Before both men recently died, scholars Arthur Jensen and J.P. Rushton wrote a landmark paper arguing that the totality of evidence shows virtually no change in the U.S. black-white IQ gap in the nearly 100 years it’s been studied. If they’re right, it’s quite astonishing that the black-white IQ gap remained about one standard deviation during all that time despite the enormous change in both the culture (apartheid in 1917; a black president in 2008) and the biological environment (gains in nutrition have been so colossal that both blacks and whites are more than one standard deviation taller than they were in 1917). This is a challenge for those who minimize the role of genes in the black-white IQ gap, or argue that the racial gap is caused by norms of reaction (i.e. white genes causing higher IQ in a specific environment as opposed to whites being genetically smarter in absolute sense) because the environment has changed so much.
However a bigger challenge for the anti-Jensenists comes from an astonishing comment by scholar Michael Hart on page 111 of his book Understanding Human History. He writes: Indeed, it appears that not a single major invention of the last 20,000 years was made in sub-Saharan Africa.
So while social scientists have been arguing about whether the black-white IQ gap in America has or has not been diminishing over the 20th century; Michael Hart is claiming to have evidence that a significant global black < white IQ gap has existed for 200 centuries!!! In other words for as long as the two races have existed in their current form; if not a lot longer. If the durability of the black-white IQ gap across the tumultuous 20th century was not enough to devastate the norms of reaction argument, how about the durability across 20,000 years?
For example, on page 110-111, Hart writes:
In the 19th century, when European explorers first entered the “secluded zone” of sub-Saharan Africa, they were struck by how extremely primitive the tribes in the region were. This was not because Europeans were blinded by ethnic chauvinism. When European traders had reached China, they had brought back glowing accounts of Chinese civilization: The Chinese might be heathens, but there was no disputing their wealth, nor the quality of their engineering skills, nor the volume of their literature. In like fashion, Europeans who had seen Japan, India, Persia, and the Arab world did not dispute the quality of their architecture and their textiles, nor the elegance of their art, nor the ability of their leaders to capably administer a large
kingdom.Of course, it might be said that all those regions had had the benefit of at least indirect contact with the West. However, when European explorers reached the New World — which had been even more isolated from the rest of the world than sub-Saharan Africa had been — they were dazzled by the large, prosperous cities they found there.
Nowhere in the secluded zone of sub-Saharan Africa have archaeologists found anything to compare with Machu Picchu in Peru, nor the ruins of Tikal in Yucatán, nor of Teotihuacán in Mexico, nor even with the statues found on tiny, remote Easter Island in the Pacific.
Is Michael Hart a credible source? Although I disagree strongly with parts of his book, he probably has a very high IQ given that he is both Ashkenazi Jewish (which is rare for an HBDer) and has more degrees than a thermometer (an A.B. from Cornell University, an L.L.B. from New York Law School, an M.S. in physics from Adelphi University, and a PhD in astronomy from Princeton University).
Of course critics would probably argue that Hart’s analysis is racist. But it’s worth noting that Hart has spoken out aggressively against certain forms of racism. For example, at an American Renaissance conference, when David Duke allegedly criticised Jewish power, Hart courageously confronted him before storming out, yelling: “You fucking Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting!”
hart is a Jew who speaks “out against” racism against Jews but has no problem with anti-black racism.
big surprise.
he’s not a “scholar” as if such an appellation were anything more than an insult.
he’s a moron just like Jesen and Rushton.
it’s nice that they argued it. no one agrees with them. black test scores dramatically improved within the span of 20 years.
‘(an A.B. from Cornell University, an L.L.B. from New York Law School, an M.S. in physics from Adelphi University, and a PhD in astronomy from Princeton University). ‘
Oh cool none in anthropology or biology. Nice. Although I don’t see anything from New York Law school here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H._Hart
FYI, New York Law school average LSAT = 152. If he had such a high IQ, why did he only go to a TTTT school? Especially after tearing it up in the ivy or near-ivy league?
‘Indeed, it appears that not a single major invention of the last 20,000 years was made in sub-Saharan Africa.’
~20,000 years ago they were doing math
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishango_bone
Astronomy ~2k years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namoratunga
There’s a good argument that Africans had better metallurgy:
“The Africans created pre-heated forced-draft furnaces, a method that was more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until the mid-19th century. It has been discovered that near Lake Victoria were 13 Iron Age furnaces that proved a technologically superior culture developed in Africa more than 1, 500 years ago overturns popular and scholarly ideas that technological sophistication developed in Europe but not in Africa.”
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/african-metallurgy-by-nordine-aka-storm/
(this is contentious though, as to whether it was independently developed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa)
….
Anyway, it’s by no means as cut and dry as what Hart presents.
Why don’t you address Hart’s claim, Swanky? Where in sub-Saharan Africa can one go today to find something as impressive as the statues of Easter Island?
SSA is 20 percent of the earth’s land mass and represents an area that is more than 147,000 times larger than Easter Island. Yet you’re left with questionable markings on a bone, a third-rate Stonehenge, and some contentious metallurgical claims?
That’s it?
People have only inhabited Easter Island for one to two thousand years and probably never numbered more than several thousand people. No one has claimed the inhabitants were ever that smart or possessors of a great civilization.
And yet they seem to have created something on that little island that we can’t find anywhere in SSA.
more lies.
as usual.
it’s boring.
and gay.
yes. of course statues of men would be more impressive than the development of math and astronomy to spunky.
Development? Markings on a stick? It’s like the ghost of Martin Bernal has come back to haunt us.
Macaca,
Prove it, mall cop.
he’s talking about sub-Saharan Africa not Egypt.
there’s no contention about SSAs being agriculturalists or pastoralists for the most part
or that the white man did NOT introduce them to the iron age.
BUT SSA was quite sparse prior to colonization—the opposite of what pp claims.
even today with anti-biotics and vaccines it’s not very densely populated. 80 per sq mile. Asia 225 per sq mile. Europe 188 per sq mile.
when the Raj began India already had more than 300 million people.
just 100 years ago SSA was like what is today the US and Canada 400 years ago, that is very sparsely settled.
that the indigenous peoples of North America north of the Rio Grande had no monumental architecture more impressive than Great Zimbabwe doesn’t mean they were dumber than the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca.
Pp commited argument by authority fallacy. Hart s arguments are logical except for the isolation part.
Actually he didn’t even get that far — Hart is not an authority. His expertise is in physics, not human history.
I present an in-use textbook, which is called “obscure” while being “rebutted” with a white separatist who holds no credentials in the field? Ironic at the very least.
Swanky acts as if sub-Saharan Africans were too busy with their mathematical and astronomical musings to have time for statue carving. Apparently, he thinks it had to be one or the other, because who had the time back then for doing both? You know, despite the fact the SSAs had several tens of thousands of years of a head start on Easter Island.
no I’m not. it’s just such a silly contention. why would hunter-gatherer societies make things that would last that long? agriculture causes people to make permanent or more permanent fixtures. the point is that there’s evidence SSA or that people in Africa had smarts despite saying no to agriculture or a qualified yes.
no worries it’s crystal clear to me now.
Martini is just projecting.
that’s why his comments never actually say anything.
their purpose isn’t communication or argument.
it’s ego defense.
Swanky,
It’s only a silly contention because you don’t know how to deal with it.
Easter Island is 163 square kilometers in area. That’s significantly smaller than the city of San Francisco, which is by area one of the smaller major cities in the U.S.
The island is so far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so isolated from the rest of humanity, that even the sea-going Polynesians who found it, and settled on it, got cut off.
Yet they built these amazing statues that tourists still go out of their way (nothing else of interest being anywhere near Easter Island) to gawk at.
Why do men paint on cave walls? Or memorize oral poetry? Or create myths? Or bury their dead with beautiful handcrafted artifacts
Because they want to, and they can.
It’s not as if I’m asking for you to assign an impressive monument or accomplishment to every tribe in SSA. Just a couple on a large continent that compare to what a few thousand people on a small isolated island were able to accomplish.
and how have the Easter Island indignes fared in Chilean society? there were still some left after the overpopulation and cannibalism.
Not well. Geographic isolation on a small island is not a long term winning strategy.
But the trek those people’s ancestors took from Africa to that small island in the Pacific left them intellectually more capable of creating lasting and memorable works of art than anything we find among the people who stayed in SSA.
yet more confirmation that Martini is a
racist moron
and a prole.
No.
(That doesn’t rule out cognitive and behavioral differences, most of which have emerged only since then.)
…said a black guy.
the rational wiki page on Jayman is hilarious.
I will add that “White” people as we know them today didn’t exist 20,000 years ago.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JayMan
I strongly disagree with isolation points. Isolation will screw entire nations like it did with China and native American tribes. The climate was harsh enough in Africa, just like the artic, to kill white settlers. The effort to fight the environment, not just iq, kept things from happening.
There was no cortez in Africa even though it was way closer than the new world. It took an industrial revolution for whites to even explore Africa outside Boer country.
AND IT’S A NEVER MENTIONED FACT BY HBD-TARDS THAT WHITE SETTLEMENT NORTH OF SOUTHER RHODESIA FAILED.
MISERABLY.
SO IF EVEN THE MIGHTY WHITE MAN COULDN’T SETTLE TROPICAL AFRICA…
A PICTURE OF AN HBDer I FOUND
Macaca,
And Bernal contended that Egyptians were SSAs.
No one seriously contested that Egyptian civilization had a major influence on the Mediterranean world before Bernal came along. What they contested was Bernal’s claim that Egyptians were black, the degree of Egyptian influence on the Greeks, and that Europeans tried to hide the Egyptian influence on their civilization because of racism against blacks.
But we have modern evidence that those subpopulations in the Americas aren’t greatly different in their IQs, which is something lacking today in SSA. We aren’t stuck with one line of information. We have several lines, and they all point in the same direction.
If SSA today was even sporadically populated with great monuments built by human hands, HBDers would have to change a lot about their ideas of how intelligence differs among population groups and why those differences arose.
But they don’t.
no.
obviously the Egyptian were NOT black.
it’s not as if there aren’t a lot of old skeletons aka mummies. they aren’t black. the facial skeleton is dispositive.
though in a sense even Rastafari wasn’t black. there is a cline from Ethiopia to Alexandria.
but they do look more black than NW Europeans. some Italians have kinky hair.
hey Martini if the nightwatchman job at the pork and beans factory isn’t going anywhere remember this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James.
They say imitation is the sincerest flattery so I guess I should feel proud that Macaca is now stealing my jokes.
i already gave you a stonehenge…
Lorop ruins? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorop%C3%A9ni
Monomotapa empire Zimbabwe ruins?
is that not enough to be “sporadic?”
Swanky,
You seriously comparing this to this?
Yes. The scientific vs the artistic. They’re monuments all the same.
As far as I know the statues are made from material that is both easily workable and durable.
You know ….an environmental thing.
[Snort.] Yeah, clearly a small, isolated island in the middle of the Pacific was a better environment for making monuments than was 20 percent of the earth’s landmass proximate to some of the earliest civilizations in human history.
I have the feeling if the Polynesians on Easter Island had independently invented writing that Swanky would just say that was to be expected because what else were they going to do with all that water surrounding them.
It’s right by a volcano. So lots of tuff is always around….
Yeah, I guess no one in SSA could find any volcanic rocks in Africa. Or other rocks. Or any other lasting material to prop up at least a few dozen feet and worship.
