Posted on 08/09/2013 3:06:33 PM PDT by reaganaut1
“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for “IQ test” in Google’s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits — just for the year 2013.
But Cox’s assertion is all too common. There is a large discrepancy between what educated laypeople believe about cognitive science and what experts actually know. Journalists are steeped in the lay wisdom, so they are repeatedly surprised when someone forthrightly discusses the real science of mental ability.
If that science happens to deal with group differences in average IQ, the journalists’ surprise turns into shock and disdain. Experts who speak publicly about IQ differences end up portrayed as weird contrarians at best, and peddlers of racist pseudoscience at worst.
I’m speaking from experience. My Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contains some scientifically unremarkable statements about ethnic differences in average IQ, including the IQ difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. For four years, the dissertation did what almost every other dissertation does — collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand.
For people who have studied mental ability, what’s truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
You have put the Jacobin/Marxist/Bolshevik/Nazi day dream in the most favorable light, even though you obviously recognize that it is a false premise for political or social direction. But, in doing so, you give it more respectability, than it actually deserves. The reason people persist in a notion that has been endlessly disproven in the terrible results from policy formulated on that premise, is emotional not rational.
No one who has ever sat in a classroom can really believe--at least in their sub-conscious--in the possibility of equal mental aptitudes. We need to understand the compulsive--that is, neurotic drive--behind the frenzy to pursue equality in a world where there is no equality of potential--why Leftists never learn from the common experiences of mankind. (See Compassion Or Compulsion?)
Why is this important? Because it helps us understand that we are not fighting altruists or idealists, for the most part; but something very different.
William Flax
See my comment #201, with respect to the same quotation.
Yes, the whole point of the "egalitarianism" movement is to expend ever-increasing amounts of money on it, and amass ever-increasing amounts of power in order to promote egalitarianism. The real objective, as you note, is actually to be able to skim money and wield power.
Your mention of the Jacobins got me thinking. From the Wiki entry:
The Jacobins assumed more and more power during the spring of 1793, with the support of the Parisian mob, which overawed the Convention, culminating in a coup at the end of May. They were to hold power until the summer of 1794, and they repeatedly purged the Convention of those they held disloyal to the Republic, ending with a widespread program of execution, the Reign of Terror in their last months. Robespierre, generally the spokesman for the successful faction, had great esteem for his reputation as "the sea-green incorruptible", and set up the slogan of the Republic of Virtue, until the Jacobins' last purge, 9 Thermidor, 27 July 1794. Although some eye-witnesses said Robespierre was shot by a soldier, some historians state he attempted suicide; in any event, his lower jaw was shattered. He was executed the next day on Thermidor 10, 28 July 1794.[7]I'm thinking that the end-game of Obama's Chicago Mob is to create a crisis at some point in the future, which could be used to trigger a "French Revolution"-type event.The Jacobin club, its leadership having been decimated with Robespierre's execution, was disbanded 12 November 1794. The Jacobins' overwhelming power rested on a very slender material basis. Some[who?] compared the club's autocracy to that of the Inquisition, with its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too illustrious or too humble to escape. The power of the Jacobins was frequently felt through their influence with the Parisian underclass—the sans-culottes – who the Jacobins could reliably count on to support them, and to mass ominously in the streets and at the National Convention when a display of force was considered desirable. Yet it was reckoned by competent observers[who?] that, at the height of the Terror, the Jacobins themselves could not command a force of more than 3000 men in Paris. A primary reason for their influence, or strength, was that, in the midst of the general disorganization in revolutionary Paris and in the provinces, they alone were organised. The police agent Dutard, in a report to the minister Garat (30 April 1793), describing an episode in the Palais Egalité (Royal), adds: "Why did a dozen Jacobins strike terror into two or three hundred aristocrats? It is that the former have a rallying-point and that the latter have none".[citation needed]
For such to occur, they would have to eradicate any nuclei of organization (like the Tea Party groups, FR, etc) which could serve as oppositional rallying points, and to disarm the middle-class so as to render them helpless against underclass mobs.
That's why gun control is a key issue for the liberal elites. It isn't about creating a society without firearms (you don't hear Obama and Biden telling the ATF to lighten their arsenal). It's about creating a society where the law abiding middle class is disarmed while government goons and their criminal underclass clients remain armed to the teeth.
