not have been possible, according to the assumptions and logic of the eugenicists.
Historically, those who emphasized the role of environment in intelligence went overboard in the opposite direction.
By the end of World War II, the racial fanaticism of the Nazis had discredited the role of heredity. Some even claimed that science had proved the intellectual equality of the races.
Science had in fact proved nothing about the intellectual ability of races, one way or the other.
A landmark scholarly article in 1969 by Professor Arthur Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley exposed the weaknesses in the prevailing environmental arguments, as Professor Flynn's later research would expose the weaknesses in the heredity arguments.
Unlike others on the heredity side of the argument, Professor Jensen....
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Thats because the general public doesn't care about intelligence and IQ tests. The general public is much more interested in celebrity whores puking on the boulevard.
We may not know just what intelligence is, but we do know that Thomas Sowell has lots of it... /grin
BUMP
Half of the public has below average I.Q., and they’re all journalists.
Pity.
Because the answer to the question of the gap - the reason for the difference in educational and economic performance of different populations, such as blacks vs Asians, but also Chinese vs other Asians, Jews vs Gentiles, etc. in many forms around the world, and the means to mitigate it, is literally worth trillions.
The potential value of this is much greater than any other question in social science, or for that matter than any other question in psychology or physiology or medicine.
Bump!
Something the left is devoid of.........
I think it's a very simple answer, and it has to do with culture. For example Indians and Japanese take education very seriously. Their success is rooted in cultural expectations.
In this country, the media worshiping masses are not focused on education. I think if you look at the music that is typical in certain ethnic groups, you can see how values are presented. I'm not going into detail, just something to think about.
The gaps between races are cultural as well. Unfortunately, poverty leads to a culture that focuses on daily survival, and less so on education. Thats why you have lots of Mexican and Black gang members who are not educated but are "surviving" as best as they feel they can. It's a vicious cycle, since the way to get out of the poverty is through education, but being poor leads to less cultural emphasis on education.
Anyway, thats my two cents on the issue.
Liberal caveman: Fire hot. Fire burn. Fire bad. Fire must be killed!
Conservative Caveman: Fire hot. Fire make food taste better. Fire warm me. Me sell fire..........
bump
Well said. I agree.
Problem solving ability.
That’s the best descriptor, but not the only one. It’s not “knowledge”, although the two are related.
Problem solving, by itself, doesn’t fit all the models though. For instance no one can deny that Van Gogh or Mozart were extraordinarily intelligent, even though they might have done miserably on a standard IQ test.
It’s interesting, because two of the potentially most fruitful areas that might help us further define ourselves don’t even have to do with humans - studies of animal intelligence, and robotics.
Extraordinarily hard to measure. I’ve taken many tests, and the results are all over the map. From a low of about 120 to a high of 158, averaging 145-150.
The left is extremely intelligent; they simply reject the Judeo-Christian moral worldview that most Americans embrace but still get half of Americans to vote for them. The Left has the intelligence to promise now what they cannot deliver hereafter because their morals do not preclude them from lying so pervasively that the blame for such blunders inevitably falls on Republicans.
Remmber that impeached, disgraced ex-president William Jefferson Clinton championed the purported rights of women, but his infamous career as a serial rapist and sex offender best demonstrates his personal commitment to the rights and integrity of women. He apparently wanted any woman whom he forced to carry his children to exercise her right to commit feticide against those children, purportedly all for the children. [We have no record that he fathered any surviving children except Chelsea; perhaps he went infertile after too many relations with Hillary.] Parlaying such duplicity into popularity requires some major intelligence (and assistance from the press).
And Hillary Rodham Clinton is extremely intelligent and certainly capable of capturing the White House for the enemies of the United States in the Democratic Party. Never doubt her conniving ways.
that's not very intelligent.........
There were rumours that Bubba had an illegitimate child with a woman in Arkansas..........
Ah, but that is the problem with these explanations -
Why do Indians and Japanese and Chinese and Jews and etc. take education so seriously, and how can you transfer this spark of motivation ? What specific acts and thoughts must be changed, in detail and repeatedly, to make other groups act as Chinese or Jews ?
Plenty of high-performing groups are rooted in a survival-oriented past, and still managed to outperform others. Most wealthy overseas Chinese, for instance, were starving coolie laborers two generations ago; Japanese peasants lived in a Malthusian feudal society, as did Russian Jews, etc. Few were richer than Mexican peasants, on the whole, back in 1900.
All I’m saying is that if there is a remedy here somewhere, a social-engineering formula or a drug or a surgical intervention, anything that can even just make up the difference, it would be of literally incalculable value.
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