You’re a sweaty, desperate man, Swanky.
Yeah because a spread out continent with several is the same as being in continuing close proximity with one.
Such jive
Swanky is two shakes away from saying the Polynesians on Easter Island were actually blessed to live on an isolated island with an extinct volcano.
Those poor sub-Saharan Africans just happened to live in a place without any resources to build things. If only they could have switched places with those Polynesians on Easter Island, then they could have shown everyone what they were capable of.
A review of Hart the non-scholar’s book:
“This is an awful book. Hart, an astrophysicist by training who has dabbled in various other things, is said to be a bright man. Reading this book, even one disposed to agree with his ideas would think him a classic crackpot.
The central thesis – that humans who lived in colder climates had to be smarter to live there, therefore they have dominated stupider people from warmer climates – attributes to racial differences in intelligence historical events and trends that were once attributed to racial differences in personality. Substitute the latter word for the former and this book could have been written 150 years ago.
But perhaps there is indeed a single underlying explanation for much of history and perhaps intelligence is it. Instead of a scholarly proof of that – which is what the book, with its many footnotes, pretends to be – what we get is a rambling, sometimes not entirely coherent, collection of facts viewed through the prism of Hart’s thesis. Facts can of course be marshaled and presented in such a way as to seem consistent with any theory of historical determination, whether based on intelligence or on God or on space aliens or the on Coca-Cola company. That does not automatically produce a rational argument, no matter how many footnotes go along for the ride.
The book is not helped by Hart’s idiosyncratic sense of organization – over fifty chapters, several of which are only one or two pages long – or by its horrendous production quality – a number of pages smeared illegibly.
One waits in vain here for something that could not have been written by a hardworking high-school student or a Victorian amateur – or a crackpot. This book is like the writings of some who want to show that there is a UFO in New Mexico or that Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford: they may be right, but they embarrass the theory rather than prove it.”
I read Hart’s book when it first came out, which puts me one up on Swanky, who hasn’t read it at all and is forced to search through Amazon’s many reviews, most of which are positive, to find something negative to write about it.
Hart’s book is not great. I’m not wholly convinced of the strength of its main thesis. It reads like the rough draft to a much better book, as if Hart had just started to organize his ideas into book form and then prematurely published them. I couldn’t help but think as I was reading the book that despite Jared Diamond’s many flaws he does an excellent job of presenting his material. Hart would’ve been better off trying to emulate Diamond’s stylistic approach to counter Diamond’s ideas.
But Hart’s to be applauded for trying to organize some disparate ideas about psychometrics, biology and history, and then put them in a rough abbreviated but coherent narrative that others can test.
And yet you admit in so many words that the book is essentially garbage.
I knew this was likely true because Hart is a) biased and b) a non-expert.
As you did with Interstellar, Swanky, you once again read an interpretation into something which can’t possibly be supported by the original text.
Hart’s book is mediocre. I didn’t care for it that much. It’s not garbage, but I finished it with some disappointment because it could’ve been much better. It has some interesting insights, but it’s not among the top books in the HBD field.
There are no unbiased experts in the field of synthesis, Swanky. When men like Jared Diamond write Guns, Germs, and Steel and Stephen Jay Gould write The Mismeasurement of Man, they use an interdisciplinary approach that includes at least half-a-dozen fields they have no background in. Yet you don’t complain.
The problem is not with people working outside their field. Sometimes the cross-pollination of various ideas in different fields requires smart men who are capable of stepping outside of their field and adding a new insight in some other area that scholar squirrels, burrowing away within the narrow confines of their respective fields for years, will never see.
I read my interpretation because I know the character.
Hart wrote a silly little book.
And your little play at no unbiased experts is about the same in terms of rhetoric as saying propositions in science are still only theories to shore up whatever silliness you’re peddling.
ideed.
a far more publicized book was A Troublesome Inheritance.
and it was basically ridiculed by all the amazon reviewers who had any expertise.
you can see my comment here: http://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/product-reviews/1594204462/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_5/177-9701121-6938035?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&pageNumber=5&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=byRankDescending
28 of 179 people found the following review helpful.😉
You know the character about as well as you know anything else in your life, Swanky.
The kind of synthesis that Hart, Diamond, Cochran, Gould and many others worked at requires an interdisciplinary approach. They must look at evidence from archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, history, population genetics, behavioral genetics, geography, medicine, evolutionary theory, psychology (psychometrics), other quantitative approaches to social science and history, the specifics of hominid evolution, primatology, sociology, political science, and many other fields.
And then they have to be able to look all over the world for evidence. They can’t specialize in just one particular area, like ancient Egypt, Native American cultures, China, or Africa.
There are no credentials for people who want to cover all, or even most, of these areas, Swanky. Not a one. There’s no college for it, and no degree for it. So they have to be self-taught, well-read, and pretty Goddamn smart to even make a reasonable stab at creating some new synthesis.
So you’re kidding yourself if you think there are “experts” out there who can give you the straight scoop, kiddo. There are none. There are only super-smart people who put together plausible or interesting syntheses and those who don’t.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never criticized Diamond or Bernal or Gould for working outside of their field. To me, that’s beside the point. Anyone who works at putting together some sort of synthesis works with an enormous amount of information that’s outside their field. It’s inevitable. Instead, I criticize them for having allowed their ideologies to drive their analysis in rather obvious and wrong-headed ways.
Alfred Rosenberg (hanged at Nuremberg) wrote this book a long time ago.
a book i read at 18.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Twentieth_Century
the years don’t make it any less bullshit.
Are you still on your warehouse security detail, Macaca? Those cutting tools aren’t going to watch themselves, you know.
Pincher Martin hates on all his betters, which is almost everyone.
he’s a welfare queen in more ways than one.
Who could hate you, Macaca? I’m even thinking of starting a fundraiser to raise some cash to pay for you to take a trip overseas. We’ll take care of the passport application fees, the airline tickets, the living expenses, the whole nine yards. Maybe we’ll even throw in a movie ticket.
You broke my heart with that sad story about losing your passport to a fire.
no such story was ever told.
you’re not funny.
you’re just a LIAR.
get off the dole Pinky.
maybe a bowling alley would hire you.
Jared Diamond: degrees in biology, physiology, professor of physiology, geography, published scholarly works in ornithology and ecology.
Michael Hart: no scholarly experience in any of the above fields.
Keep pretending they’re both equals in terms of expertise, even in inter-disciplinary studies.
It’s just more nonsense.
So, which one is more likely to have ideleology drive his/her analysis? The one with a) a bias that has been historically shown to motivate the manipulation of science (racism) and b) no formal training in ANY of the disciplines….or the one without these hindrances?
You can get pretty far with common sense, spunky. I’m sorry that you don’t have any of it.
i remember an old sex-less man took orders at a nearby Chinese restaurant.
he spoke Chinese and English for what reason i don’t know. he was white.
his employers spoke only Chinese.
that’s Martini at best.
there’re obvious problems with the claim that psychological traits can be subject to adaptation just like physical traits.
1. psychological traits however local the study aren’t as heritable as physical traits
2. what is an adaptive psychological trait in one time and place may not be in another
3. no studies have been done on the heritability of psychological traits across cultures
4. the intelligence which singles out man of all species is exactly the trait which makes him more plastic, the trait which makes his behavior so malleable across time and place.
Macaca,
I distinctly remember you telling me that story about your passport.
Of course I also remember you telling me on three separate occasions that you would never talk to me again, and yet here you are.
Maybe your long-term memory needs to be checked out.
so one could believe that Poodles and Border Collies were smarter than other dogs much more easily than he could believe that Ashkenzai Jews or Koreans were much smarter than other humans.
what i told you was that my passport had been stolen from my car along with a jacket and my keys when i stupidly didn’t lock it in the downtown of my major metropolitan area.
why the thieves would have taken my passport or my keys…no idea.
but i’ve always had an excellent long term memory and a very poor short term memory.
why was my passport in my car?
because i’d misplaced/lost my driver’s licence and had to use my passport as photo ID.
i have since replaced it.
you still haven’t said what Pink Martini does if anything.
i made a lot (for me) and invested it well when i worked as an actuary. and i have some family money. i expect i’ll never work for wages past 45.
what about you Pinky?
Macaca, I’d get that head checked out if I were you. Severe head trauma can cause a person to get all kinds of information mixed up.
my crappy short term memory, or rather crappy for my scores, beings up an interesting point.
school and college it happened so often it really was a trend…i scored MUCH higher on final exams and other cumulative exams than i scored on quizzes/midterms etc.
this makes the point that IQ is ACQUIRED.
and that the difference between smart people and not-smart people is…as vos Savant said…
intelligence isn’t what you know. it’s what you understand.
of course if one understands what he “learns” he will remember it FOREVER. whereas if it’s just “pattern recognition” he’ll forget it almost as soon as he “learned” it.
school and college in the Us and Canada is for puppies.
cumulative exams are for big ferocious dogs.
yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence
of course, an HBDer just says that high IQ means you go through the stages faster. the counter is that the tests just measure certain stages in this development for various skills, which means that IQ tests aren’t measuring the speed at which individuals can go through the stages.
it took me three times to pass my driving test!
i think it was on cockring’s blog where someone claimed a “gotcha” on Kamin.
Kamin said something like:
of course there’s an effect of genes, but we don’t know how to measure it.
the very thing which IQ tests claim to measure, human intelligence, is what makes the measurement, independent of time and place, impossible…
or perhaps impossible.
there’re obvious problems with the claim that psychological traits can be subject to adaptation just like physical traits.
1. psychological traits however local the study aren’t as heritable as physical traits
Because psychological traits are measured indirectly. We don’t measure intelligence, we measure intelligent behavior and then define intelligence as the ability that caused said behavior. It’s analogous to measuring height from how well one does in a basketball game. I’m sure if height were measured that way, it’s heritability would decrease too.
2. what is an adaptive psychological trait in one time and place may not be in another
Same is true for height
3. no studies have been done on the heritability of psychological traits across cultures
Have cross-culture heritability height studies been done?
4. the intelligence which singles out man of all species is exactly the trait which makes him more plastic, the trait which makes his behavior so malleable across time and place.
And the trait that singles out chameleons of all species is the trait which makes its skin colour so malleable across time and place. Does that mean its ability to change skin colour was not subject to adaption just like other physical traits?
So did the latitude vs. IQ correlation exist historically?
I would love to get that correlation change with time…
I have actually enough data to study this. I will look at that, and post solutions…
So then this topic might be resolved, or even get more complicated?
I do recall Richard Lynn discussing a correlation between ancient stone tools & latitude, but I will have to check his book to get specifics
I suspect the correlation between IQ & latitude was even higher tens of thousands of year ago. It probably got weaker post agriculture because new evolutionary variables were introduced especially population explosions for some not others
eskimos — “stupid,” native americans — “stupid,” greeks and romans (in temperate climates) — “smart,” north europeans at that time —- “stupid,” mogolians — “stupid.” it’s a stupid theory. smarts help in heat and cold.
further….the mongols rode a bunch of horses around and conquered most of the known world….but did they invent anything? NO. any inventions coming out of siberia? NO. STUPID theory.
Siberia? You need a certain population density to do anything, dumbass.
You also need a culture which allows and even encourages invention. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, were almost certainly smarter than their Western European gentile neighbors from 1500 to 1800, and yet they contributed almost nothing to the inventions and scientific progress that marked that period. Why? Their subculture wasn’t interested in it.
