OT: Re Donald Trump

[David Kleinecke]

People who post to AUE might be interested in a blog article by
George Lakoff called "Why Trump". You can find it at
http://georgelakoff.com/blog/

I'm going to try parsing it for discourse purposes and it looks
like it will challenge my parsing techniques.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

Thanks for posting that.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Don Phillipson]

"David Kleinecke" <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:d763ae66-a378-4fa9...@googlegroups.com...

> People who post to AUE might be interested in a blog article by
> George Lakoff called "Why Trump". You can find it at
> http://georgelakoff.com/blog/

This academic (promoting his new book on US politics) writes:
"Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great
rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee
and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why
he is winning - and winning handily . . ."

The few paragraphs on his web site wholly omit that the most
important presidential skill or qualification is the ability to
negotiate agreement with the peculiar sort of people who
get themselves elected as Senators or Congressmen
(and that the Republican party delegates at the nomination
convention probably have this in mind.) Seldom do US
major parties nominate anyone without this ability -- but
Americans sometimes elect presidents without it, most
obviously Obama.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

[Stan Brown]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 18:15:03 -0500, Don Phillipson wrote:
> The few paragraphs on his web site wholly omit that the most
> important presidential skill or qualification is the ability to
> negotiate agreement with the peculiar sort of people who
> get themselves elected as Senators or Congressmen
> (and that the Republican party delegates at the nomination
> convention probably have this in mind.) Seldom do US
> major parties nominate anyone without this ability -- but
> Americans sometimes elect presidents without it, most
> obviously Obama.
>

I agree that it's an important presidential skill. For some reason,
Democratic presidents seem to lack it: Carter and of course Obama are
obvious examples. But Clinton lacked it too, though he disguised it
by turning himself into a Republican in all but name. I think LBJ was
the last Democratic President who knew how to "work" Congress.

One reason our government is so messed up is that the qualifications
are completely out of tune with the skills. The qualities that make a
person attract votes are not the same as the qualities that help him
to govern.

Of course, when the Republicans openly boast that they will block
whatever Obama proposes, regardless of its merits, simply because he
proposed it, there's no way the government can work. I am completely
mystified why the voters put up with this, since it's obvious who is
preventing the government from functioning.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"The difference between the /almost right/ word and the
/right/ word is ... the difference between the lightning-bug
and the lightning." --Mark Twain

[Robin Bignall]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:39:00 +0000, "Peter Duncanson [BrE]"
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:

>On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 09:49:28 -0800 (PST), David Kleinecke
><dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>People who post to AUE might be interested in a blog article by
>>George Lakoff called "Why Trump". You can find it at
>> http://georgelakoff.com/blog/
>>
>>I'm going to try parsing it for discourse purposes and it looks
>>like it will challenge my parsing techniques.
>
>Thanks for posting that.

It's a very interesting article.
--
Robin Bignall
Herts, England (BrE)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 6:15:30 PM UTC-5, Don Phillipson wrote:
> "David Kleinecke" <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:d763ae66-a378-4fa9...@googlegroups.com...

> > People who post to AUE might be interested in a blog article by
> > George Lakoff called "Why Trump". You can find it at
> > http://georgelakoff.com/blog/
>
> This academic

"This academic"???

George Lakoff is probably _the_ most prominent of Chomsky's students, in the
real world. Some thirty years ago he introduced the understanding of the
importance of metaphor in ordinary language (*Metaphors We live By* and
*Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things* were two of his early books on the
subject), and the referenced essay is a practical application to his
interpretation of public discourse -- just as he's been doing for several
decades.

He was also one of the pioneers of Generative Semantics in the mid 60s,
rebelling against the Aspects model that DCK mentioned the other day.

> (promoting his new book on US politics) writes:
> "Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great
> rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee
> and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why
> he is winning - and winning handily . . ."
>
> The few paragraphs on his web site wholly omit that the most
> important presidential skill or qualification is the ability to
> negotiate agreement with the peculiar sort of people who
> get themselves elected as Senators or Congressmen
> (and that the Republican party delegates at the nomination
> convention probably have this in mind.) Seldom do US
> major parties nominate anyone without this ability -- but
> Americans sometimes elect presidents without it, most
> obviously Obama.

Maybe if you read the book, you'll find something about that.

[Tony Cooper]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 18:15:03 -0500, "Don Phillipson"

It seems to me it is painfully obvious that Trump will not be able to
work with Congress. It was not obvious, prior to the election, that
Obama would have the problems that he has had.

At this point it seems that the Republicans are more against Trump
going forward than the Democrats are.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[Rich Ulrich]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016 18:15:03 -0500, "Don Phillipson"
<e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:

What I gather from the article is the insight that Obama
is such a bane to the fundamentalists because he so
perfectly represents the "nurturing" father who can deal
with complex situtations, and not the dictatorial/
authoritative one with simplistic answers.

--
Rich Ulrich

[David Kleinecke]

I think Lakoff intended exactly that.

But I think Lakoff would agree that race also looms large.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Of course. Everyone knows he has no chance of beating Hillary.

Oh -- when I recommended you vote for Kasich, that was when I thought Florida
was on March 1. You actually need to vote for Rubio to be sure to deny Trump
the first-ballot majority.

[Tony Cooper]

The problem is that "everyone" knew he had no chance to get this far,
either.

>Oh -- when I recommended you vote for Kasich, that was when I thought Florida
>was on March 1. You actually need to vote for Rubio to be sure to deny Trump
>the first-ballot majority.

I received my sample ballot in the mail. All of the original
Republican candidates are on the ballot. I could vote for any
candidate no longer in the running.

[Peter T. Daniels]

The Catherine Harris legacy? The Hudson County Board of Elections gets the
sample ballot to me about two business days before the election. But then,
we have no emphasis put on early voting -- except when Christie schedules
the special senatorial election a month before the gubernatorial election
so that Cory Booker at the head of the Democratic ticket won't deflect votes
to the little-known, underfinanced Democratic opponent to Christie's
reelection. Which cost the state about $25M to have a separate election.

So far, 8 newspapers have called on Christie to resign as he seems to prefer
to stand like a lump behind Trump instead of attending to the state's business
that he's neglected for the past two years or so.

Watch for NJ bridges to start falling down because the roads budget is about
to be completely exhausted and he refuses to consider raising the lowest-in-
the-country gasoline tax.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Thursday, March 3, 2016 at 4:15:30 PM UTC-7, Don Phillipson wrote:
> "David Kleinecke" <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:d763ae66-a378-4fa9...@googlegroups.com...
>
> > People who post to AUE might be interested in a blog article by
> > George Lakoff called "Why Trump". You can find it at
> > http://georgelakoff.com/blog/
>
> This academic (promoting his new book on US politics) writes:
> "Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great
> rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee
> and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why
> he is winning - and winning handily . . ."
>
> The few paragraphs on his web site wholly omit that the most
> important presidential skill or qualification is the ability to
> negotiate agreement with the peculiar sort of people who
> get themselves elected as Senators or Congressmen

It's certainly an important skill, but if you think it's important
to Trump supporters, I suspect you're overestimating the majority of them.
See for instance

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/donald-trump-voters/401408/

(Just a few of the people who wrote mentioned domestic negotiation.)

