Racial Differences in Intelligence
Schorsch
Mainstream Science on Intelligence
The Wall Street Journal
December 13, 1994
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the publication of "The Bell Curve," many commentators have
offered
opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific
evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are
actually firmly supported.
This statement outlines conclusions regarded as mainstream among
researchers on intelligence, in particular, on the nature, origins, and
practical consequences of individual and group differences in
intelligence. Its aim is to promote more reasoned discussion of the
vexing phenomenon that the research has revealed in recent decades. The
following conclusions are fully described in the major textbooks,
professional journals and encyclopedias in intelligence.
The Meaning and Measurement of Intelligence
1. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other
things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems,
think
abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from
experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic
skill, or
test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper
capability
for comprehending our surroundings--"catching on," "making sense"
of
things, or "figuring out" what to do.
2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests
measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical
terms,
reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments.
They do
not measure creativity, character personality, or other important
differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.
3. While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all
measure
the same intelligence. Some use words or numbers and require
specific
cultural knowledge (like vocabulary). Others do not, and instead
use
shapes or designs and require knowledge of only simple, universal
concepts (many/few, open/closed, up/down).
4. The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can
be
represented well by the bell curve (in statistical jargon, the
"normal
curve"). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are
either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above
IQ
130 (often considered the threshold for "giftedness"), with about
the
same percentage below IQ 70 (IQ 70-75 often being considered the
threshold for mental retardation).
5. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American
blacks or
other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ
scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans,
regardless of
race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English
well
can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native
language.
6. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little
understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of
neural
transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of
the
brain, uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.
Group Differences
7. Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ
level. The
bell curves of different groups overlap considerably, but groups
often
differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line.
The
bell curves for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered
somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks
and
Hispanics) ale centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.
8. The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the
bell
curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for
different
subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and
blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ
100
the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered.
Practical Importance
9. IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single
measurable human trait, to many important educational,
occupational,
economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and
performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life
(education, military training), moderate but robust in others
(social
competence), and modest but consistent in others
(law-abidingness).
Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social
importance.
10. A high IQ is an advantage in life because virtually all activities
require some reasoning and decision-making. Conversely, a low IQ
is
often a disadvantage, especially in disorganized environments. Of
course, a high IQ no more guarantees success than a low IQ
guarantees
failure in life. There are many exceptions, but the odds for
success in
our society greatly favor individuals with higher IQs.
11. The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life
settings become more complex (novel, ambiguous, changing,
unpredictable, or multifaceted). For example, a high IQ is
generally
necessary to perform well in highly complex or fluid jobs (the
professions, management): it is a considerable advantage in
moderately
complex jobs (crafts, clerical and police work); but it provides
less
advantage in settings that require only routine decision making or
simple problem solving (unskilled work).
12. Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor
affecting
performance in education, training, and highly complex jobs (no
one
claims they are), but intelligence is often the most important.
When
individuals have already been selected for high (or low)
intelligence
and so do not differ as much in IQ, as in graduate school (or
special
education), other influences on performance loom larger in
comparison.
13. Certain personality traits, special talents, aptitudes, physical
capabilities, experience, and the like are important (sometimes
essential) for successful performance in many jobs, but they have
narrower (or unknown) applicability or "transferability" across
tasks
and settings compared with general intelligence. Some scholars
choose
to refer to these other human traits as other "intelligences."
Source and Stability of Within-Group Differences
14. Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both
their
environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range
from
0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that
genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ
differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared
correlation
of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become
equal
for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all
remaining
differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.
15. Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in
intelligence (by an average of about 12 IQ points) for both
genetic and
environmental reasons. They differ genetically because biological
brothers and sisters share exactly half their genes with each
parent
and, on the average, only half with each other. They also differ
in IQ
because they experience different environments within the same
family.
16. That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not
affected
by the environment. Individuals are not born with fixed,
unchangeable
levels of intelligence (no one claims they are). IQs do gradually
stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little
thereafter.
17. Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences,
we do
not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently.
Whether
recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable
scientific debate.
18. Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable
(consider diabetes, poor vision, and phenal keton uria), nor are
environmentally caused ones necessarily remediable (consider
injuries,
poisons, severe neglect, and some diseases). Both may be
preventable to
some extent.
Source and Stability of Between-Group Differences
19. There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ bell curves for
different
racial-ethnic groups are converging. Surveys in some years show
that
gaps in academic achievement have narrowed a bit for some races,
ages,
school subjects and skill levels, but this picture seems too mixed
to
reflect a general shift in IQ levels themselves.
20. Racial-ethnic differences in IQ bell curves are essentially the
same
when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade.
However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow
learners,
these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount
learned
as youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national
surveys
continue to show, black 17- year-olds perform, on the average,
more
like white 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with
Hispanics
in between.
21. The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligence
appear
to be basically the same as those for why whites (or Asians or
Hispanics) differ among themselves. Both environment and genetic
heredity are involved.
22. There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across
racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between
groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why
individuals
differ among themselves within any particular group (whites or
blacks
or Asians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the
reason
why some individuals in a population have high IQs but others have
low
IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such
high
(or low) IQ individuals than others. Most experts believe that
environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but
that
genetics could be involved too.
23. Racial-ethnic differences are somewhat smaller but still
substantial
for individuals from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. To
illustrate,
black students from prosperous families tend to score higher in IQ
than
blacks from poor families, but they score no higher, on average,
than
whites from poor families.
24. Almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white
ancestors-the white admixture is about 20%, on average--and many
self-designated whites, Hispanics, and others likewise have mixed
ancestry. Because research on intelligence relies on self-
classification into distinct racial categories, as does most other
social-science research, its findings likewise relate to some
unclear
mixture of social and biological distinctions among groups (no one
claims otherwise).
Implications for Social Policy
25. The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular
social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They
can,
however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of
pursuing those goals via different means.
The following professors-all experts in intelligence an allied
fields-have
signed this statement:
Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
John B. Carroll, U.N.C. at Chapel Hill
Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
David B. Cohen, U.T. at Austin
Rene W. Dawis, University of Minnesota
Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve U.
Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
Hans Eysenck, University of London
Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
Linda S. Gottfredsen, University of Delaware
Richard J. Haier, U.C. Irvine
Garrett Hardin, U.C. Berkeley
Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
Joseph M. Horn, U.T. at Austin
Lloyd G. Humphreys, U.Ill. at Champaign-Urbana
John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
Douglas N. Jackson, U. of Western Ontario
James J. Jenkins, U. of South Florida
Arthur R. Jensen, U.C. Berkeley
Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
Nadeen L. Kaufman, Cal. School of Prof. Pshch., S.D.
Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
Nadine Lambert, U.C. Berkeley
John C. Loehlin, U.T. at Austin
David Lubinski, Iowa State University
David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburg
Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Cecil R. Reynolds Texas A&M University
David C. Rowe University of Arizona
J. Philippe Rushton U. of Western Ontario
Vincent Sarich, U.C. Berkeley
Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
Frank L. Schmidt University of Iowa
Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A&M University
James C. Sharf, George Washington University
Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Del Theissen, U.T. at Austin
Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington University
Philip Anthony Vernon, U. of Western Ontario
Lee Willerman, U.T. at Austin
Wolf Kirchmeir
IOW, it's a suite of abilities, which may or may not correlate with each
other, interact with each other, depend on each other, etc. Whatever,
it's clear thay are learned/developed to different degrees by different
learning regimes (ie, personal histories of education, etc.)
> 2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests
> measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical
> terms,
> reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments.
> They do
> not measure creativity, character personality, or other important
> differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.
[...]
I know. but I'm not blinded by statistical validity, as you and many
other believers in IQ test seem to be.
"Reliable" and "valid" merely means "replicable results", which isn't at
all surprising. _Any_ objective test of human behaviour(s) can be made
reliable and valid. Just run it on a large enough random sample of
people, and you'll get your bell curve, after which you can "place"
individuals on the curve depending on their test results. So what? To
say that someone scores at/above/below average on an objective test is
meaningless in and of itself.
As a teacher, I had many, many objective tests foisted on me and my
classes. One of the most interesting was a vocabulary test that had been
normed on southern Ontario, urban students. My classes not only "failed"
this test, they did so by answering incorrectly about 20% of the items -
but almost all my students agreed on the "incorrect" answer. IOW, they
just used words differently than their S. Ont urban fellows. And that's
the problem withn any objective test, including IQ tests - it's valid
_only_ for the demographic on which it was normed. It's simply silly to
assume that it applies to different groups with different histories. And
to use it to compare different groups is not only silly, it's
pernicious. As for its meaning even for the demographic on which it was
normed - well, that's another issue.
The problem with any test whose results fall on the bell curve is
simple: the curve tells you that there are many factors at work to
produce the results, but it tells you nothing at all about how those
factors are related to each other or to the results obtained.
In fact, if a bell curve results, that should be a signal that a great
deal of (very difficult and tedious) analysis and further testing is
needed in order to discover those factors and figure out their
relationship. In some areas of behavioural analysis, that's recognised,
and a great deal of effort has goine itno devsisng
experimentsl/observational regimes that will isolate the presumed
factors at work in producing the complex behaviour under study. But it
ain't easy. The problem is that numbers that fall on bell curves hide data.
Eg, the marks for a class are "averaged" over many tests and assignment
results. Usually, you get a bell curve. Consider two students who are
"average" - one may do excellent work of one type, and very poor work of
another; and contrariwise for the other. Or both may do average work on
all types of assignments. The mark cannot tell you this. The mark
_hides_ the data, and so is useless and often pernicious in its effects.
(Several jurisdictions have recognised this, and require lengthy
annotations on the report card by the teacher; but then why use single
a mark at all?)
So, the rest of your post, no matter how carefully correct in a
technical sense, doesn't help persuade me that intelligence as defined
above is a useful concept. On the contrary - it confimrs my suspicion
that "intelligence" is one of the vaguest, least useful concepts in
psychology. Better to break up these tests into carefully specific ones
- and that, from my reading on the matter and my practical experience in
"evaluating" students, is a very, very difficult task. Even the terms
used, such as "problem solving", refer to suites of abilities.
Etc.
stlbl
measured intelligence, and statistics in general. If you want to see
what the effect of encouraging (through breeding) desirable physical
traits(strength, virility, etc), and discouraging (through murder)
undesirable mental traits (perceived higher intelligence, creativity,
etc..) in a slave population by masters as it effects future
generations, go ahead---but at least include "measuring" the domination
of American sports by African American athletes.
It might be more interesting to take a population of high IQ
scorers, and try to breed intelligence out of them by enslaving them,
ripping their families apart, denying them health care and schools,
then giving them IQ tests in a couple hundred years. That would be
more scientific. Oh yeah, then throw in seeing if they could create a
new art form (jazz), anyway.
So really all the people measuring IQ are just social historians, or
journalists. They are only providing current evidence for the
propagation of racist societal structures on humans. Besides, race
does not exist. All humans are the same species. We can and do
interbreed---the main difference between American blacks and other
blacks around the world is that they usually have white "blood" in
them. Is that a parameter that is considered?
And again, who is to say which "suite" of problem solving tasks is
more complex---those involved in returning a serve in the game of
tennis, or playing chess. I bet its easier to write a chess program
than to build a robot to return serves...
Again, the utility of such statistics is exagerrated.
P.Comm
species?
You are a teacher and you didn't read clearly where the signers were not
measuring creativity (jazz) and/or physical abilities in games (sports)?
MANY ethnic groups experienced hardships - some even worse than the ones the
ancestors of blacks experienced as slaves. For instance, like the Chinese -
even IN China back then and here too.
My take? Tupac Shakur was a lot more REAL than you on these matters.
"stlbl" <wjgr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1104943958.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I'm afraid I have to agree that there is limited meaningfulness of
> measured intelligence, and statistics in general. If you want to see
> what the effect of encouraging (through breeding) desirable physical
> traits(strength, virility, etc), and discouraging (through murder)
> undesirable mental traits (perceived higher intelligence, creativity,
> etc..) in a slave population by masters as it effects future
> generations, go ahead---but at least include "measuring" the domination
> of American sports by African American athletes.
That has to do with fast twitch muscles - the blacks are NOTABLY,
FORENSICALLY different from other races on that. Aside from that, if the
athlete didn't start playing with a ball or doing physical things very
young, he'd not be a very good athlete no matter how good athletes his
parents were.
> It might be more interesting to take a population of high IQ
> scorers, and try to breed intelligence out of them by enslaving them,
> ripping their families apart, denying them health care and schools,
That was done time and time again through the centuries to the Chinese
peasants, serfs and slaves by the ruling classes there in China. It did not
affect their usually higher IQs.
> then giving them IQ tests in a couple hundred years. That would be
> more scientific. Oh yeah, then throw in seeing if they could create a
> new art form (jazz), anyway.
It doesn't explain the even lower IQ scores for Africans in Africa that did
NOT have these things done to them. Environment there and their own
selection there called for a different KIND of intelligence than the kind
that whites and Asians have. That's obvious.
> So really all the people measuring IQ are just social historians, or
> journalists. They are only providing current evidence for the
> propagation of racist societal structures on humans.
Rubbish.
Besides, race
> does not exist. All humans are the same species. We can and do
> interbreed---
Species is not the same as race. But so what - dogs, coyotes, wolves and
jackals can ALSO interbreed and produce highly fertile offspring. Those
animals are the same GENUS.
the main difference between American blacks and other
> blacks around the world is that they usually have white "blood" in
> them. Is that a parameter that is considered?
> And again, who is to say which "suite" of problem solving tasks is
> more complex---those involved in returning a serve in the game of
> tennis, or playing chess. I bet its easier to write a chess program
> than to build a robot to return serves...
> Again, the utility of such statistics is exagerrated.
But playing chess and throwing a ball around have nothing to do with the
ability to make technology and create an industrial society - i.e., modern
civilization. When the environment thru time DEMANDS that smarter people
with more foresight are needed, those are the traits people breed for. If
the environment doesn't demand that, you'd not end up with smarter or higher
IQ people there.
>
stlbl
precision, and technology that still cannot be duplicated? Or the
pre-Columbian cultures while Europeans lived in squalor??Were these
white cultures?
What is your definition of race? I never said race was the same as
species---Ive just never heard of any real definition of race...Is the
aim of IQ measurement an attempt to give some quantitative "basis" to
someone's concept of race ? Or are you trying to re-enter the realm of
medicine---psychology is certainly a science, but medicine is not.
And they measured IQ in China during this breeding you are referring
to? It would be easy to design IQ tests that would reverse the higher
IQs found among whites and Asians relative to blacks. And has anyone of
the signers heard of the studies measuring poor scores on IQ tests by
groups that EXPECT (and are expected) to get lower marks?
Whats this fast twitch muscle stuff. Hitting a baseball involves a
whole lot more than reflexes. And starting out young to make a good
athlete..so what....measure the IQ's of the progeny of geniuses, as
long as you make sure they were kept away from education and tell me
what you find.
O fcourse playing chess and throwing balls has everything to do with
making technology and industrial society actually OCCUR.You go ahead
and build a culture without planning (chess) and machinists and
carpenters (physical abilities)...
Wolf Kirchmeir
> You are a teacher and you don't know the difference between a race and a
> species?
Well, if you ask this question, it's obvious that you have some definite
meanings of these terms in mind. Whether they correspond to some
objective reality is an entirely different question. You think they do.
You also seem to think that anyone who looks at the facst will agree
with you. More fool you.
I am a teacher, and I know that both "race" and "species" are very
slippery terms. There are many such terms -- all of them are more or
less abstract, which should provide a number of clues towards better
understanding.
"Race" and "species" mean whatever you define them to mean. I have read
a lot on these and related topics. I know that Africans belong to a
large number of cultures that didn't do much intermarrying, and have
different genetic profiles. So what? The same is true of Northern and
Mediterranean Europeans. So what?
If you want to identify "race" with genetic profile or genotype, you
also have to decide which features of a genotype are significant: that's
not a scientific question. Medically, we know that certain groups are
more or less prone to ceratin genetic mistakes. If you want to call such
groups races, go ahead. IMO it's the only meaning of "race" that makes
any sense. However, groups defined by genotype don't coincide very well
with groups defined by phenotype.
Recent work on evolution and genetics has shown that "species" is just
as slippery a term. Basically, a species is a breeding population, is
all. But how do you define "breeding population"? You could use normal
breeding behaviour, in which case breeding populations that do not
normally interbreed (ie, when there are enough mates available in each
group) are different species. But such breeding groups can and do
hybridise. (This is the case with wolves, coyotes, and dogs in Ontario.)
Do we now have three species? Or did we have two races of one species?
If you draw the boundary at infertile hybrids, then wolves, coyotes, and
dogs are the same species. If you draw the boundary at normal breeding
behaviour, then they are three species. Which meaning of species do you
have in mind?
Etc.
stlbl
also for asking what PURPOSE is intended in trying to quantify
intelligence. I like your idea of a suite of abilities or skills as a
more important, albeit, more difficult, entity to measure.
It just burns my ass when I hear about this kind of stuff, for the
following reasons(there are more than i will list): Look at what
hateful people do with these statistics---it is dehumanizing to call
someone stupid. I hate to think of all the kids that do poorly in
school because they have been told they are less than average in
intelligence---or their parents help them less with school because
after being told the results of these kinds of tests---they figure,
"what's the point? My kid ain't too damn bright to start with..." Or
the kids who are told they have genius IQs but are poor students and go
through life becoming used to disappointing people and all that does to
one's self esteem.
I wonder what IQ scores are good predictors of? If they predict
academic performance--I would say they more accurately CAUSE academic
performance. But not always---my uncle is a retired psychiatrist. Ist
in his class undergraduate--first in his med school class. IQ tested
to be 104. I would say academic performance is more related to having
one or several good mentors. Among the academics who signed the
opening post---I bet everyone of them had at least one or more
OUTSTANDING teachers or advisors in their academic careers.
I think this is about as useful as tests that show women do worse
in spatial organization and math tests----diversity is what makes the
world interesting. People excel in some areas while are inept in
others. I like to think that anyone in the world is better than
everyone else in the world in something measurable. eVERYONE IS A
GENIUS AT BEING THEMSELVES.
P.Comm
> So the environment demanded the great pyramids, its mathematical
> precision, and technology that still cannot be duplicated? Or the
> pre-Columbian cultures while Europeans lived in squalor??Were these
> white cultures?
Egyptians and pre-Columbian cultures were not white OR black.
Environment can do a great deal of things, if you include metabolism and
diet, uterine environment, and sexual selection into "environmental
factors." For instance, introducing a half blind human male into a society
who comes from generations of half blind people - could easily result in
poor eyesight popping up in that popularion when there was none before. If
that half blind male manages to have a lot of wives and lots of kids - then
it would show up a LOT in the population.
The pre-Columbian cultures came and went, ebbed and flowed - and there are
only theories as to exactly why. The history of Egypt is better
documented - and how it came to end.
>
> What is your definition of race?
Well, first one must figure out if there IS race or not - and that wholly
depends on if you are a "lumper" or a "splitter." See here:
http://www.geocities.com/satanicreds/variation.html
My definition more or less tends to agree with what the various races tend
to use for themselves. They all self identify - and they strongly do so
(especially if they are non-white, they strongly do so). Go figure.
I never said race was the same as
> species---Ive just never heard of any real definition of race...
http://www.geocities.com/satanicreds/variation.html
Forget where the article is - the information in it is good and it's from
the top geneticists in the field.
Is the
> aim of IQ measurement an attempt to give some quantitative "basis" to
> someone's concept of race ?
You read the same article I read. In the article, they mentioned groups of
people that fall into this or that category. Call them whatever you want -
gene pools, cultures, ethnicities, breeds, whatever.
Or are you trying to re-enter the realm of
> medicine---psychology is certainly a science, but medicine is not.
The url I refer you to has genetic data - I guess that would be medicine,
not psychology.
> And they measured IQ in China during this breeding you are referring
> to? It would be easy to design IQ tests that would reverse the higher
> IQs found among whites and Asians relative to blacks.
I think someone tried that - it didn't work. There is also that Raven's
thing.
And has anyone of
> the signers heard of the studies measuring poor scores on IQ tests by
> groups that EXPECT (and are expected) to get lower marks?
>
> Whats this fast twitch muscle stuff.
Medical forensic facts. Research it.
Hitting a baseball involves a
> whole lot more than reflexes. And starting out young to make a good
> athlete..so what....measure the IQ's of the progeny of geniuses, as
> long as you make sure they were kept away from education and tell me
> what you find.
IQ doesn't measure what you were taught. Some of those kids that were
isolated from other humans and locked in closets for years tested quite
high.