Invention is also not the only metric for measuring intelligence. The Mongols were pretty thin on the ground, and yet they conquered the world by adopting or creating – we don’t know which – some innovative military techniques and organizational skills.
This is congruent with Hart’s thesis. Since most invasions in Eurasia went from north to south, he claims this is evidence that the northern Eurasian populations were more intelligent than the southern Eurasian populations. Hence the Mongols don’t disprove Hart’s thesis; they confirm it.
What’s more, the heirs of Genghis Khan almost certainly have created things, since they are thick on the ground now in NE Asia and they had nearly a thousand years to integrate into at least a couple of societies which encouraged education.
In any case, we have modern IQ tests for the areas where Genghis Khan’s heirs are thickest on the ground and they do just fine on them. This certainly isn’t because Mongolia is a wealthy place with an excellent educational system.
‘You need a certain population density to do anything, dumbass.’
oh…so you’re saying people can be SMART but fail to leave anything behind because they live in societies that AREN’T dense? thanks for making my point jackass.
Swanky Doofus,
Sub-Saharan Africa was more dense with people before the time of Christ than Siberia is with indigenous people *today.*
Asking what the native peoples of Siberia have ever accomplished is like asking what the indigenous people living inside the Sahara Desert (away from the littoral strip and the Nile river) have ever accomplished.
Next you’ll be asking us what the native people of Antarctica have ever done for mankind. You’re apparently just that stupid.
“It’s worth noting that Hart has spoken out aggressively against certain forms of racism.” As you provide as an example, Hart spoke out against David Duke’s anti-Semitic statements. Big surprise here–Hart is Jewish, as you noted earlier. Defending one’s own group does not require a principled stance against racism. Now, if he had “spoken out aggressively” against anti-black or anti-Native American comments, then that might mean he actually is opposed to racism.
I have a challenge for HBD deniers, this essay on Human Varieties totally debunks Cosma Shalizi: http://humanvarieties.org/2013/04/03/is-psychometric-g-a-myth/
Come to terms with the facts that the g factor is a reality.
dummkopf:
g is a statistic. it is a characteristic of a population. it is not a characteristic of individuals. one may project an individual’s subtest scores onto the principle component of his population and thus assign him a g score. but this adds nothing to the set of subtest scores. and the principal component does vary from one population to another.
g is not a thing in the brain. with radically different societies one gets radically different g loadings.
That’s not the point, it’s only “real” because it correlates with many important things, more so than alternatives. You are a fucking retard, g factor is important and useful.
the g factor doesn’t correlate with blah, blah, blah…
IT IS blah, blah, blah,…
besides,
you’re a Mexican.
so we both know who the retard is.
‘That’s not the point, it’s only “real” because it correlates with many important things, more so than alternatives. ‘
Lol. How would a product of factor analysis not “correlate” with many important things…
One more: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/11/does-the-glasgow-coma-scale-exist-do-comas/
20k years, maybe, only 10k years, maybe, more than 1k years, inescapably so. It is actually condescending to today’s africans to point to counting sticks and call that mathematics.
I don’t have to pretend. Nor is it important. Synthesizers don’t have to be experts in the same fields. This is not a game where the person with the most degrees wins.
In fact, Diamond could have a half dozen more degrees and still not cover all the areas he covers in his books. He deals with subjects in linguistics, environmental studies, anthropology, history (including various subfields), and makes indirect mention of areas concerning psychometrics and political science. Those are just a few.
Diamond’s views in many of his books, for example, have been criticized quite heavily by many anthropologists. They cast aspersions on his scholarship and even his reading ability.
And I’m actually sympathetic to Diamond on some of the battles he has with anthropologists. Because they’re unreasonable and stupid about some of their points. But you can’t be sympathetic to Diamond, Swanky. If you’re at all consistent, you have to admit he’s not an expert in ethnography and they are.
Hart has NOTHING. NOTHING is far different than SOMETHING. I understand that you are comfortable supporting NOTHING, but to equate the two is RIDICULOUS.
and I never said Diamond couldn’t be wrong or was infallible. but Hart is probably wronger than wrong or not even wrong.
You wouldn’t know, Swanky. You haven’t read Hart’s book, and you’re not qualified to discuss his assertions. I have read the book. Pumpkin has read book. But you have not. We can tell you what’s in it. You cant tell us what’s in it.
So, to borrow the stylistic tic you in turn borrowed from Macaca, you have NOTHING.
I never said you did. Nor did I even suggest such a ridiculous standard was necessary or possible.
What I said is that there are no credentialed experts among the people who write these kind of books. So trying to compare Diamond’s credentials to Hart’s is a nonstarter because no matter how well and broadly you’re schooled, you will inevitably need to intelligently discuss the scholarship in a lot more areas in which you’re not tutored. It’s less important, therefore, what you are taught than what you can teach yourself.
Hart’s a trained Princeton astrophysicist. He’s obviously quite bright in many areas Diamond has not a clue about, including the hard sciences, technology, statistics, and math. He’s also obviously gone to a lot of trouble to learn many other subjects, including history, psychometrics, evolutionary theory, and archaeology.
It’s amazing to me that you’ve managed to become as ripe as you’ve become and you still haven’t figured out that scholars don’t stick to their fields at all in these discussions. They never have and they never will.
Oh here’s some clumsy rhetorical “magic.” To level a critique against the Christian or his assertions, I don’t have to read his Bible, and so it is here. I have the fact that he ISN’T an expert, and I have the fact that he has a HUGE bias. Armed with that and a rough idea of his theory, I’m reasonably not inclined to think much of it.
‘So trying to compare Diamond’s credentials to Hart’s is a nonstarter’
Yes, to you someone having zero expertise in ANY of the fields he writes about is the SAME as someone who has expertise in several of the fields he writes about.
‘He’s obviously quite bright in many areas Diamond has not a clue about, including the hard sciences, technology, statistics, and math’
And if Diamond had written a book about those areas, I would be leveling the same critique. But he didn’t.
‘It’s amazing to me that you’ve managed to become as ripe as you’ve become and you still haven’t figured out that scholars don’t stick to their fields at all in these discussions’
It’s amazing that you toss out these little rhetorical gambits for as ‘ripe’ as you’ve become. Writing in fields that are a natural outgrowth of fields one has expertise in is different from writing in fields that are completely removed from one’s expertise. Like I said, spunky…common sense. Try to have some of it.
HBDers think the problem is the mere suggestion that the races of man aren’t equal or even that there are races of man.
but outside humanities and social science academics this isn’t the problem
if the facts were dispositive then blacks and Latinos would accept some restrictions on affirmative action and disparate impact and immigration.
but, as i’ve said before,
1. better a smart SSA or Latino than a stupid Chinaman as immigrant.
2. even if HBDers were right on all counts it wouldn’t mean an end to AA, just a severe restriction. the ecological fallacy is a real cognitive bias.
3. the very idea of a state which isn’t a nation state is a New World idea and a stupid idea. the US WILL become like Brazil. Germany learned from its mistakes and is today a truly great country. the US has never had to look at itself in the mirror.
if immigrants had to pass an IQ test of some kind how would the percentages change? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Origin
1. HBDers might say that people from high income (and “thus” high IQ) countries are less likely to emigrate.
2. BUT those from such countries who do wish to emigrate one might expect were on the left hand side of the bell curve, whereas those from poorer countries were on the right hand side of their country’s bell curve.
Martini reminds me:
Jayman and Cockring BEG for money on their blogs,
YET they should both be billionaires by the theory they promote.
must be a CONSPIRACY. 😉
the flynn effect does considerable damage to these ‘historical’ notions of IQ. if it’s such a genetic and evolutionary thing, why has it “risen” nearly 2 sd in only ~60 years?! it makes no sense.
the nutrition explanation is stupid because the flynn effect operates in the top 5% of ability as well. there is no genetic explanation.
human culture or environment…human adaptability.
theory is busted. the only responses have been redefine —> pretending dark-skinned people aren’t ‘black,’ and ad hoc explain —> ‘nutrition,’ ‘early schooling,’ ‘blah blah blah.’
Rational wiki says it best:
“Another problem with using IQ in this manner (besides the obvious) is the Flynn Effect, a phenomenon discovered by the psychologist James Flynn in which there has been a global rise in average IQ scores. In many cases, ethnic minorities have made the most rapid gains.[17][18] Whoops.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Racial_realism#Craniology_redux
lol.
the nutrition explanation is stupid because the flynn effect operates in the top 5% of ability as well. there is no genetic explanation.
Actually you’re 100% wrong. 20th century height gains operate in the top 5% too and they’re caused by nutrition.
Actually you’re 100% wrong.
get a penis already!
heterosis and less disease in children as a result of vaccinations and antibiotics are two other explanation of the height gains.
and the height of the rich has also increased. that’s NOT due to nutrition!
pp has a very very low IQ.
someone posted here a while ago that Chileans have made a 20 point gains in IQ since 1970 iirc…
and Chileans are for the most part mestizos, even though they think of themselves as white.
get a penis already!
Get a brain already! And get an education while you’re at it!
heterosis and less disease in children as a result of vaccinations and antibiotics are two other explanation of the height gains.
Disease stunts height by limiting the body’s ability to use nutrients so disease is subsumed under nutrition, idiot. And one could just as easily argue IQ gains are caused by heterosis so if you want to go down the genetic road, your HBD denial is even further debunked (if that were possible)
and the height of the rich has also increased. that’s NOT due to nutrition!
Whatever you want to argue it’s due to can be applied to IQ gains among the rich.
pp has a very very low IQ.
Which is more than enough to out-debate you.
I am not 100% wrong. telling me that height gains arose from differences in nutrition is not in any way proof of that…two different traits. plus….
first, over the last 50-60 years the height gains have stopped, which suggests that this “improved nutrition” stopped — IQ keeps increasing.
second, i haven’t seen this ‘top 5% are affected too’ regarding height….where is it? point me to it. i hope it isn’t a forum post.
as far as i kno, the well-off are taller too….so what gives there?
and the flynn effect has been like what…over 2sd? and if the Jensen-tards are right, g has actually declined, which increases the flynn effect even greater…..maybe 1sd more (i don’t know the exact and i don’t care, it’s common sense). nutrition gets us less than half that amount in the other traits but explains all of this trait?
YOU CAN’T HAVE THE CAKE AND EAT IT TOO
first, over the last 50-60 years the height gains have stopped
100% wrong!
second, i haven’t seen this ‘top 5% are affected too’ regarding height….where is it? point me to it. i hope it isn’t a forum post.
It’s documented in Flynn’s books, and by me:
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/is-the-flynn-effect-stronger-on-the-left-half-of-the-curve/
apparently you think that it was still on the rise in the 60’s too. unlikely. regardless, at the very least for the last ~40 years.
‘Average height in the United States has remained essentially stagnant since the 1980s even as the racial and ethnic background of residents has shifted.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
Actually, you’re 100% wrong! Third time in a row in one morning (that must be a record 🙂 )
The government periodically collects “anthropometric” data on a large sample of people. By comparing the 1988-1994 study to the 2003-2006 study, we can see that over this 13.5 year (on average) stretch, young men of each race tended to be a little less than half an inch taller. In 1988-1994, non-Hispanic white men of age 20-39 averaged 5-9.95 versus 5-10.4 in 2003-2006, for an increase of 0.45 inches. That suggests a growth rate of about 1 inch per generation in recent years.
http://isteve.blogspot.ca/2010/03/are-people-still-growing-up-taller-than.html
the pp doth protest too much….
let’s note the source…again it’s a blog post. I’m going to go ahead and trust the CDC over a blogpost.
even the wiki source is an academic paper. the topic has also been the subject of other academic papers. http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1241/1/underperformance.pdf (from the comments of that blogpost lol, a lot of which seem to disagree with ol’ sailer)
So I have the CDC, academic papers. You have a blogpost. sounds about right.
and the flynn effect has been like what…over 2sd?