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533

(In a survey, the only characteristic associated with Trump supporters
at a statistically significant level was authoritarianism, which is not
a quality I associate with admiring good negotiators.)

> (and that the Republican party delegates at the nomination
> convention probably have this in mind.)

To the extent that they have choices, I think the main thing they'll
have in mind is getting a Republican elected.

> Seldom do US
> major parties nominate anyone without this ability -- but
> Americans sometimes elect presidents without it, most
> obviously Obama.

--

Jerry Friedman

[Mack A. Damia]

The popularity of Trump reveals the true nature of the conservative
movement; that is, its ideology is largely relative (dependent) in
nature.

One of Trump's largest blocks of voters are the "poorly educated"
(high school diploma or less), and as Trump so eloquently stated, "I
love the poorly educated!"

[Tony Cooper]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2016 07:51:26 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"

<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>On Friday, March 4, 2016 at 10:03:11 AM UTC-5, Tony Cooper wrote:
>> On Fri, 4 Mar 2016 06:47:36 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> >Oh -- when I recommended you vote for Kasich, that was when I thought Florida
>> >was on March 1. You actually need to vote for Rubio to be sure to deny Trump
>> >the first-ballot majority.
>>
>> I received my sample ballot in the mail. All of the original
>> Republican candidates are on the ballot. I could vote for any
>> candidate no longer in the running.
>
>The Catherine Harris legacy?

Ms Harris - who is a "Katherine", as you have been informed - was the
Secretary of State of Florida. The responsibility for determining the
ballot text is a function of the Supervisor of Elections for each
county in Florida and must conform to Florida law. The county
Supervisor of Elections is an elected post.

The ballots we received were for the primary that will be held on
March 15th, and in accordance with Florida law that requires the names
on the ballots to be determined by who the declared candidates were 45
days before the primary.

[martin.ambuhl]

On 03/04/2016 02:38 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:
> One of Trump's largest blocks of voters are the "poorly educated"
> (high school diploma or less), and as Trump so eloquently stated, "I
> love the poorly educated!"

I am amazed at the reasons people give for voting for Trump. The
fundamentalist and conservative bases must purposely put on blinders to
vote for someone who is a corrupt plutocrat with the ability to bankrupt
almost any enterprise his privileged background allows, while bragging
about his blatantly immorality and lack of family values. Every
"reason" to vote for Trump is in fact a reason to vote against him. But
those of us who actually work with polling data know one truth:
respondents lie. That is one reason that minority and women candidates
usually do better in the pre-election polls that at the voting booth.

But this is to much: has any candidate before this shown such elitist
disrespect for the anti-elitists who vote for him? Certainly "the less
educated" would have less irritating.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Friday, March 4, 2016 at 4:16:29 PM UTC-7, mam...@earthlink.net wrote:
> On 03/04/2016 02:38 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:
> > One of Trump's largest blocks of voters are the "poorly educated"
> > (high school diploma or less), and as Trump so eloquently stated, "I
> > love the poorly educated!"
>
> I am amazed at the reasons people give for voting for Trump. The
> fundamentalist and conservative bases must purposely put on blinders to
> vote for someone who is a corrupt plutocrat with the ability to bankrupt
> almost any enterprise his privileged background allows, while bragging
> about his blatantly immorality and lack of family values. Every
> "reason" to vote for Trump is in fact a reason to vote against him.

Come on, not "every". He likes Planned Parenthood.

> But
> those of us who actually work with polling data know one truth:
> respondents lie. That is one reason that minority and women candidates
> usually do better in the pre-election polls that at the voting booth.
>
> But this is to much: has any candidate before this shown such elitist
> disrespect for the anti-elitists who vote for him? Certainly "the less
> educated" would have less irritating.

Some of them like his willingness to irritate people. It's politically
incorrect. I suppose it could be commendable objectivity on some of
his supporters' part that they admire him for being willing to irritate
them too.

One of the respondents in the /Atlantic/ article I linked to said
this:

"I'm in my early 30s and I grew up in San Francisco in a liberal home.
And I have a very difficult time keeping up with all the various
appropriate and inappropriate terms used to reference people and their
causes. Trump makes brash and uncompromising statements about issues
many people feel very passionate about. When he spoke about illegal
immigration he made statements that many people agree with and are
afraid to state. A lot of that fear is a fear of being labeled a racist
or a fear of violating constantly changing societal norms. It's
frustrating to listen to politicians speak and make no statements.
It's even more frustrating to watch politicians fold in the presence
of the slightest bit of pressure. The appeal of Trump isn't because
they trust him to make the right decisions, it's the hope that he
will influence the rest of the field to make strong statements
regardless of the media backlash."

Yes, "black" and "gay" have been acceptable terms for his whole life,
but it's hard to keep up.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter Moylan]

On 2016-Mar-05 06:38, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> One of Trump's largest blocks of voters are the "poorly educated"
> (high school diploma or less), and as Trump so eloquently stated, "I
> love the poorly educated!"

Many politicians love the poorly educated, because they are so easily
swayed. Many Australians believe that the reason Liberal (conservative)
governments keep cutting education funding is that they know that
educated people are more likely to vote against them.

Sometimes, however, the poorly educated can be swayed in an unexpected
direction. Here, they generally vote the way that the Murdoch press
tells them to vote. Murdoch usually campaigns for the right side of
politics, but not always, and he's pulled off a few surprises.

One of my children said something interesting last week. He said that
Murdoch's control of Australian politics is weakening because people no
longer read newspapers. I'll have to think about that.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Cheryl]

I sometimes think that an easy way to dismiss one's political opponents
is to claim that they're uneducated and/or swayed by others. Early forms
of modern democracy didn't extend the franchise to certain groups of
people - those who didn't own property, for example, or women - because
they were considered incapable of properly participating in government.
Modern countries have extended the franchise much more widely, but it's
still easy to dismiss those we disagree with as being simply incapable
of making the 'right' decisions - that is, the ones we'd make. We, of
course, are influenced by others as well when it comes to making
political choices, but we make the RIGHT choices!

Back in the days when there were two local newspapers, each was
well-known to support one of the local political parties. Local politics
were passionate and could be vicious, but neither side could claim that
the others voted the way the newspaper proprietor thought they should.
People were often said to vote the way the rest of their families did,
but that applied to supporters of both parties.

--
Cheryl

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 1:08:51 AM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 2016-Mar-05 06:38, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> > One of Trump's largest blocks of voters are the "poorly educated"
> > (high school diploma or less), and as Trump so eloquently stated, "I
> > love the poorly educated!"
>
> Many politicians love the poorly educated, because they are so easily
> swayed. Many Australians believe that the reason Liberal (conservative)
> governments keep cutting education funding is that they know that
> educated people are more likely to vote against them.
>
> Sometimes, however, the poorly educated can be swayed in an unexpected
> direction. Here, they generally vote the way that the Murdoch press
> tells them to vote. Murdoch usually campaigns for the right side of

Up Here he's usually on the wrong side.

> politics, but not always, and he's pulled off a few surprises.
>
> One of my children said something interesting last week. He said that
> Murdoch's control of Australian politics is weakening because people no
> longer read newspapers. I'll have to think about that.

Did he somehow manage to not establish a TV empire Down There?
FoxNews has pretty much taken over from the New York Post.

