LOL! In my mind's eye I can see this as clear as a bell...not to mention the expression(s) on your face. 
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 ...
Eh, technically, he was married to her.
NOT Hillary.........
There’s a difference between intelligence and wisdom. The wise do not reject God, but Satan isn’t too stupid to ensnare us.
Just a thought on the value of “fixing” the under education problem.
It may very well serve the best interests of those who wield the sword of power to have an unmotivated and ignorant populous. Given this, I don't think there is much value to a cure, other than the value of suppressing it.
Well, I am not asking for answers from you, because I’m sure nobody really knows them so far.
I’m not sure of the general insincerity of politicians motivations; this is a worldwide issue, and I believe that people like Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia, for instance, did sincerely want to boost the performance of his Malay people to match that of Malaysias Chinese minority, through perhaps the world most thorough (and very expensive) “affirmative action” program. He was quite bitter (and genuinely so I believe) that thirty years later it had made almost no difference.
If there was a known, certain method of closing that gap I am sure he would have bought into it.
As would a means of enhancing the difference (i.e. enhancing intelligence). This would be particularly true (the value of it) with people who are already highly intelligent - moving some of them into the genius class (where most of the Nobel Prize scientists reside) would dramatically enhance our understanding of science and dramatically improve our ability to solve "insolvable" problems.
I’ve had similarly all-over-the-map results which makes me question the validity of the tests and the criteria used in making them. Then there’s the moral question of placing people in niches based on those results - which could deny them (and the rest of us) opportunities and advancements because they accepted the “results” as truth and stopped trying.
One of the worst nights I ever experienced was as a guest at a MENSA meeting. I wanted to get everyone’s “gifted” perspective on ongoing problems while the geniuses found me an annoying obstacle while they were playing “who can impress everyone more” while trying to get other people’s girlfriends and boyfriends. It was a childish playground of one-upsmanship under a veneer of good vocabulary and poor clothing and grooming sense.
It wasn’t bad because anyone trounced me...it was bad because I realized most of that intellect was being spent on their own egotistical advancement of their self-images and where they stood in their “herd” - while not seeing how that dominated their energies and limited their outlooks and creativity. That was a shocking realization for a guy from “the wrong side of the tracks”.
there is no evidence that is not the case.
culture and race or even more tightly defined beyond race as specific ethnicities easily becomes chicken and egg circular...which is a product of which...and what about geographic isolation...and if groups have distinct physical differences then why not differing IQ aggregates....there is plenty of data to support that
likewise, I have known all my life that poverty may make achievement harder but is no rationale for culture implosion.
my own ancestors were utterly destroyed and hungry, destitute and broken after the Civil War and during Reconstruction but they never became predators nor embraced serial illegitimacy....never....it took two to four generations to recover the wealth that was lost but they never disintegrated and went feral culturally
to believe that IQ and achievement are cultural driven alone mostly is wishful thinking....even Sowelll knows this and has stated as such
They suffer from what Friedrich Hayek called “The Fatal Conceit.”
Good points.. I’m one who believes its both genetic and cultural factors. Russians for example are obviously very intelligent naturally, but their culture of corruption seems to hold them back.
You are right too unlocking the secrets would be very valuable. I’m thinking there is a possibility my great grandchildren could have genes inserted that would put them at a high genius level compared to people today.
I thought buyawa was actually supporting your basic argument that there are stocks who will strive and those who won’t without artificial intervention. There are indeed four or five races on this planet with wildly different capacities of intellect, physicality, durability and procreativity. I, like you, am very disturbed that the least intelligent have an edge on that last one but take some comfort that their inherent stupidity limits their survival (cold as that may seem).
It’s only when those folks are tolerated in an environment as welcoming and supportive as ours (state of the art medicine, welfare state, traitorous lawyers, vast subculture of Spanish-only speakers insisting we conform to them) that I have to put my foot down and say “Sorry, amigos. Borders closed. Take it up with Calderon if you’re Mexican. Be glad we don’t treat you like the Mexicans do if you’re from somewhere else. Fill these REAL forms out and file them.”
Our country’s greatest weakness is everyone’s tendency toward kindness - which extends to our representatives trying to please everyone all the time. If we don’t cut Mexico off the tit now it may become impossible once the corruption creeps way down into the local governments.
I’m for Duncan Hunter’s wall regardless of who gets the Presidency: it’s already passed and we want to know why it isn’t near completion yet.
(yes, CB, I’ll be back out on time. Gnight)
LOL! In my mind's eye I can see this as clear as a bell...not to mention the expression(s) on your face.
Any book Thomas Sowell recommends is definitely worth a look.“Flynn provides the first satisfying explanation of the massive rise in IQ test scores. He avoids both the absurd conclusion that our great grandparents were all mentally retarded and the equally unsatisfactory suggestion that the rise has just been in performance on IQ tests without any wider implications..” N. J. Mackintosh, University of Cambridge
Yesterday, while listening to Rush interview Justice Thomas, I was struck by how similar he sounds like Thomas Sowell. Not just in voice tone but the way he spoke.
> We have no record that he fathered any surviving children except Chelsea <
Haven’t you noticed Chelsea’s resemblance to Webster Hubbell?
And didn’t Billy Jeff tell Juanita Broderick that he (BJ) was infertile?
[But what this has to do with Thomas Sowell’s IQ, I know not!]
Yes! Intellect isn't intelligence, and intelligence isn't insight, insight is only a part of wisdom... I recall that China, for many years cultivated a class of savants to administer it's government--the Mandarins. It seems that this was during its most insular and stagnant period.
Creeping mandaranism.
I did not mean to appear to be saying buwaya was wrong
i was just elaborating my observations
buwaya brought up great points
I suppose it depends on how one defines a generation - I look at the change in the general status of the overseas Chinese as a phenomenon that I can perceive as happening, for the most part, within my lifetime.
The truly interesting aspect of it is not that there have always been wealthy Chinese merchants, but that the mass of this population, formerly poor as dirt, is no longer poor. This change only happened in the last fifty-sixty years.
I know the overseas Chinese case intimately. When my father (class of 54) went to engineering school in Manila, nearly all his classmates were Filipinos. When I went to the same school (class of 82) nearly all were Chinese. My classmates fathers nearly all started as garbage-pickers, tinkers, street vendors, and the like. When I was little you could still find rickshaws in Manilas Chinatown, a job no Filipino will do; it seems that today it may be impossible to find a poor Chinese in Manila. I find this astonishing.
The same thing happened in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, over the same period and to about the same degree. Economic policy and social-political conditions and policies vis-a-vis the Chinese, ranging even to overt persecution, varied greatly in all these places over that post-war period. But yet the Chinese succeeded in all of them. This also is astonishing.
Probably the three main expat groups worldwide that prosper in host nations are:
Arab Christians
Sephardic Jews
Ethnic Chinese
They run commerce in the Caribbean basin for all intensive purposes
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