It’s been about 2 SD on culture reduced visual tests (maybe more, maybe less; the data is low quality) and perhaps zero on culture reduced non-visual tests. Put both together and it’s been about the same as height gains.
and if the Jensen-tards are right, g has actually declined, which increases the flynn effect even greater…..maybe 1sd more (i don’t know the exact and i don’t care, it’s common sense). nutrition gets us less than half that amount in the other traits but explains all of this trait?
Well the Flynn effect is believed to not be on g by those who believe in g. But one of the major alleged causes of the IQ dysgenic effect (mutation load) would also cause people to be getting genetically shorter too, so with or without dysgenics, height gains parallel IQ gains.
So I have the CDC, academic papers. You have a blogpost. sounds about right.
LOL! The blog post was simply a comparison of two academic papers. One showing height in the late 80s/early 90s, the other showing height in the early 2000s.
But I guess you think only academics are qualified to know whether 70.4 inches is taller than 69.95 inches. LOL!
And I should add, the academic paper you cite is a hot mess. They obtain height of different birth cohorts at wildly different ages and then use some convoluted multiple regression equation controlling for income and education to try to control for the analysis.
By contrast, Steve Sailer’s data was pure, clean and straightforward.
yes, he took two papers and saw a difference and concluded that there must have been an increase between the cohorts, which borders on retarded. the next cohort showed DECREASE of about a quarter of an inch. in the paper before the second one steve used, the cohort was about the same. hence the overall increase is VERY close to the error of ~.13.
seems stable.
‘But one of the major alleged causes of the IQ dysgenic effect (mutation load) would also cause people to be getting genetically shorter too, so with or without dysgenics, height gains parallel IQ gains.’
huh? the dysgenic effect as far as I know refers to more r-selection than K-selection. R-selection would make people taller while making them dumber.
*about the same as the one after the one he used.
Okay, so average the two 21st century papers together to get a more a reliable estimate. So young white non-hispanic men are something like 70.3 inches tall in the 21st century versus 69.93 in the 1980s Measurement error might have exaggerated the difference but the difference appears to exist.
huh? the dysgenic effect as far as I know refers to more r-selection than K-selection. R-selection would make people taller while making them dumber.
That’s only one alleged cause of the theoretical dysgenic effect. The other is mutation load. Why would r selection make people taller? That makes no sense.
oh please. the measurement error is all over the place in each paper. it’s probably somewhere between .1-.2. the gain is almost nil. OECD thinks so. CDC thinks so. That european paper with an agenda thinks so. we’re not getting any taller in the US.
otoh, Flynn effect continues.
r-selection involves low parental investment. so, women in r-selected societies will seek out men who are physically strong first —> tall, robust, etc, so that their children won’t need the care.
Culture reduced Flynn effect gains since the late 1980s are within the error margin too.
Children who don’t need care are those who mature faster. Such people are often short adults
girls who mature faster probably do end up shorter, but boys who mature faster end up taller.
re: flynn effect….you got a link or something?
‘ It’s analogous to measuring height from how well one does in a basketball game.’
that’s very telling. if you judge a soccer player with basketball’s rules, you’d conclude him a pretty poor athlete. or…you’d probably look pretty stupid to hunter-gatherer people if you tried to live among them.
‘Same is true for height’
which is why lower height is correlated with several negative health outcomes and vice versa…
seems pretty maladaptive.
i mean it’s the same problem. it’s the iq = intelligence problem. i don’t think anyone argues that ‘intelligence’ wasn’t selected for.
i don’t think anyone argues that ‘intelligence’ wasn’t selected for.
But Macaca (he can’t seem to choose a name so we have no choice but to choose one for him) did come close to arguing just that, writing:
“there’re obvious problems with the claim that psychological traits can be subject to adaptation just like physical traits.”
that’s very telling. if you judge a soccer player with basketball’s rules, you’d conclude him a pretty poor athlete. or…you’d probably look pretty stupid to hunter-gatherer people if you tried to live among them.
So it comes down to who can live the best in the most environments. Intelligence is the mental ability to adapt:
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/what-is-intelligence-2/
the problem is making the leap to determining then that IQ tests measure “intelligence” rather than “the rules of basketball.” and it’s not really that simple. michael jordan was dogshit in baseball but dominated basketball. this notion of ‘best in most’ environments very likely is silly. it certainly is in the REST of biology.
human beings inhabit such a wide range of environments because we are already best in most environments. so it’s possible that ‘intelligence’ is different in each environment.
and he didn’t come close to arguing that. he argued that they’re not selected for in the same way. height is probably good everywhere. being aggressive is probably not.
the problem is making the leap to determining then that IQ tests measure “intelligence” rather than “the rules of basketball.” and it’s not really that simple. michael jordan was dogshit in baseball but dominated basketball.
Huh? For his age and experience level, Michael Jordan was SPECTACULAR at baseball.
this notion of ‘best in most’ environments very likely is silly. it certainly is in the REST of biology.
human beings inhabit such a wide range of environments because we are already best in most environments. so it’s possible that ‘intelligence’ is different in each environment.
Just because humans are the most behaviorally adaptable animal doesn’t mean some human populations can’t be more behaviorally adaptable than others.
and he didn’t come close to arguing that. he argued that they’re not selected for in the same way. height is probably good everywhere. being aggressive is probably not.
That must be why the pygmies evolved to be so tall 🙂
‘Huh? For his age and experience level, Michael Jordan was SPECTACULAR at baseball.’
lol he was in the minor leagues….
‘Just because humans are the most behaviorally adaptable animal doesn’t mean some human populations can’t be more behaviorally adaptable than others. ‘
Idk, how do you test, “adaptable,” again? By nature it’s just who remains there surviving. more importantly, yes it’s possible…but it doesn’t seem like these tests are measuring that.
re: the pygmies….the height was probably a tradeoff because of the pressure to have more children earlier, not because of any advantage shorter height provided.
Which is still higher than 98 percent of people who play baseball ever go.
Yet the difference in performance when we changed the rules is A LEAGUE of difference
not if they’re MJ.
dumb…duh, duh, duh…DUMB!
Which is still higher than 98 percent of people who play baseball ever go.
And people who play baseball are themselves at least an SD more athletic than average.
Swank’s analogy is one i’ve made myself and one i have PERSONAL experience with though it has an Achilles heel yet unscathed by Martini.
1. i was a very very good, truly gifted, football player (that is soccer player), but i quit to play football (that is American football) because in America even at good suburban schools the soccer players are the un-athletic kids. and the soccer coaches made us run all the time which i’d always hated.
2. athletic ability’s g factor, so far as it has one, explains less than the g factor of “cognitive ability”…or so HBDers claim. that is, a gold medal decathlete isn’t really “the world’s greatest athlete”. he’s just the world’s greatest decathlete.
3. but speaking of HBD and sport check out this guy. he’s only 5’11”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZ3ZcorTF0
Nobody ever claimed that individual facilities don’t matter.
Most Nobel Prize winning physicists are probably smart enough to write a fictional book they can sell to the public, and some of those books might even be pretty good. But the fact that almost none of them could write prose as well as, say, F Scott Fitzgerald or Willa Cather doesn’t mean the correlations in IQ tests don’t matter.
Less about yourself, Macaca, and more about some example we can all judge objectively. I know you like to talk about yourself, but that really isn’t the point of this forum.
you should reveal what you’be BEGGED me to reveal.
but it would just be a bunch of cockroaches.
so you don’t.
I did as a joke. Because I knew you wouldn’t reveal that information.
Nobody gives a shit about your stellar career as your prep school’s fifth best soccer player.
more lame attempts at bullshit.
“Doctor he can speak only bulllshit, but he can’t even do that well…
I’m afraid it’s terminal. he’s got Pink Martini disease.”
still no info on Martini except he joined the US military and learned China talk.
if you want most to master the art of bullshit you should read late 20th c French “philosophy” like Derrida or any English lit crits.”
the world champion who Martini would be:
NO!
the air’s too thin up their for Martini.
he aspires rather to be the world’s greatest flatulist. he would be the successor to the great Le Pétomane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane
…up there…
‘ But the fact that almost none of them could write prose as well as, say, F Scott Fitzgerald or Willa Cather doesn’t mean the correlations in IQ tests don’t matter.’
And if those physicists were judged for intellect by reference to their fiction writing skills? Oh that’s right…we’d think them quite stupid COMPARED to the F. Scott Fitzgeralds of the world. We might even say there was a GAP between them.
willa cather?
yuck!
i knew all along but one passage of criticism cinched it for me.
Conrad was describes as a master of prose and a foremost “prose stylist”.
Conrad is a VERY bad writer. like Martini, English was a second language for him. his first was Polish. Martini’s first language is China-talk obviously.
it became clear to me that in a world dominated by the pullulating masses of subhumanity good was bad and bad was good.
willa cather is Rauschenberg.
so are ALL belletrists after Waugh.
Year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness, until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper. The place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing. Quomodo sedet sola civitas – vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet, I thought, that is not the last word.
the Age of Hooper is the Age of Martini and Cockring and Shoe and so forth…
and btw pp Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s character Nick came from a family engaged in industrial distribution.
he wrote one novel worth reading, married a crazy woman, and died from a heart attack in his early 40s.
Fitzgerald is the apotheosis of SHALLOW. had he been born later he’d’ve been a staff writer for Thirty something.
Those two things right there are greater accomplishments than anything you’ve ever done in your life, Macaca. Why should I rub it in? Or at least, why should I rub it in all at once?
Swanky,
There would be a gap. But not a large one. And since we see the gap between races is in every area of intellectual distinction, (except perhaps music), it’s not the same thing.
We’re not judging between two smart people, where one person has an advantage in one intellectual area and the other has an advantage in another area.
We’re judging between two population groups, where one group has the advantage everywhere.
‘But not a large one’
I see. So a work of pulp fiction that sells isn’t largely removed from The Great Gatsby (or whatever literary classic). I disagree.
‘We’re judging between two population groups, where one group has the advantage everywhere.’
Yes. Just like people who played basketball would have the advantage in all aspects of basketball over soccer players. The game is an analogy to the society at large, not one specific domain.
and save the ecological fallacy…
why should anyone care?
even less money for shithole black school districts?
no smart SSAs admitted but open borders for the Chineee?
harp and harp and harp and…
you’ve shagged your hobby horse to death Martini.
what is the fucking point?
Macaca,
Do yourself a favor and stop trying to bullshit everyone with your faux literary criticism in which you pull a Swanky by telling everyone about the quality of books you’ve never actually read.
Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop are two superb novels that are among the finest written in the English language in the twentieth century. Cather is one of the finest writers about the American west who has ever took pen to parchment, and she is probably among the top two or three female novelists America has ever produced.
I never mention Conrad, did I, dunderhead?