[Mack A. Damia]

If you think about the kinds of learning that took place as you
progressed through grades/standards in elementary/secondary schools
and higher education, you have to recognize an advancing degree of
analytical thought.

When you chose class leaders in the lower grades/standards, what were
the criteria in your selection? Attractiveness? Popularity? There
were probably no "hot button" issues such as, say, keeping out certain
classes of students or keeping rival school students away from events.

Mary Lou Bruner, 68, very recently attracted 48 per cent of votes for
an education position; she is leading candidate for the Texas Board
of Education in the first round of voting for the vacant position.

Mary Lou's attractiveness to voters stems from her position on
President Obama. She claims that Obama was a gay prostitute and that
the theory of evolution causes school shootings.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3474838/Woman-claims-Obama-former-gay-prostitute-theory-evolution-causes-school-shootings-leading-candidate-Texas-Board-Education.html

[Percival P. Cassidy]

"Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
in the UK.

Perce

[Tony Cooper]

Never had such as thing as a "Head Boy" in any school I attended.

>> Mary Lou Bruner, 68, very recently attracted 48 per cent of votes for
>> an education position; she is leading candidate for the Texas Board
>> of Education in the first round of voting for the vacant position.
>>
>> Mary Lou's attractiveness to voters stems from her position on
>> President Obama. She claims that Obama was a gay prostitute and that
>> the theory of evolution causes school shootings.
>>
>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3474838/Woman-claims-Obama-former-gay-prostitute-theory-evolution-causes-school-shootings-leading-candidate-Texas-Board-Education.html
>

Yeah, right, but - by Texas standards - she's a moderate candidate for
the Texas Board of Education. The other candidates are whack-jobs.

[Mack A. Damia]

Checked an earlier yearbook. We had class officers - President, VP,
Treasurer and Secretary - beginning in 9th Grade.

[Cheryl]

Not necessarily; it depends on the individual. I've known plenty of
people who didn't have much formal education but still managed
analytical thinking; and people with university degrees who could be
surprisingly unanalytical - often when speaking of things outside their
field of study, of course, but some tended to absorb totally
uncritically the most popular dogmas taught during their undergraduate
studies. Sometimes I think that more people should be taught history to
gain perspective; other times, I think maturity will do it for some
people and nothing will help others.

[David Kleinecke]

I think the Lakoff article I posted a reference to applies here,

Some people were taught nothing but direct causation and never have been
exposed to systemic causation. The jargon gets mixed up but I think what
Lakoff calls systemic causation is what what is called analytic thinking
is aiming to expound.

But the best single thing to learn is that any idea might be wrong.

[Mack A. Damia]

No. At least not most of the people. Of course there are always rare
exceptions.

This is why, say, calculus, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and
other advanced subjects that teach critical thinking are not taught in
the lower grades. This is why most children do not go to university
at age ten or eleven.

Children are not merely little men and little women; they are not
developed adults. That is, developed physically and mentally.

[Cheryl]

On 2016-03-05 6:48 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:

>
> No. At least not most of the people. Of course there are always rare
> exceptions.
>
> This is why, say, calculus, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and
> other advanced subjects that teach critical thinking are not taught in
> the lower grades. This is why most children do not go to university
> at age ten or eleven.
>
> Children are not merely little men and little women; they are not
> developed adults. That is, developed physically and mentally.

There's a vast literature on critical thinking. Admittedly, it's been a
while since I read up on it, but although there is assumed to be a
developmental aspect to reasoning abilities, actually teaching them,
much less demonstrating that transference can take place, is not well
understood. By 'transference', I mean the claim that someone who has
managed to successfully learn something that requires critical thinking
(mathematics, Latin and some forms of formal reasoning like logic were
common candidates) can transfer that ability and use critical thinking
in a different field of study.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 2:20:32 PM UTC-5, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
> On 03/05/2016 12:04 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> > When you chose class leaders in the lower grades/standards, what were
> > the criteria in your selection? Attractiveness? Popularity? There
> > were probably no "hot button" issues such as, say, keeping out certain
> > classes of students or keeping rival school students away from events.
>
> "Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
> in the UK.

Then who served on the Student Council??

[Peter Moylan]

On 2016-Mar-06 07:31, Cheryl wrote:

> Sometimes I think that more people should be taught history to gain
> perspective; other times, I think maturity will do it for some people
> and nothing will help others.

Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.

No doubt a study of history at an advanced level is good for gaining
perspective. I don't think it does much of that at high school level.

[Mack A. Damia]

Yes, I hear what you are saying, but the vast majority of people
develop intellectually in stages - from child to adult.

Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
population have IQs less than 100. School curriculums of regular
classes are tailored to the mean intelligence level of a particular
grade.

The authors comment that while they are very-well educated, when it
came to, say, quantum mechanics, it was all "dutch' to them. This is
why Einstein was Einstein.

If you teach a child algebra, he/she learns abstract thinking, but the
foundations are still mathematics and arithmetic learned earlier.

[Mack A. Damia]

Short three-minute debate on Trump between Ted Koppel of ABC News and
Bill O'Reilly of Fox News.

In a nutshell.....

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/2016/03/03/watch-ted-koppel-call-out-bill-oreilly-to-his-face-you-created-trump-by-destroying-journalism/

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,

Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>population have IQs less than 100.

Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
median score of 100 *by construction*.

ObEnglishUsage: "Herrnstein and Murray's book", not "Herrnstein's and
Murray's book" -- the latter implies each one has his own book,
whereas the former indicates (correctly) that it is a joint venture.
This rule breaks down with pronouns, however, and I don't have any
corpus-based evidence to say whether it is actually observed in
practice, although it is what people my age were taught (in reference
books like Sebranek and Meyer's /Basic English Revisited/). And of
course no comma before the title. (As Kory Stamper noted in a recent
blog post, the historic convention -- still observed 30 years ago by
Sebranek and Meyer -- would also call for apostrophes in "1990's" and
"IQ's".)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993

[Richard Tobin]

In article <ca1c405d-bd74-4316...@googlegroups.com>,

Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> "Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
>> in the UK.

>Then who served on the Student Council??

No such thing at my school.

-- Richard

[Cheryl]

Generally no one, at least in schools I attended or otherwise was
familiar with. I think with one of them the staff at some time tried to
organized some kind of student government, but it never attracted much
interest from students. I don't know if this is because I'm mainly
familiar with small schools, or because this is typical of all schools
in my part of the world, large and small.

We had a valedictorian chosen on the basis of marks to give a speech on
graduation from high school, and, in much lower grades, students would
be selected by teachers to hand out pencils or clean the erasers, but we
didn't have any class leaders or presidents or anything like that.

[Peter Moylan]

On 2016-Mar-06 11:14, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,
> Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>> Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>> universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>> population have IQs less than 100.
>
> Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
> Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
> median score of 100 *by construction*.

And of course "mediocre", which is often used as a put-down, means
nothing worse than "average".

No matter how you do the definitions, you can't get around the fact that
humans are, by and large, not very intelligent.

[Mack A. Damia]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 00:14:46 +0000 (UTC), wol...@bimajority.org
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:

>In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,
>Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>>Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>>universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>>population have IQs less than 100.
>
>Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
>Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
>median score of 100 *by construction*.