>
> O fcourse playing chess and throwing balls has everything to do with
> making technology and industrial society actually OCCUR.You go ahead
> and build a culture without planning (chess) and machinists and
> carpenters (physical abilities)...
Lots of geniuses that make technology don't play chess. Lots of machninists
and such don't play sports.
>
P.Comm
news:QAdDd.18331$7n1.9...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> P.Comm wrote:
>> You are a teacher and you don't know the difference between a race and a
>> species?
>
> Well, if you ask this question, it's obvious that you have some definite
> meanings of these terms in mind. Whether they correspond to some objective
> reality is an entirely different question. You think they do. You also
> seem to think that anyone who looks at the facst will agree with you. More
> fool you.
I read the same essay you read, saw who signed it.
>
> I am a teacher, and I know that both "race" and "species" are very
> slippery terms.
More or less. Niles Eldredge seems to have a good idea of what speciation
is. Races are VARIETIES within a species. Ask any botanist what it means
when it comes to plants.
There are many such terms -- all of them are more or
> less abstract, which should provide a number of clues towards better
> understanding.
>
> "Race" and "species" mean whatever you define them to mean. I have read a
> lot on these and related topics. I know that Africans belong to a large
> number of cultures that didn't do much intermarrying, and have different
> genetic profiles. So what? The same is true of Northern and Mediterranean
> Europeans. So what?
>
> If you want to identify "race" with genetic profile or genotype,
Uh, I don't think anyone can. Race is identified by people IN races
(identifying as such) by PHENOTYPE. They do it by looks.
you
> also have to decide which features of a genotype are significant: that's
> not a scientific question. Medically, we know that certain groups are more
> or less prone to ceratin genetic mistakes. If you want to call such groups
> races, go ahead. IMO it's the only meaning of "race" that makes any sense.
> However, groups defined by genotype don't coincide very well with groups
> defined by phenotype.
I think they more or less DO coincide - very generally speaking. But they
do not coincide well enough to match up genotype to phenotype 100% of the
time.
>
> Recent work on evolution and genetics has shown that "species" is just as
> slippery a term. Basically, a species is a breeding population, is all.
> But how do you define "breeding population"? You could use normal breeding
> behaviour, in which case breeding populations that do not normally
> interbreed (ie, when there are enough mates available in each group) are
> different species. But such breeding groups can and do hybridise. (This is
> the case with wolves, coyotes, and dogs in Ontario.) Do we now have three
> species? Or did we have two races of one species?
That's debated. Some say these canines are the same genus - different
species. Some say that ability to interbreed makes them same species.
> If you draw the boundary at infertile hybrids, then wolves, coyotes, and
> dogs are the same species. If you draw the boundary at normal breeding >
> behaviour, then they are three species. Which meaning of species do you
> have in mind?
Do you know that plants are cross fertile across FAMILY lines, GENUS lines,
and SPECIES lines? I don't abide by the idea that cross fertility means
same species at all. I also know that anything involving humans is polluted
by politics and emotions - none of it is objective. Botany is not like that
at all. Studies of invertebrates are also more objective.
>
> Etc.
stlbl
you guys should do IQ studies on them.
In college. I learned that Indians (from India) are considered white
because of their "nasal index". Also Austalian aborigines are a
caucasoid group, but Colin Powell is supposedly black---so what does
that have to do with appearance? (Maybe a twitch reflex is desirable to
be a successful politician!?Spinning, waffling, faking, fade away
shots...) But I assume that the aborigines would do better on IQ
tests than Powell or his son, the FCC honcho...?! Iranians are
certainly white, Iran of course a variation of "Aryan".
People used to be perplexed why it took so long for the US to
intervene in the Balkans in the 90's---or actually why we (and Britain)
took so long to respond to Hitler. Its not that unclear if you think
about it---we have no trouble killing Negroids or Mongoloid types, but
killing whites has always been less palatable.
I guess the IQ tests define which groups US foreign policy will deem
attackable. Certainly having a lower IQ would make your group more
readily dehumanizable.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> IQ doesn't measure what you were taught. Some of those kids that were
> isolated from other humans and locked in closets for years tested quite
> high.
A) You can be taught to score hogher on anya objective tets. B)
refernecs for "quite high" IQ scores by kids who were locked into
closets? Including complete data on what they did or did not have access
to (some of thsoe kids were not as isolated as others.)
Wolf Kirchmeir
>>However, groups defined by genotype don't coincide very well with groups
>>defined by phenotype.
>
>
> I think they more or less DO coincide - very generally speaking.
How generally? What's your measure of coincidence? Some ratio ("On
average, individuals in Group A differ from each other by one base pair
in N, while individuals in group B differ by 1.5 base pairs in N.") Or
some correspondence ("In region X of the genome, base-pair differences
of individuals in group A compared to each other are small, while
base-pair differences compared to individuals in Group B are large.")
What scale would you use to identify people as belonging to the same
rather than a different race? BTW, phenotypical race differences
themselves are rather dicey, as people at either side of the
phenotypical mid-range could just as well be grouped with another race.
> But they
> do not coincide well enough to match up genotype to phenotype 100% of the
> time.
Well, it seems to that they coincide no better than any grouping you
care to make. As I understand it, on average, the genetic difference
between individuals in any group is greater than the differences between
averages for those groups.
>>Recent work on evolution and genetics has shown that "species" is just as
>>slippery a term. Basically, a species is a breeding population, is all.
>>But how do you define "breeding population"? You could use normal breeding
>>behaviour, in which case breeding populations that do not normally
>>interbreed (ie, when there are enough mates available in each group) are
>>different species. But such breeding groups can and do hybridise. (This is
>>the case with wolves, coyotes, and dogs in Ontario.) Do we now have three
>>species? Or did we have two races of one species?
>
>
> That's debated. Some say these canines are the same genus - different
> species. Some say that ability to interbreed makes them same species.
Precisely. Which means that "species" is not an objective fact. It's a
more or less convenient grouping made for, um, specific purposes.
>>If you draw the boundary at infertile hybrids, then wolves, coyotes, and
>>dogs are the same species. If you draw the boundary at normal breeding >
>>behaviour, then they are three species. Which meaning of species do you
>>have in mind?
>
> Do you know that plants are cross fertile across FAMILY lines, GENUS lines,
> and SPECIES lines?
Yes.
> I don't abide by the idea that cross fertility means
> same species at all.
Well, that's your choice. I'm just pointing out that what you define as
a species _is_ a choice. The same goes for race. "Race" seems to matter
more in some cultures than others, and it also seems to matter more for
some people within (for example) N. American society than for others.
This fact is in itself a clue that race is a construct made for certain
purposes. It's those purposes that need clarification and debate.
> I also know that anything involving humans is polluted
> by politics and emotions - none of it is objective.
Oh dear, humans just will be humans, won't they? If only they weren't so
damn emotional! The world would be a much better place if everybody were
totally rational. Nothing would ever get done, of course, because nobody
would care enough about anything to get it done, but that' a samll price
to pay, eh?
> Botany is not like that
> at all. Studies of invertebrates are also more objective.
Stick to hostas and snails, then. (Actually, if you know some way to
keep slugs and snails off my hostas, I'd be grateful for your
information. :-))
P.Comm
> Since you have a better idea on what constitutes race in plants, maybe
> you guys should do IQ studies on them.
> In college. I learned that Indians (from India) are considered white
> because of their "nasal index".
Not just for that alone.
Also Austalian aborigines are a
> caucasoid group,
No they are not.
> but Colin Powell is supposedly black
Colin Powell is mostly white or at least non-black. But does Colin Powell
self-identify as black? If he does, then that's his own self-chosen GROUP.
Iranians are
> certainly white, Iran of course a variation of "Aryan".
> People used to be perplexed why it took so long for the US to
> intervene in the Balkans in the 90's---or actually why we (and Britain)
> took so long to respond to Hitler. Its not that unclear if you think
> about it---we have no trouble killing Negroids or Mongoloid types, but
> killing whites has always been less palatable.
Kin bonding is part of what the human limbic brain "tells us" to do - it's
an instinct. It's an instinct that is there for a biological reason.
Britain took long to respond due to the horrors they suffered in ww1.
American people did not want to get involved in another foreign war due to
the preferences for the Monroe Doctrine - which got washed away (foolish
move, imo). Iraqis are white. Tell that to them. Irish are white. Tell
that to the Irish in lieu of centuries of British hatred toward them. Tell
that to the Serbian white Slavs who the USA foolishly turned against in
favor of what we now know were pro terrorist groups (Albanians) and drug
runners - not to mention slave traders, child sellers and people who have a
black market for human organs. Aside from that, ww2 was a war fought
between all WHITE tribes of people.
> I guess the IQ tests define which groups US foreign policy will deem
> attackable. Certainly having a lower IQ would make your group more
> readily dehumanizable.
If YOU say so. There is your FEAR showing up. I can remember when an IQ of
80 was considered "moron" or retarded. Then that got altered to IQ of 70.
I am in favor of Eugenics as practiced in the People's Republic of China.
Both negative and positive eugenics. I am in favor of a 100% strict merit
system - which is the only thing that is fair. Anything else is a drag
down, a burden that people never even had a vote to say they would accept on
their shoulders.
H. sapiens started at GO. What the many groups of them splitting up did as
newly separated groups from then on can be looked at as strategies for life.
Some had better strategies, some had bad ones. Give three people half a
million dollars. Check those three people out in 10 years time and you'll
see that they did not opt to do the same things. This is free will, choice,
etc. It would be CRIMINAL to take money from #1 who may have turned half a
million into a billion - and hand it over to #2 who may have taken his half
a million and wasted it on stupid shit that rendered him back in the
"poverty" classification.
H. sapiens, in these newly split up groups, had to fend for themselves and a
great degree of cooperation within the GROUP had to happen or they'd have
perished. In time, they chose for traits that were advantageous - that's
called sexual selection.
You might want to search "James Michael Howard" and read his data on
testosterone and other things - as regards to the groups of humans.
>
P.Comm
You'll have to find the references yourself - but there quite a few of them,
they tested above average.
I think if you and others like yourself were really interested in this in
any objective way, you'd already know about these cases of such severely
abused kids found years later and tested. Neurologists are especially
interested in them. Some of them can't even learn to speak; it's too late
for them, yet they test above average in IQ.
Right now, you and people who agree with you are quite content to just poo
poo the very notion of IQ and intelligence and affirm each others posts (and
quickly regard any hint of refutation as being from some hostile camp out to
commit genocide or some such) - and you all do that due to what I can see is
fear. You are also quite content to brand anyone who might write that
missive we both read on this thread - and sign it - "racist."
Whatever. Quite frankly, you don't want to know. So please don't PRETEND
you want to know by asking ME to "fetch" references for you.
Data showing that high testosterone levels plus low IQ lead to pretty
predictable violence is also probably unknown to you.
Big whatever.
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/mainstream-on-iq
Ask the people who signed that to fetch references for you.
P.Comm
> Oh dear, humans just will be humans, won't they? If only they weren't so
> damn emotional! The world would be a much better place if everybody were
> totally rational. Nothing would ever get done, of course, because nobody
> would care enough about anything to get it done, but that' a samll price
> to pay, eh?
You said that. I did not say that. It is emotional and instinctive
reactions that humans tend to have that cause them to see people as "us"
versus "them." And as "more like us" versus "more like them." Only after
the facial recognition instinct kicks in and the feelings are felt, is the
theory made up - or no theory made up - people just act on what they feel -
attraction or repulsion. It is the sense of sight by which humans identify
"physical markers" - i.e., not sense of smell. It is by that facial
recognition sense that humans tend to categorize people into general races -
and they tend to agree with each other on these facial recognition markers.
Forensics can also identify with just a skull. The facial recognition
ability is something in-built in our own natures. It is 100% solely by this
facial recognition ability that blacks of all kinds, even those that look
non-black to me (but maybe not to someone else), self-identify as black.
>
>> Botany is not like that at all. Studies of invertebrates are also more
>> objective.
>
> Stick to hostas and snails, then. (Actually, if you know some way to keep
> slugs and snails off my hostas, I'd be grateful for your information. :-))
Malathion, probably. OR:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4031_rid-snails-slugs.html
Bug Geta Snail/Slug bait by Ortho.
You could have found that out by asking anyone in a store that sells plants.
Wolf Kirchmeir
> YOU wrote:
[...]
>>Stick to hostas and snails, then. (Actually, if you know some way to keep
>>slugs and snails off my hostas, I'd be grateful for your information. :-))
>
>
> Malathion, probably. OR:
>
> http://www.ehow.com/how_4031_rid-snails-slugs.html
>
> Bug Geta Snail/Slug bait by Ortho.
>
> http://www.nemasysinfo.com/
>
> You could have found that out by asking anyone in a store that sells plants.
Sure, but I wanted to know your experience on this issue. I don't like
malathion. I've tried a number of slug baits/traps - they work, sort of.
Beer seems to work best. Seems that slugs can't resist a buzz.!
:-)
Wolf Kirchmeir
>>[...]
>>
>>>IQ doesn't measure what you were taught. Some of those kids that were
>>>isolated from other humans and locked in closets for years tested quite
>>>high.
>>
>>[...]
>>
>
>
> You'll have to find the references yourself - but there quite a few of them,
> they tested above average.
>
> I think if you and others like yourself were really interested in this in
> any objective way, you'd already know about these cases of such severely
> abused kids found years later and tested. Neurologists are especially
> interested in them. Some of them can't even learn to speak; it's too late
> for them, yet they test above average in IQ.
>
> Right now, you and people who agree with you are quite content to just poo
> poo the very notion of IQ and intelligence and affirm each others posts (and
> quickly regard any hint of refutation as being from some hostile camp out to
> commit genocide or some such) - and you all do that due to what I can see is
> fear. You are also quite content to brand anyone who might write that
> missive we both read on this thread - and sign it - "racist."
>
> Whatever. Quite frankly, you don't want to know. So please don't PRETEND
> you want to know by asking ME to "fetch" references for you.
Well, actually all the reading I've done indicates the _isolated_ tested
below average, so I was quite surprised to hear you make this claim.
(Must've been different cases - oh yes, I see you now refer to abused
kids. Not qite the same as isolated kids, is it?) That's why I wanted
references. I could do some googling, of course, but thought you might
have the refs handy.
> Data showing that high testosterone levels plus low IQ lead to pretty
> predictable violence is also probably unknown to you.
This would mean that the IRA, for exmple, is staffed with stupid thugs.
Well, um, maybe you have a point. -- Anyhow, I've seen a lot of
different studies on testosterone and agression/violence, inlcuding one
of the type you allude to. The results are all over the map. I've also
seen data on agression/violence and cultural background. Cultural
background seems to be at least as good a predictor of agressive/violent
behaviour as testosterone levels. "Honour" seems to have something to do
with it, apparently. Maybe stupid people's sensitivity to insult is
higher. There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that this is so -
has anyone studied this?) Maybe this sensitivity is enough to account
for the higher levels of violence? I dunno. But correlation of low IQ
and high testosterone levels doesn't rule it out.
> Big whatever.
>
> http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/mainstream-on-iq
>
> Ask the people who signed that to fetch references for you.
I saw the list. I read Hans Eysenck many years ago. I even tested my own
IQ - around 130-140 FWIW. The book said at this level, the testing error
could be as much as +/-10! No engineer or physicist would put up with
measurement error of this magnitude.
I have never denied that IQW don't test something. Nor have I denied
that IQ test results don't correlate with all sorts of things. (My
favourite is shoe size, as a matter of fact.) It would very surprising
if there were no such correlations. But just which correlations matter?
And why?
What I deny is that intelligence is a "general ability", and hence that
IQ tests measure it. The IQ tests themselves do not measure _one_
ability, they measure _several_ abilities - the text which you posted
lists them, in fact. What's more several of the supposed abilities (such
as "problem solving") are, to put it mildly, not at all well understood,
and if anything consist of several abilities themselves. I repeat: the
IQ hides data, as all scores that combine several numbers do. The hidden
data is important - even IQ fanatics have recognsied this, and some at
least now give the component scores. But they still believe that the
single number is meaningful.
Since IQ tests have been normed, their results will be reliable in the
statistical sense - that is, you will get the same results
(statistically speaking) with another sample of the group on which the
tests were normed. You will usually not get the same results with any
other group - it would be rather surprising if you did, actually, and
would need to be explained.
I've seen a variety of these tests, and been subjected to several of
them myself, and two things about them strike me is odd. One is how much
implicit knowledge these tests assume. Even the non-verbal tests assume
implicit knowledge of all kinds, such as what a pattern is, and how one
compares patterns. Patterns, like beauty, tend to be in the eye of the
beholder (which is, BTW, a reason why people with long experience of art
will see beauty in pictures that other people see as a collection of
messy daubs.)
One thing that my random reading in AI has impressed upon me is how much
implicit knowledge there is in the most commonplace of human tasks and
interactions. Trying to make systems that behave like humans even in a
limited domain is very difficult because of this implicit knowledge (and
other factors, too.) Some AI people think the trick is to find the
correct "knowledge representation", which I think isn't quite right, but
that's another issue.
The other oddity is how simplistic a view of intelligent tasks is held
by the test makers. In the case of multiple choice tests (including
pattern matching or predicting), I could often see good reasons for
selecting two or more of the offered choices - yet _one_ is the best
answer, and gets the highest score. Says who? On what grounds? These are
not trivial objections, since the scoring determines your IQ.
And so on.
Bottom line: whatever the correlations between IQ and other behaviours,
the IQ test does not measure what it purports to measure. As with all
objective tests, the numbers must be interpreted. The interpretations
are someone's opinion, and like all opinions, they must be justified.
Correlations with other tests are not a justification, but merely more
numbers to be interpreted. If the correlations hide some causative
factor(s) that can be elucidated and controlled, the IQ test will have
had some utility. Sofar, there has been precious little of that.
BTW, the biggest idiocy IMO is the "heritability of intelligence"
notion. Nothing you inherit can have any effect without the environment,
so to argue that so much of the IQ is due to inheritance and so much due
to environment misrepresents both inheritance and environment, and
worse, thoroughly misrepresents their interaction. That's not only
stupid, it's evil.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> I am in favor of Eugenics as practiced in the People's Republic of China.
> Both negative and positive eugenics. I am in favor of a 100% strict merit
> system - which is the only thing that is fair. Anything else is a drag
> down, a burden that people never even had a vote to say they would accept on
> their shoulders.
Eugenics in China??? That's a new one. The One Child policy has led to a
surplus of males, who are just entering the bad testosterone age - you
should be able to predict what will happen when a sizeable percentage of
them cannot find mates and won't be able to channel their energy into
building a family and connections with other families (which is what the
"kin bonding that the limbic brain tells us to do" is all about.) Guess
what the limbic brain tells us to do when we can't found families and
kin-bond by that route?
As for 100% merit systems - for some strange reason, the people who
argue for this always define merit as what they have, so that --
naturally and fairly, of course, we would;t want it any other way --
they get the spoils.
In any case, from your comments below, I wouldn't want a merit system
based on your notion of merit. I prefer my own, thank you very much.
> H. sapiens started at GO.
Hoohah! Life is a game of Monopoly (tm). Wonderful!
> What the many groups of them splitting up did as
> newly separated groups from then on can be looked at as strategies for life.
> Some had better strategies, some had bad ones.
This is about as simplistic a version of anthropology 101 as I've ever seen.
> Give three people half a
> million dollars. Check those three people out in 10 years time and you'll
> see that they did not opt to do the same things. This is free will, choice,
> etc.
Ah yes, the Libertarian argument. I should've seen it coming. I must be
slipping.
> It would be CRIMINAL to take money from #1 who may have turned half a
> million into a billion
That depends on how he managed this feat. If he did by chicanery and
force, it would be criminal _not_ to take it away from him.
> - and hand it over to #2 who may have taken his half
> a million and wasted it on stupid shit that rendered him back in the
> "poverty" classification.
Stupid shit is just stuff _you_ don't want to spend the money on. One
man's shit is another man's treasure. And if, as Alfred Doolittle claims
he does with his excess wealth, he has spent it "providing pleasure to
himself and his friends, and employment to others," he has spent it
about as wisely as it can be spent. Money is shit, you see - and shit is
very bad when kept in a concentrated pile, and very good when it's
spread around. In the one case it causes disease; in the other, it
promotes growth.
And what of #3 (whom you conveniently leave out)? Suppose he gave his
1/2 million away to people who needed help? I suppose it would be
criminal to reward him for his kindness?
> H. sapiens, in these newly split up groups, had to fend for themselves and a
> great degree of cooperation within the GROUP had to happen or they'd have
> perished. In time, they chose for traits that were advantageous - that's
> called sexual selection.
