Summary of a scrapped post about race science Newer, or less regular readers of Unglossed, will likely be caught off guard to learn this journal intermittently devotes attention to problems to do with race. Well: Consider the previous sentence your notice.
Your narrative is bogus from the very beginning. There’s only one “race”. The human race. If you think melatonin and it’s Contant levels in someone’s skin has anything to do with something besides systemic racism and lack of opportunity, you’re an ignorant asshole.
I take your point. However, there has to be a however, language is only one factor we use to evaluate another. Vision is a huge determinant and those who do not have it are commonly believed to listen more intently not simply to the words or word meaning use but the tone and inflection, the emotions in their expression. We all do this to some extent. So word use is of limited use as a tool to evaluate another either in everyday life or in some sort of 'scientific' way.
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise that a lot of what is promoted or accepted even as 'science' is very poor to useless meaningless nonsense. i gave up on the nature / nurture debate long ago as I thankfully realised that the two overlap so extensively as to make division impossible and pointless to attempt. Intelligence may be one of those things we may never be able to fully define as there are simply too many factors involved.
Just as black / white deductive reasoning is a limited though necessary attribute critical to survival in certain circumstance, it is a dangerous way of reasoning most of the time. People though simplify choices repeatedly to 'this or that', either / or choices without realising how poor this is for decision making. The marketing people are delighted that they do this and what many think is science is also using this all too common simplictic thinking to promote a desired outcome, usually a belief.
How was that IQ score achieved? Not doubting your obvious high intelligence at all.
A school teacher in outback Oz was disgusted with the very low IQ scores of the mission aborigine kids. She looked the questions a little closer and realized tnhey were about things the kids in her class had never or rarely ever come across or been exposed to. So she redesigned the question to ask essentially the same thing but in the lived experience context the aboriginal kids had experienced. And pow, the IQ scores jumped for the same kids. When a group of suburban european kids were given the new 'aboriginalised' questions they scored much lower IQ's than before. The teacher was severely chastised for doing this experiment.
The point is obvious I hope. Anyone will score low when asked questions about what they have little or no experience or knowledge of especially when out of the familiar cultural context. So what does an IQ score tell us? Not very much generally.
Sort of had a father until 14 years old, refridgerator feminist mother who was not comfortable with a son as the only child, poor schooling quality which I lost all interest in at about 8 years old, second worst high school in the state and I hated it anyway - never did homework etc. Did good though, despite it all as some do and many dont. We only hear about the failures though which distorts our view of the reality.
IQ?? Intelligence Quotient in proper speak is the biggest fault in all this. Culture, differences especially, do make more impact upon an IQ outcome or result than almost anything else. IQ works ONLY to a limited extent WITHIN a narrow cultural demographic - and THAT'S IT FOLKS.
Without any consideration of race, the US population is made up of so many diverse cultural groups that regardless of race it is a flawed metric to use. In Australian speak, IQ is as useless as gumboots on a Goanna (rubber boots on a lizard). Fancy numbers that mean nothing significant in reality.
Another way to look at this is to take a Harvard PhD in any science and see how intelligent they appear to be when dropped into a highland New Guinea jungle. OR the vice versa. What IQ??
Trying to measure intelligence of people is about as difficult as nailing custard pies to a wall - just too many factors to account for. Trying to compare intelligence of different people? Whyeee??
Who ya gonna believe, science, or your own lying eyes?
A space alien could spend a single day in a mixed race kindergarten and he would be able to stack rank the races perfectly in terms of intelligence and behavior. And this experiment would never fail, no matter how many ETs signed up. Furthermore, simply skimming the pages of the news will tell you exactly the same thing. And it will be the same for every nation on earth. All of this has been understood for a few hundred years with perfect clarity, until the modern world decided to self-obfuscate for political reasons.
I don't need science to tell me the sun comes up in the morning and sets at night. I don't need science to explain racial differences to me either, because I'm alive on planet earth, and that's evidence enough, received, often unpleasantly, every single day.