One of the most vocal critics of Hernstein's and Murray's *The Bell
Curvez* was the anthropologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who addressed his
attacks in "The Mismeasure of Man. The objections emanated from the
nature of the discipline. For one thing, Anthropology never did
accept an inherent or acquired difference in the races except skin
color, hair and appearance.

The authors had to establish that IQ tests measure the same thing in
blacks as in whites. There is a mean difference in black and white
scores on mental tests, historically about one standard deviation in
magnitude on IQ tests (IQ tests are normed so that the mean is 100
points and the standard deviation is 15). This difference is not the
result of test bias, but reflects differences in cognitive
functioning. The predictive validity of IQ scores for educational and
socioeconomic outcomes is about the same for blacks and whites.

The mean group difference for white and African American young people
as they complete high school and head to college or the labor force is
effectively unchanged since 1994. Whatever the implications were in
1994, they were about the same in 2014.

The flashpoint of the controversy about race and IQ was about genes.
If you mention “The Bell Curve” to someone, they’re still likely to
say “Wasn’t that the book that tried to prove blacks were genetically
inferior to whites?”

In the final analysis, the authors were unable to state the degrees to
which race versus environment contributed to the difference.

(Charles Murray) "The reaction to “The Bell Curve” exposed a profound
corruption of the social sciences that has prevailed since the 1960s.
“The Bell Curve” is a relentlessly moderate book — both in its use of
evidence and in its tone — and yet it was excoriated in remarkably
personal and vicious ways, sometimes by eminent academicians who knew
very well they were lying. Why? Because the social sciences have been
in the grip of a political orthodoxy that has had only the most
tenuous connection with empirical reality, and too many social
scientists think that threats to the orthodoxy should be suppressed by
any means necessary. Corruption is the only word for it."

https://www.aei.org/publication/bell-curve-20-years-later-qa-charles-murray/

[Rich Ulrich]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 00:14:46 +0000 (UTC), wol...@bimajority.org
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:

>In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,
>Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>>Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>>universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>>population have IQs less than 100.
>
>Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
>Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
>median score of 100 *by construction*.

Now here is a profound factor that H & M dismissed in about one page.

The "median score" on the IQ tests in schools are re-standardized
every few years. A fellow named Flynn noticed (back in the 1980s)
that the tests always got harder. In fact, since WW II, if you judged
by the IQ tests of WW II, the world got about 15 IQ points smarter
in the next 50 or 60 years. The "Flynn effect" was confirmed
world-wide, generally speaking. The Wikipedia article covers the
phenomenon pretty well; plus, the fact that none of the glib
explanations for it seem to work.

What is the relevance? - The argument that "IQ differences
must be genetic" was substantiated by the observation that social
factors were known to have only tiny and trivial effects on IQ.
The Flynn Effect shows a major and widespread exception.

The long-noted effect, "IQ seems to decline steadily with age",
was tossed on the trash heap, except as a side-note to the
artifactual measurement of IQ across time. Oh, it was about a
dozen years ago that Fox TV presented a take-it-yourself IQ
test as an evening program. At the end, they gave several
conversion tables to transform your raw score of "correct" to
an IQ score, with higher numbers assigned for IQ if you were older.

It is fairly reasonable to hypothesize that the Black/White experience
is of the same magnitude as this generational difference, socially
speaking, and it could have similar consequences on the score
achieved on IQ tests.

--
Rich Ulrich

[Mack A. Damia]

"Increased intelligence is a myth (so far)" (2014)

"Speaking about science, Carl Sagan observed that extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence. So far, we do not have it for claims
about increasing intelligence after cognitive training or, for that
matter, any other manipulation or treatment, including early childhood
education."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3950413/

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 6:41:50 PM UTC-5, Mack A. Damia wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Mar 2016 19:16:14 -0330, Cheryl <cper...@mun.ca> wrote:
>
> >On 2016-03-05 6:48 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> No. At least not most of the people. Of course there are always rare
> >> exceptions.
> >>
> >> This is why, say, calculus, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and
> >> other advanced subjects that teach critical thinking are not taught in
> >> the lower grades. This is why most children do not go to university
> >> at age ten or eleven.
> >>
> >> Children are not merely little men and little women; they are not
> >> developed adults. That is, developed physically and mentally.
> >
> >There's a vast literature on critical thinking. Admittedly, it's been a
> >while since I read up on it, but although there is assumed to be a
> >developmental aspect to reasoning abilities, actually teaching them,
> >much less demonstrating that transference can take place, is not well
> >understood. By 'transference', I mean the claim that someone who has
> >managed to successfully learn something that requires critical thinking
> >(mathematics, Latin and some forms of formal reasoning like logic were
> >common candidates) can transfer that ability and use critical thinking
> >in a different field of study.
>
> Yes, I hear what you are saying, but the vast majority of people
> develop intellectually in stages - from child to adult.
>
> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
> Curve"

It's a wonder anyone would even mention that at all any more. Its assumptions
and methodological flaws were thoroughly debunked at the time. S. J.
Gould's New Yorker essay on it was reprinted in the "second edition"
of *The Mismeasure of Man*.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 7:13:18 PM UTC-5, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> Short three-minute debate on Trump between Ted Koppel of ABC News and
> Bill O'Reilly of Fox News.

Ted Koppel hasn't been "of ABC News" for at least a decade. I believe it's
NBC's *Meet the Press* on which he occasionally turns up as a commentator.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 7:15:02 PM UTC-5, Richard Tobin wrote:
> In article <ca1c405d-bd74-4316...@googlegroups.com>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

[no, he didn't]

> >> "Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
> >> in the UK.
> >Then who served on the Student Council??
>
> No such thing at my school.

Did Malcolm MacDowell shoot up his school in vain, then? (In *If ...*, which
is most notable for the organ postlude, Toccata from the Fifth Symphony by
Widor; one of the congregants on the way out says, "Splendid voluntary,
Vicar!" -- to which the vicar responds, "Buxtehude!")

Even St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's (Episcopal) in the 1960s had class and student
body presidents.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 03/05/2016 10:33 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>>> "Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
>>>> in the UK.
>>> Then who served on the Student Council??
>>
>> No such thing at my school.
>
> Did Malcolm MacDowell shoot up his school in vain, then? (In *If ...*, which
> is most notable for the organ postlude, Toccata from the Fifth Symphony by
> Widor; one of the congregants on the way out says, "Splendid voluntary,
> Vicar!" -- to which the vicar responds, "Buxtehude!")
>
> Even St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's (Episcopal) in the 1960s had class and student
> body presidents.

The (private -- Anglican-connected) school at which I obtained the
certificate showing that I had attained an academic standard high enough
to be admitted to a university had no Student Council, no Class
Presidents, and no elections for anything -- except for a "mock
election" in the run-up to a real general election.