No, that's not sexual selection at all. Sexual selection is what
accounts for differences between the sexes, especially those that have
no purpose other than promote or guide mate selection.
> You might want to search "James Michael Howard" and read his data on
> testosterone and other things - as regards to the groups of humans.
Well, your language suggests a pretty high level of testosterone IMO.
Which group do you admit belonging to, then?
But I'll look him up.
stlbl
keeping deer and rodents away from your plants so that insects and
diseases can eat them."
You guys are funny---you are arguing about race and end up having a
beer together. Sounds like 1930's Munich to me. Makes sense since
thats pretty much where the US is (at least in foreign policy) now..Im
surprised there wasnt some accusation of conducting "Jewish Science"
somewhere.I seem to recall that the ethnic groups in America that did
the best on IQ tests were Jews and Chinese..hmm.well I Guess Im no
better than George Bush, starting argumnets, acting like a kid walking
through a dry forest lighting matches and throwing them over his
shoulder---but not concerned about the future, because too hung up
trying to figure out the present....oh, well, time to migrate this
thread off to some other category somewhere...
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
>>>[...]
>>>
> Well, actually all the reading I've done indicates the _isolated_ tested
> below average, so I was quite surprised to hear you make this claim.
> (Must've been different cases - oh yes, I see you now refer to abused
> kids. Not qite the same as isolated kids, is it?) That's why I wanted
> references. I could do some googling, of course, but thought you might
> have the refs handy.
Uh, you do not call keeping a kid locked up in a basement for 14 years
abuse? Those are the cases I heard of over the years. Why would I have
references? Neurologists are interested in these people. Their IQ tested
above average. Their ability to learn certain things was below - so
neurologists learn that language skills must be learned by a certain time in
a person's life - or it's just too late. They especially paid attention to
the more RECENT and documented cases of kids raised by animals since they
were quite young. I didn't do any reading on it because it's not a main
interest of mine. But I have seen documentaries on science shows about it -
which were, for me, quite entertaining and informative. EG, one example, I
didn't read about the girl raised by dogs that barks (she's a grown woman
now). I saw her and heard her.
>
>> Data showing that high testosterone levels plus low IQ lead to pretty
>> predictable violence is also probably unknown to you.
>
> This would mean that the IRA, for exmple, is staffed with stupid thugs.
:-D. Ya think? James Michael Howard, who posts here, has heaps of data on
that. And yes, some whole gene pools of people DO HAVE higher T levels and
obviously, the selected and select in favor of that. Please check out JMH's
material - his posts are on here and he puts urls down.
> Well, um, maybe you have a point. -- Anyhow, I've seen a lot of different
> studies on testosterone and agression/violence, inlcuding one of the type
> you allude to.
ONE? Ah, you restrict your info finding to the web. Not a good idea. And
I'm not for getting "into ALL that" again - including the thing about
selection for friendlier behavior resulting in markedly different APPEARANCE
in offspring after only a few generations (hello - does that translate to
what people see and call race? It sure does.)
The results are all over the map. I've also
> seen data on agression/violence and cultural background. Cultural
> background seems to be at least as good a predictor of agressive/violent
> behaviour as testosterone levels. "Honour" seems to have something to do
> with it, apparently.
Ever think that people with all that honor shit that leads to violence HAVE
higher T levels to begin with? They choose to "be offended" by some stupid
shit. Imo, they have diseased egos and are a menace to civilized society.
Maybe stupid people's sensitivity to insult is
> higher.
Gee, ya think? LMAO. I see them as humans with diseased egos.
There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that this is so -
> has anyone studied this?) Maybe this sensitivity is enough to account for
> the higher levels of violence? I dunno. But correlation of low IQ and high
> testosterone levels doesn't rule it out.
Yup - JMH has HEAPS of data on all of that kind of thing.
>
>> Big whatever.
>>
>> http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/mainstream-on-iq
>>
>> Ask the people who signed that to fetch references for you.
>
> I saw the list. I read Hans Eysenck many years ago.
I don't like that guy. He's not the only signer. There are much better
ones than him and Mr. "bullshit penis measurement" Rushton on there.
I even tested my own
> IQ - around 130-140 FWIW. The book said at this level, the testing error
> could be as much as +/-10! No engineer or physicist would put up with
> measurement error of this magnitude.
>
> I have never denied that IQW don't test something. Nor have I denied that
> IQ test results don't correlate with all sorts of things. (My favourite is
> shoe size, as a matter of fact.) It would very surprising if there were no
> such correlations. But just which correlations matter? And why?
Well, in western civilization, high IQ seems to matter regarding ability to
think in a very specific way. I would imagine in China too since they have
higher IQs. In some societies, brute strength matters more (all that macho
stuff).
>
> What I deny is that intelligence is a "general ability", and hence that IQ
> tests measure it. The IQ tests themselves do not measure _one_ ability,
> they measure _several_ abilities - the text which you posted lists them,
> in fact. What's more several of the supposed abilities (such as "problem
> solving") are, to put it mildly, not at all well understood, and if
> anything consist of several abilities themselves. I repeat: the IQ hides
> data, as all scores that combine several numbers do. The hidden data is
> important - even IQ fanatics have recognsied this, and some at least now
> give the component scores. But they still believe that the single number
> is meaningful.
Because the single number is a good predictor, as those two guys from
Rutgers said (I forgot their names, maybe Cohen or something like that).
I used to be one of the people that SUPREMELY poo pooed IQ results because
my IQ is in the 160s and my husband's is in the 170s. Every single person I
knew in my life with IQ THAT high had NO ambition - self included, husband
included. Our goal is to find a way to work the LEAST amount of time and
make good money, and then either stop working young or work PT and be semi
retired. I achieved that goal - stopped working at the age of 36. Good
riddance to crap I didn't want to do. Drudgery. We want to just go thru
life playing with whatever we feel like playing with, or reading what we
want to read, studying what we want. Every single person I ever met with
high IQ like that was the same. They got jobs like long haul truck driver
or some kind of really menial work that left them off to themselves, not
bothering with anyone else, where they could think their own thoughts or
listen to music as they worked. It's like we don't want to be BOTHERED with
any of it. Then, awhile back, the highest IQ on record, to boot, turned out
to be a hooker! I wondered "what good is it?" I can communicate a lot
easier with an uneducated street punk that talks REAL - "from the heart" and
speaks 100% in the concrete than I can communicate with some eddicated
parrot, pseudo intellectual that I call a "talking head" because he yabbers
about bullshit and doesn't even know what he is FEELING at any given moment.
He "realizes what he was feeling" weeks later. What the hell is that? A
split person? Well, yeah. It is. There is NO communicating with that
type. Not possible. But they tend to have higher IQs than street punks, as
far as I know.
TAKE that guy, Tupac Shakur. I think I mentioned him in this thread. I
have no idea what his IQ is - but what he was actually saying was for real,
GUT real, concrete. He was NOT some thug that advocated being a
dictionary-definition thug. I clearly "heard" what he had to say. But I
also realized that educated people were just not capable of understanding
the man, or what he was SAYing, the gut meaning of it. How can that be?
Well then, there are obviously different kinds of intelligence there,
different kinds of thinking - unless I opt to think that there was a vast
conspiracy against the guy and people out to get him for no reason at all.
Only very recently and due to a stupid little math thing that was supposed
to be a joke - and another math thing that was not a joke, did I realize
what high IQ means. What was TOO obvious to me, SO obvious that I didn't
have to do ANY math to figure both out (plus I'd not have known how to do
math for it, I never studied math past HS) - was NOT so obvious to people
that got scholarships in math and people in college - who took DAYS to
figure it out (the few that did figure it out!). AH HA! Now I know what IQ
is. My friend said to me that well, what's too simple and too obvious to me
is NOT that way to him - and his IQ is in the 140s. He said I ought to
think about what ELSE might be obvious to me - that's not so obvious to
others. Good point.
I know that if I get synthetic and "combine disciplines" people don't get
it. If I jump paradigms, people don't get it. If I skip the b, c, d, e, f
and go from A to G, people don't get it (I did that with the math problems).
What's the use. Bottom line tho, if a person doesn't "get it" when it's
spelled out 100% concretely, then they are REALLY stupid. People also don't
"get" something if their emotions get in the way of their clearly seeing
something - which is ANOTHER kind of stupidity, imo.
I wrote the article (and put my name on it, not some usenet nick) I put the
url to "Is there such a thing as race" and well - you can read it. The
answer is yes and no. Heh. I can prove it's yes and no, too. Heh. On
usenet, with nick, I often debate (and hope it doesn't turn into a flame - I
DO get flamed...).
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...]
>> I am in favor of Eugenics as practiced in the People's Republic of China.
>> Both negative and positive eugenics. I am in favor of a 100% strict
>> merit system - which is the only thing that is fair. Anything else is a
>> drag down, a burden that people never even had a vote to say they would
>> accept on their shoulders.
>
> Eugenics in China??? That's a new one.
Here is the url to the whole article, written by an army guy there:
http://www.geocities.com/satanicreds/eug-ch.html
Guess
> what the limbic brain tells us to do when we can't found families and
> kin-bond by that route?
It tells you to "habitat track." LMAO. That's not happening there, btw.
>
> As for 100% merit systems - for some strange reason, the people who argue
> for this always define merit as what they have, so that --
> naturally and fairly, of course, we would;t want it any other way --
> they get the spoils.
Not so. When I say merit, I mean merit. I mean ability - and ability is
going to BE in specific areas most of the time. A child with a natural
aptitude in music, with perfect pitch, SHOULD BE encouraged to go into
that - expose that child to instruments of many kinds. And so forth. The
tone deaf person (very easy to tell if a person is tone deaf) should be
DIScouraged from pursueing a career in music. People tend to LIKE what they
are naturally good at. Do the same across the board. You do not know what
merit is? OK - here is MERIT - an account of it from the old USSR. We used
to have that in the USA too, before the later 1960s.
http://www.geocities.com/satanicreds/sovieted.html
So then, when the 5 year old kid that can, in 15 minutes, draw a picture
that looks exactly like what's there (gifted kid), I'd say it's a good
picture. Schools used to do that, too. But when a 5 or older year old kid
can't draw for jack shit and I hear mommy saying "oh, that's beautiful"
well, let that kid ask me and I'd tell him the picture is shit. I'm very
VERY blunt. I don't believe in patting mediocrity on the back (aka, LYING
about it). The fact is, if that kid SEES the picture drawn by the gifted
kid, that kid is going to KNOW he himself can not draw. So why lie to the
kid? In a merit system, no one lied to the kids.
>
> In any case, from your comments below, I wouldn't want a merit system
> based on your notion of merit. I prefer my own, thank you very much.
>
>> H. sapiens started at GO.
>
> Hoohah! Life is a game of Monopoly (tm). Wonderful!
Do you think that humans did not evolve at the same time? That they did NOT
start from GO?
>
>> What the many groups of them splitting up did as newly separated groups
>> from then on can be looked at as strategies for life. Some had better
>> strategies, some had bad ones.
>
> This is about as simplistic a version of anthropology 101 as I've ever
> seen.
Simplistic, but true. I realize you don't like it. Tish tish.
>
>> Give three people half a million dollars. Check those three people out
>> in 10 years time and you'll see that they did not opt to do the same
>> things. This is free will, choice, etc.
>
> Ah yes, the Libertarian argument. I should've seen it coming. I must be
> slipping.
I hate libertarians, they have "pertual motion" economic theories. But it's
the facts of life, nonetheless. My example was to turn whole groups of H.
sapiens into an example of 3 people and what they DO. That is, what they
THINK (or do NOT think) of doing.
>
>> It would be CRIMINAL to take money from #1 who may have turned half a
>> million into a billion
>
> That depends on how he managed this feat. If he did by chicanery and
> force, it would be criminal _not_ to take it away from him.
You added that to my example.
>
>> - and hand it over to #2 who may have taken his half a million and wasted
>> it on stupid shit that rendered him back in the "poverty" classification.
>
> Stupid shit is just stuff _you_ don't want to spend the money on. One
> man's shit is another man's treasure. And if, as Alfred Doolittle claims
> he does with his excess wealth, he has spent it "providing pleasure to
> himself and his friends, and employment to others," he has spent it about
> as wisely as it can be spent.
Yer not too much of a synthetic thinker, I see. No more anecdotes then. I
was using the 3 people as a synthetic example of "H. sapiens split into
GROUPS that have good or bad strategies."
Money is shit, you see - and shit is
> very bad when kept in a concentrated pile, and very good when it's spread
> around. In the one case it causes disease; in the other, it promotes
> growth.
>
> And what of #3 (whom you conveniently leave out)? Suppose he gave his 1/2
> million away to people who needed help? I suppose it would be criminal to
> reward him for his kindness?
You missed the point. Ok, no more analogic synthesis here.
>
>> H. sapiens, in these newly split up groups, had to fend for themselves
>> and a great degree of cooperation within the GROUP had to happen or
>> they'd have perished. In time, they chose for traits that were
>> advantageous - that's called sexual selection.
>
> No, that's not sexual selection at all. Sexual selection is what accounts
> for differences between the sexes, especially those that have no purpose
> other than promote or guide mate selection.
No, sexual selection is a more honed in example of natural selection. You
select mates based on TRAITS. Do you want to marry the KINDER, GENTLER egg
head? Or do you want to marry the brute hung up on honor with an ego so
sensitive that looking at him the wrong way could get you killed. Do you
select for brawn? Or for brains? Do you select people with big noses? Or
with small ones? And so forth. It was shown recently that selecting based
100% on BEHAVIOR produced offspring within a few generations that LOOKED
markedly different. Foxes were chosen, selected out of a whole heap of wild
foxed, based on friendliness in behavior. Within a few generations, the
friendly group had a markedly different appearance. Translate that to what
human beings would see if they looked across the line at each other.
Markedly different appearances.
>
>> You might want to search "James Michael Howard" and read his data on
>> testosterone and other things - as regards to the groups of humans.
>
> Well, your language suggests a pretty high level of testosterone IMO.
> Which group do you admit belonging to, then?
My language is blunt. I'm not a male, DUH. Your language suggestes that
you are a warrior on a crusade that imagines genocidal racists at every turn
if someone disagrees with you. You are also fond of telling me what I
mean, instead of reading what I said I meant.
P.Comm
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
"P.Comm" <tjs...@spampost.com> wrote in message
news:9oODd.1111$Ii4...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
>> YOU wrote:
>
> [...]
>>>Stick to hostas and snails, then. (Actually, if you know some way to keep
>>>slugs and snails off my hostas, I'd be grateful for your information.
>>>:-))
>>
>>
>> Malathion, probably. OR:
>>
>> http://www.ehow.com/how_4031_rid-snails-slugs.html
>>
>> Bug Geta Snail/Slug bait by Ortho.
>>
>> http://www.nemasysinfo.com/
>>
>> You could have found that out by asking anyone in a store that sells
>> plants.
>
> Sure, but I wanted to know your experience on this issue. I don't like
> malathion.
Well, it works pretty well, especially with wasps. It - STINKS, tho.
I've tried a number of slug baits/traps - they work, sort of.
> Beer seems to work best. Seems that slugs can't resist a buzz.!
> :-)
:-D drunk slugs. I think they are beautiful creatures. Well, where I am,
fire ants (and biting black ants too - we don't have nice northern variety
non-biting ants here, they are ALL vicious) have eaten up slugs, snails,
beautiful earthworms too - all the insects that are good for the soil - and
(fireants) are causing most of the soil erosion. The new breed of fireants,
the ones with 30 queens, cooperate with other nests instead of war with them
for territory - and now they cooperate with termites. They'll kill a tree -
and let termites have the rest. The old fireants didn't do that, they used
to eat termites - and it's not that these new ones do not eat dead tree and
termites. THEY DO. BUT - now they aren't doing it. Like, how the hell
they they - arrange? - this deal with termites? I know they did - but heh,
that's amazing! Insects are SMART! They are awesome, imo. I had slugs on
the driveway back in the 80s - I left them alone. There was another animal
too, I never saw it in the day, but it would make figure 8 slime trails - no
joke. But the fireants... the bastards didn't just neatly pick up pieces of
ortho poison I put down, but they placed them in a nice circle while I stood
there and watched. They love going deep under concrete too - I can get
ideas about billions of them under all of the concrete around - couldn't
that eventually cause it to cave in? I know people that go back up north
and came back down here, came back to see 1 acre of solid fire ant mound,
the 30 queen type. Of course, environmentalists are too eager to blame MAN
for soil erosion - when the fire ants have done most of it. And now they
are destroying other plants. Plague man. And they are SMART. Forget
humans and strategies for life - mehhh. Look at insects and - say WOW.
I have a lot of greenery and colorful plants around my home, but insects
don't tend to bother them at all. I have junipers, copper leaf crotons,
brava crotons, fan palms, pygmy date palms. a HUGE Canary Island date palm,
sheflara, King saego (a Permian age plant!) and coccus pamosa palms (I think
one died being partly uprooted by Hurricane Charlie :( Ivy tends to be a
pain in the butt and weed killer doesn't kill it (it's not a weed!).
Otherwise, my plants are pretty big because I use grass cuttings as thick
layer of mulch - it forms a hot anaerobic environnment that tends to make
"ground shrubs" grow into pretty damned BIG plants (as high as the house!).
Green thumb helps :) I don't baby them at all.
Families of lizards live where my plants are, they are beautiful. One snake
(black one) took to using the soffit drain pipe as a hotel :) Occasionally,
a cat makes it onto the roof - how they do that I don't know - and has
kittens. The only animal I had a squabble with for "free home" was an
armidillo - I finally got it to go dig elsewhere on my property :) Oh, and
wasps. I don't mind they make a home in the outside unused light - or under
the soffit, but STING THE LANDLADY THREE TIMES IN THE BACK? And OUCH? Uh
uh. I evicted them.
OH, one other thing. I notice these days that the strongest "off" (deet) no
longer works to keep biting insects other than mosquitos away. Not good.
Deed melts plastic - so that's not good either and it is not good to put
near spandex - as in bathing suit on beach where off-land wind brings biting
flies. :(
Is this off topic or what? LOL.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> ONE? Ah, you restrict your info finding to the web.
Actually I avoid the web, if possible. I prefer Science and similar
journals. Don't read as much as I used to since I retired, though.
Wolf Kirchmeir
> The results are all over the map. I've also
>
>>seen data on agression/violence and cultural background. Cultural
>>background seems to be at least as good a predictor of agressive/violent
>>behaviour as testosterone levels. "Honour" seems to have something to do
>>with it, apparently.
>
>
> Ever think that people with all that honor shit that leads to violence HAVE
> higher T levels to begin with? They choose to "be offended" by some stupid
> shit. Imo, they have diseased egos and are a menace to civilized society.
Wewll, I said it was a study on _cultural_ background. Southern States
vs Northen States, in fact. I see no reason to suppose that Southerners
have more testosterone than Northerners. What's more, the experiment was
carried out at a midwestern college where, as it happens, the studnet
body was about equally composed of Southerners and Northerners. The
experimental setup was an "accidental" bumping into a person on a narrow
stairway that many student took between classes. The reactions wehre
tabulated, the accents of the bumpees indicateing what part of the
country they wer from. Not a bad protocol, IMO. Doesn't prove much, but
does cast doubt on the silly deterministic "high testosterone levels
cause higher levels of violence" superstition. BTW, I've seen a study
that found that violence increases testosterone levels, and that people
with lower levels of testosterone prior to the violent incident were
more likely to engage in violence.
You seem to believe that correlation means causation - at any rate, you
keep referring to JMH's data. Correlations mean squat. IQ test scores
correlate very well with shoe size. IQ scores correlate very well with
SAT scores. Etc. So what?
Oh, and "LMAO" is a _very_ intelligent argument. Obviously. I mean, if
you were stupid, it would just mean you didn't get it, but since you
have an IQ of 160 (+/-15), your reaction must be grounded in carefully
reasoned consideration of all the data, so it must summarise a
well-founded critique, and only a stupid person like me would take issue
with it.
[...]
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> My language is blunt. I'm not a male, DUH. Your language suggestes that
> you are a warrior on a crusade that imagines genocidal racists at every turn
> if someone disagrees with you. You are also fond of telling me what I
> mean, instead of reading what I said I meant.
Don't matter that you're female - you still have testosterone, and your
testosterone levels also correlate with various aspects of violent
behaviour. Or doesn't JMH have those data in his pile?
I'm fond of telling you what your statements imply. I haven't a clue as
to what you _think_ your language means - until you tell me I was wrong
in my interpretation. EG, you claim I "added" the criterion of how #1
made his money to your anecdote. Gee, P. Comm, I thought I was "jumping
paradigms" and "synthesising across disciplines" and (ugh!) "thinking
outside the box." You just didn't like the conclusions implied when I
did that.