One way to convince everyone that you’re not brain-damaged would be to stick to what is actually in our posts when you respond to them.
cath-eter was an American…
finest blah, blah, blah is an oxymoron in this context…
i couldn’t get past the first sentence of O Pioneers it was so retarded.
the only ‘mer’can who might be on the list would be the much reviled by critics Paul Theroux.
Swanky,
Some pulp fiction is excellent. Who doesn’t like Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett? The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon are among the top novels written in the twentieth century.
But I suspect most top physicists would try their hand at science fiction, and they would probably produce some interesting and valuable works in that genre.
Besides, Fitzgerald spent most of his time writing about flappers and gin parties. And he later wrote about Hollywood. He wasn’t against making some dough by taking on the subjects that we would today think of as in the domain of pulp fiction.
The analogy only works for a specific domain for the obvious reason that soccer players don’t have to play basketball.
I don’t blame you for quitting. With your head problems, you obviously couldn’t follow a plot in a novel to save your life. Stick to the comic books, you moron.
plot or complexity of plot has nothing to do with it.
one can tell, but one is NEVER Martini, when an author is a moron or not.
catheter was a moron.
Paul Theroux is a sardonic, well traveled, and copious author.
which is it? are these physicists up to the task or not?
‘But the fact that almost none of them could write prose as well as, say, F Scott Fitzgerald or Willa Cather’
‘ most top physicists would try their hand at science fiction, and they would probably produce some interesting and valuable ‘
Are they mostly all nowhere near as good but passable, or are they mostly all producing interesting and valuable works that are nearly as good?
Make up your mind…
‘The analogy only works for a specific domain for the obvious reason that soccer players don’t have to play basketball.’
In this case we plucked a bunch of soccer players from playing soccer and forced them to play basketball with a bunch of basketball players, then judged them on various abilities unique to basketball.
footballers needn’t play basketball?
again the UN-subtle worldview of the HBDer show itself.
soccer players are forced to play basketball…every single one…and are condemned for their lack of ability and/or interest in basketball…
and javelin throwers are forced to run the 3000m.
and sumo wrestlers are forced to be Olympic divers…
it happens every minute of every day.
every day of every year.
every year of every century.
etc.
human culture advances much more rapidly than evolution.
by the dim lights of Cockring and his gimp Martini this guy would totally suck as a sumo.
would he?
Theroux has traveled the WHOLE world…
that is,
the WHOLE world.
it’s pretty obvious from his travel-logues that this isn’t something any sane person should want to do. that the West IS the best…get here we’ll do the rest…
but the travel writing of Simon Winchester isn’t so jaundiced.
i can’t afford a yacht without selling my house, but few can. if i could i’d be off like shot.
People mistakes ”intelligence” with ”rationality” as concepts. These misconception creates the idea of synonyms between the two words and as result we believing that the intelligence is only one type. Rationality is based on a set of behaviors which are logically adaptatives. Parasitism in nature is a greater manifestation of ”intelligence”. Intelligence is a synonyms of rationality** Nope.
Real rationality is wisdom which are (real and not puppets) diplomacy, ponderation. Intelligence is variable, diverse, subjective and complex. Wisdom, diplomacy, ponderation or rationality is homogeneous and objective.
But I want to understand that, you need statistics and studies to know that there are clear differences between blacks and whites ** And these differences have not diminished with time, especially with the liberal policies of ” social welfare ” having effects dysgenic in populations of African descent around the world ***
Education is like a crutch. To find out who is really smart and how they are distributed among the races, you need to remove the cultural obligation of the school. When this requirement is removed from people, most do not seek knowledge on their own.
Swanky writes above:
Hart’s book is not presented as the gospel truth. He even includes in his final chapter a set of predictions that can be falsified, saying “If most of these predictions turn out to be wrong, I would have to admit that my hypothesis is incorrect.”
That’s to Hart’s credit. I’m not aware of any other synthesizer ending his book that way. More social scientists should take Hart’s approach.
And if you’d read the book, you’d know that, Swanky. But of course you didn’t read the book, and so you thought Hart wrote about his ideas like he was handing down scripture.
There are no experts, Swanky. None. They don’t exist except as a figment in your imagination.
There are only smart men who can capably take on the challenge of synthesizing enormous amounts of learning about the origin and worldwide development of mankind into an interesting, consistent, testable framework; and there are smart men who can’t take on that challenge without leaving themselves open to easy rebuttals.
You have no such “fact” of Hart’s bias, let alone how big it is.
Pumpkin and I both read Hart’s book. We have sophisticated views of it. That is, we can see it has some good points and some bad points.
You haven’t read Hart’s book, and so you think it contains “NOTHING.” Of course, like any dumb jackass, you’re entitled to your opinion. It’s a free country. I’m sure the donkey helping the farmer ploy the field has certain ideas about how the work should proceed. Fortunately for the farmer, he doesn’t have to listen to it.
You can’t weigh the education of scholars like a hay bale, doofus.
When a synthesizer goes to work, it’s more like they’re trying to create a chemical reaction. The neglect or misuse of just one critical area of scholarship can destroy their entire thesis, just like forgetting to add a key chemical can prevent the entire reaction from taking place no matter how carefully the chemist controlled the rest of the experiment.
An example. Both Diamond and Hart have strong ideas about the relative smarts of various peoples around the world. But Diamond neglects psychometrics; Hart does not. Neither man, however, is a psychometrician. But the one more capable of understanding the statistics behind psychometrics, given their backgrounds, is clearly Hart.
On the other hand, Diamond is far superior to Hart in presenting his thesis. he dresses it up much better. Hart’s book reads like a rough draft; Diamond is an accomplished story teller.
Unfortunately for Diamond, the story he tells is false.
‘Hart’s book is not presented as the gospel truth’
Completely blows past the point of what I said in favor of more rhetorical ploys. The usual for spunky.
‘You have no such “fact” of Hart’s bias, let alone how big it is.’
He is a white separatist. That is a fact. It is also a significant bias.
‘and so you think it contains “NOTHING.”’
More rhetorical equating. I said Hart has nothing as in NO expertise. Naturally, you’d twist that. Hart has expertise in NONE of the fields he writes about.
‘You can’t weigh the education of scholars like a hay bale, doofus. ‘
A high school graduate writes a book about advances in modern medicine. A doctor writes the same. According to you, we are TOTALLY AGNOSTIC as to which book will more likely be worth our time.
You lack common sense.
‘one more capable of understanding the statistics behind psychometrics’
Biophysics incorporates a good amount of math. Diamond is probably capable of understanding z scores and heritability.
‘You compared a defense of some arguments in Hart’s book to a defense of the Bible.’
Wrong. You attacked me for having NOT read the book, to which I responded it wasn’t necessary to have done so before attacking the book’s subject matter— there were reasons to think it was suspect.
‘Hart’s politics have nothing to do with his arguments in Understanding Human Nature, ‘
A wild assertion that is contravened by the fact that his arguments are extremely consistent with his biases.
‘You don’t get extra credit for having studied some fields’
That’s just you with more nonsense.
‘ It won’t help your thesis if you make a critical mistake in another field you either knew nothing about or chose to ignore.’
Who is more likely to make such a critical mistake? Someone with NO familiarity with any of the fields, or someone who has expertise in some of the fields — and the other fields are outgrowths or related to the fields he does have expertise in? More lessons in common sense.
‘We aren’t talking about a specific field or even a couple of fields. ‘
Advances in modern medicine would likely cover many different fields as well 🙂
‘I’ve only made this point about a hundred times now so I can understand why you’re still unclear about it’
You’ve said the same thing over and over again, yes. It’s still wrong each time you say it.
Swanky,
You don’t know the subject matter. You have no idea what’s in the book except what you try to glean from a comment here or there, which is why I’m having to constantly correct your wild-assed guesses about where Hart went wrong.
I mean, what kind of dumbass thinks the Mongols are proof against Hart’s thesis? You shouldn’t even have to read Hart’s book to get that one right. Yet you still got it wrong, Swanky.
And how do you know Hart’s politics don’t flow naturally from his scientific views?
No, that’s me with an argument that I have carefully made by use of specific examples.
Since the mistake only has to happen in one important area, we have no clue who is more likely to make a critical mistake. You have to carefully read the argument, listen to various expert opinion about the different parts of it, and then come to your own conclusion.
And even than you might not be right.
Swanky has this odd view of science. He believes there are some clear consensuses out there in various scientific fields and that smart people just have to go to school to learn them. Therefore some scholar with a lot of degrees will always have a better opinion when synthesizing ideas in various fields than some person nearly as well-educated.
Of course that’s complete bullocks. It’s not just that the scientific consensus isn’t always true, and that fields like linguistics and geology often have major shifts of opinion in them. Sometimes the scientific consensus isn’t even well-known to the people working in those fields. Jensen was surprised, for example, to discover that most psychologists and educators agreed with his views on race and IQ. And Jensen was working in the field on that particular question.
Swanky must just like to be told what to think. He wants various groups of scientists to say, “Swanky, think this about this,” and he can then call it a day. No need to read Hart’s book or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Every field has various subfields. A historian who focused on European political diplomacy, for example, might not know very much about European military history, at least as to how weapons and tactics developed on the battle field. But few would question that the transition for a scholar from writing about diplomatic history to writing about military history is far easier than to go from writing about psychometrics is for a physiologist.
‘You don’t know the subject matter. You have no idea what’s in the book’
some variation of a) genetic intelligence differences between groups and b) a reason — cold climates selected for blah blah….
you haven’t corrected me once. you’ve just tried to dismiss the many counter-examples to the stupid theory in the book.
‘And how do you know Hart’s politics don’t flow naturally from his scientific views?’
The “scientific” views that arise from his non-expertise in any of the related fields that would inform such views? What a joke.
‘Since the mistake only has to happen in one important area, we have no clue who is more likely to make a critical mistake. ‘
Nonsense. Who is more likely to make the critical mistake in 1 out of 4 related fields? the person who has expertise in ZERO out of 4, or the person who has expertise in 3 out of 4. Common sense, spunky.
‘ He believes there are some clear consensuses out there in various scientific fields and that smart people just have to go to school to learn them’
This is true. There are consensuses out there in various scientific fields about various issues. Although it’s not just as simple as smart people go to school to learn them. It’s more like, spunky, pp, and most of the other people who read these books are ALSO laypeople in these fields. Therefore, as laypeople, it’s important to recognize where the information is coming from.
‘Of course that’s complete bullocks. It’s not just that the scientific consensus isn’t always true, and that fields like linguistics and geology often have major shifts of opinion in them’
Of course this isn’t what I said. This latest anti-science screed of yours is the same as advising us all against just listening to the doctor because “changes in medicine happen all the time.”
‘Jensen was surprised, for example, to discover that most psychologists and educators agreed with his views on race and IQ.’
According to the latest mainstream paper, this is false.
‘Swanky must just like to be told what to think’
Spunky must like getting medical advice from the local shaman.
Swanky writes:
It’s the details which nail down or falsify the thesis. If you can’t bother with the details, then you can’t judge the thesis. Simple as that.
I’ve corrected you numerous times, including most recently when you tried to claim that the Mongolian empire somehow countered Hart’s thesis.
But anyone who’s read the book can see how stupid your comments are. They don’t need me to point them out. Your errors are that obvious.
But please go ahead and tell us again how the Mongolian empire contradicts Hart’s thesis. Should be good for a few laughs.
Well, just to cite one example, Hart would know enough about math and technology to immediately laugh at your claim that some markings on an ancient stick represent the high mathematical musings of SSAs.
As Mencken once said, a good horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.