There were "prefects" appointed by the Headmaster (or perhaps by the
teachers as a whole), and a Head Prefect, who was either appointed, or
perhaps chosen by the prefects from among their own members. The
"Prefects('? -- I don't remember) Court" dealt with routine disciplinary
matters and could administer canings or other punishments -- or refer
matters to a higher authority

Perce

[Cheryl]

I don't understand what you mean, unless it's that humans are for some
reason supposed to be more intelligent than, in fact, they have been
observed to be. If you want to use IQ as a measure of intelligence (and
that's a debatable point!), most humans will score within a certain
range for intelligence. Saying they're not very intelligent because they
score within the normal range of intelligence for their species is like
saying that cats, by and large, aren't very good hunters because they
don't always catch their prey. Or that bloodhounds, by and large, aren't
good trackers because sometimes they lose their prey. In all cases,
there's probably a certain level of ability that most members of the
species have. Some will be a bit better and some a bit worse than
average. You can say that some humans (or cats or dogs) are better or
worse at whatever the ability is, but by and large most of them will be
average. Or mediocre, if you prefer.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

The problem is that "mediocre" tends to be used in a disparaging way.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/mediocre

Of only average quality; not very good:

Although its origin appears to be neutral, "mediocre" doesn't mean "Of
average quality".

Origin

Late 16th century: from French médiocre, from Latin mediocris 'of
middle height or degree', literally 'somewhat mountainous', from
medius 'middle' + ocris 'rugged mountain'.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Janet]

In article <dk1q08...@mid.individual.net>, Nob...@NotMyISP.net
says...

In our school, Prefects were supposedly elected by their year-group.
Our peers elected me and my BF Jennifer. The headmistress
vetoed democracy on the grounds J and I were unfit for the honour, a
disruptive influence, bad role models. We were disqualified.

Jennifer's father, an influential figure in our small town,
immediately invited the head to lunch at the local Conservative Club,
and by the end of it Jennifer was reinstated.

A lasting lesson in politics .

Janet

[Peter T. Daniels]

So they were training you for the non-democratic, authoritarian form of representative
government that I've been learning from your colleagues here that you suffer under.

[Katy Jennison]

A pretty appalling example for, presumably, everyone in your school.

Still, I expect it was the same in other places. No wonder the
country's going to the digs.

--
Katy Jennison

[Katy Jennison]

Damn. Dogs. Definitely dogs.

--
Katy Jennison

[Cheryl]

I would use "mediocre' in a disparaging way, while for me "average" is
not disparaging but descriptive. I think someone else in the thread
suggested "mediocre".

[Mack A. Damia]

After reading all of the verbiage, I think it is a CNN interview. Yes,
I haven't seen Ted for ages.

[Mack A. Damia]

Yes, it was me describing the bell curve for IQ.

H. & M. point out that an average (mediocre) IQ of 100 is rather poor
for the complexities of this day-and-age.

[Mack A. Damia]

I mentioned that before, and Gould had a personal agenda if you read
up on it.

[Mack A. Damia]

It is Fox News and The O'Reilly Factor.

[Tony Cooper]

You recently wrote: "I suspect you were never brought up in any sort
of biblical tradition. In that case, you would do well to abandon your
new immersion in the very Christian poets."

Since you were not brought up in any sort of British tradition, you
would do very well to abandon your continued immersion in the British
political system.

On second thought...don't. It's quite possible that the head-shaking
in disbelief of the ignorance of the comments is what is keeping some
otherponders alert.


--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[Tony Cooper]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 08:30:48 -0800, Mack A. Damia
<mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>I mentioned that before, and Gould had a personal agenda if you read
>up on it.

My turn to vent. The use of "agenda" to imply an attempt to do
something untowards is a personal peeve of mine.

Of course Gould had a personal agenda. An agenda, in this context, is
a plan. He was acting to plan by writing the essay. If Gould's
premise was completely acceptable it would still be the output of a
personal agenda, but we are accustomed to thinking that the agenda is
somehow not acceptable if we call it a "personal agenda".

[David Kleinecke]

What is deplorable is HIDDEN agendas.

But the "hidden" gets lost.

[LFS]

Are we? To me, a personal agenda implies some form of individual bias,
which we all have. That's not unacceptable, although it might be if it
is a hidden agenda.

--
Laura (emulate St George for email)

[Mack A. Damia]

Did you read the blurb I posted about The Bell Curve - twenty years
later? An interview with Murray?

Gould had to disagree because of the nature of Anthropology concerning
inherent differences in peoples and races. Murray lamented in the
interview that many learned scholars lied and knew they were lying in
their criticisms of H &M's research.

I happen to agree with the premise, and I cannot fathom the thrust of
the learned opposition to H & M's work. I have done research myself
into "intelligence" and research methods/inferential statistics. Their
research and methodology are sound. It is easy to nitpick.

[Peter T. Daniels]

That doesn't make him wrong.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Admittedly, I haven't studied British television dramas the way you have,
so doubtless you're far more qualified to pontificate on the British
political system than the Brits who do their best to explain it here.

Or are you aware of some procedure by which they choose which candidates will
"stand" for election to office?

Did the British public decide that Mrs Thatcher would be the very best person
to compete for, let alone win, the post of Head of Government?

[Peter T. Daniels]

You bring that up again, even though it was politely ignored before.
What the hell does either Gould or Murray have to do with Anthropology?

[charles]

In article <c60a7b9e-3003-43a6...@googlegroups.com>, Peter

No. Mrs Thatcher had been elected Leader of the party by party members -
including MPs.

We now have, in some parts of the country directly elected Mayors. I am
convinced this is to pave the way for a directly elected Prime Minister.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

[pensive hamster]

So you have a democratic, non-authoritarian form of representative
government Over There? I have one word for you. Trump.

Or as Churchill put it:

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation
with the average voter."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9696402/Why-Winston-Churchill-will-always-be-the-last-word-in-political-wit.html

For the benefit of those with treacley internet connections, the three
wittiest quotes (in my opinion) from the above article are:

Churchill said that Clement Attlee "looks like a female llama surprised
while bathing."

Clement Freud called Mrs Thatcher "Attila the Hen".

Malcolm Rifkind: "You realise you're no longer in government when
you get in the back of your car and it doesn't go anywhere".

[Tony Cooper]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 17:35:40 +0000, LFS
<la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:

>On 06/03/2016 17:02, Tony Cooper wrote:
>> On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 08:30:48 -0800, Mack A. Damia
>> <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I mentioned that before, and Gould had a personal agenda if you read
>>> up on it.
>>
>> My turn to vent. The use of "agenda" to imply an attempt to do
>> something untowards is a personal peeve of mine.
>>
>> Of course Gould had a personal agenda. An agenda, in this context, is
>> a plan. He was acting to plan by writing the essay. If Gould's
>> premise was completely acceptable it would still be the output of a
>> personal agenda, but we are accustomed to thinking that the agenda is
>> somehow not acceptable if we call it a "personal agenda".
>>
>
>
>Are we? To me, a personal agenda implies some form of individual bias,
>which we all have.

I agree.

>That's not unacceptable,

And again.

>although it might be if it is a hidden agenda.

What I am referring to is the *use* of "personal agenda" in writing.
You will be hard-pressed to find an example of some article where
"personal agenda" is not used to indicate or strongly imply
disapproval.

For some reason, while we all agree that personal opinions are normal
and acceptable, when we disagree with those opinions we label them a
result of a "personal agenda".

If someone writes an article on the need to improve the parking
situation in Oxford, and you agree that improvements are needed, you
are not likely to label the author's words the result of a personal
agenda even if that person has something to gain by improved parking
conditions.