Even if I stay inside your box, there is no reason to suppose that #1
doesn't owe something to the society in which he made his money. Without
them, he couldn't have done it, you see. For all you know, he sold #2
that stupid shit that you diss. As set up, your anecdote is simplistic,
and merely valid, not sound. I'm sure you know the difference, what with
your high IQ and all. You claim to dislike Libertarians, but your
anecdotal argument is a favourite of Libertarian one, and is intended to
justify not having to share your wealth. Was that your intention? You
see, stupid me doesn't know what you meant, only what you said.
Bye for now.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[sni[ an entertaining and informative post about fireants]
> OH, one other thing. I notice these days that the strongest "off" (deet) no
> longer works to keep biting insects other than mosquitos away. Not good.
> Deed melts plastic - so that's not good either and it is not good to put
> near spandex - as in bathing suit on beach where off-land wind brings biting
> flies. :(
>
> Is this off topic or what? LOL.
Maybe, but interesting. Would be nice to see some baseline data on
fireant behaviour. If the behaviour you observe represents real change
(and not merely the effect of your not having noticed fireants much
before, hence having missed the behaviour that you see as new), this
looks like an example of very fast evolution of social behaviour, and
would support the Eldridge/Gould hypotheis of punctuated equlibrium.
H'm.
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...]
>> My language is blunt. I'm not a male, DUH. Your language suggestes that
>> you are a warrior on a crusade that imagines genocidal racists at every
>> turn if someone disagrees with you. You are also fond of telling me
>> what I mean, instead of reading what I said I meant.
>
> Don't matter that you're female - you still have testosterone, and your
> testosterone levels also correlate with various aspects of violent
> behaviour. Or doesn't JMH have those data in his pile?
What are you, crazy? This is usenet. This is a post. I'm not a violent
person - I'm actually quite easy going and friendly. I have never started a
fight with anyone and have not even been in anything resembling a physical
fight since I was a kid (and I never started one then, either). Someone
bumping into me is no big deal - just excuse me and get on with it.
>
> I'm fond of telling you what your statements imply.
Your implications. Not my intentions.
I'm in favor of taxes that build roads, infrastructure, things that
modernize a society that make the society more and more modern,
technological. I am NOT in favor of taxes that pay people to stay home, have
kids, and pay to rebuild homes they destroyed 10 times in a row. I am not
in favor of Bush taking my tax dollars to hand over to victims of the
Tsunami when we have problems right here that need fixing fast. 4
hurricanes, remember? I am not in favor of giving money to people that
throw what they have away on things they don't need - when they know (if
they have brains) that they can not afford these things. Libertarians are
in favor of Adam Smith. My ideal is Gene Roddenberry - but I'm, for reality
(not idealism) 100% in favor of the New Deal of FDR as he wrote it, not as
the Big Ls warped it.
I see I should never have mentioned IQ or anything personal - you definitely
have an ISSUE with it. You fail to be able to agree to disagree to the
extent that you HINT that I'm a violent person. You're crazy.
Good luck murdering your snails.
P.Comm
Look up JMH's studies - they were not done as you say at all. High T is
related to higher density in bones, for example. Go read it.
>
> You seem to believe that correlation means causation
No, I see that chemical tests are chemical tests - and chemistry can explain
behavior.
- at any rate, you
> keep referring to JMH's data. Correlations mean squat. IQ test scores
> correlate very well with shoe size.
No they don't. Both husband and I have rather small shoe sizes - but high
IQs. I know what you are doing. You don't like empirical data.
IQ scores correlate very well with
> SAT scores. Etc. So what?
Yes, they do. Predictors, as the Rutgers College professors showed, among
others.
>
> Oh, and "LMAO" is a _very_ intelligent argument. Obviously. I mean, if you
> were stupid, it would just mean you didn't get it, but since you have an
> IQ of 160 (+/-15), your reaction must be grounded in carefully reasoned
> consideration of all the data, so it must summarise a well-founded
> critique, and only a stupid person like me would take issue with it.
Oh stuff it. Apparently it did bother you, since you HAD to rag on it.
>
> [...]
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [sni[ an entertaining and informative post about fireants]
>> OH, one other thing. I notice these days that the strongest "off" (deet)
>> no longer works to keep biting insects other than mosquitos away. Not
>> good. Deed melts plastic - so that's not good either and it is not good
>> to put near spandex - as in bathing suit on beach where off-land wind
>> brings biting flies. :(
>>
>> Is this off topic or what? LOL.
>
> Maybe, but interesting. Would be nice to see some baseline data on fireant
> behaviour.
Agree. I also called up the makers of both OFF and Cutter and told them
about their product's lack of effectiveness with other biting (flying)
insects. I offered to go when any of them to the place and DEMONOSTRATE it
for them.
If the behaviour you observe represents real change
> (and not merely the effect of your not having noticed fireants much
> before, hence having missed the behaviour that you see as new),
I have observed the behavior of ants for decades, btw. Ever see two groups
of ants at war? No, it's not just me noticing it. The experts that thought
up the idea to introduce a pheromone that would cause the drones to murder
the single queen (but not die out themselves) noticed it - WOW, now they
have ants with 30 queens. I.e., they really screwed up. They aren't going
to ADMIT they did this. But they have "observed" the "new breed" or
"different breed" of fireants. Who knows what spin they'd put on it, but to
have to admit they CAUSED this? Not an option. Some of us paying close
attention noticed it. 99% just want them off the lawn.
this
> looks like an example of very fast evolution of social behaviour, and
> would support the Eldridge/Gould hypotheis of punctuated equlibrium.
Yup, sure would! It's already known that insects adapt very fast. But heh,
nationalist monarchic fireants turning into communist ologarchic fireants
was not expected - and yes, LMAO. I think Gould proved his hypothesis
regarding PE with trilobites and other life forms. Heck, even the arising
of primates (including us) is proof of it - had the dinosaurs still been
here, we would NOT be here. And they are gone due to the big rock from
space.
I think the whole paradigm they have about strategy and evolution is missing
a lot of information. They are only beginning to see cooperative
strategies, even symbiotic ones - when before they only saw competition.
They are far too slow to believe that ants can cooperate with termites - and
even if they see it and find poison to kill both species, it would be a long
time before anyone had the balls to write an article about how they
cooperated. That kind of cooperation is against their own paradigm. They
also make the grave error of thinking other animals, like insects, are
"stupid." They aren't. There are animals that can get inside a rat and not
only undermine the rat's reproductive stragey, but make that rat like the
smell of cats. So the rat goes up to the cat (other rats must look on and
think that rat has gone nuts) - the cat eats the rat - and the little animal
that made the rat do that get where they aimed to get in the first place -
IN the cat's digestive tract. That's intelligence. It's alien, sure, but
it's intelligence. To make matters worse, many humans are terrified of
thinking that something that small can undermine their own free will and
make something "else" seem like free will. Humans are terrified of that.
So no MD will say that "the bacteria will MAKE YOU want chocolate, MAKE YOU
get up and get it and eat it." They simply say "YOU may crave chocolate -
but do not eat it for it will render the antibiotic useless." Focus on the
YOU, YOU crave, the antibiotic, blah blah. Nonsense. The bacteria want the
chocolate in order to make themselves immune to the antibiotic. The
bacteria can MAKE YOU crave chocolate (even if you didn't like chocolate to
begin with). It's all in the semantics - what's really going on, versus
what people are told THEY might feel.
>
> H'm.
Wolf Kirchmeir
>>keep referring to JMH's data. Correlations mean squat. IQ test scores
>>correlate very well with shoe size.
>
>
> No they don't. Both husband and I have rather small shoe sizes - but high
> IQs. I know what you are doing. You don't like empirical data.
Oh, come on, P.Comm - you know an exception to a correlation does not a
refutation make.
Schorsch
stlbl wrote:
> So the environment demanded the great pyramids, its mathematical
> precision, and technology that still cannot be duplicated? Or the
> pre-Columbian cultures while Europeans lived in squalor??Were these
> white cultures?
Yes they were. The leading classes of the "pre-Columbian cultures" were
indeed "white" appearance. That "Europeans lived in squalor" is new to
me. Even the Proto-Europeans have achieved a lot.
> What is your definition of race? I never said race was the same as
> species---Ive just never heard of any real definition of race...Is
the
> aim of IQ measurement an attempt to give some quantitative "basis" to
What convinces me that behavioural difference are caused through
hereditarian factors is looking at the socio-economic differences of
countries and at their racial make-up. There is definitely a
correlation.
Barry
because there were no permanent settlements, no agriculture, no animal
husbandry, no machinery etc etc. It is now considered that the Australian
Aboriginal people adapted exceedingly well to the Australian enviroment where
there were no suitable herd animals, no cereal and other similar plant foods,
and no need, because of their way of life, to build permanent structures. They
enhance rather than degrade the enviroment. We have come to know them as people
of considerable language and artistic ability, and they are great mimics too.
They have a cosmology and "religion" which we would label as "Pantheism". We
could learn much from these so-called primitive peoples.
Regards, Barry
"Schorsch" <bart...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1105370726.3...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
P.Comm
Ahem, thinking back to specific people knew with overly high IQs like that
(above 140) - none of them had big feet. Heh, on the contrary in fact
(HMM!) That statement you made is about as ridiculous as Rushton's
statement about how high IQ correlates with small penis size. Well ahem, I
offer you 1. my husband and 2 my father. (other males in the family weren't
that high, they were only like 126 or 132 or whatever - but they were pretty
well endowed - and yeah yeah, in crowded quarters privacy is a luxory of
rich prudes). Would that be two exceptions to the rule?
I'm not going to argue on this. Imo, it's 100% irrelevant - it's just mouth
offs on both sides that end up on usenet. Professors that signed that
document are on one side, I guess - and they don't all agree with each
other, either.
Let's forget IQ. Let's focus on behavior and also apply a BLIND merit
system when it comes to schools, etc. I'd bet hard cash on who'd come out
on top and who'd come out on the bottom. Hard cash.
stlbl
Mayan and Tolmec civilizations were white---even if either one of us is
completely wrong we are still talking about appearances---and skin
color is NOT what determines whether or not someone is considered
black, especially in America---here, the criteria for black is "One
drop" of Negro blood-
The squalor Im talking about is , say, 1000 to 1500 AD when the
Mayans were coming out of a period of high civilization, Egypt's
pyramids and sphinx and astronomical knowledge had been around for
millenia---and most of Europe (except for the landed gentry and
nobility) lived along side of rivers, used open trenches for latrines
and were at the mercy of disease plague and ignorance. Everyone knows
the Renaissance only happened after cultural exchange (if you want to
call the Crusades cultural exchange) with the near east--Ottomans
universities, systems of accrued knowledge, etc. In fact the Catholic
church would send their popes and other reiligious dignitaries to Spain
for education.
>>>>>What convinces me that behavioural difference are caused
through
hereditarian factors is looking at the socio-economic differences of
countries and at their racial make-up. There is definitely a
correlation.>>>>
You are your own best critic---all that correlation is shows is just
that economic warfare has been perpetrated in countries by whiter
people upon darker ones. And it wasnt because the "whites" had more of
anything aquired through heredity except maybe gunpowder. Thankyou.
Reply
P.Comm
> So the Egyptians were white...and they all had blue eyes....
What's with the blue eyes? Seems to me that depigmented color is something
kinda recent - I can post something from a Professor that's very good
(below). Egyptians were graphically described by people as having skin sort
of like how I get if I'm in the sun a bit - coppery. Dark eyes. They dyed
their hair all kinds of colors, LOL. They also waxed their legs or other
body parts - which means they had hair on them. WHY they'd do that, is a
good question. Who'd they see with lack of body hair? Asians?
and the
> Mayan and Tolmec civilizations were white
Olmec or Toltec? Which? They were white? No they weren't, if you base it
on features. One of them may have been Chinese from T'ang Dynasty people
coming there. I've seen pure blooded Mayans in the backwaters of Mexico -
they look like S. Chinese people - VERY much so. They don't speak Spanish,
either.
Skin color - most Chinese people are whiter than any S. Europeans. Hell,
I'm whiter than most S. Europeans if I stay out of the sun. I easily get as
dark as people from India with a bit of sun, same shade as theirs - fast,
too.
---even if either one of us is
> completely wrong we are still talking about appearances---and skin
> color is NOT what determines whether or not someone is considered
> black, especially in America---here, the criteria for black is "One
> drop" of Negro blood-
Features are what people see - facial recognition. Not color. Color is too
changeable.
> The squalor Im talking about is , say, 1000 to 1500 AD when the
> Mayans were coming out of a period of high civilization, Egypt's
> pyramids and sphinx and astronomical knowledge had been around for
> millenia---and most of Europe (except for the landed gentry and
> nobility) lived along side of rivers, used open trenches for latrines
> and were at the mercy of disease plague and ignorance.
It was a LOT worse than that there - civilized people described it in detail
and wrote of it.
Everyone knows
> the Renaissance only happened after cultural exchange (if you want to
> call the Crusades cultural exchange) with the near east--Ottomans
> universities, systems of accrued knowledge, etc. In fact the Catholic
> church would send their popes and other reiligious dignitaries to Spain
> for education.
Spain had a HIGH civilization under the Moors - they were Berber people.
When the Moors lost to the Spanish - the civilization went out the door and
it became 3rd world - but the Moors went and made war with Songhay and
wrecked the shit out of it. Whole library vanished due to that. Ibn
Battuta chronicles Songhay - some parts of it had lit up streets at night.
He doesn't say HOW they lit it up. Back then the Chad River was also HUGE.
Climate changed big time there.
>>>>>>What convinces me that behavioural difference are caused
> through
> hereditarian factors is looking at the socio-economic differences of
> countries and at their racial make-up. There is definitely a
> correlation.>>>>
Yeah, but that changes. As I once argued with an off the cliff leftie that
blamed all evil imperialism on white males - well, heh, the mantle of
imperialism seems to have been passed along from one group of people to
another - and only very recently do white males have the mantle. They'll
probably lose it to China in the future.
>
> You are your own best critic---all that correlation is shows is just
> that economic warfare has been perpetrated in countries by whiter
> people upon darker ones.
But that's only recently in terms of human history. Oh, you are talking to
another person - I can't tell who said what on here.
And it wasnt because the "whites" had more of
> anything aquired through heredity except maybe gunpowder. Thankyou.
> Reply
Heh, the Chinese had gunpowder first - and you may not know, but us Tatars
USED that - tho no one else knew what the hell it was - Europeans thought
it was demonic power from Tartarus, LMAO. You see, the wisdom of the
Chinese on this was that war should NEVER be made so easy that you can just
blow up so many people with one shot, including non soldiers. Making war
that easy was seen as a very bad idea.
Here is the information on depigmented humans (not all whites are
depigmented like that).
http://interracialvoice.com/sweet7.html
Where Did White Folks Come From?
By Frank W. Sweet
People with the extremely pale skin, hair, and eyes typical of northern
Europeans first appeared on the world stage a mere five millennia ago --
long after cave men turned into farmers. Despite Hollywood's casting lovely,
talented Darryl Hanna as a Paleolithic huntress, it turns out that "The Clan
of the Cave Bear" were not White folks at all.
We shall discuss European prehistory in a moment.
[NO, SNIP SNIP - it's discussed right here.]
Actual complexion, not "race," is the subject of this essay.
Everyone Came From Africa But Only Europeans Lack Color
It seems trivial to say that our species originated in Africa and so
everyone has dark brown ancestors, but there in an important subtlety here.
Europeans are more recently African than most. Several waves migrated out of
Africa over the past hundred millennia. The ancestors of Europeans came from
Africa more recently than did the settlers of any other continent. The final
wave of African migrants to populate Europe arrived only about thirteen
millennia ago, long after Australia and China had been settled. In fact, DNA
analysis of Africans of Bantu stock and Europeans reveals that these two
groups are today genetically closer than either group is to, say, Asians or
Native Americans. Complexion, like beauty, is truly only skin-deep.
Nevertheless, despite Europeans and Africans being closely related, few
differences among people's appearance are as dramatic as their skin color.
Observe families at the beach. Neither the contrast between fat folks and
thin ones, or between tall families and short ones, catch your eye the way
pale pink European-looking bodies differ from dark brown African-looking
ones.
Hair-, skin-, and eye-color all come from a body-produced substance called
melanin. Africans have lots of melanin. Europeans have very little. And yet,
when it comes to melanin, Europeans, not Africans are the exception. This is
hard to grasp today. Europeans conquered the planet a few centuries ago, and
so you see their descendants everywhere. But consider only natives, and you
will soon realize that people from southern India, Andaman Islanders,
Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines are all as dark as Africans, although
they are only distantly related to them. On the other hand, pink skin,
blonde hair, and blue eyes are virtually unknown among temperate-climate
Northern Asians or Native Americans. Even Arctic Inuits (Eskimos) and Aleuts
are swarthier than northern Europeans. Nobody is as pale.
And so the title question, "Where did White folks come from?" really comes
down to asking, "What happened to Northern Europeans that made them so
pale?" Clearly, something made folks around the Baltic who lacked melanin
more successful than their darker neighbors. The complexion gradient we see
across Europe from north to south today is obviously the result of
prehistoric intermarriage between the melanin-deficient folks of the Baltic
and the melanin-endowed population south of the Mediterranean.
Two lines of evidence, art and DNA analysis, tell when the mutation took
place. Art brackets the time period of the event. DNA analysis pinpoints it
so precisely that we can figure out the cause of its regional success.
Art Suggests When
Many books have been written praising the near-photographic realism of
Paleolithic cave art. Few stress how seldom human figures are depicted. Very
few point out that, whenever people and animals are depicted together, the
hunters are routinely painted as darker than their prey. Some
paleoanthropologists mention this oddity as evidence that the cave artists
depicted animals realistically, but for some strange religious reason
painted people much too dark. A more plausible explanation is that folks
really were dark back then. The hunting scene above, showing dark-brown
bowmen shooting medium-brown deer, was painted in what is now France. It
dates from about thirteen millennia ago, around the time of the last
Africa-to-Europe migration. Europeans had not yet lost their color as of
this date.
Similarly, early Egyptian paintings depict only brown people. For example,
consider the fragmentary picture of boats, at left. Examine the row of
oarsmen. The picture dates from six millennia ago. Again, no
European-looking people are to be seen. Of course, one could say that
fair-complexioned people might simply not have reached Egypt yet by that
time, but see the next example.
Another strategy of examining art approaches the question from the other
direction, "When was the first portrait of an undoubtedly fair-complexioned,
European-looking person painted?" As it turns out, it was a statue painted
in Egypt about five millennia ago. It depicts Prince Rahotep and his Consort
Nefret, of the Old Kingdom, early Fourth Dynasty. He is brown. She is pink.
For this piece and similar examples ancient art, see P.P. Kahane, Ancient
and Classical Art, ed. Hans L. C. Jaffe, 6 vols., 20,000 Years of World
Painting, vol. 1 (New York: Dell, 1967).
The evidence of art suggests that the mutation making northern Europeans
melanin deficient happened sometime between five and six millennia ago.
DNA Reveals Why
As it turns out, DNA analysis shows that the dramatic change in European
complexion happened around the Baltic in about 3000 B.C. -- just yesterday,
geologically speaking. This was a hundred millennia after our species'
emergence. It was forty millennia after the invention of culture (art,
music, language, religion, fashion). It was twenty millennia after horses
and oxen were painted on the cave walls of Lascaux and Altamira. It was four
millennia after the invention of agriculture -- long after the "The Clan of
the Cave Bear" stopped hunting and settled down to raise crops. It was
centuries after the invention of writing in Sumeria. It was around the time
when Egypt's Early Dynastic Period was starting.
For details on the when and how of the paleness adaptation, read Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography
of Human Genes, trans. Sarah Thorne (Princeton: Princeton University, 1994).
This book is the most comprehensive DNA analysis yet published of the
migrations and waves of human Diaspora that began about one hundred
millennia ago in Africa and colonized the globe. It has become a standard
reference for scholars of prehistory. It mainly covers events that
transpired across the entire planet, but it spends a page (145) explaining
the European paleness mutation. Here is what happened.
Vitamin D is essential to calcium metabolism. Without it, you get rickets:
grotesquely bowed legs and malformed skull and chest. Human skin produces
vitamin D when the sun's ultraviolet light penetrates the protective melanin
layer. This means that the complexion our ancestors inherited from
equatorial Africa was a delicate balance. Too little melanin (too fair a
complexion) and you would get skin cancer. Too much melanin and you would
not produce enough vitamin D.
As we spread out of Africa and across the globe, we moved into regions where
sunlight was too weak to penetrate our skin. Fortunately, other animals also
produce vitamin D and store it in their fat, just as we do. As long as we
made a living by eating animals, especially animal fat, we simply consumed
their vitamin D. Our own skin's inability to produce vitamin D in weak
sunlight was not even noticed.