Does China's influence extend to fudging the IQ scores of Asian-American children, who score higher than whites? Are malnutrition levels among American blacks worse than the Vietnamese peasants who came here from the rice paddies of SouthEast Asia as children and became valedictorians?
While the Bolsheviks numbered 40,000 at the time of the November Revolution, experts estimate that 18 months before, they only numbered 10,000. The four fold expansion was in a collapsing Russian Empire.
You are entirely correct as to the tremendous importance of the Tea Parties & Free Republic, as a line of defense.
Cheers--in a very grim period in the lives of Americans, who still care.
William Flax
This reminds me of those who claim that black and hispanic underperformance in schools (and in the economy) is all due to white racism. You'd think that these same "racist whites" would also prevent Indian or Chinese kids from doing well in schools too, wouldn't you? The fact that other non-whites seem to do just fine tells us that the problem is with the black and hispanic students, not with prejudicial bias.
We live in a culture where the left and the media fight for equality.”
Can you explain the redundancy?
___________________________________________________________
When it comes to the Left, they can never be sure.
Hence the redundancy.
Zombieland Rule “Double Tap”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmA2WYyw-_A
The redundancy can be explained by the fact that the media is also the left. As to your assertion that they strive for equality seems vague at best.
To be clear, I thought the redundancy of the left and the media was clear.
The equality issue, is a relatively new phenomenon.
The Media/left, have been working very hard to “normalize” and “mainstream” the acceptance of both perversion and mediocrity.
“It’s not their fault if they are stupid”
The left and the media want to take away our calculators and give them to the lazy class.
Equality:
You make too much money ?
You must have taken it from someone.
You’re a smart guy ?
How dare you judge those that aren’t.
The media’s celebration and promotion of the ignorant, lazy, deviant and misguided has reached their pinnacle of relativism.
The left, the media, promote the “Uncertainty” of self.
It is a constant effort to destroy the individual, in an effort to promote the group.
Equality.
though I’ve never looked for it, that graph makes things painfully obvious
the next question would be, how accurate is it?
The Bell Curve....still a good read.
All one has to do is take a look at the history of science to see who contributed the most to our modern world and understanding of mathematics and the physical sciences.
Certainly Asians are driven by their families and culture to excel. But interestingly when you see second and third generation Asian students who weren’t raised by Tiger Moms they aren’t that much different than caucasian students.
most excellent
That I agree with but I would add the caveat that said book cases must be full of books that are not just fluff travel books (though I enjoy those too). The truth is that those who learn to read and enjoy reading at an early age will do well in school even if they are not of superior IQ. Hard work and persistence pay off when studying.
My auntie (who was a rocket scientist) used to say that she would rather work with a C student than someone with straight As. Not because the A student wasn’t bright, but rather because they weren’t teachable. The A student thought they were bright and had all the answers. They had never failed. So when things didn’t go ‘according to plan’ they had no way to dig down and find root causes. The C student on the other hand had worked hard to understand the material and often came up with the one or two simple questions that enlightened everyone not because of the brilliance of the question but the very simplicity of it. In trying to understand the basics of the problem the C student would ask the key question because he was trying to understand the problem rather than trying to come up with some clever ‘solution’
” If someone actually gets a college degree you can assume they have the intelligence to do most jobs.”
Actually not. College is no longer a litmus test of intellect. They practically hand out degrees if you are there long enough and pay enough money. Toss in the various clapping for credit courses and you don’t have to actually do anything. Many courses are simply pass/fail and there is no requirement to even show up.
Great insight, thanks for sharing. Your aunt sounds like a very interesting woman.
It’s undisputed. Just not PC to discuss. Or they say the tests are biased.
That indeed she was. She was fortunate to work with a great group of rocketeers who loved what they did..... hypersonic flight. She wrote a technical note that was appended to one of the other papers entitled “Point return landings from the moon to the earth”. The year was 1959.....guess where they got the quick reference for equations when Apollo 13 happened???
“what good would talking about it do? ... Unless I were hiring theoretical physicists, the candidate’s IQ score would be way down the list of things I looked at.”
Maybe if we talked about it, it wouldn’t be so low on your list.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.