However, if a person writes an article about the need to improve
parking conditions in Oxford by building a large parking structure in
Blackbird Leys Park and providing shuttle service to the city-center,
and you disagree with this, you might suggest the writer has a

[Jerry Friedman]

On 3/6/16 4:35 AM, Cheryl wrote:
> On 2016-03-05 9:44 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 2016-Mar-06 11:14, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,
>>> Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>>>> Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>>>> universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>>>> population have IQs less than 100.
>>>
>>> Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
>>> Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
>>> median score of 100 *by construction*.
>>
>> And of course "mediocre", which is often used as a put-down, means
>> nothing worse than "average".

Likewise "mean".

>> No matter how you do the definitions, you can't get around the fact that
>> humans are, by and large, not very intelligent.
>>
> I don't understand what you mean, unless it's that humans are for some
> reason supposed to be more intelligent than, in fact, they have been
> observed to be.

...

It's literally true. If you define "very intelligent", as the top 10%,
say, then 90% of humans are not very intelligent.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Mack A. Damia]

I read a long time ago that Gould was an anthropologist or had a great
influence on the discipline of anthropology.

Wiki says he was a paleontologist and an evolutionary biologist. Many
people according to reports found him to be pompous and
self-righteous, so that should hit home with you.

"The Mismeasure of Man" dealt more with debunking the theories of
Samuel Morton and his 19th Century investigation of skull sizes.

Upon deeper analysis, Gould's attacks proved to be largely baseless,
and Morton was exonerated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?_r=0

[Mack A. Damia]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 10:47:48 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"

Oh, yes it do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?_r=0

[Peter T. Daniels]

So you keep explaining. NOT BY THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

> We now have, in some parts of the country directly elected Mayors. I am
> convinced this is to pave the way for a directly elected Prime Minister.

And it's taken you only 338 years (counting from 1688) to get there?

[Cheryl]

I suppose I was coming at it from the point of view of what level of
intelligence you could expect most humans to have. I don't see much
point in basing my expectations of intelligence in any given human, or
group of humans, on the intelligence of either the top 10% or the bottom
10% of the total population of humans.

It doesn't seem any more useful to describe most humans as not very
intelligent than it is to describe most of them as not very tall.

[Peter T. Daniels]

What about him? He's never been elected to anything, and never will be.

> Or as Churchill put it:
>
> "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation
> with the average voter."

He was a rather notorious Conservative, no? He also said that democracy is
the worst form of government, except for all the others.

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9696402/Why-Winston-Churchill-will-always-be-the-last-word-in-political-wit.html
>
> For the benefit of those with treacley internet connections, the three
> wittiest quotes (in my opinion) from the above article are:
>
> Churchill said that Clement Attlee "looks like a female llama surprised
> while bathing."

Which reminds me of the Chesterton line, quoted by Brooke Gladstone in the
frequent promos for her NPR program *On the Media*, that "Journalism consists
of saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to beople who did not know that Lord Jones
was alive."

> Clement Freud called Mrs Thatcher "Attila the Hen".

Surely that was invented hundreds or thousands of times across the country.

> Malcolm Rifkind: "You realise you're no longer in government when
> you get in the back of your car and it doesn't go anywhere".

So anyone "in government" gets a limo and a driver?

[Peter T. Daniels]

That should tell you something about the reliability of what you read.

> Wiki says he was a paleontologist and an evolutionary biologist. Many
> people according to reports found him to be pompous and
> self-righteous, so that should hit home with you.
>
> "The Mismeasure of Man" dealt more with debunking the theories of
> Samuel Morton and his 19th Century investigation of skull sizes.

AS I SAID, his New Yorker review was reprinted in the SECOND EDITION.

> Upon deeper analysis, Gould's attacks proved to be largely baseless,
> and Morton was exonerated.

Morton had nothing to do with *The Bell Curve*.

He was not criminally charged with anything, so he didn't need exoneration.

> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?_r=0

Right, measuring volumes by filling a skull with BB shot was highly reliable,
It doesn't even say how the modern investigators made their measurements.

[Stan Brown]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2016 15:58:44 -0500, Tony Cooper wrote:
> What I am referring to is the *use* of "personal agenda" in writing.
> You will be hard-pressed to find an example of some article where
> "personal agenda" is not used to indicate or strongly imply
> disapproval.
>

"Ulterior motive" used to be reserved for the nefarious ones. But I
think the right-wingers' use of the term "gay agenda" has spoiled the
use of "agenda as applied to persons.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"The difference between the /almost right/ word and the
/right/ word is ... the difference between the lightning-bug
and the lightning." --Mark Twain

[Mack A. Damia]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2016 15:22:58 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"

I was not and am not commenting on Morton's work; I am merely
reporting what has been reported, so take your gripe up with THEM!

Who said Morton had something to do with The Bell Curve? I don't
care when Gould's New Yorker review was reprinted. Why should I?

Gould taught at Harvard University for most of his professional
career, so what does that tell you, bright-eyes?

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 9:54 pm, Janet wrote:
> In article <dk1q08...@mid.individual.net>, Nob...@NotMyISP.net
> says...

>>
>> On 03/05/2016 10:33 PM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>>> "Class president"!" Never had any such thing in any school I attended --
>>>>>> in the UK.
>>>>> Then who served on the Student Council??
>>>>
>>>> No such thing at my school.
>>>
>>> Did Malcolm MacDowell shoot up his school in vain, then? (In *If ...*, which
>>> is most notable for the organ postlude, Toccata from the Fifth Symphony by
>>> Widor; one of the congregants on the way out says, "Splendid voluntary,
>>> Vicar!" -- to which the vicar responds, "Buxtehude!")
>>>
>>> Even St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's (Episcopal) in the 1960s had class and student
>>> body presidents.
>>
>> The (private -- Anglican-connected) school at which I obtained the
>> certificate showing that I had attained an academic standard high enough
>> to be admitted to a university had no Student Council, no Class
>> Presidents, and no elections for anything -- except for a "mock
>> election" in the run-up to a real general election.
>>
>> There were "prefects" appointed by the Headmaster (or perhaps by the
>> teachers as a whole), and a Head Prefect, who was either appointed, or
>> perhaps chosen by the prefects from among their own members. The
>> "Prefects('? -- I don't remember) Court" dealt with routine disciplinary
>> matters and could administer canings or other punishments -- or refer
>> matters to a higher authority
>

> In our school, Prefects were supposedly elected by their year-group.
> Our peers elected me and my BF Jennifer. The headmistress
> vetoed democracy on the grounds J and I were unfit for the honour, a
> disruptive influence, bad role models. We were disqualified.
>
> Jennifer's father, an influential figure in our small town,
> immediately invited the head to lunch at the local Conservative Club,
> and by the end of it Jennifer was reinstated.
>
> A lasting lesson in politics .

It's good to know you were disruptive and a bad rôle model, though. That
must be why you fit in so well here.
--
Robert B. born England a long time ago;
Western Australia since 1972

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 11:35 pm, Katy Jennison wrote:

> On 06/03/2016 13:54, Janet wrote:

>> In our school, Prefects were supposedly elected by their year-group.
>> Our peers elected me and my BF Jennifer. The headmistress
>> vetoed democracy on the grounds J and I were unfit for the honour, a
>> disruptive influence, bad role models. We were disqualified.
>>
>> Jennifer's father, an influential figure in our small town,
>> immediately invited the head to lunch at the local Conservative Club,
>> and by the end of it Jennifer was reinstated.
>>
>> A lasting lesson in politics .
>

> A pretty appalling example for, presumably, everyone in your school.
>
> Still, I expect it was the same in other places. No wonder the
> country's going to the digs.
>
Am I missing an archaeological reference?