Next, about nine millennia ago, the invention of agriculture changed our
diet. From then on, most of us lived mainly on grains (wheat, barley, oats).
Farmers who lived around the Mediterranean and further south no longer ate
vitamin D from animals, but their dark skins produced it from the bright
sunlight of the region. Inuits and Laplanders who lived in the far north
never switched to grains. They continue to consume mainly animal fat to this
day and so acquire vitamin D despite weak sunlight. But the Gulf Stream
washes northern Europe and warms the Baltic Sea. In this narrow region, the
climate allowed the switch to agriculture, but sunlight was too weak to
penetrate dark skin and produce vitamin D. Rickets spread through the
population, as can be seen in the fossil bones of the time.
Then, about five millennia ago, a random mutation occurred along the Baltic.
It suppresses melanin production and created a breed of people who could
live off agriculture in the far north and still not get rickets. Their pale
skins are so unprotected that even the weak sunlight of the far north can
penetrate and produce vitamin D. Free from rickets, the pale ones multiplied
and prospered as their rickety dark-skinned neighbors died out. (SEE COMMENT
ON THIS)
Folks remained dark in Africa. Paleness is harmful near the equator, so the
pale ones never spread into Africa until the age of European expansion.
Paleness offers neither advantage nor harm around the sunny Mediterranean,
so people there are about a 50-50 mix between the pale European model of
human being and the original African model. Nowadays, vitamin D is added to
commercial foods, so rickets is rare, no matter where you live or how dark
your complexion.
---
Readers interested in the details of prehistoric migrations should read
America's Odd Two-Caste System. This 32-page booklet is the first in a
series by the author titled Paths not Taken. The entire series is available
for online purchase at www.backintyme.com/books2.htm and also from
Amazon.com. They are also sold at numerous historical site and museum gift
shops in Florida, or can be borrowed from libraries.
- END -
COMMENT - imagine the people's reactions way back then to the rickets and
the pigment of the women who died and who lost babies. Shamanic thinking
prevailed back during those days - they'd have concluded that perhaps a
CURSE was upon the darker people. If anything, they'd have quickly shoved
them out of their society and not mated with them anymore. That would
account for a HEAP of dualistic thought that I don't see ANYONE has except
whites - where anything dark or of the dark is evil - and anything light or
of the light is good.
Hypothesis: this DEEP kind of trauma of the sick, dead and dying babies,
MAY account for this demonification of all things dark - including dark
people. Sandor Gilman "On Blackness Without Blacks" is a must read - to see
how DEEP this feeling is.
stlbl
man_in_...@yahoo.com
> "stlbl" <wjgr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:1105618735....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> > So the Egyptians were white...and they all had blue eyes....
>
> What's with the blue eyes? Seems to me that depigmented color is
something
> kinda recent - I can post something from a Professor that's very good
> (below). Egyptians were graphically described by people as having
skin sort
> of like how I get if I'm in the sun a bit - coppery. Dark eyes.
They dyed
> their hair all kinds of colors, LOL. They also waxed their legs or
other
> body parts - which means they had hair on them. WHY they'd do that,
is a
> good question. Who'd they see with lack of body hair? Asians?
Body hair, in the Amazon, is a sign of the animal world, so
they remove what little they have. Even pubic hair.
> and the
> > Mayan and Tolmec civilizations were white
>
> Olmec or Toltec? Which? They were white? No they weren't, if you
base it
> on features. One of them may have been Chinese from T'ang Dynasty
people
> coming there. I've seen pure blooded Mayans in the backwaters of
Mexico -
> they look like S. Chinese people - VERY much so. They don't speak
Spanish,
> either.
Well, they don't look southern Chinese to me. (And I live in
California.)
> ---even if either one of us is
> > completely wrong we are still talking about appearances---and skin
> > color is NOT what determines whether or not someone is considered
> > black, especially in America---here, the criteria for black is "One
> > drop" of Negro blood-
>
> Features are what people see - facial recognition. Not color. Color
is too
> changeable.
Agreed. I mean, my features actually are somewhat
Mediterranean-looking.
> > The squalor Im talking about is , say, 1000 to 1500 AD when the
> > Mayans were coming out of a period of high civilization, Egypt's
> > pyramids and sphinx and astronomical knowledge had been around for
> > millenia---and most of Europe (except for the landed gentry and
> > nobility) lived along side of rivers, used open trenches for
latrines
> > and were at the mercy of disease plague and ignorance.
>
> It was a LOT worse than that there - civilized people described it in
detail
> and wrote of it.
Well, living along the river's a good thing; easy access to
water and fish. But yeah, Europeans were at the mercy of the
plague. (On a side note, I read somewhere that Europeans
have more immunity to HIV than the indigenous people of
other regions because of some similarity to bubonic plague.)
> Everyone knows
> > the Renaissance only happened after cultural exchange (if you want
to
> > call the Crusades cultural exchange) with the near east--Ottomans
> > universities, systems of accrued knowledge, etc. In fact the
Catholic
> > church would send their popes and other reiligious dignitaries to
Spain
> > for education.
>
> Spain had a HIGH civilization under the Moors - they were Berber
people.
> When the Moors lost to the Spanish - the civilization went out the
door and
> it became 3rd world - but the Moors went and made war with Songhay
and
> wrecked the shit out of it. Whole library vanished due to that. Ibn
> Battuta chronicles Songhay - some parts of it had lit up streets at
night.
> He doesn't say HOW they lit it up. Back then the Chad River was also
HUGE.
> Climate changed big time there.
People forget that during the Middle Ages, Spain and Turkey
were the only areas which weren't Third World.
> Yeah, but that changes. As I once argued with an off the cliff
leftie that
> blamed all evil imperialism on white males - well, heh, the mantle of
> imperialism seems to have been passed along from one group of people
to
> another - and only very recently do white males have the mantle.
They'll
> probably lose it to China in the future.
Agreed about imperialism; Bush has certainly accelerated
that process. (Only an idiot would cut taxes during
wartime and simultaneously hike spending.) The big problem
is, Americans' biggest industries are credit and debt
collection. As for a correlation, everything has a
correlation. If a correlation's less than .9, I'm not
interested in it. For example, the correlation for stature
and genetics is .990. Herrnstein and Murray's greatest
correlation was .4.
> And it wasnt because the "whites" had more of
> > anything aquired through heredity except maybe gunpowder.
Thankyou.
> > Reply
>
> Heh, the Chinese had gunpowder first - and you may not know, but us
Tatars
> USED that - tho no one else knew what the hell it was - Europeans
thought
> it was demonic power from Tartarus, LMAO.
Hence the name Tatars. Remember, these are people who only
recently realized the value of bathing.
> You see, the wisdom of the
> Chinese on this was that war should NEVER be made so easy that you
can just
> blow up so many people with one shot, including non soldiers. Making
war
> that easy was seen as a very bad idea.
True. I mean, once you start destroying infrastructure,
conquest's no longer worth it. But, while war itself is
basically politics by violent means, the resulting
militarism is what you want to do after the hour 200 of a
filibuster.
> People with the extremely pale skin, hair, and eyes typical of
northern
> Europeans first appeared on the world stage a mere five millennia ago
--
> long after cave men turned into farmers. Despite Hollywood's casting
lovely,
> talented Darryl Hanna as a Paleolithic huntress, it turns out that
"The Clan
> of the Cave Bear" were not White folks at all.
Actually, white folks are genetically closer to black folks
than to "the Clan of the Cave Bear". But apparently even
Ayla (the cro-magnon adopted by neanderthals) wasn't white
as we think of it.
> In fact, DNA
> analysis of Africans of Bantu stock and Europeans reveals that these
two
> groups are today genetically closer than either group is to, say,
Asians or
> Native Americans.
Or even Asians and Melanesians. From the DNA studies I've
read, the genetic phylogeny is something like this:
,---------------------------------------East Africa
! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! `--------------Circum-Mediterranean
! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ,-----Northern Europe
! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! `----------Central Asia
! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! `-Circumpolar
! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! `--Southern Asia
! ! ! ! !
! ! ! !-----------------Pacific Rim
! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! !-Polynesia
! ! ! ! !
! ! ! `------------------Melanesia
! ! ! !
! ! ! `-----------Australia
! ! !
! ! `----------------------Western Africa
! ! !
! ! `--------Central Africa
! !
! `------------------------------Americas
! !
! `--Tierra del Fuego
!
`----------------------------------------Southern Africa
> Hair-, skin-, and eye-color all come from a body-produced substance
called
> melanin. Africans have lots of melanin. Europeans have very little.
And yet,
> when it comes to melanin, Europeans, not Africans are the exception.
This is
> hard to grasp today. Europeans conquered the planet a few centuries
ago, and
> so you see their descendants everywhere. But consider only natives,
and you
> will soon realize that people from southern India, Andaman Islanders,
> Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines are all as dark as Africans,
I've also seen some fancydancers who were as dark as
Africans. (Hell, I once saw an Eskimo who was almost dark
enough to be black in a movie filmed in Nunavut.)
> Two lines of evidence, art and DNA analysis, tell when the mutation
took
> place. Art brackets the time period of the event. DNA analysis
pinpoints it
> so precisely that we can figure out the cause of its regional
success.
I personally wouldn't use DNA to trace the exact time of a
gene which actually does undergo natural selection, but the
art, and any remains preserved well enough, could give us
a date.
> Another strategy of examining art approaches the question from the
other
> direction, "When was the first portrait of an undoubtedly
fair-complexioned,
> European-looking person painted?" As it turns out, it was a statue
painted
> in Egypt about five millennia ago. It depicts Prince Rahotep and his
Consort
> Nefret, of the Old Kingdom, early Fourth Dynasty. He is brown. She is
pink.
_insert jungle fever joke here_
> For details on the when and how of the paleness adaptation, read
Luigi Luca
> Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and
Geography
> of Human Genes, trans.
Sforza's a bit of a demagogue, IMO. Of course, most pop
scientists end up being so.
> Vitamin D is essential to calcium metabolism. Without it, you get
rickets:
> grotesquely bowed legs and malformed skull and chest. Human skin
produces
> vitamin D when the sun's ultraviolet light penetrates the protective
melanin
> layer. This means that the complexion our ancestors inherited from
> equatorial Africa was a delicate balance. Too little melanin (too
fair a
> complexion) and you would get skin cancer. Too much melanin and you
would
> not produce enough vitamin D.
There's also the issue of folic acid; too much UV radiation
destroys folic acid and thus results in all kinds of birth
defects.
Cancer itself isn't as much an issue in natural selection.
However, humans, being social animals, might lose the
governing body (e.g., old people) to skin cancer.
> They continue to consume mainly animal fat to this
> day and so acquire vitamin D despite weak sunlight. But the Gulf
Stream
> washes northern Europe and warms the Baltic Sea. In this narrow
region, the
> climate allowed the switch to agriculture, but sunlight was too weak
to
> penetrate dark skin and produce vitamin D. Rickets spread through the
> population, as can be seen in the fossil bones of the time.
Agreed for the time.
> Paleness offers neither advantage nor harm around the sunny
Mediterranean,
> so people there are about a 50-50 mix between the pale European model
of
> human being and the original African model. Nowadays, vitamin D is
added to
> commercial foods, so rickets is rare, no matter where you live or how
dark
> your complexion.
A lot of those nutritional diseases are rare now because we
can add the vitamins. I don't know anyone with scurvy; if
you can't get citrus, you can eat organ meats. The big
defects now are a lack of antioxidants and excessive energy
intake; I blame both to some extent on the food industry.
Said food industry raises animals on grain rather than a mix
of vegetables, and is constantly super-sizing.
> Hypothesis: this DEEP kind of trauma of the sick, dead and dying
babies,
> MAY account for this demonification of all things dark - including
dark
> people. Sandor Gilman "On Blackness Without Blacks" is a must read -
to see
> how DEEP this feeling is.
I'd agree there. I mean, look at how fundies are always
talking about gay men giving people AIDS. The trauma from a
fatal disease which occurs more often in people who meet
certain conditions will always result in discrimination
against people who meet those conditions.
stlbl
George Bush Fan Club discussion group....there are some interesting
articles on this backintyme.com site (get past the commercial
stuff--there are articles listed on the end)--about the one-drop rule
and America's ridiculous policy of classifying people as black OR
white--that author says, and I agree, it makes about as much sense as a
short/tall binary way of looking at people---no in betweens
acknowledged!?! You HAVE to fit in one category---but what about we men
that are right at the MEAN---5'10"?
Therefore --- if you apply their precious Bell (actually Gaussian)
curve to SKIN COLOR and use this binary way of thinking---with say
Nordic/Baltic peoples on one side of the curve and say, Nigerians of
the other side---80 % or more are mixed genetic and the same criteria
(statistics) that quantifies lower IQs(sub-mean) to blacks will have
relegated the whole idea of SEPARATE races to the realm of the
ridiculous (there is a gradient of races just like intelligences,
however measured) which is good as this is the realm in which these
studies were devised. Which is why most intelligent people (myself not
included) would just laugh at these sort of rantings and not lower
themselves enough to involve themselves in these sort of discussions.
Its funny that with that way of thinking, you would have to classify
the British royal family as black---does Bush know his only real allies
in his latest Republican war is a Black monarchy???--and that the 19th
century was fundamentally a century of a white(ish) Navy conquering the
world for the sake of their Black Queen?? Any informed Brit knows
about Victoria's African side of the family....
P.Comm
>> "stlbl" <wjgr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>> news:1105618735....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>> > So the Egyptians were white...and they all had blue eyes....
>>
>> What's with the blue eyes? Seems to me that depigmented color is
> something
>> kinda recent - I can post something from a Professor that's very good
>
>> (below). Egyptians were graphically described by people as having
> skin sort
>> of like how I get if I'm in the sun a bit - coppery. Dark eyes.
> They dyed
>> their hair all kinds of colors, LOL. They also waxed their legs or
> other
>> body parts - which means they had hair on them. WHY they'd do that,
> is a
>> good question. Who'd they see with lack of body hair? Asians?
>
> Body hair, in the Amazon, is a sign of the animal world, so
> they remove what little they have. Even pubic hair.
Egypt is not in the Amazon. :)
>
>> and the
>> > Mayan and Tolmec civilizations were white
>>
>> Olmec or Toltec? Which? They were white? No they weren't, if you
> base it
>> on features. One of them may have been Chinese from T'ang Dynasty
> people
>> coming there. I've seen pure blooded Mayans in the backwaters of
> Mexico -
>> they look like S. Chinese people - VERY much so. They don't speak
> Spanish,
>> either.
>
> Well, they don't look southern Chinese to me. (And I live in
> California.)
Try going via the back roads to Chichen Itza. Of course the ones in CA
don't look that way - they are Spanish mostly. The ones along the roads to
Chichen Itza DO.
HIV has some similarity to leukemia (HTLV 1 is leukemia I think). Europeans
homozygous for Gc2 gene are immune - and some that lack a strand of DNA that
AIDS attaches to are immune. That's the last I heard of that. Uh, oh,
James Michael Howard might be interested in this one - that Gc2 gene is part
of that Vitamin D bonding thing.
>> Everyone knows
>> > the Renaissance only happened after cultural exchange (if you want
> to
>> > call the Crusades cultural exchange) with the near east--Ottomans
>> > universities, systems of accrued knowledge, etc. In fact the
> Catholic
>> > church would send their popes and other reiligious dignitaries to
> Spain
>> > for education.
>>
>> Spain had a HIGH civilization under the Moors - they were Berber
> people.
>> When the Moors lost to the Spanish - the civilization went out the
> door and
>> it became 3rd world - but the Moors went and made war with Songhay
> and
>> wrecked the shit out of it. Whole library vanished due to that. Ibn
>
>> Battuta chronicles Songhay - some parts of it had lit up streets at
> night.
>> He doesn't say HOW they lit it up. Back then the Chad River was also
> HUGE.
>> Climate changed big time there.
>
> People forget that during the Middle Ages, Spain and Turkey
> were the only areas which weren't Third World.
True - and more than that - the Tatars (Turks not living in Turkey) had a
HUGE empire - the biggest one to-date in history - and that was not 3rd
world back then either.
>
>> Yeah, but that changes. As I once argued with an off the cliff
> leftie that
>> blamed all evil imperialism on white males - well, heh, the mantle of
>
>> imperialism seems to have been passed along from one group of people
> to
>> another - and only very recently do white males have the mantle.
> They'll
>> probably lose it to China in the future.
>
> Agreed about imperialism; Bush has certainly accelerated
> that process. (Only an idiot would cut taxes during
> wartime and simultaneously hike spending.) The big problem
> is, Americans' biggest industries are credit and debt
> collection. As for a correlation, everything has a
> correlation. If a correlation's less than .9, I'm not
> interested in it. For example, the correlation for stature
> and genetics is .990. Herrnstein and Murray's greatest
> correlation was .4.
? Not sure I understand what you are saying here or what it's about.
Stature is affected by DIET - the white Americans that came here are living
proof of it. Those guys were like 4'10" tall - but due to good diet, they
grew big. Us too. The next generation of us well, my 17 yr old male cousin
was 6'7" tall for an example, his female sister, age 12 was 5'11" and all of
this was due to the mostly beef (steaks) diet here. The parents of both my
cousins are about 5' to 5'3" tall - they starved as kids. They are SHORT.
Meanwhile, both the male and female are still growing and they are very
tall. They are mesomorphics too, they aren't bean poles.
>
>> And it wasnt because the "whites" had more of
>> > anything aquired through heredity except maybe gunpowder.
> Thankyou.
>> > Reply
>>
>> Heh, the Chinese had gunpowder first - and you may not know, but us
> Tatars
>> USED that - tho no one else knew what the hell it was - Europeans
> thought
>> it was demonic power from Tartarus, LMAO.
>
> Hence the name Tatars. Remember, these are people who only
> recently realized the value of bathing.
Well, our own name for ourselves is Tatar (Europeans called it Tartars).
Actually, Tatar is only one tribe - but that tribe was the majority compared
to others.
>
>> You see, the wisdom of the
>> Chinese on this was that war should NEVER be made so easy that you
> can just
>> blow up so many people with one shot, including non soldiers. Making
> war
>> that easy was seen as a very bad idea.
>
> True. I mean, once you start destroying infrastructure,
> conquest's no longer worth it. But, while war itself is
> basically politics by violent means, the resulting
> militarism is what you want to do after the hour 200 of a
> filibuster.
>
>> People with the extremely pale skin, hair, and eyes typical of
> northern
>> Europeans first appeared on the world stage a mere five millennia ago
> --
>> long after cave men turned into farmers. Despite Hollywood's casting
> lovely,
>> talented Darryl Hanna as a Paleolithic huntress, it turns out that
> "The Clan
>> of the Cave Bear" were not White folks at all.
>
> Actually, white folks are genetically closer to black folks
> than to "the Clan of the Cave Bear". But apparently even
> Ayla (the cro-magnon adopted by neanderthals) wasn't white
> as we think of it.
Ah, that's a movie. I know whites are closer to blacks. Central Asian or
Siberian Asiatics are the furthest from blacks. Not sure about China.
>
>> In fact, DNA
>> analysis of Africans of Bantu stock and Europeans reveals that these
> two
>> groups are today genetically closer than either group is to, say,
> Asians or
>> Native Americans.
Yup.
Well, as I said somewhere else, Central Asians and many Chinese are a lot
"whiter" than Europeans.
> This is
>> hard to grasp today. Europeans conquered the planet a few centuries
> ago, and
>> so you see their descendants everywhere. But consider only natives,
> and you
>> will soon realize that people from southern India, Andaman Islanders,
>
>> Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines are all as dark as Africans,
The shade they have is different - except for the Adaman Islanders. But if
you want to go by skin color alone - then China, with the most people in the
world populating it - those people have white skin - and I mean WHITE, way
whiter than many Germans even. The racial name "white" is very misleading -
it does not just refer to skin color - it refers to features. Chinese
people are whiter than most "white" people. In fact, so am I, if I'm not
tan from being outside.
>
> I've also seen some fancydancers who were as dark as
> Africans. (Hell, I once saw an Eskimo who was almost dark
> enough to be black in a movie filmed in Nunavut.)
Keep in mind, Eskimos are outside a lot. I can get dark like that, like a
person from India - same shade of dark - if I'm outside a lot - especially
since I live in the tropics and love the beach and ocean :)
>
>> Two lines of evidence, art and DNA analysis, tell when the mutation
> took
>> place. Art brackets the time period of the event. DNA analysis
> pinpoints it
>> so precisely that we can figure out the cause of its regional
> success.