Quite apart from the fact we’re talking about dozens of fields (not four), it still depends more on avoiding bad mistakes rather than the quality of expertise in a few narrow fields.
Since you’re the only person here who habitually comments on books and papers he hasn’t read, this criticism would be more appropriate if it was directed at yourself.
Medicine is different. Health is an area with literally tens of thousands of experts and a long history of knowledge.
But if you’re talking about, say, ancient technology with an emphasis in technology in Sub-Saharan Africa around the time of the Axial Age in Eurasia, you’re now down to probably two dozen scholars who have any idea what they’re talking about. Ideas in that field are also far more likely to radically change with just one new dig.
Look at how much our views on Neanderthals have changed in just the last two decades. And there are far more experts working on those hominids than there probably are working on ancient SSA technology.
So medicine is not a valid comparison with the kind of knowledge that we’re dealing with here in the evolution of man.
Point it out. I’m talking about a poll of hundreds of people working in the field, not a paper.
‘It’s the details which nail down or falsify the thesis. If you can’t bother with the details, then you can’t judge the thesis.’
Spunky needs an in-depth investigation before he can reasonably infer anything about a proposition such as “leprechauns are in gardens in the springtime.”
‘the Mongolian empire somehow countered Hart’s thesis.’
mongols are in cold climates. mongols are not very bright IQ-wise. mongols also had an empire. mongols haven’t invented anything particularly special.
‘Hart would know enough about math and technology to immediately laugh’
You mean enough about being a white separatist to draw every inference against that proposition. of course he and you would dismiss one of the OLDEST mathematical objects as ‘nothing.’
‘Quite apart from the fact we’re talking about dozens of fields (not four), it still depends more on avoiding bad mistakes rather than the quality of expertise in a few narrow fields’
Blah blah blah. Answer the question. Who is more likely to make the error?
‘Since you’re the only person here who habitually comments on books and papers he hasn’t read, this criticism would be more appropriate if it was directed at yourself.’
You can read all of the tomes in the world about dragons, spunky — believing in them will still be wrong at the end of the day. And I don’t need to read them all to know that the idea is stupid.
‘Medicine is different. Health is an area with literally tens of thousands of experts and a long history of knowledge.’
lol. No, it isn’t different. These fields also have their experts and their bodies of knowledge. These fields are interrelated, which is why if someone is an expert in a FEW of them, they probably have a better understanding of the RELATED fields in which they lack expertise. Or at least, a far better understanding than someone who isn’t formally acquainted with any of those fields.
‘Point it out. I’m talking about a poll of hundreds of people working in the field, not a paper.’
More rhetorical sleight-of-hand. If you want to change the currency of proof you’ll accept, then change the currency of the proposition you offered. What poll of hundreds did Jensen ever do? I sure hope it’s not just an anecdote of his…
Martini has hit the nail on his thumb as usual, so to say.
the chink in the armor of the argument to authority on these matters is that such as may hold un-popular opinions will simply never be hired into a tenure track or never tenured.
Harpoondick and Jensen and Hernstein…did they express their racism and social Darwinism after tenure or before?
the chink in the armor of the argument to authority on these matters is that such as may hold un-popular opinions will simply never be hired into a tenure track or never tenured.
I was going to make a similar point. It’s not who the more qualified expert is; it’s who the most honest one is. Michael Hart actually believes what he’s saying. Diamond, probably not.
‘ Michael Hart actually believes what he’s saying. Diamond, probably not.’
Why?
As far as I know Diamond already had tenure before he started on his merry way as well.
“Michael Hart actually believes what he’s saying. Diamond, probably not.”
Im positive Diamond believed everything he write in that book. Especially about New Guinean intelligence.
You compared a defense of some arguments in Hart’s book to a defense of the Bible. If you don’t like the rhetorical blowback to your own overblown verbiage, be more careful how you write.
Hart’s politics have nothing to do with his arguments in Understanding Human Nature, which stand on their own and can be debated on their own without reference to whether he’s a commie or a fascist.
And I told you there is no such thing as an expert in synthesizing different approaches. You don’t get extra credit for having studied some fields. It won’t help your thesis if you make a critical mistake in another field you either knew nothing about or chose to ignore.
Idiot. We aren’t talking about a specific field or even a couple of fields. We’re talking about synthesizing an interdisciplinary approach to a very broad topic which covers, literally, dozens of fields and subfields.
I’ve only made this point about a hundred times now so I can understand why you’re still unclear about it.
And he shows that where in his books?
as far as I know after
Why?
As far as I know Diamond already had tenure before he started on his merry way as well.
Because he had too much to gain from writing that book. It served his interests on multiple, multiple levels.
And he seems too intelligent to believe it.
according to the Jew LotB most older Jewish Americans believe exactly as Diamond.
they think gentiles are just lazy.
Steve Shoe met a white Namibian in China. i’ve said it before.
the Namibian said that black Africans were just as capable but much less motivated and he attributed this to the ease of making a living in tropical Africa.
so this is the same and not the same explanation given by HBD-tards.
what was selected for wasn’t intelligence per se, it was motivation to do…whatever…
so cold climate peoples are like hot climate peoples on amphetamine.
reminds one of
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard.
maybe the betas are actually RIGHT. and my personal experience, again, confirms this…that the most accomplished people aren’t just able, they’re also insanely hard working.
the only exception i know of to this is the greatest chess player ever, perhaps, certainly the greatest for a limited period of time:
the Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca.

Jewish-Gentile differences are a lot less obvious than the differences Diamond denied
He’s smart which is probably why he believes it — you got it backwards .
…Intelligence is the mental ability to adapt…
as usual pp-less pp is playing the words always refer to things game.
what is adaptive in one environment may not be in another.
there is no general ability to adapt to any environment. but there is an idea. pp, as she has no pp, can’t tell the difference.
and as Santoculto might have said, if the adaptation is immoral then it is smarter to NOT adapt.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
pp is a dyke, a racist, a moron, and she loves horror movies.
as usual pp-less pp is playing the words always refer to things game.
What does a word have to do to qualify as a thing?
what is adaptive in one environment may not be in another.
You can’t adapt to any environment, hence even with nepotism, you work in a warehouse.
there is no general ability to adapt to any environment. but there is an idea. pp, as she has no pp, can’t tell the difference.
You’re confusing general ability with ability in general.
pp is a dyke, a racist, a moron, and she loves horror movies.
Love that warehouse trash-talk!
and i make more than you.
and you’ve already told me what you do.
it’s much lower than a warehouse.
but you do weigh more than me.
you’ve got that.
adaptability in the modern world is just another word for psychopathy/sociopathy…
hence your lesbianism, racism, and love of horror movies.
and i make more than you.
No you don’t. I have more income and more occupational status, despite less education.
more lies.
adaptability in the modern world is just another word for psychopathy/sociopathy…
Psychopaths are not more adaptable, they just have an easier situation to adapt to because they aren’t burdened by ethical dilemmas. But yes, they will appear more adaptable, but only on a superficial level of analysis.
lesbian, racist, college drop outs who dress like prostitutes have very few career choices in the US.
maybe it’s different in Canada.
it depends on how one defines sociopath.
as i’ve said 80% of the jobs in the US are bullshit, but my company supplies manufacturers, builders, and utilities. it actually dies something. and wholesale trade has the highest wages of any industry sector in the US. or it did last time i checked. when you get a cut of sales it can be quite good.
lesbian, racist, college drop outs who dress like prostitutes have very few career choices in the US.
They can always work in a warehouse.
and btw, nepotism is the RULE in the US not the exception.
in general if you don’t have some nepotism in your favor and you don’t have a degree from an Ivy League school then the best you can hope for is a “job” at McDonald’s.
it’s the same in the UK.
there are even conservatives in the Us and the UK who explain why this is a good thing.
They can always work in a warehouse.
then why don’t you?
more lies.
No, I work in a white collar profession, which is much higher occupational status than working in a warehouse. And I work with very rich clients, though occasionally some very poor ones in the rural parts. And the industry I work in is booming so money is very good right now; though I’d rather have more free time.
that’s pretty vague pp. sounds like your “occupation” is bullshit.
i worked in a high status white collar occupation for years, and it was immoral. so i quit. i was an actuary.
besides the warehouse is where my company puts everyone to start. i’m not gonna be there for long. if you’re not a prole moron you move into sales.
besides you’ve already told me your occupation is blue collar. so you’re lying again.
your clients are rich?
HA!
they’re individuals!
i’m in B to B.
you’re STILL in retail.
it’s like the difference between Edward Jones and Goldman Sachs.
and making good money in Ottawa doesn’t require any adaptation at all.
it’s the richest city in Canada.
you’d have to make an effort not to “succeed” in Ottawa.
I worked in a blue collar field in college but before graduating I landed a white collar job, and worked part time job until I graduated (with honors) with a non-STEM degree. My biggest regret is attending college at all or for that matter completing high school.. It was boring and tedious.
yet more lies.
There are tons of poor people in Ottawa in the rural sections and certain urban areas. Vanier is the genetic garbage of Ottawa. I can’t go there without being solicited by small headed prostitutes.
But there is lots of money to be made in high tech, finance, and government. The government workers drag down the correlation between IQ and money. They only have their job because they are over-educated in some non-STEM degree but keep their job because of good looks. When there are budget cuts, they fire all the ugly people, even the brilliant ones, because the government doesn’t care if it makes a profit so brains aren’t valued.
Why would I need to lie about having a college degree? Half the city has one. It’s no big deal. It’s not even a deal.
why would hoes hit on a girl dressed like a hoe?
because if you had one you wouldn’t say it was “non-STEM” you’d say what it was
They hit on me because there are so few conservatively dressed clean-cut suburban looking guys in that part of town. It never fails. I’m walking down one direction, and they’re walking in another, and they see me and turn around and start walking in my direction. At that moment I know instantly it’s a prostitute who will solicit me in about 30 seconds.
and again it is seen what a truly shitty job free market capitalism has done in the US and Canada over the last 35 years or so.
Washington DC has similarly high incomes and low unemployment. Maryland has the highest incomes of any US state.
it used to be government paid less than the private sector.
now it pays more even though it’s just increased at the rate of inflation.
but again Ottawa is like the Garden of Eden compared to anywhere in the US in terms of how un-competitive it is. it’s like the US in the late 90s.
if you had to move there then you can claim you’ve “adapted”, but if not, then you’ve just been LUCKY.
No, I’d rather not say what the degree is in.
you wish you had a penis.
guys who aren’t fags don’t make ad nauseam posts on Oprah. they don’t even know who Lady Guido is. Rushton doesn’t answer their questions.
unless…
…
they’re from a racial minority.
was it in accounting or finance or economics?
given your worship of status these are likely candidates.
guys who aren’t fags don’t make ad nauseam posts on Oprah. they don’t even know who Lady Guido is.
Lady Guido? LOL! I don’t anything about Lady Gaga except that I hate her music with a passion. I just read she has a high IQ in an article by IQ researcher Jonathan Wai and was intrigued because she obtained wealth unmediated by education. My obsession with Oprah is because she combines the three most Darwinian correlates of IQ: money, brain size, and race.
If anyone here is gay, it’s you. You’re obsessed with calling others gay, and you posted images of three different Hollywood men in one post. One of them was even animated to show off his smile. LOL!
was it in accounting or finance or economics?
No, but I’m glad you recognize I have the math IQ for economics.
unless…
…
they’re from a racial minority.