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 11:38 pm, Katy Jennison wrote:

> On 06/03/2016 15:35, Katy Jennison wrote:

>> No wonder the
>> country's going to the digs.
>>
>

> Damn. Dogs. Definitely dogs.
>

The original was more thought-provoking.

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 10:52 pm, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>
> So they were training you for the non-democratic, authoritarian form of representative
> government that I've been learning from your colleagues here that you suffer under.
>

Now that we are getting daily doses of the American way on television,
we in other countries can only give thanks for our lack of suffering and
outright trumpery.

[Robert Bannister]

I sincerely hope we don't go that way here.

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 7:40 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
> Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
> universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the

> population have IQs less than 100. School curriculums of regular
> classes are tailored to the mean intelligence level of a particular
> grade.

I would take issue with that last statement. While I am sure the class
teacher may take the easy option of teaching to the middle of the
class's ability level which will change from year to year, the over-all
school curriculum will not change, and the standard demanded by external
examinations even less so. That is why some external supervision of
schools is so important, whether by examining the student's abilities or
by some other method.

[Janet]

In article <5279549c-a6d0-4020...@googlegroups.com>,
gram...@verizon.net says...

No, he was notorious for changing political party at the drop of
numerous hats.

Janet.

[Mack A. Damia]

I don't think we disagree, although I don't think that there will be
much overall variation in students' abilities from year-to-year unless
there are exceptions. But exceptions belong in Special Education -
either remedial or gifted.

[Janet]

In article <c60a7b9e-3003-43a6...@googlegroups.com>,
gram...@verizon.net says...

How could he not be? I believe we explained very recently that in
Britain almost anyone can stand for election, and the simple procedure
was posted.

Janet.

[Janet]

In article <da65a8a1-5848-4c9a...@googlegroups.com>,
gram...@verizon.net says...

Party members ARE the general public. Any member of the general
public can join the Conservative party, which enables them to vote in
party leadership elections. How hard is that to understand?

Janet.

[Robert Bannister]

On 6/03/2016 7:35 pm, Cheryl wrote:
> On 2016-03-05 9:44 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 2016-Mar-06 11:14, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,

>>> Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>>>> Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>>>> universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>>>> population have IQs less than 100.
>>>

>>> Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
>>> Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
>>> median score of 100 *by construction*.
>>
>> And of course "mediocre", which is often used as a put-down, means
>> nothing worse than "average".
>>

>> No matter how you do the definitions, you can't get around the fact that
>> humans are, by and large, not very intelligent.
>>
> I don't understand what you mean, unless it's that humans are for some
> reason supposed to be more intelligent than, in fact, they have been

> observed to be. If you want to use IQ as a measure of intelligence (and
> that's a debatable point!), most humans will score within a certain
> range for intelligence. Saying they're not very intelligent because they
> score within the normal range of intelligence for their species is like
> saying that cats, by and large, aren't very good hunters because they
> don't always catch their prey. Or that bloodhounds, by and large, aren't
> good trackers because sometimes they lose their prey. In all cases,
> there's probably a certain level of ability that most members of the
> species have. Some will be a bit better and some a bit worse than
> average. You can say that some humans (or cats or dogs) are better or
> worse at whatever the ability is, but by and large most of them will be
> average. Or mediocre, if you prefer.
>

By definition, half the animals and humans are below average.
I don't believe in IQ tests, but going by the reported popular beliefs
of people - about refugees, foreigners in general, conspiracies, which
politicians will be good for them, etc., an awful lot of them seem to be
either credulous or stupid and sometimes very cruel. I won't mentions
UFOs, and good taste is another question entirely.

[Robert Bannister]

On 7/03/2016 12:29 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> H. & M. point out that an average (mediocre) IQ of 100 is rather poor
> for the complexities of this day-and-age.

Or have we come up with the kind of society that is poorly designed for
many if not most of its members? I'm not sure who "we" are, and I doubt
any society in history catered for more than a minority. Well, there may
have been some attempts at a form of communism, but none of those worked
for very long.

[Robert Bannister]

On 7/03/2016 1:36 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:

> Gould had to disagree because of the nature of Anthropology concerning
> inherent differences in peoples and races.

Haven't these differences only been tested on the population of the USA?
I wonder what the result would be in say India or China. The nature of
IQ testing cannot allow accurately for socio-economic or cultural factors.

[David Kleinecke]

On Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 6:05:14 PM UTC-8, Robert Bannister wrote:
> On 7/03/2016 1:36 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:
>
> > Gould had to disagree because of the nature of Anthropology concerning
> > inherent differences in peoples and races.
>
> Haven't these differences only been tested on the population of the USA?
> I wonder what the result would be in say India or China. The nature of
> IQ testing cannot allow accurately for socio-economic or cultural factors.

It is notorious that what IQ tests measure is whatever it is that IQ tests
measure.

That is - IQ isn't intelligence (whatever that is).

[Mack A. Damia]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016 10:05:08 +0800, Robert Bannister
<rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>On 7/03/2016 1:36 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:
>
>> Gould had to disagree because of the nature of Anthropology concerning
>> inherent differences in peoples and races.
>
>Haven't these differences only been tested on the population of the USA?
>I wonder what the result would be in say India or China. The nature of
>IQ testing cannot allow accurately for socio-economic or cultural factors.

Foreign IQ tests obviously allow for language differences.

Christopher Jencks (still living) was an early researcher and maybe
the first to point out that blacks had an average IQ one standard
deviation below the mean.

These studies can include blacks and whites from throughout the world.

One study identified Ashkenazi Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe as
having the highest average IQ of any sub-group: one full SD above the
mean.

[Peter Moylan]

On 2016-Mar-07 07:20, charles wrote:

> We now have, in some parts of the country directly elected Mayors. I am
> convinced this is to pave the way for a directly elected Prime Minister.

Not a good idea. We've tried it here, and got the worst mayor we've ever
had. Luckily he didn't serve a full term; he had to resign because of a
bribery scandal.

Newcastle wasn't the only council to have a problem. Direct election of
mayors seems to make it easier for the corrupt to gain power.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Mack A. Damia]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016 09:58:02 +0800, Robert Bannister
<rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>On 7/03/2016 12:29 am, Mack A. Damia wrote:
>
>> H. & M. point out that an average (mediocre) IQ of 100 is rather poor
>> for the complexities of this day-and-age.
>
>Or have we come up with the kind of society that is poorly designed for
>many if not most of its members? I'm not sure who "we" are, and I doubt
>any society in history catered for more than a minority. Well, there may
>have been some attempts at a form of communism, but none of those worked
>for very long.

Who has "designed" a society? It is what it is.

I guess there are those who would perform better in, say, a
hunter-gatherer society, but we have moved beyond that.

Or have we?

