Khas wrote:sonofccn wrote:Khas wrote:Also, a big part of the racial tension in the U.S. is actually the fault of rich landowners, who did everything they could to make sure that poor whites, black slaves, and indentured servants (both black and white) never unified, lest they go all French Revolution on their asses (which came close to happening a few times). Now, let this indoctrination continue for the next few centuries, and we have the clusterfuck on our hands today. Basically, it's as Palpatine said in Revenge of the Sith - those with power are always afraid of losing it, and will do anything to keep it.
Care to elaborate, Khas? What indoctrination are we specifically talking about? Obviously I don't think I would agree but I do want to hear you out.
Perhaps "indoctrination" was the wrong word, but it was the first one that came to mind. Basically, what I meant was that, in some areas, when poor whites were told that they were of a superior race to blacks, that idea kept being repeated throughout the generations. Of course, not everyone believed this, but the idea got passed on enough to ingrain itself into the culture - believe me, I live in Pennsyltucky, and I've seen plenty of this shit - where it unfortunately lingers to this day.
This will keep going on if nothing is done, for example, to bring enough evidence to dispute the reliability of IQ tests. All these rednecks only need to point at the numerous IQ studies realized across the entire African continent for one. Or just click on a
special map. The only counter to that argument is doing your best to prove that IQ tests really are bogus and from there, proceed to hammer the point on and on.
However, for example when one looks for evidence of a lack of reliability it's easy to find a click-bait article like this one:
IQ scores not accurate marker of intelligence, study shows, but here's what one will read:
Researchers have determined in the largest online study on the intelligence quotient (IQ) that results from the test may not exactly show how smart someone is. [Wow. First line and we've already gone from certainty to oh well maybe perhaps who knows not sure dunno...]
"When we looked at the data, the bottom line is the whole concept of IQ -- or of you having a higher IQ than me -- is a myth," Dr. Adrian Owen, the study's senior investigator and the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at the university's Brain and Mind Institute said to the Toronto Star. "There is no such thing as a single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence." [Sounds like a strawman argument. Who said there was one single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence?]
They found that there was not one single test or component that could accurately judge how well a person could perform mental and cognitive tasks. Instead, they determined there are at least three different components that make up intelligence or a "cognitive profile": short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component. [FLASH NEWS: scientists discover that a human's cognitive abilities are a compound of several ... abilities!]
Researchers also discovered that training one's brain to help perform better cognitively did not help.
"People who 'brain-train' are no better at any of these three aspects of intelligence than people who don't," Owen said. [Well that's damning. IQ tests are meant to cover a wide range of mental abilities. But now it seems that training may not help "cheating" on the final scores? So much for the "we aint got no dem skools coz we' poor" argument.]
For some reason, people who played video games did better on reasoning and short-term memory portions of the test. [At last, some good news playmates! But wait. If it actually improves some mental abilities, then why is it not considered brain-training?]
"We have shown categorically that you cannot sum up the difference between people in terms of one number, and that is really what is important here," Owen told the CBC. [Huh? Reading from the article alone, it certainly does not get there at all!]
The overall idea one gets after reading this article is not exactly what the title was alluding to, and it's a poor job in the end.
Hard to say who's fault it is. The sensationalist press for not reporting properly what the study was about?
Let's check the paper itself then!
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 7312005843
ScienceDirect, 2012 wrote:What makes one person more intellectually able than another? Can the entire distribution of human intelligence be accounted for by just one general factor? Is intelligence supported by a single neural system? Here, we provide a perspective on human intelligence that takes into account how general abilities or “factors” reflect the functional organization of the brain. By comparing factor models of individual differences in performance with factor models of brain functional organization, we demonstrate that different components of intelligence have their analogs in distinct brain networks. Using simulations based on neuroimaging data, we show that the higher-order factor “g” is accounted for by cognitive tasks corecruiting multiple networks. Finally, we confirm the independence of these components of intelligence by dissociating them using questionnaire variables. We propose that intelligence is an emergent property of anatomically distinct cognitive systems, each of which has its own capacity.
You can appreciate the HUGE SPIN put onto the study's results. A spin equally found in several other newslets.
That said, I'm quite skeptic about those IQ tests...
If one is looking for
better criticism, he can start
here for example.
Then you also get other studies that almost sound too silly to mention them:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04 ... ly-measure
Brains wrote:
While subjects taking such tests are usually instructed to try as hard as they can, previous research has shown that not everyone makes the maximum effort. A number of studies have found that subjects who are promised monetary rewards for doing well on IQ and other cognitive tests score significantly higher.
Essentially, they found that people who didn't give a damn about tests didn't get good scores.
...
No shit Sherlock.
How much do these crap studies cost again?
So, perhaps the opinion of an
anthropologist might be useful here?
Wait, there's more!
Brains wrote:
To further examine the role of motivation on both IQ test scores and the ability of IQ tests to predict life success, Duckworth and her team carried out two studies, both reported in today's paper. First, they conducted a "meta-analysis" that combined the results of 46 previous studies of the effect of monetary incentives on IQ scores, representing a total of more than 2000 test-taking subjects. The financial rewards ranged from less than $1 to $10 or more. The team calculated a statistical parameter called Hedge's g to indicate how big an effect the incentives had on IQ scores; g values of less than 0.2 are considered small, 0.5 are moderate, and 0.7 or higher are large.
Duckworth's team found that the average effect was 0.64 (which is equivalent to nearly 10 points on the IQ scale of 100), and remained higher than 0.5 even when three studies with unusually high g values were thrown out. Moreover, the effect of financial rewards on IQ scores increased dramatically the higher the reward: Thus rewards higher than $10 produced g values of more than 1.6 (roughly equivalent to more than 20 IQ points), whereas rewards of less than $1 were only one-tenth as effective.
Yay, in other words, even with lots of money for grabs, you might push the scores up ten to twenty points and that's about it... and there would obviously be limits since I really doubt anybody would become a genius because
GOLD!
Of course, it's quite absurd to even think that the vast majority of IQ tests have been done under the promise of sweet candy if one would perform admirably.
Extra Time!
Brains wrote:
In the second study, Duckworth and her ...
According to the researchers, that suggests that native intelligence does still play an important role in both IQ scores and academic achievement.
And just to make matters worse:
Brains wrote:
Nevertheless, the Duckworth team concludes that IQ tests are measuring much more than just raw intelligence--they also measure how badly subjects want to succeed both on the test and later in life.
So not only do these tests give a good idea of how stupid or smart you are, but they also reveal if you're a lazy bum or a Fortune500 achiever.
And just to backstab the idea hinted at in the initial paragraph of the article:
Brains wrote:
Yet Duckworth and her colleagues caution that motivation isn't everything: The lower role for motivation in academic achievement, they write, suggests that "earning a high IQ score requires high intelligence in addition to high motivation."
Woop-tee-doo!
I mean, how the heck are you even supposed to argue against the random grandgrandgrandgrandson of a Confederate slaver when even science seems to do about anything it can to worsen the whole thing?? :|
You may try arguing that low scores in Africa are caused by a lack of education, nutrition, etc. But then the correlation gets reverted: they sukc because they dumbs. Which, well, embarassing as it is, it sounds convincing enough to some people:
An opinion defended by an expert Japanese a decade ago or so. Maybe he's lost his job by now? But then again he comes from a culture that's still far off on the racist spectrum.