The plot thickens. A non-white blogger? Wouldn’t that be a scandal. LOL!
You remind me a lot of Hannibal Lecter
no such recognition have i ever given.
you don’t have a penis. i do recognize that.
if it talks like a girl and keep talking like a girl…it’s a girl…or a fag.
white male heterosexuals do not make 100 blog posts on Oprah.
PERIOD!
nor do they bitch about “sadistic bullies”.
The Lion is a white male heterosexual and he’s posted way more about the HBO series GIRLS than I have about Oprah.
And gays are not fans of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
And gays do not defend Bill Cosby in the latest scandal.
I described you as a sadistic bully so that people wouldn’t think I was mean for verbally and mathematically lynching you.
you didn’t defend Cosby.
ok…
there is one more alternative.
your parents native language wasn’t English (or Canadian if that’s English you ‘oser) and perhaps it’s not yours either.
1. you’re a lesbian
2. you’re a fag
3. you’re not only non-white, but your parents were immigrants.
4. there is no other possibility.
pp’s native language is some gibberish…God knows what.
she’s confused lynchee with lyncher.
she thinks the “strange fruit” is the frugivore.
a perv extraordinaire.
I did indeed defend Cosby. Bros before hos 🙂
he’s counter-suing the latest lady to sue him.
i think when pp played with Barbie she dressed her up with this uniform:
i’m 100% certain that Oprah and the Cos would score below the 95th percentile on whatever IQ test they took.
that’s not to say they aren’t smart.
it’s rather to say that IQ tests don’t measure smart-ness between cultures.
so Japan at one time was in Guinness for the highest mean IQ of any country. but the extra hours of school per day and school six days a week was sufficient to explain the advantage. or that’s what my physical anthropology text says anyway. from my 1984 GBWR the claim is that in 1960-61 the Japanese scored and average 115!
why no greater since?
btw, the instructor for that physical anthropology course was not a “Marxist”. he was a conservative douche. he didn’t understand what heritability meant. so not all antho profs are “Marxists”.
has anyone talked about british blacks and british whites? seems like that gap has narrowed
HBD-tards can always claim that immigrants are self-selected or un-talented immigrants are excluded.
that may be true, but…
then what’s the political point of HBD?
these numbers show black African British score only 1/3 an SD below white British.
the Irish scored a full SD lower in the early 70s.
the Chinee score higher by 2/3 an SD in two of three parts…
but mightn’t this ALSO be explained by self-selection and selective admissions?
i’m still waiting for the Chineee Newton.
but even a Chinee Einstein would do.
all i know about China people is they loves them the white cock. even the Chinese dudes.
they can only be so self-selected…
“The evolutionary theory does however predict that when different races occupy approximately similar environments, such as for instance in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands, the intelligence differences will remain.”
plus everything i read suggests that the greater influx coincides with more lax standards
again from my repertoire of personal experience which Martini thinks it bad taste to mention:
when i sat the GRE subject test in chemistry, ahead of me in the entrance line there was a Chinee American and a white guy. one was sitting the English GRE. the other was sitting the math.
which was which?
the Chinee guy was sitting the Enlgish!
one’s own experience is necessarily anecdote, perhaps. but it is also quite rational to give it greater weight than anything else.
and more…
i was told before i sat it that the only scores in the 99th percentile were made by Chinese…in the PRC…
well the 99th percentile was 910 for my test date.
i scored 940.
it’s about as good of taste as mentioning anything by the widely discredited Lynn
…
also if it were genetic wouldn’t the white/black brits score between the blacks and whites? they don’t…
The mustachioed Freddie Mercury wrote above:
The structure has a lot to do with the quality of novel. Structure and style. Or as Vladimir Nabokov put it, “Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.”
Naturally, Freddie thinks ideas make novels because he’s a moron who never reads and can’t understand what he reads.
Hahaha ! Paul Theroux, Freddie Mercury’s window onto the world. If Macaca can’t get a passport, he can at least read another train book by the gallivanting Theroux.
By the way, now that V.S. Naipaul is in his eighties and most likely at death’s door, has Theroux stopped living in his shadow and eating his shit?
Naipaul is UTTER SHIT.
i started his Guerrillas. again it only took a very little to get that taste in my mouth…the taste of a moron.
you’re quoting the chi-mo Nabokov as an authority?
he’s a chi-mo!
look Martini,
great authors are NEVER great.
NEVER!
belles-lettres is an IG-NOBLE calling.
it’s for morons.
whoever would be a great writer is just the walking dead, les maudits.
stat crux dum volvitur orbis Pinky.
Naturally, Freddie thinks ideas make novels because he’s a moron who never reads LIE and can’t understand what he reads. LIE
Hahaha ! Paul Theroux, Freddie Mercury’s window onto the world. If Macaca can’t get a passport LIE
just more lies from Martini.
Swanky writes above:
There’s no contradiction. Their prose wouldn’t be nearly as good. But prose style is just one major element of a novel. The structure of their books might be better.
ok so then your original comment about prose style was essentially meaningless because now apparently you believe nobel-prize winning physicists would probably produce comparable work to an F. Scott. lol
I’ve never heard a gallows laugh before, Swanky.
Can you count? Prose is one important aspect of writing a novel. but it’s not the only one. No physicist is likely to have the musical ear for writing that Fitzgerald possessed because prose writing at that level is such a singular talent that even most excellent writers don’t have it.
But novels are about more than just prose style. Structure is another critical element to a novel, and there’s no reason to believe that some physicists couldn’t structure a novel better than Fitzgerald.
I can’t break all the elements of writing in my every post to you. You either have to keep up or go back to school.
this from a prole who apparently thinks there are more than ten 20th c English language novels worth reading.
high literature is LOW.
grow up Martini.
sentiment has been passe since 1914.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
Yes, so your original statement was meaningless re: the actual quality of a physicist as a fiction-writer versus an F. Scott, because you only discussed one element while suggesting that the other element could grant the physicists an advantage, i.e. nothing, i.e. no real comment.
No one needs to go to school to call you out on your continuing lame rhetorical street magic.
NO!
that’s just lit crit bullshit again.
what matters is the idea.
as a Russian and unreconstructed Stalinist told me…i die, so what, what matters is the IDEA…
my Harvard AB in English dad has told me the same.
form and formalities are for idiots.
remember what the Rite of Spring provoked?
I focused on that one element because that is where the gap in talent between a writer and a physicist would be largest in writing a novel, and because prose style is a major element to writing a novel.
Just because you lack a first rate education doesn’t mean I’m responsible for detailing out every single nuance to my argument in every single post. I expect even you to keep up somewhat, Swanky, even if my expectations in that regard aren’t very high.
Is this the same dad you wanted to kick in the nuts?
Your dad lied to you, Macaca. Or he passed on his idiocy to you though the genes.
‘Just because you lack a first rate education doesn’t mean I’m responsible for detailing out every single nuance to my argument in every single post’
the word you’re looking for is bullshit. essentially your “nuanced” statement is — physicists could write some pretty good fiction books, but just because they couldn’t write nearly as well as F. Scott [but probably could write just as good of a book as him because they may well structure a book better] doesn’t mean there’s no use in correlations between the abilities. by “nuanced” you mean meaningless. you’re essentially now saying that you believe they generally could write books of similar quality to literary classic, which makes the end of the statement (doesn’t mean there’s no use…) a pointless addition.
more LIES.
i stand by what i said.
high lit…
is low…
for low-brows…
who would be high-brows!
score in the 99th percentile on the GRE chemistry and all four of the ACAS chemistry exams etc
then you might not sound like a femme loser.
Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.
what’s funny about China people is they have absolutely nothing over the Indians. they have no indigenous philosophy AT ALL.
no wonder they score so much lower in “verbal reasoning”.
Freddie Mercury writes:
You mean, besides Daoism, Confucianianism, and about a dozen other different philosophies?
Try to keep to what you know, Freddie, even if that’s just playing with your own bunghole.
If the point of the discussion is to focus on where two kinds of smart people most differ, why would I focus on something where they don’t differ?
It would be as if we were discussing soccer and basketball players, and I pointed out that many soccer goalies are really tall and that some excellent basketball players – like Hakeem Olajuwon – became excellent pro basketball players. I would be avoiding your main point by focusing on rare exceptions. That’s something you are talented at, but I don’t have much stomach for.
‘If the point of the discussion is to focus on where two kinds of smart people most differ, why would I focus on something where they don’t differ?’
You started off by using “writing a fictional book” as your metric of performance, which according to you
(after the fact) includes both elements. Then, if you are now to be believed, you discussed how physicists could “write a fictional book” while failing to match the prose of F. Scott. Apparently, now (after the fact) you didn’t mean prose as in “write a fictional book,” you meant prose as in one half of the element required to write a fictional book. Why would the correlations not be useful if a physicist could probably write as good a fictional book as an F. Scott? There’d be no reason to even say such a thing, which why I think you just post-hoc’d this whole “no I meant as in one of the TWO elements of a book as referenced by this quote I posted after that reply.”
regardless….if you don’t think there’d be any difference then the example simply isn’t useful.
a “rare exception” according to spunky:
Daoism, Confucianianism?
are you fucking kidding?
they’re both juvenile SHIT. only a tween could possibly be impressed.
the Tao-te-Ching, the Chuang-Tzu, the Analects, compared to the Upanishads or even the aphorisms of Patinjali.
the ENTIRETY of China people’s literary output is a JOKE.
A JOKE!!!
although that’d be a good tangent. I know there are a lot of physicists-turned-authors. I don’t recall any rising to any spectacular heights, save Asimov.
And he was a biochemist or something. But I’ll take hard-scientist/physicist.
Swanky writes above:
Some would probably do quite well at the guard positions, and I suspect most have the athletic talent to have at least made it at the U.S. collegiate level, NCAA division II.
Compared to the general population as a whole, there would be a strong correlation, even though most of them obviously don’t have the height to make it to the professional level.
But your analogy is still screwed up.
Highest league to highest league I doubt everything you have just said. They would probably do terribly at guard compared to the CURRENT basketball players, etc. So if you want to start saying ‘well they’d probably do better than MOST basketball players generally,’ you’re still with a — ‘the best soccer player still won’t be nearly as good as the best basketball player at basketball,’ or in other words, A GAP.
REPOSTED:
Highest league to highest league. Sure.
But then highest league to highest league, we can’t even find that many poets who also wrote good novels. Or great mathematicians who also did first-rate scientific work.
I mean, why stop at comparing soccer to basketball? Why not ask which centers could play guard in the NBA and which point guards could try their hand at center?
And that’s in the same sport.
So your analogy is stil screwed up. You’re basically asking why one person can’t be equally good at some other similar task. But in the real world, most soccer players don’t need or want to play basketball. Nor do most basketball players need or want to play soccer.
In the real world of population groups, however, most need and want to be wealthy and productive. And those who are already wealthy and productive want to be better off still.
Martini’s standards are so low he likely esteems The Maltese Falcon as high literature.
at least he hasn’t trumpeted Robbe-Grillet.
Heidegger was the last philosopher.
Waugh was the last novelist. (even though his Vile Bodies was actually a rough draft.
Freddie,
Your literary criticism in in your ass.
you’ve got grey hairs Pinky.
stop molesting those without any.
You haven’t got any hair on your head, Freddie, which is why you try to butch it up with that florid mustache.
i will show you fear in A Handful of Dust
Highest league to highest league. Sure.