[Cheryl]

On 2016-03-06 10:23 PM, Robert Bannister wrote:

>
> By definition, half the animals and humans are below average.
> I don't believe in IQ tests, but going by the reported popular beliefs
> of people - about refugees, foreigners in general, conspiracies, which
> politicians will be good for them, etc., an awful lot of them seem to be
> either credulous or stupid and sometimes very cruel. I won't mentions
> UFOs, and good taste is another question entirely.
>

Certainly some people are often stupid and cruel - maybe we all are at
certain times, since there's no guarantee that any of us are invariably
intelligent and kind.

The tendency to describe holders of beliefs the speaker doesn't agree
with as 'stupid' seems nearly universal. Sometimes, too, there's a
difference in what politician I think will be good for people and their
views on the subject - which may well be based on a different view of
'good'. If I'm motivated mainly by said politician's view on tax
increases while my neighbour is looking for one who will promise to
improve the health care services, we are making political choices based
on different priorities - I'll wonder why he wants to pay more taxes
when he's not a rich man and he'll wonder why I'm so indifferent to the
needs of the sick when I'm getting to an age when illness is more and
more common.

As for fashion and taste - well, that changes so often that if I notice
something along those lines that I think particularly attractive and/or
cleverly designed, I need wait a very short time before I see something
that will convince me that modern society is sinking into an abyss of
bad taste.

[Cheryl]

It's not merely language differences that cause comparison problems with
IQ test results - it's cultural differences. Even within the same
language group and the same country, questions can assume background
knowledge that only some of the test-takers may have, since these vary
with personal experience. There have, of course, been efforts to develop
tests that are less culture-specific, but I'm not sure that they've been
entirely successful.

There have also been arguments that whatever it is that IQ tests
measure, it's not intelligence, but perhaps a sub-set or sub-category of
overall intelligence.

[Mack A. Damia]

Certainly there are modes of intelligence that the Stanford-Binet does
not measure. Musical, Existential, Artistic, Interpersonal, Spacial,
Kinesthetic and more.

Out of, say, one-thousand people, how many can make a meaningful
career out of music? Sports? Entertainment? Composing? Writing?

The types of intelligence measured on the S-B are verbal and
quantitative, and those are the factors that best predict success in
our society, and success is measured in narrow ways. It didn't matter
much to women a hundred years ago, but for a man, it was the ability
to earn and to provide for his family in an increasingly industrial
society. The S-B measures those aptitudes that bring about success.

Foreign-based IQ tests are adjusted for language and culture, and the
tests are continuously undergoing improvements.

[Peter Moylan]

I'm reminded of something that happened when I was teaching. One year
there was a significant drop in entry standards to Engineering courses.
Naturally, there was a jump in failure rates in all subjects at the end
of the year. At the examiners' meeting, the Engineering academics wanted
to apply the same standards as in previous years. The representative
from the Education faculty [1] fought this strongly. He claimed that all
the results were invalid, because they hadn't been normalised to a fixed
mean and standard deviation.

(He was outvoted.)

[1] Back in those days every Faculty Board had representatives from
other faculties, in a (not always successful) attempt to ensure uniform
standards across the university. This was changed when the powers of
Faculty Boards were reduced, as part of the process of removing
academics from decision-making processes. These days, I gather, there is
a lot of pressure to make examinations easier to pass, in the interests
of improving "productivity".

[pensive hamster]

On Monday, 7 March 2016 02:50:28 UTC, Cheryl P wrote:
> On 2016-03-06 11:01 PM, Mack A. Damia wrote:

In my opinion, for sure IQ tests are culture-specific, and assume background
knowledge that only some of the test-takers may have.

I watched a 2009 programme called "Race and Intelligence : Science's Last
Taboo", by Somali-born former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao8W2tPujeE
(45 mins)

which attempts to elucidate the issue of the culture-specificity of IQ tests.
It is a pretty good programme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rageh_Omaar#Personal_life

"... At the age of two, Rageh moved to the United Kingdom. He thereafter
attended two independent schools, the Dragon School in Oxford and
Cheltenham College in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Omaar later studied
Modern History at New College at the University of Oxford.[2]"

Somali-born, but UK educated, and speaks perfect English, don't you know.
So he can probably see both sides of the cultural divide.

I am a white British male. When I was a teenager, I went through a phase
of checking my IQ. I used a stopwatch, and a Pelican book (same
publishers as Penguin Books) called something like "Know your own IQ", by
Hans Eysenck, IIRC

I did 5 or 6 tests. My score on the final test was about 30 points higher
than on the first test, because I had begun to suss out how the test
writers' brains worked, and what they were after in their questions.

I think the test writers were probably white westerners. For sure I would
have scored a lot less well had the test writers been, say, New York
black rap-loving dudes.

[Peter T. Daniels]

This whole message tells me you haven't changed during your many months of absence.

[Peter T. Daniels]

From what you three (I think it is) report here, you seem to have installed a
perpetual and self-perpetuating rightwing nutcase government.

I remind you again, Trump has never been and never will be elected to anything.

[Jerry Friedman]

On 3/6/16 4:10 PM, Cheryl wrote:
> On 2016-03-06 6:23 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:

>> On 3/6/16 4:35 AM, Cheryl wrote:
>>> On 2016-03-05 9:44 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>> On 2016-Mar-06 11:14, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>>>> In article <80rmdb5ujanus0m0p...@4ax.com>,

>>>>> Mack A. Damia <mybaco...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>

>>>>>> Also, if you are familiar with Herrnstein's and Murray's, "The Bell
>>>>>> Curve" that caused more than a ripple in academia in the 1990s, the
>>>>>> universal mean IQ of 100 is mediocre at best. That means 50% of the
>>>>>> population have IQs less than 100.
>>>>>

>>>>> Of course they do. If you read any of the criticism of Herrnstein and
>>>>> Murray's shoddy little book, you would recall that IQ scales have a
>>>>> median score of 100 *by construction*.
>>>>
>>>> And of course "mediocre", which is often used as a put-down, means
>>>> nothing worse than "average".
>>

>> Likewise "mean".

>>
>>>> No matter how you do the definitions, you can't get around the fact
>>>> that humans are, by and large, not very intelligent.
>>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean, unless it's that humans are for some
>>> reason supposed to be more intelligent than, in fact, they have been
>>> observed to be.

>> ...
>>
>> It's literally true. If you define "very intelligent", as the top 10%,
>> say, then 90% of humans are not very intelligent.
>>
>
> I suppose I was coming at it from the point of view of what level of
> intelligence you could expect most humans to have. I don't see much
> point in basing my expectations of intelligence in any given human, or
> group of humans, on the intelligence of either the top 10% or the bottom
> 10% of the total population of humans.

I wasn't being entirely serious. "Not very intelligent", taken
literally, has nothing to do with expectations.

> It doesn't seem any more useful to describe most humans as not very
> intelligent than it is to describe most of them as not very tall.

Seriously now, and since we're talking about democracy, it could be
useful to talk about how many voters are capable of choosing the
candidate who is most likely to provide what they want. For instance,
if a person's top priority is their own wealth, can they pick the
candidate who is most likely to improve it? (Technically that might
mean the candidate under whose administration the voter's expected
wealth is the highest.) If the voter's top priority is honesty, can
they pick the most honest candidate?

My record on this sort of thing is... mediocre.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter T. Daniels]

Beginning with raising GBP500. When has any such candidate ever been elected
to anything?