Your narrative is bogus from the very beginning. There’s only one “race”. The human race. If you think melatonin and it’s Contant levels in someone’s skin has anything to do with something besides systemic racism and lack of opportunity, you’re an ignorant asshole.
I take your point. However, there has to be a however, language is only one factor we use to evaluate another. Vision is a huge determinant and those who do not have it are commonly believed to listen more intently not simply to the words or word meaning use but the tone and inflection, the emotions in their expression. We all do this to some extent. So word use is of limited use as a tool to evaluate another either in everyday life or in some sort of 'scientific' way.
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise that a lot of what is promoted or accepted even as 'science' is very poor to useless meaningless nonsense. i gave up on the nature / nurture debate long ago as I thankfully realised that the two overlap so extensively as to make division impossible and pointless to attempt. Intelligence may be one of those things we may never be able to fully define as there are simply too many factors involved.
Just as black / white deductive reasoning is a limited though necessary attribute critical to survival in certain circumstance, it is a dangerous way of reasoning most of the time. People though simplify choices repeatedly to 'this or that', either / or choices without realising how poor this is for decision making. The marketing people are delighted that they do this and what many think is science is also using this all too common simplictic thinking to promote a desired outcome, usually a belief.
Yet social science is real?
Please.
You're right about one thing for sure: Science is a tool. A tool of power.
The Po-Mo's made some truthful claims, ironically enough.
How was that IQ score achieved? Not doubting your obvious high intelligence at all.
A school teacher in outback Oz was disgusted with the very low IQ scores of the mission aborigine kids. She looked the questions a little closer and realized tnhey were about things the kids in her class had never or rarely ever come across or been exposed to. So she redesigned the question to ask essentially the same thing but in the lived experience context the aboriginal kids had experienced. And pow, the IQ scores jumped for the same kids. When a group of suburban european kids were given the new 'aboriginalised' questions they scored much lower IQ's than before. The teacher was severely chastised for doing this experiment.
The point is obvious I hope. Anyone will score low when asked questions about what they have little or no experience or knowledge of especially when out of the familiar cultural context. So what does an IQ score tell us? Not very much generally.
Sort of had a father until 14 years old, refridgerator feminist mother who was not comfortable with a son as the only child, poor schooling quality which I lost all interest in at about 8 years old, second worst high school in the state and I hated it anyway - never did homework etc. Did good though, despite it all as some do and many dont. We only hear about the failures though which distorts our view of the reality.
IQ?? Intelligence Quotient in proper speak is the biggest fault in all this. Culture, differences especially, do make more impact upon an IQ outcome or result than almost anything else. IQ works ONLY to a limited extent WITHIN a narrow cultural demographic - and THAT'S IT FOLKS.
Without any consideration of race, the US population is made up of so many diverse cultural groups that regardless of race it is a flawed metric to use. In Australian speak, IQ is as useless as gumboots on a Goanna (rubber boots on a lizard). Fancy numbers that mean nothing significant in reality.
Another way to look at this is to take a Harvard PhD in any science and see how intelligent they appear to be when dropped into a highland New Guinea jungle. OR the vice versa. What IQ??
Trying to measure intelligence of people is about as difficult as nailing custard pies to a wall - just too many factors to account for. Trying to compare intelligence of different people? Whyeee??
Who ya gonna believe, science, or your own lying eyes?
A space alien could spend a single day in a mixed race kindergarten and he would be able to stack rank the races perfectly in terms of intelligence and behavior. And this experiment would never fail, no matter how many ETs signed up. Furthermore, simply skimming the pages of the news will tell you exactly the same thing. And it will be the same for every nation on earth. All of this has been understood for a few hundred years with perfect clarity, until the modern world decided to self-obfuscate for political reasons.
I don't need science to tell me the sun comes up in the morning and sets at night. I don't need science to explain racial differences to me either, because I'm alive on planet earth, and that's evidence enough, received, often unpleasantly, every single day.