Dogfighting, Sports memorabilia and now genetics.

[Jamougha]

An interesting point, quite releant to the discussion; in the last decade or so, psychologists have been studying the effects of 'priming' on cognitive performance. It turns out that you can change average performance radically depending on the queues that you feed people. For example, ask one group to think about the characteristics of a university professor before taking a general knowledge test, and another to think about the characteristics of a football hooligan, and the professor group will do much better. Ask a third group to think about the characteristics of a secretary and they will score in between, but finish the test faster!

This is relevant because among the tests that have been done are tests on the effects of racial priming. Take two groups of black people and have them take a maths test. One group has to fill out their race on the front of the answer sheet, the other doesn't; no other changes. Now the group that is asked about their race will perform dramatically worse.

This means that all IQ tests that ask for your ethnicity on the front are actually invalid as a means of differentiating the IQs of different racial groups.

Kind of scary in a way.

[vhawk01]

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So tell me this, how does the "race" gene(s) correlate to the "intelligence" gene(s)?

Given the following:
One race has a higher average IQ than another race.
Race is genetically determined.
Intelligence is genetically determined (in part).

Don't those three facts have to be put together before there is any scientific basis for Watson's conclusion?

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All of those facts would be stipulated by anyone with even a minor knowledge of biology, right? Which of those three do you disagree with?

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You missed the question. I don't disagree with any of the 3 "facts" (discount the apparent lack of very accurate IQ tests).

How do you know genetics is the REASON why a race is testing at a higher IQ than another? That is, unless you can prove that genetics is 100% responsible for intelligence.

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I don't. Merely that if there is any genetic basis whatsoever, then it will have some impact on intelligence.

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This statement is wrong.

Assume:
Race is 100% genetic
Intelligence is 50% genetic
Intelligence is 50% environmental
Avg IQ of Caucasian 100
Avg IQ of African 90

How do you know that the difference in IQ is not achieved entirely by the 50% of intelligence that is environmentally determined? You would need to place babies of African racial genetics in the exact same environment as Caucasian babies and then test their intelligence to prove this. Since Watson makes no reference to IQ data being gathered in this way, and he also provides no proof that IQ is 100% genetic, his entire hypothesis is bunk.

EDIT: poorly worded major point! [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

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So your point is that there are racial genetic differences, and there is some genetic component to intelligence, but there is no reason to assume that any of these racial genetic differences impact intelligence, right? I guess that makes sense. And thats sort of the point I was making earlier, that there wasnt much time where humans were isolated from each other for something relatively minor selection pressure like intelligence to have made much of a dent.

[Borodog]

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An interesting point, quite releant to the discussion; in the last decade or so, psychologists have been studying the effects of 'priming' on cognitive performance. It turns out that you can change average performance radically depending on the queues that you feed people. For example, ask one group to think about the characteristics of a university professor before taking a general knowledge test, and another to think about the characteristics of a football hooligan, and the professor group will do much better. Ask a third group to think about the characteristics of a secretary and they will score in between, but finish the test faster!

This is relevant because among the tests that have been done are tests on the effects of racial priming. Take two groups of black people and have them take a maths test. One group has to fill out their race on the front of the answer sheet, the other doesn't; no other changes. Now the group that is asked about their race will perform dramatically worse.

This means that all IQ tests that ask for your ethnicity on the front are actually invalid as a means of differentiating the IQs of different racial groups.

Kind of scary in a way.

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Cool. Linky?

[pvn]

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Which assumes that "Intelligence must be primarily genetically based", but provides no proof.

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This is obviously true. Do you see why?

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I sent my dog to harvard, he didn't come out noticiably smarter. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the reason people do better than dogs at Harvard can be traced back to differences in our DNA.

[pvn]

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You people defending Watson . . .

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I always love people who argue heatedly about the wrong thing.

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If Osama sent a videotape to CNN and said 2+2=4, and someone on a random intarwebs message board said "it's true, 2+2 does equal 4" I would put the over/under at about 15 seconds before someone started ranting about "Osama defenders".

[natedogg]

thread lock coming from iron81 in 10... 9... 8....

natedogg

[VayaConDios]

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An interesting point, quite releant to the discussion; in the last decade or so, psychologists have been studying the effects of 'priming' on cognitive performance. It turns out that you can change average performance radically depending on the queues that you feed people. For example, ask one group to think about the characteristics of a university professor before taking a general knowledge test, and another to think about the characteristics of a football hooligan, and the professor group will do much better. Ask a third group to think about the characteristics of a secretary and they will score in between, but finish the test faster!

This is relevant because among the tests that have been done are tests on the effects of racial priming. Take two groups of black people and have them take a maths test. One group has to fill out their race on the front of the answer sheet, the other doesn't; no other changes. Now the group that is asked about their race will perform dramatically worse.

This means that all IQ tests that ask for your ethnicity on the front are actually invalid as a means of differentiating the IQs of different racial groups.

Kind of scary in a way.

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Cool. Linky?

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http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.pitts/stereotype_threat_

[andyfox]

Watson's been shoveling this sh*t for years. He might be an eminent scientist, but he's also a bigot. To wit:

"In 1997, he told a British newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual."

"He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, positing the theory that black people have higher libidos, and argued in favour of genetic screening and engineering on the basis that 'stupidity' could one day be cured. He has claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: 'People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great'."

"He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true'."

Why should anyone take anything this man has to say about race seriously?

[andyfox]

"Its a little sad that this has to be met with such hysteria"

I don't think it's sad at all. It would be much sadder were in not met with such "hysteria." You claim that "the methods for testing intelligence and the ways we categorize different intelligences are so atrocious that it drowns out the actual data in noise . . And that doesn't even begin to get into the CONCLUSIONS we draw from that. There is still far more variability WITHIN groups than BETWEEN groups."

Yet, from this, Dr. Watson thinks we can "cure" stupidity (as well as ugliness), that women should abort homosexuals, and that blacks are stupider than whites, as anyone who has worked with them would recognize. Its disgusting, period.

[andyfox]

"I would also be willing to lay large odds that anyone who is using those differences to make some kind of grand point is doing it wrong"

It's not hard to tell, from Dr. Watson's comments over the years, why he's doing it wrong.