But then highest league to highest league, we can’t even find that many poets who also wrote good novels. Or great mathematicians who also did first-rate scientific work.
I mean, why stop at comparing soccer to basketball? Why not ask which centers could play guard in the NBA and which point guards could try their hand at center?
And that’s in the same sport.
So your analogy is stil screwed up. You’re basically asking why one person can’t be equally good at some other similar task. But in the real world, most soccer players don’t need or want to play basketball. Nor do most basketball players need or want to play soccer.
In the real world of population groups, however, most need and want to be wealthy and productive. And those who are already wealthy and productive want to be better off still.
‘You’re basically asking why one person can’t be equally good at some other similar task’
I’m not asking that at all. I’m saying that the way you measure one isn’t necessarily the way you measure the other, or at the very least, isn’t the most accurate way of measuring the other. The quality here is “athleticism.” We are measuring it through the proxy of these rules. Putting points on the board is analogous to wealth/achievement.
All else being equal, we’d expect the better athletes (think raw physical conditioning) to dominate in all sports. But all else is not equal. The rules matter. Changing up the games matters. And if you’re measuring athleticism by how well these people follow the rules of a particular game or develop the skills specific to one game, you’re going to get some gaps between gameplayers.
That’s not even getting into the fact that “good” raw physical conditioning in one game may not be so good in another game, etc. etc.
Swanky,
But it is accurate. The lack of a perfect correlation in talents doesn’t mean that general intelligence or general athletic ability doesn’t exist.
For what’s it’s worth, I’ve read Harpending declare over in a comment at West Hunter that an ‘a” for athletic ability doesn’t exist, that athletic skills (balance, strength, speed, conditioning, etc.) don’t correlate in the same way “g” correlates for different intellectual tasks.
I personally don’t believe it. But keep in mind that there are different opinions on the subject, and that my opinion may be wrong. There could be a real and important distinction between the two realms of talents that I’m not currently arguing.
I thin at the high school level, this is true. There are many star athletes participating in three sports in school. Guys who are good to excellent at football, basketball, and football – and who would also be well above average if they went out for wrestling, tennis, or soccer.
But the competition gets so fierce at the higher levels that athletes need to specialize, just as intellectually inclined people tend to specialize the higher up they go.
so there are still bath houses open 24 hours?
You tell us, Freddie.
‘But it is accurate. The lack of a perfect correlation in talents doesn’t mean that general intelligence or general athletic ability doesn’t exist.’
This analogy isn’t about whether a general ability it exists (yet). It’s about measurement. Measuring a good basketball player is probably not the best way to measure (or separate) the good athlete.
‘But the competition gets so fierce at the higher levels that athletes need to specialize, just as intellectually inclined people tend to specialize the higher up they go.’
Yeah. They need to DEVELOP CERTAIN SKILLS. Two athletes with equal conditioning who play two separate games will end up having different specializations. You take a group of soccer players and put them into a group of basketball players, you will find a gap.
belle lettres is not a specialism any more than putting.
as an aesthetic point I completely disagree that ‘style’ and structure are everything. content is king. style and structure are just rhetorical…but that’s a personal thing.
Content is vague. Style and Structure are content. Nabokov’s point is that ideas in literature should be meaningless to judging the aesthetic quality of it. Unfortunately, proles like Macaca think ideas in works of art mean everything. As Robert Louis Stevenson said to Henry James, “We want incident, interest, action: to the devil with your philosophy.”
nabakov had no point.
he was a chi-mo.
anyone who invests him with authority or thinks him at all worthy of mention is very likely a chi-mo.
another Conrad, a Slav who wrote in English.
nothing could be more perverted.
Nabokov is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and a lit professor who taught people like your father how to read a novel. So naturally you don’t like him.
ok. by content i mean idea. “something” to say.
Ideas are meaningless in great art.
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is one of the greatest novels ever written and it’s about adultery in provincial France. There’s no real point to it, but it’s a magnificently crafted work. Naturally, some people try to invest great meaning into it, but they’re being vapid in the same way you were when you tried to turn Interstellar into some meditation on the power of love.
It depends on your needs. I played basketball in high school, and we had coach who actively recruited among the football players to help fill our squad. The idea was that a fellow showing good athletic ability on the gridiron would also show it on the hard court.
Yeah, but you’re still looking at this question from the wrong end. Gaps happen everywhere. But why do they happen? Soccer and basketball players don’t randomly sort themselves out. They go where they are most likely to find success based on differences in physical shape and athletic ability.
‘Soccer and basketball players don’t randomly sort themselves out. They go where they are most likely to find success based on differences in physical shape and athletic ability.’
Or, they applied the same athletic ability to whatever environment confronted them at the time and set up the rules accordingly.
No, if you played sports, you’d know that’s not true.
and George Lincoln Rockwell, arrant HBDer, was a chi-mo too.
the chi-mo thing kinda gets in the way.
his “greatest” novel is about a chi-mo.
autobiography perhaps?
Todd Field’s Little Children is a MUCH more GROWN UP treatment.
‘Ideas are meaningless in great art.’
Says you. I disagree. Substance over form.
‘tried to turn Interstellar’
on the power/importance of the individual, ya dip.
“Substance over form.”
There is no substance to art without the art. Ideas in literature are a dime a dozen. They’re cheap, inflated, meaningless. What matters is how you treat your story, the way you build it and they way you write. That’s all that matters. No one really cares what Tolstoy’s view are on war and peace. They only care if he can make the story sing.
i recall my douchey dad telling me Twain was “one of the greatest” blah, blah, blah,…
Huckleberry Finn is a SHITTY novel for seven year olds at most.
‘No, if you played sports, you’d know that’s not true.’
History didn’t unfold like sports in high school. There weren’t different games/environments for everyone to just choose from. There was just, you’ve got/encountered a soccer field, gym, etc. to work with, now work with it.
“History didn’t unfold like sports in high school.”
Which is why your sports analogy doesn’t work.
Most basketball players don’t want to be soccer players, but most Africans do want to live like Europeans. They just can’t.
So for your sports analogy to work, everyone would have to want to play one sport.
Melville wrote nothing better than Bartleby.
Americans CAN’T write!
there’s a VERY simple criterion for greatness in bell lettres…
has the work contributed new words to the language. is it often quoted.
1984 stands out above all others here.
but Robinson Crusoe is also a great novel in this respect.
‘ Ideas in literature are a dime a dozen. They’re cheap, inflated, meaningless’
Right idea in the right context is rare.
Ideas in literature are a dime a dozen. They’re cheap, inflated, meaningless. What matters is how you treat your story, the way you build it and they way you write. That’s all that matters.
THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THE TRUTH.
DEAR GOD WHAT A FUCKING PHILISTINE!
‘but most Africans do want to live like Europeans. They just can’t.’
No, they have to, now. The ones in America were brought here. The ones in Africa were forcibly conquered and forced into the new games. So it’s like forcing people to play an entirely new game and then laughing at them for being poor at the game compared to the current well-practiced players. Nevermind that when it comes to black Americans, being able to say with a straight face (and still very arguably) that they have been playing the same basketball as whites only starts in the last 40-50 years.
Coetzee and McEwan are both good writers…
but neither has anything to say…
so their novels are BORING and STUPID.
Coetzee’s best work is his autobiographical Youth.
Martini is a belletrist manque like Nobel.
only a prole among proles like pp would without irony describe him as “learned”. let him have it.
which reminds me of my Jap lit class.
an A- whoop whoop!
but my God the Japs can’t write worth a damn.
and that includes their Nobel laureate Kawabata. Murakami would be laughed at as a comic book perv by any Western publishers.
Tales of Genji — a porno
Dream of the Red chamber — a porno
China people have nothing to offer the West except their labor.
Dream of the Red chamber — a porno
If you want to read a real Asian porno – and I know you do, since you play with yourself all day long – read 金瓶梅 (The Golden Lotus).
Dear Pumpkinperson,
your blog is a bullshit today. Sorry, but i don’t go continue following more. Goodbye!
Which part did you have a problem with?
Mugabe.
Black and white IQ difference is reality, and it probably existed quite long time.
However, “emergence” of intelligence is probably not a product of cold winters. At the end, human ancestors (and smart monkeys) evolved in Africa, not in Europe or Asia. So intelligence emerged much more effectively in Africa, where the conditions were favorable. Not where it is unfavorable (cold climate, etc). Unfavorable conditions kills only lower IQ individuals, but does the high complexity intelligence emerge from there?
If there are any individuals with IQs higher than 130 or 160 in Africa at the moment, then I would believe intelligence can emerge in warm climates, 0 latitude…
I am not at all sure of anything, only challenging with questions…
The environment that is optimum for the evolution of intelligence depends on the level of intelligence that exists at the time. For millions of years, cold climates were just too cognitively demanding for even the brightest primates so the cold could not select for intelligence; only physical traits like fur. Only when primate’s got so smart that intelligence was a competitive advantage in cold climates could cold climates strongly select for intelligence.
So it’s not about how easy or hard the environment is, but about how well it discriminates. Warm climates are like an easy IQ test that did an excellent job discriminating between bright and dull pre-humans, but once all humans got so smart that warm climates were no longer challenging, cold climates became effective at discriminating between different IQ levels; hence natural selection. Prior to that, cold climates were just too hard an IQ test for intelligence to have been the primary evolutionary strategy.
ok, so you think that the right amoung of challenge is needed, just enough to select for high IQ but not too much that kills everyone…
thanks.
Yes, that’s what I think. I think Africa stimulated evolution for millions of years, but our brains eventually outgrew its challenges, and we needed tougher environments to continue evolving.
‘If there are any individuals with IQs higher than 130 or 160 in Africa at the moment’
….is this a serious statement?
Here is just one likely candidate. I think he may be in Italy now, though, but he was in Africa for a long, long time.
James Adedayo Oguntuase
I am serious. However I would like a more objective data.. Of course there are physicists and mathematicians, philosophers in African universities. But still, I cannot evaluate how many standard deviations their IQ away from European average.
Average african IQ and its standard deviation is quite low as far as I know, but I belive more in phenomenon than theory…
Did you just pick a random person in internet?
http://psiq.org/
check this link, do you see any african country in that list?
There is at least one black guy from US, I know, about 150s. He could be mix too, don’t know…
There are also in internet many claims of high IQ by black people…
So, although rare, there are some I guess. So intelligence could actually emerge in africa…
Look at the number of Greeks in that list, far more successful than their average IQs…
All right. Well there are plenty of African-born individuals who receive elite educations at western institutions.
Barack Obama’s father would probably qualify
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama,_Sr.
“Barack Obama’s father would probably qualify”
Sorry but you are giving only famous names… I would like to have quantified data.. or test results…
http://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2014
Check that IMO, international Math Olmypiad site, Africa is the worst continent. Maybe Nigerians are a abit ok.
But Liechtenstein is also very bad, cause of their population…Luxembourg and Iceland too..Norway and Denmark very bad too. in comparison to the life quality in the country…
So there are more geniuses in Nigeria than in some developed European countries…
‘Sorry but you are giving only famous names… I would like to have quantified data.. or test results…’
Well you asked for ONE SINGLE person.
And a lot of the inquiry will be indirect, anyway.
Such as this math olympiad inquiry.
Here…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/31/ivy-league-admissions-college-university/7119531/
First generation from Africa, scored in 98th overall percentile on SAT. There. IQ > 130 if you’re following the reasoning on this blog.