>
> I personally wouldn't use DNA to trace the exact time of a
> gene which actually does undergo natural selection, but the
> art, and any remains preserved well enough, could give us
> a date.
You are responding to Sweet's article - I think he used that approach too.
>
>> Another strategy of examining art approaches the question from the
> other
>> direction, "When was the first portrait of an undoubtedly
> fair-complexioned,
>> European-looking person painted?" As it turns out, it was a statue
> painted
>> in Egypt about five millennia ago. It depicts Prince Rahotep and his
> Consort
>> Nefret, of the Old Kingdom, early Fourth Dynasty. He is brown. She is
> pink.
>
> _insert jungle fever joke here_
LMAO - oh, are you MIB my pal? He's probably brown from being outside.
Color for us was never an issue because we CHANGE so much and so FAST.
Features are seen. HEY - check these photos - the b/w of me might show you
something - got some of me, mom, dad, brother and grandfather:
www.geocities.com/go_darkness/pictures.html
Well, TRANSFATS! anything with "partially hydrogenated oil of any kind" is
TRIPLE bad.
>
>> Hypothesis: this DEEP kind of trauma of the sick, dead and dying
> babies,
>> MAY account for this demonification of all things dark - including
> dark
>> people. Sandor Gilman "On Blackness Without Blacks" is a must read -
> to see
>> how DEEP this feeling is.
>
> I'd agree there. I mean, look at how fundies are always
> talking about gay men giving people AIDS. The trauma from a
> fatal disease which occurs more often in people who meet
> certain conditions will always result in discrimination
> against people who meet those conditions.
Fuck yes! And the fundies are modern people. Picture it back then, during
shaman days - all the dark ones sick and rickety, babies dying? HORRORS -
they must have been horrified. They wouldn't have the knowledge to figure
it was what they ate. But they would see lighter people doing OK with
babies. Bingo - there it is.
>
P.Comm
>I agree with the comments about Bush---you know there is a I Hate
> George Bush Fan Club discussion group....there are some interesting
> articles on this backintyme.com site
Ain't there? It's a dynamite site!
(get past the commercial
> stuff--there are articles listed on the end)--about the one-drop rule
> and America's ridiculous policy of classifying people as black OR
> white--that author says, and I agree, it makes about as much sense as a
> short/tall binary way of looking at people---no in betweens
> acknowledged!?! You HAVE to fit in one category---but what about we men
> that are right at the MEAN---5'10"?
True - Sweet used to be friendly awhile back (he's a great guy!), but when I
wrote him my hypothesis about what caused that black/white (dark/light)
duality among western people RELIGIOUSLY speaking (carried over to
everything else) he didn't say much after that. He did say he did not like
religion. My hypothesis crosses disciplines, it's outside the box - VERY
much so. Also, lots of people partly black don't like that one drop rule
and resent blacks insisting that they self-identify as black. I suggest he
read Sandor Gilman "On Blackness without Blacks" and see what they are
reacting to. Well, we now have people of mixed race that resent blacks
getting all over them for not identifying as black, even if they are
literally "one drop." I understand why they do that - it's like how Slavs
EMPHASIZE how Nietzsche was a Slav - it's due to past German prejudice
against Slavs as inferior. It's a dynamic, it's emotional and it's very
very real - it can't just be dismissed. Emotions are real. Dynamics in
society are also real. The whole "act black" thing well, when whites go off
on that and start up with "no such thing as race" they better grasp that
blacks that are into that DEMAND that race is real - and they want to speak
up, identify - especially if the person is famous or a professor or
something. It's like whites denied them humanity before due to race. NOW
whites (liberals) want to deny them RACE when they are PROUD of it or
speaking "in your face" about it. Let's ask blacks themselves. I don't
like "black ON white" bullshit - primarily because it's not just black on
white - it ends up being black on anything non-black as perceived by them!
You can't be TRANSracial around them. Heh.
> >
> Therefore --- if you apply their precious Bell (actually Gaussian)
> curve to SKIN COLOR and use this binary way of thinking---with say
> Nordic/Baltic peoples on one side of the curve and say, Nigerians of
> the other side---80 % or more are mixed genetic and the same criteria
> (statistics) that quantifies lower IQs(sub-mean) to blacks will have
> relegated the whole idea of SEPARATE races to the realm of the
> ridiculous (there is a gradient of races just like intelligences,
> however measured) which is good as this is the realm in which these
> studies were devised. Which is why most intelligent people (myself not
> included) would just laugh at these sort of rantings and not lower
> themselves enough to involve themselves in these sort of discussions.
Did it ever occur to you that blacks in the USA deliberately fuck up their
tests? I have MET blacks that deliberately fucked up in school, got low
grades, just to be "cool." I've seen it with my own eyes. It's sort of
like some Hispanics that pretend they don't speak English when they DO - and
fluently.
>
> Its funny that with that way of thinking, you would have to classify
> the British royal family as black---does Bush know his only real allies
> in his latest Republican war is a Black monarchy???--and that the 19th
> century was fundamentally a century of a white(ish) Navy conquering the
> world for the sake of their Black Queen?? Any informed Brit knows
> about Victoria's African side of the family....
You lost me on that one. I don't get it.
>
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]>
> Did it ever occur to you that blacks in the USA deliberately fuck up their
> tests? I have MET blacks that deliberately fucked up in school, got low
> grades, just to be "cool." I've seen it with my own eyes. It's sort of
> like some Hispanics that pretend they don't speak English when they DO - and
> fluently.
I've noted deliberate underperformance also among First Nations and
working class students. Two examples:
-- an Ojibway girl who (in her weekly journal, written for English
class) expressed anxiety about her ambition to succeed in school, since
her friends put her down for "trying to be better than them" if she got
good marks.
-- a boy whose marks went from A/A+ to D/F in a fairly regular pattern -
he was working class, and his friends put him down whenever he got a
good mark.
Then there are those who are afraid of messing up if they do the test as
instructed, so they deliberately mess up. That way, they have controlled
the outcome, not the test. Me, myself, have fucked up on tests, just to
show the bastards that they couldn't figure me out. That was when I was
a teenager, ane very confused. Which is another reason I put very little
stock in SATs and such. -- There are many and usually very mixed motives
for messing up on a test. Racial consciousness is just one factor.
Etc.
Mori...@gmail.com
Mori...@gmail.com
It's immature to deabate about such a sensitive and indepth subject
like this.
If anyone is really interested in understanding topics of this nature I
suggest reading books by Jared Diamond. He presents non-biased,
well-grounded theories as to why societies (and ultimately the
"intelligence" of it's participants) developed as they did today.
Mori
www.mori.tk
Barry
put off by the title. I nearly was, but fortunately I bought it and could not
put it down.
Regards, Barry
<Mori...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1106090577.3...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Wolf Kirchmeir
> "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond should be compulsory reading. Don't be
> put off by the title. I nearly was, but fortunately I bought it and could not
> put it down.
> Regards, Barry
Agreed, but it does contain some errors (ie, I noted but did not record
some as I read it), and Diamond ignores conflicting evidence. As an
introduction to how to frame the issue, it's worthwhile. As a definitive
treatment of the issue, it's misleading.
P.Comm
news:X9lHd.69$g05....@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
> "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond should be compulsory reading.
> Don't be
> put off by the title. I nearly was, but fortunately I bought it and could
> not
> put it down.
> Regards, Barry
Isn't that the same book that gets into the geography - E-W for Europe and
Asia and N-S for Africa? If so, I read it too - quite awhile ago - it was
good.
P.Comm
Well, here is another example. I was hanging out with a math professor - it
was casual, we were having dinner at this GREAT (oh god GREAT) place - and
heh, had gone thru a whole pitcher of Sangria (the real thing) - so we were
pretty drunk. Throughout the night, he was passing me these really dumb
math problems that were all jokes. Then, he passes me this problem after
taking 12 coins out of his pocket. I EXPECTED a joke since the other ones
(maybe 50 in all) were jokes. Of course, he said it was not a joke (but he
said that with the others, too). That one I solved pretty fast - drunk too.
Then he gets this BIG attitude over it. See, it took HIM 3 days to solve it
and he had told me that. HA.... And so, to make things worse, I improved
on the problem later on (when sober) and presented him a new problem, told
him there is a pattern to it a way to solve all such problems and I "got
it." He couldn't solve it. He's a professor. I have HS math only. Go
figure. Why he'd get all attitudish over it and, well - that has nothing to
do with intelligence. It's emotions.
Thing is - when you go to "take a test," you know you are "taking a test"
and some folks get stressed out - others do not. Some very good test takers
are dumber than the backside of a barn when it comes to real life things or
applying what they should know, or appear to know.
It really SUCKS that kids have that kind of ethic and then proceed to fail.
That kind of thing did not exist when I was a kid in school at all. What
you are desribing is the product of diseased egos - and diseased egos imo,
have to GO.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[snip story of a math puzzle - btw, what was it? I'd like to try it.
Even if it takes me a few days...]
It's not whether you've studied math, its whether you can see certain
kinds of patterns.
> It really SUCKS that kids have that kind of ethic [of trying to fail] and then proceed to fail.
> That kind of thing did not exist when I was a kid in school at all. What
> you are describing is the product of diseased egos - and diseased egos imo,
> have to GO.
When I was in school in Austria, England, and even Canada, we didn't
have nearly so many tests, and all of them, with one exception, were
"performance tests" -- we had to to do what we had been doing in class.
Ie, precis in language, word problems in math, drawings in drafting, map
lettering in geo, etc. I guess our teachers, bless their antediluvian
theories of education, believed that we would actually learn the skills
we practiced... The exception? "Reading comprehension tests",
administered after we had supposedly read a book to a deadline, and
before we took it up in class. I think it was a ruse to ensure that
(most of us, anyhow) would actually read the book.
I didn't see a multiple choice _exam_ until university. In an ed psych
course. It took me twenty three minutes to do what was supposedly a
3-hour exam (at a rate of nearly ten questions/minute); I made no
revisions, and scored in the 92nd percentile. That university took my
money under false pretenses.
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [snip story of a math puzzle - btw, what was it? I'd like to try it. Even
> if it takes me a few days...]
Got an email addy? I'm at nakived at juno dot com if you email me, say who
you are and what you want. I'll mail it to you.
>
> It's not whether you've studied math, its whether you can see certain
> kinds of patterns.
Well, I saw patterns, alright, later on when I got sober :)
>
>> It really SUCKS that kids have that kind of ethic [of trying to fail] and
>> then proceed to fail. That kind of thing did not exist when I was a kid
>> in school at all. What you are describing is the product of diseased
>> egos - and diseased egos imo, have to GO.
>
> When I was in school in Austria, England, and even Canada, we didn't have
> nearly so many tests, and all of them, with one exception, were
> "performance tests" -- we had to to do what we had been doing in class.
> Ie, precis in language, word problems in math, drawings in drafting, map
> lettering in geo, etc. I guess our teachers, bless their antediluvian
> theories of education, believed that we would actually learn the skills we
> practiced...
When I was in school in the 50s in the USA - there was a strict merit system
and no grading tests on curves. EG, fast readers, regular, slow readers.
Pronunciation, enuciation, spelling Bs, all that. Knowing the meaning of
the words, how to use them in sentences - that was in very early years in
school, I was about 7 or 8 years old. It blows my mind that people today in
higher grades don't know this stuff. Each individual say, was given 50
questions, 2 points each question. The scores were absolute, not graded
based on what others got (on a curve). Curved grades are like this: IF the
top student in the class only got 30 right out of 50, that grade counts as a
the "new A score" and the rest of the scores fall into place from there,
with 30 right being the best score (A grade). I saw this as cheating, when
I first ran into it in 12th grade. 30 right and 20 wrong should have been a
C grade, not an A grade. That means that with the curved grade, people who
FAILED that test with only 10 right would get a C grade! Zero right would
be a D! NO failing grade there at all. That's also seen as "dumbing down"
education here in the USA. Anyway, say in math or arithmetic, we were given
problems to solve that were up to par with what we had learned about solving
them. They were not the same problems. In other words, does a person know
HOW to add, subtract, divide, multiply, do fractions, percentages, etc etc.
Same for geometry (plane geometry) which I had in 5th grade. I aced those
courses. History was (I HATED IT) just a rehash of what a person memorized
and I saw it as worthless. Reading was a test of comprehension, or they
asked us to write something ourselves to describe a situation. We had
reading comp too and I used to get accused of always post structuralizing
the stuff - tho I got good grades, when asked to try not to do that, I ended
up deconstructing, LMAO. I think cultural differences probably made me see
things from a very different perspective. But I'd ace that too. They did
teach us to THINK - which I think was very good. EG, in geometry: "The
angles of any given triangle, when added up, equal 180 degrees. Go home for
assignment and PROVE WHY this is so." That was the kind of problem we got a
lot. Most of us did it, too. Then the problems would be - ah, a plane
geometry text book for back then. I know they don't teach that in high
schools here anymore mostly. SOME schools do teach it. But I had this in
5th grade, in grammar school.
The exception? "Reading comprehension tests",
> administered after we had supposedly read a book to a deadline, and before
> we took it up in class.
See above, we had that too, it was part of regular reading. The thing is,
back then there was this "THIS is supposed to be the meaning of this story"
idea - STRUCTURLISM. I always post structured the stuff - or deconstructed
it. LMAO. It was as if, for me, what the author of the story said had no
meaning - it was just hearsay. Example from well-known kid story: "yeah,
but what did Cinderalla DO that her sisters hated her so much?" "How did
she end up being the step daughter - was that her natural mother? where was
her father? Etc." Of course, that's outside the actual text in the story -
I'm using that as a well known example of a story - we never read that
particular tale, but even as a kid when I first heard it, I wondered WHY
they were so mean to her because being mean to siblings was OUTSIDE my
experience in-culture! People were mean only to those that really deserved
it due to some real provocation! So the teachers used to smile and like it
and the other kids were always ready for it "oh boy, here it comes." Some
would think it was funny and laugh, others used to look at me kinda odd and
THINK about it and understand the different viewpoint.
I think it was a ruse to ensure that
> (most of us, anyhow) would actually read the book.
A REALLY good author to read where you can NOT agrue with structure or post
structure or deconstruction - is H. P. Lovecraft. That also would increase
a person's vocabulary, for sure. "Call of Cthulhu," "At the Mountains of
Madness." Excellent for that!
>
> I didn't see a multiple choice _exam_ until university.
I never had a multiple choice exam in school, not ever. I saw them when I
worked in a medical school (I was not a student at all), medical students
took them! They were SIMPLE questions, too! I saw them on job
applications, had to pass it to get the job. I also saw it on civil service
exam - I got 100% right. FAST too. Really easy test. I can't believe
people failed it!
In an ed psych
> course. It took me twenty three minutes to do what was supposedly a 3-hour
> exam (at a rate of nearly ten questions/minute); I made no revisions, and
> scored in the 92nd percentile. That university took my money under false
> pretenses.
Heh, I got 99th %ile on my SAT :) Hmm, I can't remember if that was
multiple choice or not - I'm not sure on that test. Long time ago!
>
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]Curved grades are like this: IF the
> top student in the class only got 30 right out of 50, that grade counts as a
> the "new A score" and the rest of the scores fall into place from there,
> with 30 right being the best score (A grade). I saw this as cheating, when
> I first ran into it in 12th grade. 30 right and 20 wrong should have been a
I agree, grading on the curve is bad. But it has an honourable oriin. I
taught for over 30 years, and I never graded ona curve. If 60% of the
class failed a reading test, that meant 60% of the class hadn't read the
book (as they usually admitted.)
What i did try to do was figure out what "good" score should be. On a
hard test it mught be 30/100, on an easy test 80/100. That was the B
grade. (NB that to get a driver's licence in Canada, you have to scote a
minium of 80% coprrect on the written test - that means 80% correct is a
D!) It's nto easy to foigure out what a good score should be - it takes
quite a few years experience, as well as explicit instruction in test
making, which, I am sorry to say, is not provided by many (if not most)
education schools. Grading on the curve was originally intended to allow
for the uncertainty about the difficulty of the test. Of course, it
assumes that students will not try to beat the system, and the fact that
it is so widespread testifies to an appalling naivete among the
instructors that use. Hah!
The "good score" is also related to what and how much had been done in
class. Eg, a reading test prior to treatment of the book in class would
have a lower passing score than the same test admiministered after the
book had been dealt with. IOW, a score is not a grade. The grade is the
teacher's judgement - a score is just a way of making comparisons more
objective, and make the grading a little easier. -- I told you numbers
are meaningless in and of themselves.... didn't I? Now you know why I
hold this position.
Etc.
Wolf Kirchmeir
>
>> The exception? "Reading comprehension tests",
>>administered after we had supposedly read a book to a deadline, and before
>>we took it up in class.
>
>
> See above, we had that too, it was part of regular reading. The thing is,
> back then there was this "THIS is supposed to be the meaning of this story"
> idea - STRUCTURLISM.
That's not a reading comprehension test. Lordy, lordy, no wonder you
don't know what I'm talking about half the time. And vice versa.
A reading comprehension test deals with the facts of the story as told,
names of the characters, sequences of events, etc. EW, "The 3rd pig
built his house from a) straw b) bricks c) concrete blocks d) wood."
> I always post structured the stuff - or deconstructed
> it. LMAO. It was as if, for me, what the author of the story said had no
> meaning - it was just hearsay. Example from well-known kid story: "yeah,
> but what did Cinderalla DO that her sisters hated her so much?" "How did
> she end up being the step daughter - was that her natural mother? where was
> her father? Etc." [...]
Yeah, but they're legitimate questions. The answers depend on whether
you're talking about the world of the story, or the about the story as
an artefact. One of my favourite questions is "Why does Hamlet put off
killing the king?" At least four contexts for the question, therefore at
least four types of answers.
{...]
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
>> "Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> [...]
>>
>>> The exception? "Reading comprehension tests",
>>>administered after we had supposedly read a book to a deadline, and
>>>before we took it up in class.
>>
>>
>> See above, we had that too, it was part of regular reading. The thing
>> is, back then there was this "THIS is supposed to be the meaning of this
>> story" idea - STRUCTURLISM.
>
> That's not a reading comprehension test. Lordy, lordy, no wonder you don't
> know what I'm talking about half the time. And vice versa.
Maybe you don't know what I mean - too bad we don't have a tale we both know
and remember very very well, to give you a hands-on example. But that was
reading comprehension.
>
> A reading comprehension test deals with the facts of the story as told,
> names of the characters, sequences of events, etc. EW, "The 3rd pig built
> his house from a) straw b) bricks c) concrete blocks d) wood."
OH my god - no no, we never got tests as easy as that, showing that sure, we
read the story and remembered the details. That is not reading comp - that
just shows that you remember the written details in the story and nothing
more. It's a test of memory, not comprehension! The 3rd pig built the
house out of bricks - sure. But WHAT does this mean, what was the author
trying to convey when he wrote this? That brick houses are more sturdy than
straw or wood in a wind storm? That all pigs are not as smart as each other?
That in the world of life and survival, STRATEGIES are important and so is
foresight? WHEN the author wrote the story, I'd bet money that building a
house of bricks was harder and more expensive than using wood. (Not so
today - and they seldom use bricks anyway today!) (If you use the concrete
blocks [not in the story of the 3 pigs] versus wood, then actually, concrete
is NOT stronger when up against real wind. Wood frame houses do not collapse
as do concrete block houses in hurricanes - and I know ALL about hurricanes,
just been thru 4 of them and my house had no damage - wood frame. All the
people IN building have wood frame homes, they opt for that!). We never had
to read that 3 pigs tale in ANY grade in school. As I posted before, "To
Build a Fire" was one tale I remember we read (I never saw snow the same way
after reading that - considering I used to love snow and play in it!). You
need to understand, there was no question that the students read the tales -
and if they didn't read it, they owned up to it when asked "Who did not read
the tale?" and they said why they didn't read it. Sometimes they were read
aloud in the class - so everyone heard the tale.
>
>> I always post structured the stuff - or deconstructed it. LMAO. It was
>> as if, for me, what the author of the story said had no meaning - it was
>> just hearsay. Example from well-known kid story: "yeah, but what did
>> Cinderalla DO that her sisters hated her so much?" "How did she end up
>> being the step daughter - was that her natural mother? where was her
>> father? Etc." [...]
>
> Yeah, but they're legitimate questions. The answers depend on whether
> you're talking about the world of the story,
Yes, but in the world of the story, certain details necessary to form an
objective opinion are missing! Heh. That's why some kids thought my stuff
was so funny.
Here is a question for the Cinderella story: What message does this
Cinderalla story give to people who live in poverty or bad conditions?
(considering almost every kid was VERY familiar with poverty, all of us
immigrants or just born here - this was valid) That they can PRAY for some
miracle and some rich prince or maybe God will SAVE them? Is the message in
Cinderella a good message or a bad one - explain why. THAT is the kind of
stuff they gave us on tests; not multiple choice questions about details in
the stories. There was absolutely NO doubt that everyone knew the tales we
were tested on. They were either read TO us, or students got up and each
read a piece of the tale - or we took them home and IF we did not read them
and owned up to it with a good excuse, no problem. We got another chance to
read it. Tales taken home to read were not long. Longer tales were read
right there IN the class, out loud. Teachers knew that kids had other
homework, chores in the house, and so forth. There was only so much given
time to read something at home. A few times we were told to watch a movie
on TV - not read the book. Book was way too long. TV show was only 2
hours. If a kid couldn't watch the show - had an excuse (he has no TV in
the house, his parents were watching something else) that was accepted. But
most of us were able to watch it. The tests were not multiple choice at
all. You had to write out an answer.
or the about the story as
> an artefact. One of my favourite questions is "Why does Hamlet put off
> killing the king?" At least four contexts for the question, therefore at
> least four types of answers.
Never read that one, but did read Othello - or correction, that got read TO
us and put into modern English by the teacher as she read it - so everyone
heard the tale, no doubt about it. I forgot most of it by now. But I
remember that Iago was EVIL! That story shows something a lot different
from "just a guy who wants the girl for himself, so he divides the couple
up," which is "fair" in love matters; a good strategy to get the girl away
from the other guy (Othello). But, Iago does NOT want her for himself. That
is what makes him EVIL - it's like a tale about the nature of evil. I'll
say that the most difficult text I had to read in 7th grade was Milton's
"Paradise Lost." Today, I doubt anyone would give 10 or 11 year old kids
that book to read.
>
> {...]
P.Comm
if it gets thru.
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:eR8Jd.111$Yg6....@news20.bellglobal.com...
P.Comm
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:bG8Jd.100$Yg6....@news20.bellglobal.com...
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...]Curved grades are like this: IF the
>> top student in the class only got 30 right out of 50, that grade counts
>> as a the "new A score" and the rest of the scores fall into place from
>> there, with 30 right being the best score (A grade). I saw this as
>> cheating, when I first ran into it in 12th grade. 30 right and 20 wrong
>> should have been a C grade, not an A grade. [...]
>
> I agree, grading on the curve is bad. But it has an honourable oriin. I
> taught for over 30 years, and I never graded ona curve. If 60% of the
> class failed a reading test, that meant 60% of the class hadn't read the
> book (as they usually admitted.)
I don't believe it has an honorable origin since I remember when they
instituted it and WHY they did it. Too many people were failing. They
simply dumbed it all down for them. I remember that. I remember what some
of the honest teachers actually SAID when some of us came to them privately
and COMPLAINED that this was not fair. What incentive did I or other good
students have to study a thing or even try to get all the answers? NONE.
We could slack and STILL ace the damned tests. As kids, slacking was good.
It meant goofing off. Kids don't figure that they will deprive themselves
of what they might wish they knew, later on.
>
> What i did try to do was figure out what "good" score should be. On a hard
> test it mught be 30/100, on an easy test 80/100. That was the B grade. (NB
> that to get a driver's licence in Canada, you have to scote a minium of
> 80% coprrect on the written test - that means 80% correct is a D!) It's
> nto easy to foigure out what a good score should be - it takes quite a few
> years experience, as well as explicit instruction in test making, which, I
> am sorry to say, is not provided by many (if not most) education schools.
> Grading on the curve was originally intended to allow for the uncertainty
> about the difficulty of the test. Of course, it assumes that students will
> not try to beat the system, and the fact that it is so widespread
> testifies to an appalling naivete among the instructors that use. Hah!
On a driver test in my state (when I moved here) if you got 1 wrong you
flunked! You had to get them ALL right.
>
> The "good score" is also related to what and how much had been done in
> class. Eg, a reading test prior to treatment of the book in class would
> have a lower passing score than the same test admiministered after the
> book had been dealt with. IOW, a score is not a grade. The grade is the
> teacher's judgement - a score is just a way of making comparisons more >
> objective, and make the grading a little easier. -- I told you numbers are
> meaningless in and of themselves.... didn't I? Now you know why I hold
> this position.
>
> Etc.
Our reading classes included reading comp. The tests were a lot more
complicated than just knowing what the characters in the tale did by rote or
remembering the names of the characters. If you answered "this pig did
that, then that pig did that" by rote, that was considered a bit dumb. No
one was asking students to rewrite the story from memory. What was the
meaning of the story? What do you think was the climax of the story? What
was the writer trying to say over all? What do YOU get out of the story
today? When pig three's house couldn't be blown down, what does this show?
There was no question that the students read the tale - either read it or
get into trouble (not just flunk). Things like that were asked. Going
outside the story to "real world" is post structuralism. Sticking to the
exact text of the story but - hmm, hard to explain it - sort of ignoring the
author's intent when he wrote the tale - is deconstruction. If you ever
read HP Lovecraft "Call of Cthulhu" you will definitely see what I mean.
That story lends itself to this kind of non structuralist reading. It's the
best story to use to even TEACH post structuralism and deconstruction. What
I found weird is that Professor Burlseon (math professor and literature
professor) USED this tale and was teaching this stuff to grad students. He
found it as strange as I did that his students had a hard time understanding
it. That tale was the type of tale we'd have had in 5th grade (grammar
school, not grad school, LOL) - I know Jack London's "To Build a Fire" was
one of the tales we read back then. I can barely remember it save for the
everpresent HORROR, especially when the match goes out on the guy. Lots of
ways to "get" something from that tale and I can remember what I got and
wrote to paraphrase.
1. Man alone is no match for raw nature. ERGO - man has to remain the
social animal that he is when he's born. He needs others to help him out.
2. A little of something can be safe and nice. But too much of the same
thing can be deadly and horrible (snow). A glass or two of wine with an
evening meal is good and healthy for you. But a case of wine with the
evening meal will make you dead drunk to pass out and is not healthy.
3. Don't venture out into strange territory unprepared.
:-D I couldn't tell you the name of the characters in that tale right now
or the order in which anything happened - but I remember the brunt of the
tale and it's decades later now.
Wolf Kirchmeir
> Wolf, is this your real email addy? I'll email you the math problem and see
> if it gets thru.
It is if you cut the first W. Or the second, if that's more to your
liking... :-)
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...] The tests were a lot more
> complicated than just knowing what the characters in the tale did by rote or
> remembering the names of the characters. If you answered "this pig did
> that, then that pig did that" by rote, that was considered a bit dumb. No
> one was asking students to rewrite the story from memory. What was the
> meaning of the story? What do you think was the climax of the story? What
> was the writer trying to say over all? What do YOU get out of the story
> today? When pig three's house couldn't be blown down, what does this show?
> There was no question that the students read the tale - either read it or
> get into trouble (not just flunk). Things like that were asked.
Well, sure, but we didn't label those "reading comprehension." That's
_interpretation_, since on the more complex questions (eg, motives)
there may well be uncertainty and ambiguity - often, BTW deliberate -
see Henry James (whom I don like, for other reasons, but he's a good
example of deliberate ambiguities.)
> Going
> outside the story to "real world" is post structuralism. Sticking to the
> exact text of the story but - hmm, hard to explain it - sort of ignoring the
> author's intent when he wrote the tale - is deconstruction.
Well, the problem with "sticking to the text" is that you have to have a
pretty good knowledge of the writer's cultural context, the expectations
(s)he had of the audience and vice versa, etc. Just looks at old movies
- even _Bullitt_ looks "dated" now, because it was made for an audience
that "read" movies differently than we do now.
You always have to go outside the story/play/movie/etc in some sense.
Eg, did Hamlet actually believe the Ghost was a devil in disguise? He
says so - but he says a lot of things, some of which are deliberately
ambiguous or deceptive. Or maybe it was a momentary lapse into
superstition. Or whatever. Point is, to understand what Shakespeare
might have wanted the audience to get from this speech, we have to have
some knowledge of how the audience thought about these things - after
all, Hamlet's self-confessed motives must make sense to them. Maybe the
"Yeah, I'd be worried too" kind of sense, or the "Is he nuts? Nobody
believes that anymore" kind of sense; or etc. -- Another example is
Romer and Juliet, see especially Juliet's father's proposal that she
marry Paris. People nowadays put that down as the worst kind of larnetal
oppression. But in Sh's time, Juliet's father would have been put down
if had not made every effort to get her such a good match. His rage is
more than just annoyance at her disobedience - by rejecting his choice,
she's also extremely ungrateful, and denying his duty as a father, and
so on. Not easy for a parent to take. But this reading of the play
depends on our knowing what's outside the play. When we read R&J with
oru modern sensibility, we forget that the play is one of the seminal
texts that shaped that sesnibility, as much by it repeated
reinterpretaion as our notions of love and marriage chnaged as by waht
it originally portrayed.
To put it another way, we always bring something in from the outside.
Good reading means knowing this, and trying to sort out what bits of
what we bring are relevant and what bits aren't, and looking for more
relevant bits.
BTW, a conversation about a text would be the kind I would propose as
the best form of Turing Test.
> If you ever
> read HP Lovecraft "Call of Cthulhu" you will definitely see what I mean.
> That story lends itself to this kind of non structuralist reading. It's the
> best story to use to even TEACH post structuralism and deconstruction. What
> I found weird is that Professor Burlseon (math professor and literature
> professor) USED this tale and was teaching this stuff to grad students. He
> found it as strange as I did that his students had a hard time understanding
> it. That tale was the type of tale we'd have had in 5th grade (grammar
> school, not grad school, LOL) - I know Jack London's "To Build a Fire" was
> one of the tales we read back then. I can barely remember it save for the
> everpresent HORROR, especially when the match goes out on the guy. Lots of
> ways to "get" something from that tale and I can remember what I got and
> wrote to paraphrase.
>
> 1. Man alone is no match for raw nature. ERGO - man has to remain the
> social animal that he is when he's born. He needs others to help him out.
> 2. A little of something can be safe and nice. But too much of the same
> thing can be deadly and horrible (snow). A glass or two of wine with an
> evening meal is good and healthy for you. But a case of wine with the
> evening meal will make you dead drunk to pass out and is not healthy.
> 3. Don't venture out into strange territory unprepared.
I thought the guy was one of those people who have no imagination....
P.Comm
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:0tgJd.178$mA5....@news20.bellglobal.com...
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> Here is a question for the Cinderella story: What message does this
> Cinderalla story give to people who live in poverty or bad conditions?
> (considering almost every kid was VERY familiar with poverty, all of us
> immigrants or just born here - this was valid) That they can PRAY for some
> miracle and some rich prince or maybe God will SAVE them? Is the message in
> Cinderella a good message or a bad one - explain why. THAT is the kind of
> stuff they gave us on tests; not multiple choice questions about details in
Like I said, you have a different vocabulary. What you cite are
questions for class discussion, homework, essays -- and for exams. Not
for tests. Tests don't count for very much, actually. The more narrowly
focusssed a test is, the more valid the results.
I would test a student's ability to comprehend a story by providing a
story to be read for the test/exam, perhaps ahead of time, perhaps not
(in which latter case, the exam timing has to allow for reading the
story.) Those kinds of questions would be asked about a story that had
_not_ been read in class, IOW. Or, you ask questions that didn't come up
in the class work.
NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
(Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen years.)
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...] The tests were a lot more
>> complicated than just knowing what the characters in the tale did by rote
>> or remembering the names of the characters. If you answered "this pig
>> did that, then that pig did that" by rote, that was considered a bit
>> dumb. No one was asking students to rewrite the story from memory. What
>> was the meaning of the story? What do you think was the climax of the
>> story? What was the writer trying to say over all? What do YOU get out
>> of the story today? When pig three's house couldn't be blown down, what
>> does this show? There was no question that the students read the tale -
>> either read it or get into trouble (not just flunk). Things like that
>> were asked.
>
> Well, sure, but we didn't label those "reading comprehension." That's
> _interpretation_, since on the more complex questions (eg, motives) there
> may well be uncertainty and ambiguity - often, BTW deliberate - see Henry
> James (whom I don like, for other reasons, but he's a good example of
> deliberate ambiguities.)
Different educational systems. The USA used to be the tops back then. Not
anymore. In 5th we had comprehension and that included interpretation -
also was a kind of way to teach legal system imo - what THEY called
deconstruction and REconstruction (NOT the same as Derrida's
deconstruction).
>
>> Going outside the story to "real world" is post structuralism. Sticking
>> to the exact text of the story but - hmm, hard to explain it - sort of
>> ignoring the author's intent when he wrote the tale - is deconstruction.
>
> Well, the problem with "sticking to the text" is that you have to have a
> pretty good knowledge of the writer's cultural context, the expectations
> (s)he had of the audience and vice versa, etc.
Oh no, not in deconstruction. The author's intent is thrown out the
window - it doesn't exist!
Just looks at old movies
> - even _Bullitt_ looks "dated" now, because it was made for an audience
> that "read" movies differently than we do now.
Hmm, you keep referring to movies/texts I'm not too thoroughly familiar
with - or don't remember. The story I mentioned is PERFECT for all of this!
It's short, you could read it (it's online to be read!) and it's DAMNED
GOOD. "Call of Cthulhu" by HP Lovecraft.
>
> You always have to go outside the story/play/movie/etc in some sense.
That's post structuralism.
> Eg, did Hamlet actually believe the Ghost was a devil in disguise? He says
> so - but he says a lot of things, some of which are deliberately ambiguous
> or deceptive. Or maybe it was a momentary lapse into superstition. Or
> whatever. Point is, to understand what Shakespeare might have wanted the
> audience to get from this speech, we have to have some knowledge of how
> the audience thought about these things - after all, Hamlet's
> self-confessed motives must make sense to them. Maybe the "Yeah, I'd be
> worried too" kind of sense, or the "Is he nuts? Nobody believes that
> anymore" kind of sense; or etc. -- Another example is Romer and Juliet,
> see especially Juliet's father's proposal that she marry Paris. People
> nowadays put that down as the worst kind of larnetal oppression. But in
> Sh's time, Juliet's father would have been put down if had not made every
> effort to get her such a good match. His rage is more than just annoyance
> at her disobedience - by rejecting his choice, she's also extremely
> ungrateful, and denying his duty as a father, and so on. Not easy for a
> parent to take. But this reading of the play depends on our knowing what's
> outside the play. When we read R&J with oru modern sensibility, we forget
> that the play is one of the seminal texts that shaped that sesnibility, as
> much by it repeated reinterpretaion as our notions of love and marriage
> chnaged as by waht it originally portrayed.
>
> To put it another way, we always bring something in from the outside.
That is what deconstructiion-ists state - that you WRITE the story along
with the author as you read it! Therefore, no two people can possibly read
the same text, even if they read the same actual text - and you yourself are
reading a NEW text if you REread it.
LONDON? LMAO. I vaguely remember a tale about Polynesia - two brothers -
it was GOOD. I don't even remember the title of it anymore, tho. Also a
problem exists - the text I read in school for "Call of the Wild" had a
woman, a wolf-dog and an Indian in it - it is exactly the same tale I saw
recently on Hallmark Channel, 1990s. It's heavy, it has layers of meaning,
even mystical meaning - but straight as a tale is it SAD (makes ya CRY!)
HOWEVER - I have not ever been able to FIND that text in any standard book
with this story in it. So there had to be some other version out there!
The version I see in books is lame.
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...]
>> Here is a question for the Cinderella story: What message does this
>> Cinderalla story give to people who live in poverty or bad conditions?
>> (considering almost every kid was VERY familiar with poverty, all of us
>> immigrants or just born here - this was valid) That they can PRAY for
>> some miracle and some rich prince or maybe God will SAVE them? Is the
>> message in Cinderella a good message or a bad one - explain why. THAT is
>> the kind of stuff they gave us on tests; not multiple choice questions
>> about details in the stories. [...]
>
> Like I said, you have a different vocabulary. What you cite are questions
> for class discussion, homework, essays -- and for exams. Not for tests.
> Tests don't count for very much, actually. The more narrowly focusssed a
> test is, the more valid the results.
?? Test = exam! They meant the same thing here.
>
> I would test a student's ability to comprehend a story by providing a
> story to be read for the test/exam, perhaps ahead of time, perhaps not (in
> which latter case, the exam timing has to allow for reading the story.)
> Those kinds of questions would be asked about a story that had _not_ been
> read in class, IOW. Or, you ask questions that didn't come up in the class
> work.
>
> NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
> especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
> instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
> the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
> (Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
> can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen
> years.)
Well, I read the story when I was 9 years old. I'm 54 now. :) I remember
the brunt of it, the hellish everpresent SNOW, the white hell of it, the
utter helplesslessness of the man, his last hope, that match.
We never had multiple choice questions. But we also never had such
questions (as what kind of house did 3rd pig build), multiple choice or not,
in any reading exam. For math tests (or arithmetic) there was no multiple
choice at all. You had to come up with the answer. I guess you'd call what
we had when it came to reading anything that's a story, or history, as
"exams." Tests - exams, were the same to us.
Like the question (math thing that professor gave me) I emailed you - it was
a straight question and you had to give the answer and proof. There is
another one, that "triangle thing" that me and others in an egroup I'm in
went on and on about for MONTHS - with the subject popping up wholly off
topic now and again. LMAO. The answer was so freaking obvious that I went
and figured that they drew it wrong. So I redrew it - LOL. Turns out I
"over figured" the thing - they did not draw it wrong - and the answer was
NOT so obvious to anyone else. Well, I wear glasses. If it's not obvious,
these people need to GET glasses. Anyway - No multiple choice options.
Multiple choice is really making a test a lot easier, I think. The answer
is probably right there, heh. Then, of course, there is the "none of the
above" option on some multiple choice tests.
Here is one: a cubed plus b cubed equals c squared. What are a, b, and c.
NO multiple choice. That's a very easy one! You can probably do it off the
top of your head. The one Terry Trotter (math professor that puts "strange
things about numbers" on websites)sent me to try my hand at (I wanted to
KILL that man) - was NOT easy since I do not have a calculator capable of
handling such huge numbers. I mean, his problem didn't involve numbers you
can just do in your head right off. No freaking way. But I got the answer.
That was this:
a fourth power plus b forth power equals c fourth power plus d fourth power.
What are a, b, c and d. How do you write that in computer talk? a^4+b^4 =
c^4+d^4 ?? I'm not sure how to write it in computer talk and I can't read
it easily, and I can't make small superscript numbers on usenet - so I wrote
it all out for you.
I know by intuition right up that a and b have to be numbers probably right
next to each other and that c and d have to be further apart, one lower than
a or b and the other higher than a or b. By the time I got to around 15, I
knew that there must be numbers way bigger than I can do in my head involved
in this. It took REAMS of paper to figure out and hope that I didn't make a
mistake doing multiplications or additions of such BIG numbers by hand. It
took me hours, even just to write it out, do the arithmetic from scratch (no
calculator), but I gave him the answer. At first I just said that I'd not
do it. But it bugged me. LMAO.
Wolf Kirchmeir
>>
>>I thought the guy was one of those people who have no imagination....
>
>
> LONDON? LMAO.
??????
I thunk we wuz talk'n 'bout th' guy in th' story.
Wolf Kirchmeir
[...]
> ?? Test = exam! They meant the same thing here.
Test: instrument for finding out some narrowly defined fact about the
student (eg, did (s)he read the story assigned for homework? Can (s)he
do 3 digit multiplications w/o pencil and paper? What facts about
history of the town does (s) he know?) Usually used to determine
baseline data so that lesson plans etc could be adapted to student.
Exam: demonstration of complex skills ("problem solving") by student.
Mind you, many "exams" were merely long tests, covering the material in
the course.
>>I would test a student's ability to comprehend a story by providing a
>>story to be read for the test/exam, perhaps ahead of time, perhaps not (in
>>which latter case, the exam timing has to allow for reading the story.)
>>Those kinds of questions would be asked about a story that had _not_ been
>>read in class, IOW. Or, you ask questions that didn't come up in the class
>>work.
>>
>>NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
>>especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
>>instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
>>the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
>>(Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
>>can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen
>>years.)
>
>
> Well, I read the story when I was 9 years old. I'm 54 now. :) I remember
> the brunt of it, the hellish everpresent SNOW, the white hell of it, the
> utter helplesslessness of the man, his last hope, that match.
Like I said, the guy had no imagination. Imagine building a fire under a
snow-laden branch! Didn't he look around first???.
> We never had multiple choice questions. But we also never had such
> questions (as what kind of house did 3rd pig build), multiple choice or not,
> in any reading exam. For math tests (or arithmetic) there was no multiple
> choice at all. You had to come up with the answer. I guess you'd call what
> we had when it came to reading anything that's a story, or history, as
> "exams." Tests - exams, were the same to us.
Yeah, I gatherd that.
> Here is one: a cubed plus b cubed equals c squared. What are a, b, and c.
> NO multiple choice.
1, 2, 3: 1 + 8 = 9. Or 2, 2, 4: 8 + 8 = 16. Etc. An infinite set of
solutions. Is 1, 2, 3 the only triplet where a, b, c are different? Dunno.
> That's a very easy one! You can probably do it off the
> top of your head. The one Terry Trotter (math professor that puts "strange
> things about numbers" on websites)sent me to try my hand at (I wanted to
> KILL that man) - was NOT easy since I do not have a calculator capable of
> handling such huge numbers. I mean, his problem didn't involve numbers you
> can just do in your head right off. No freaking way. But I got the answer.
> That was this:
>
> a fourth power plus b forth power equals c fourth power plus d fourth power.
> What are a, b, c and d. How do you write that in computer talk? a^4+b^4 =
> c^4+d^4 ?? I'm not sure how to write it in computer talk and I can't read
> it easily, and I can't make small superscript numbers on usenet - so I wrote
> it all out for you.
A^4 + B^4 = C^4 + D^4
BTW, the version that appears in the reader shows superscripts - this
version (in the text editor whicxh is part of the news-reader - shows it
with the caret. Wierd.
> I know by intuition right up that a and b have to be numbers probably right
> next to each other and that c and d have to be further apart, one lower than
> a or b and the other higher than a or b.
I agree.
Did you try restating it as a quadratic, and solving for the square
roots? I suspect that would be faster. But this question doesn't bug me.
Doug McDonald
> in the class work.
>
> NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
> especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
> instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
> the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
> (Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
> can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen years.)
The whole idea in Humanities studies it to inculcate arcana. (Note:
those words chosen carefully!) Humanities at least when I was in college
was a basically closed system of arcana. You were expected to know
all the background of everything, without ever being told or taught it.
Nothing in my literature classes was EVER taught. We were just supposed
to read books and know everything about them without reading
any commentary, or even having a textbook that discussed and exposited
the rules which govern such stuff. The idea apparently was to guarantee
that non-majors made bad grades. It succeeded.
Doug McDonald
P.Comm
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:ArsJd.472$mA5.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
> [...]
>> ?? Test = exam! They meant the same thing here.
>
> Test: instrument for finding out some narrowly defined fact about the
> student (eg, did (s)he read the story assigned for homework?
As I said, that was as-given, the students DID know the material, either
from reading it aloud taking turns in the class, or having it read to them.
Only very short stories were even expected to read at home. I'm talking
about children - in grammar school! Maybe you don't realize how MUCH
homework we had back then. From second grade (7 year old kids) onward, you
needed a briefcase to carry the books home every school day. Reading a
story takes TIME - time that kids just didn ot have back then.
Can (s)he
> do 3 digit multiplications w/o pencil and paper?
??? Like 246 X 381? You gotta be kidding! No pencil and paper? I can't
even do that and I aced math/arithmetic/geometry.
What facts about
> history of the town does (s) he know?) Usually used to determine baseline
> data so that lesson plans etc could be adapted to student.
Ah, well the tests were standardized - kids got the same tests that kids got
the next year in the same grade.
>
> Exam: demonstration of complex skills ("problem solving") by student.
>
> Mind you, many "exams" were merely long tests, covering the material in
> the course.
Well, to me, exam and test were the same thing. You sit there and answer
questions on paper. NONE of it was multiple choice.
>
>>>I would test a student's ability to comprehend a story by providing a
>>>story to be read for the test/exam, perhaps ahead of time, perhaps not
>>>(in
>>>which latter case, the exam timing has to allow for reading the story.)
Back then? No way. Kids had to do CHORES, like help build a screen porch,
mow the lawn (big lawns) and such. Kids were not babied as they have been
for so long here. Not back then. Kids also had to go out and get play in
(and there was no law demanding parental supervision back then). All in
all, we did good - the country was tops in math, science, and etc. Now?
Heh. MEHHHH ptewey. I run into college kids that ASKED ME to write their
freaking essays for them (and get paid for it). One of the books I did read
was by two of those guys listed from Rutgers University - on the subject of
IQ and race. I read the book in a few hours, practically scanned it and
then wrote up what the brunt of the whole book was about. Yeah, I know -
it's not ethical to do that - but money talks when you need it. I did at
least ask the guy to READ what I wrote before he handed it in. Considering
I spent hardly any time doing it, he got a B on it. I run into college
educated people that "get lost" reading my published novel when in my time,
anyone in 7th or 8th grade would have been able to read MOST of it - the
rest they could look up in a dictionary. Pathetic. I had to write "essays"
that long when I was in the 2nd grade in grammar school. I swear, you could
probably, I could probably, ace thru a social science course without
studying a single text book. It's THAT EASY. That's not what I call an
education. It's Forrest Gump dumbed down garbage. This convo already
happened on this newsgroup ages ago.
>>>Those kinds of questions would be asked about a story that had _not_ been
>>>read in class, IOW. Or, you ask questions that didn't come up in the
>>>class
>>>work.
Well, I just told you what we did back then in schools.
>>>
>>>NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
>>>especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
>>>instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
>>>the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
>>>(Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
>>>can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen
>>>years.)
>>
>>
>> Well, I read the story when I was 9 years old. I'm 54 now. :) I
>> remember the brunt of it, the hellish everpresent SNOW, the white hell of
>> it, the utter helplesslessness of the man, his last hope, that match.
>
> Like I said, the guy had no imagination. Imagine building a fire under a
> snow-laden branch! Didn't he look around first???.
LOL.
>
>> We never had multiple choice questions. But we also never had such
>> questions (as what kind of house did 3rd pig build), multiple choice or
>> not,
>> in any reading exam. For math tests (or arithmetic) there was no
>> multiple
>> choice at all. You had to come up with the answer. I guess you'd call
>> what
>> we had when it came to reading anything that's a story, or history, as
>> "exams." Tests - exams, were the same to us.
>
> Yeah, I gatherd that.
The whole reaction to the dumbed down education has come up with the issue
over vouchers and home-education. Parents took a peak at textbooks from the
50s era and well, freaked out that kids that young were learning that stuff.
Compared to what their kids are learning now? There is a lot of outrage
over it.
>
>> Here is one: a cubed plus b cubed equals c squared. What are a, b, and
>> c. NO multiple choice.
>
> 1, 2, 3: 1 + 8 = 9. Or 2, 2, 4: 8 + 8 = 16. Etc. An infinite set of
> solutions. Is 1, 2, 3 the only triplet where a, b, c are different? Dunno.
Sure, I said you could do it in your head, fast :) But can most 8 or 9 year
old kids do it in their heads today?
>
>> That's a very easy one! You can probably do it off the top of your
>> head. The one Terry Trotter (math professor that puts "strange things
>> about numbers" on websites)sent me to try my hand at (I wanted to KILL
>> that man) - was NOT easy since I do not have a calculator capable of
>> handling such huge numbers. I mean, his problem didn't involve numbers
>> you can just do in your head right off. No freaking way. But I got the
>> answer. That was this:
>>
>> a fourth power plus b forth power equals c fourth power plus d fourth
>> power. What are a, b, c and d. How do you write that in computer talk?
>> a^4+b^4 = c^4+d^4 ?? I'm not sure how to write it in computer talk and
>> I can't read it easily, and I can't make small superscript numbers on
>> usenet - so I wrote it all out for you.
>
> A^4 + B^4 = C^4 + D^4
>
> BTW, the version that appears in the reader shows superscripts - this
> version (in the text editor whicxh is part of the news-reader - shows it
> with the caret. Wierd.
?? I don't see any superscripts ever showing up on newsgroups.
>
>> I know by intuition right up that a and b have to be numbers probably
>> right
>> next to each other and that c and d have to be further apart, one lower
>> than a or b and the other higher than a or b.
>
> I agree.
>
> Did you try restating it as a quadratic, and solving for the square roots?
> I suspect that would be faster.
What do you mean? Like A^4+B^2+n1 = n2? Explain. Uh, no, not faster. I'd
have to get to the 4th powers AND add them up. It's not LIKE a^2+b^2 =
c^2+d^2. Hmm.. no no, nix that - that would only give you a clue (If I
typed it out) but you'd have to already have gotten the answer to give the
clue :) It still requires TONS of paper and a lot of hands-on arithmetic
and care not to screw up - like ADD 3 plus 3 and get 9 (cause you multiplied
by mistake).
> But this question doesn't bug me.
OK, but would you take it on without a calculator able to handle BIG BIG
numbers? Terry had quite a few "strange things" about numbers too, but I
can't find the original emails (probably in my old computer). He has
websites too - but I can't seem to find the one with the cute strange
numbers on it :)
Wolf Kirchmeir
> "Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:BQsJd.476$mA5.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>
>>P.Comm wrote:
>>[...]
>>
>>>?? Test = exam! They meant the same thing here.
>>
>>Test: instrument for finding out some narrowly defined fact about the
>>student (eg, did (s)he read the story assigned for homework?
>
>
> As I said, that was as-given, the students DID know the material, either
> from reading it aloud taking turns in the class, or having it read to them.
> Only very short stories were even expected to read at home. I'm talking
> about children - in grammar school! Maybe you don't realize how MUCH
> homework we had back then. From second grade (7 year old kids) onward, you
> needed a briefcase to carry the books home every school day. Reading a
> story takes TIME - time that kids just didn ot have back then.
>
> Can (s)he
>
>>do 3 digit multiplications w/o pencil and paper?
>
>
> ??? Like 246 X 381? You gotta be kidding! No pencil and paper? I can't
> even do that and I aced math/arithmetic/geometry.
There's a trick to doing it. I was taught it. But I've forgotten it. :-)
Wolf Kirchmeir
>>Like I said, the guy [in To Build a Fire] had no imagination. Imagine building a fire under a
>>snow-laden branch! Didn't he look around first???.
>
> LOL.
>
>>>We never had multiple choice questions.
What state? In most states, multiple choice questions were SOP by the
mid 50s. BTW, read some Reader's Digest articles on education and
schools from the late 50s/early 60s. They are all in fvaor fo the things
the public-ed foes detsets: child centere d learning, whole language,
etc. RD is always a good indicator of current middle-classs thinking,
which cycles through the same themes every generation or so.
> The whole reaction to the dumbed down education has come up with the issue
> over vouchers and home-education. Parents took a peak at textbooks from the
> 50s era and well, freaked out that kids that young were learning that stuff.
> Compared to what their kids are learning now? There is a lot of outrage
> over it.
People forget that a lot of kids failed back then: middle school was
intended to weed out the non-academics, and did a very good job of it,
too. When I graduated from HS (about 10 years before you) 70-80% of kids
didn't. In fact, when I started teaching hjgh school, school-leaving age
was 14 - and over half of the grade 8s did not go on to high school. Of
those that did, about 1/2 quit at age 16/grade 10 - which was entry
level for jobs in the bank, apprenticeships, etc. Of those that did
graduate, roughly 60% _started_ postsecondary, and less than half of
those finished. There were also a lot of jobs for people with limited
skills - eg, there were still "office boys" back then! And far more gas
pumps proportionate to population than there are now, and no easy-swipe
pay-at-the-pump etc. In general, required entry-level skills have
increased enormously since then, as have required skill levels
generally. The ramping up of skill levels started before then, of
course, but people didn;t realise it was happening until it was well
under way. A US Dept of Labour survey of required job skills, done in
the late 70s/early 80s IIRC using a sample of 400 job-descriptions on
file at the Dept, found that in 80% of the sample workers had to read
and/or write at least 2 hours of every work shift. And most of the
job-classifications were labelled "skilled labour."
BTW, a few years after I started teaching HS, school-leaving age was
raised to 16. There is now talk about raising it to 18.
The dumbing down of HS education happened for many reasons. One is that
there were more and more kids who couldn't do the academic stuff to the
level required, and those that could wanted to get to job-training, er,
I mean "higher education", as fast as possible. So even for the
potential high achievers, much was cut out. (I still mourn for Latin.)
Another resason: the parents' insistence that their kid had some right
to a HS diploma - after all, they paid school tax, didn't they? And I'm
sorry to have to tell you that the parents who complain about the
dumbing down of education are also likely believe that their average kid
is a genius.
In addition, a much higher percentage of people now go to college; not
to get an education, but to get a certificate that they are qualified to
do some relatively complex job.
[...]
>
>>But this question doesn't bug me.
>
>
> OK, but would you take it on without a calculator able to handle BIG BIG
> numbers?
No. :-)
> Terry had quite a few "strange things" about numbers too, but I
> can't find the original emails (probably in my old computer). He has
> websites too - but I can't seem to find the one with the cute strange
> numbers on it :)
I like reading about number theory, but not doing it.
Wolf Kirchmeir
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. It was clearly a very bad
school. Just because a school calls istelf a college or university
doesn't mean it is one. :-)
Doug McDonald
>>
>>
>> The whole idea in Humanities studies it to inculcate arcana. (Note:
>> those words chosen carefully!) Humanities at least when I was in
>> college was a basically closed system of arcana. You were expected to
>> know
>> all the background of everything, without ever being told or taught it.
>> Nothing in my literature classes was EVER taught. We were just supposed
>> to read books and know everything about them without reading
>> any commentary, or even having a textbook that discussed and exposited
>> the rules which govern such stuff. The idea apparently was to guarantee
>> that non-majors made bad grades. It succeeded.
>>
>> Doug McDonald
>
>
>
> I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. It was clearly a very bad
> school. Just because a school calls istelf a college or university
> doesn't mean it is one. :-)
It was a very "good" school: Rice. This was one way to be
"good" in their view.
Doug McDonald
Wolf Kirchmeir
Yeah, I've noticed that reputations of US colleges don't match up with
reality.
P.Comm
> P.Comm wrote:
>> "Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> [snip a conbfession of, um, malfeasnace. Tsk tsk!]
>
>>>Like I said, the guy [in To Build a Fire] had no imagination. Imagine
>>>building a fire under a snow-laden branch! Didn't he look around
>>>first???.
>>
>> LOL.
>>
>>>>We never had multiple choice questions.
>
> What state?
NJ.
In most states, multiple choice questions were SOP by the
> mid 50s. BTW, read some Reader's Digest articles on education and schools
> from the late 50s/early 60s. They are all in fvaor fo the things the
> public-ed foes detsets: child centere d learning, whole language, etc. RD
> is always a good indicator of current middle-classs thinking, which cycles
> through the same themes every generation or so.
>
>> The whole reaction to the dumbed down education has come up with the
>> issue over vouchers and home-education. Parents took a peak at textbooks
>> from the 50s era and well, freaked out that kids that young were learning
>> that stuff. Compared to what their kids are learning now? There is a lot
>> of outrage over it.
>
> People forget that a lot of kids failed back then: middle school was
> intended to weed out the non-academics, and did a very good job of it,
> too.
Yes, because the school work was a lot, LOT harder. That is what happens
with merit system. Imo, today, a college grad is the equivalent of a HS
grad back then.
When I graduated from HS (about 10 years before you) 70-80% of kids
> didn't. In fact, when I started teaching hjgh school, school-leaving age
> was 14 - and over half of the grade 8s did not go on to high school. Of
> those that did, about 1/2 quit at age 16/grade 10 - which was entry level
> for jobs in the bank, apprenticeships, etc. Of those that did graduate,
> roughly 60% _started_ postsecondary, and less than half of those finished.
But the ones that did finish were excellent at what they did.
There were also a lot of jobs for people with limited
> skills - eg, there were still "office boys" back then! And far more gas
> pumps proportionate to population than there are now, and no easy-swipe
> pay-at-the-pump etc.
There are still a lot of jobs like that now - 14 million illegal aliens take
them - so the jobs are HERE.
In general, required entry-level skills have
> increased enormously since then, as have required skill levels generally.
> The ramping up of skill levels started before then, of course, but people
> didn;t realise it was happening until it was well under way. A US Dept of
> Labour survey of required job skills, done in the late 70s/early 80s IIRC
> using a sample of 400 job-descriptions on file at the Dept, found that in
> 80% of the sample workers had to read and/or write at least 2 hours of
> every work shift. And most of the job-classifications were labelled
> "skilled labour."
>
> BTW, a few years after I started teaching HS, school-leaving age was
> raised to 16. There is now talk about raising it to 18.
>
> The dumbing down of HS education happened for many reasons. One is that
> there were more and more kids who couldn't do the academic stuff to the
> level required, and those that could wanted to get to job-training, er, I
> mean "higher education", as fast as possible. So even for the potential
> high achievers, much was cut out. (I still mourn for Latin.) Another
> resason: the parents' insistence that their kid had some right to a HS
> diploma - after all, they paid school tax, didn't they? And I'm sorry to
> have to tell you that the parents who complain about the dumbing down of
> education are also likely believe that their average kid is a genius.
I know that. Well, catering in to emotions is not a good idea. I would NOT
want to go to a doctor that didn't know what the hell he was doing - and I
have run into quite a few of those here in FL. In NJ not the case.
>
> In addition, a much higher percentage of people now go to college; not to
> get an education, but to get a certificate that they are qualified to do
> some relatively complex job.
>
> [...]
>>
>>>But this question doesn't bug me.
>>
>>
>> OK, but would you take it on without a calculator able to handle BIG BIG
>> numbers?
>
> No. :-)
>
>> Terry had quite a few "strange things" about numbers too, but I can't
>> find the original emails (probably in my old computer). He has websites
>> too - but I can't seem to find the one with the cute strange numbers on
>> it :)
>
> I like reading about number theory, but not doing it.
HA! Too bad you can't remember that trick with large numbers!
P.Comm
--
http://innsmouth.rules.it
or http://www.geocities.com/trip_to_innsmouth
http://lovecraft.shows.it
or http://www.geocities.com/lovecraft_was_here
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:O9XJd.4459$Yg6.9...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Wolf Kirchmeir
> Did you get the math problem in email? Please let me know.
>
Yes. I looked at it, and recalled that I solved it, um, 50 years ago.
Tried to remember what I did, and failed. I realised you have to start
with three piles of 4, weigh two of them. If equal, sought for ball is
in theri dpile, o'wise in one of weighed piles. Re arrange weighed piles
into tow groups of 3, plus one of each left over. If equal, test one
ball of these against one of the left overs, will show if heavier or
lighter. If not equal, .... Er. (Wait till you hit 60- you will notice a
falling off in, um, "cognitive skills." First to go is the cryptic
crossword - I used to be able to do the Globe and Mial cryptic in 20
minutes or less. Now I can't get all the clues. Mind you, the new puzzle
setter is very sloppy with his definitions, and his rebus clues often
allude to pop-culture items I don't know - generation gap, I guess. So I
have some excuse...))
I'm going to give it another shot sometime today. If I find time.
Doug McDonald
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It was a very "good" school: Rice. This was one way to be
>> "good" in their view.
>>
>> Doug McDonald
>
>
>
> Yeah, I've noticed that reputations of US colleges don't match up with
> reality.
That's quite false .... they match quite well. Rice really was and it
a truly top-tier school, well deserving of the place it has in
the usual suspects top schools lists. It's just that, at least when
I was there, if you were a science type you got a very great science
education, if you were a humanities type you get a near-great
humanities eductaion ... but the education you got in the "other"
half of the science-humanities divide was somewhat useless.
Doug McDonald
P.Comm
attached to it, as I gave it. :)
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwol...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:6m8Kd.5609$Yg6.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> P.Comm wrote:
>> Did you get the math problem in email? Please let me know.
>>
>
> Yes. I looked at it, and recalled that I solved it, um, 50 years ago.
> Tried to remember what I did, and failed. I realised you have to start
> with three piles of 4, weigh two of them. If equal, sought for ball is in
> theri dpile, o'wise in one of weighed piles. Re arrange weighed piles into
> tow groups of 3, plus one of each left over. If equal, test one ball of
> these against one of the left overs, will show if heavier or lighter. If
> not equal, .... Er. (Wait till you hit 60- you will notice a falling off
> in, um, "cognitive skills."
Well, I'm 54.
First to go is the cryptic
> crossword - I used to be able to do the Globe and Mial cryptic in 20
> minutes or less. Now I can't get all the clues. Mind you, the new puzzle
> setter is very sloppy with his definitions, and his rebus clues often
> allude to pop-culture items I don't know - generation gap, I guess. So I
> have some excuse...))
>
> I'm going to give it another shot sometime today. If I find time.
OH, shoot, well, I mailed you the "how to do it" but - NOT how to figure out
how many you can do with 4 or 5 changes :) There's a pattern in there :)