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Many people think IQ tests do not measure creativity. This belief is ironic because IQ tests are backed by the statistical concept known as g (the hypothesized general factor that causes all mental abilities to positively correlate) and the most g loaded tests are those that require you to see associations between seemingly unrelated things: Pattern recognition.
Even g loaded tests as tedious as vocabulary or general knowledge require creativity because acquiring a large fund of information requires you to make some creative associations. For example, if someone asks to borrow some “dead presidents”, you must associate borrowing with money and then be creative enough to associate money with the pictures on currency which are of historical presidents. Hence “dead presidents” enters your vocabulary as a synonym for money.
But because IQ tests all have the same right answer that all high IQ people by definition converge on, many feel that they can’t be measuring creativity (which implies original thought). As a result, psychologists have created divergent thinking tests which supposedly measure creativity. A typical divergent thinking test is to ask people to name as many uses for a brick that they can think of in two minutes. Such tests do not have one right answer or even 100 right answers. The number of right answers is potentially infinite. Original answers like “for a short man to stand on when kissing a tall girl”, or “to put in your suitcase when you leave a hotel without paying so they think you’re still there” get more credit than unoriginal answers like “smash a window”, or “help build a house”.
Although divergent thinking tests correlate positively with conventional IQ tests, the correlation is low (and some say it vanishes altogether above IQ 120).
But one reason for the low correlation could be that divergent thinking tests are not measuring a cognitive ability but rather a personality trait. According to Arthur Jensen, in order for a test to be measuring an “ability” (physical or mental), there must be a clear standard of proficiency. Everyone can agree that remembering five digits is more impressive than remembering two digits or that solving a puzzle in 2 minutes is more impressive than solving it in 3 minutes. But can everyone agree that using a brick to kiss a tall girl is more impressive than using a brick to build?
There are humor tests where there is no single right answer. For example people are asked to write a caption to a cartoon and the funnier the caption, the higher the score. This potentially does have a clear standard of proficiency because although humor is subjective, laughter is involuntary, and if the test participants knew the objective was to make as many people laugh as possible, this might make a good psychometric measure of creativity.
Of course it would be completely impractical because every time someone was tested, you’d need to poll a representative sample of the public on whether the person’s answers were funny. But given that stand-up comedians have high IQs, I highly suspect this test would correlate at least moderately with g.
Some of this famous humorists have favorable environment to stay in irregular profession like that stand up comedians.
There is a positive correlation between IQ and humor. Still doesn’t mean Marilyn Vos Savant has a fantastic humor because she scored quite high on IQ tests.
I was (privately and publiclly) wondering lately about the connection between logical thinking (let’s say intelligence, as simplistic as that may be) and creativity. Having read many studies and, well, lived life, I got the suspicion that, at least in some cases, there might be somewhat of a negative correlation.
I mean, it’s very complex but there were two studies that showed that viewing video content with fantastical elements made kids more creative (in one of the two studies) and worsened their (other kids’) executive functions (in the other study).
Personally, I have an amazing sense of humor (humble me etc) but not an extremely high IQ (yet). I think it is to a large extent because of my life experiences and my gayness (stereotypes be damned).
Also, there are many kinds of creativity and many types of humor. Stand-up comedians are usually very perceptive and it just happens that they express that through jokes instead of essays, so their high IQs are not necessarily related to their ability to be funny.
I don’t think the example you presented (with money) is about creativity. Convergent thinking, yes, but I don’t much agree that convergent thinking is really creativity and I think scientists are torn on this as well. Though, to be fair, things that increase divergent thinking, sometimes increase convergent thinking as well (like psilocybin and closing our eyes).
I used a brick to type this comment.
Like Rushton, I can see a triarchial positioning of races in terms of creativity. (Blacks most creative, whites medium, Asians low)
Testosterone is correlated with creativity, probably most with musical creativity, so it makes sense that these things would unfold.
Lol. This guy.
Melo, I’ve been reading Science in Black and White by Alondra Oubre. It’s pretty stunning to me—as I was reading the book I thought “wow this is like my blog.” Regarding my hereditarian and post-hereditarian views. Many of the same arguments (for instance, citing Ross et al and discussing T and PCa but in the next chapter citing the newer studies showing that it’s not causal for PCa).
The author has written on this subject in the past. She has a chapter in race and menarche (something I’m really interested in), testosterone, race and brain, genes and IQ, the AR gene.
She discusses Rushton’s brain size studied at length. I’ll leave some quotes later.
I give it a 4/5—i think “HBDers” should be focusing on arguments like hers. I think her arguments are really balanced and while I disagree with some of her language (like in chapter 1 she talks of “blank slatists” vs genetic determinists) I love the book. It’s chock full of citations and her writing style is great.
She has a chapter in race and menarche (something I’m really interested in)
rr can’t handle books not written by black women.
what the people wanted. but then the people were shutdown after the reichstag fire.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Reichstagswahl_M%C3%A4rz_1933.svg
Imagine thinking I care about the race of an author.
imagine cutting your hair.
Wow that is actually really interesting. I’ll definitely check that out.
I’ve had a lot of curiosities regarding racial differences in menarche.
Melo do you have any specific questions on the topic?
For you? No. I want answers from people who can be intellectually honest.
Haha
What I said is true though.
Nope. I’m pretty knowledgeable on the area though.
LOL, yeah it is.
Haha nope.
LOL, maybe I’ll believe you when you can answer simple questions.
Til then, yeah it is.
Haha your thoughts about me have nothing to do with my knowledge in a specific area.
LOL, your “knowledge” on menarche is not why I think you’re intellectually dishonest. It’s your refusal to engage in honest debate.
LOL nice “scarequotes”
Thanks, I think they’re very appropriate.
LMAO no they’re not.
LOL, yeah they are.
How can I trust your “knowledge” if you’re Intellectually dishonest about everything else?
HAHA nah.
So if I’m “dishonest without straight-out lying” what am I “dishonest” about?
Why dont we, instead of having endless comments talking about the same thing, make an argument, defend, refute, counter etc in 2 or 3 rounds and call it a day?
^^^retarded gay man^^^
What are you basing “blacks have the highest creativity” on? If it’s entertainment skill, that might just be higher extroversion.
Surely the most creative race is the one that has come up with the majority of the worldviews, ideologies, philosophies, art forms and genres that exist in the world.
Relative to their IQ theyre highly creative.
Ok, but you didn’t say relative to IQ.
Anyway, how are they creative except when it comes to being entertainers?
African Americans are known for having a variety of inventors. George Washington Carver comes to mind. Unfortunately this was decades ago as there has been a huge dysgenic effect in the black community over the last century.
Blacks have lower latent inhibition meaning they associate “unrelated” things at a stronger level than other groups.
Not to mention 90% of worldviews, ideologies, philosophies, art, etc are expressed through entertainment.
And blacks have played a key part in advancing all those things remarkably as well. Maybe not as much as whites because of their remarkably lower IQ but theyve held their weight for what they have to work with.
To expand on this, art and genres are more prominent in older non-white civilizations than in white ones.
I hope my points make sense to you and you can see my perspective.
There are three forms of creativity: figural, originality, and fluency. Abstract thought is the closest link between IQ and creativity.
Dreams are a great proxy for creativity. Youre conjuring up emotions, places, things, ideas, etc.
I think emotional creativity is most important as it comes to your aid most in life.
Ok ridiculous peepee
You won
I will not fight against your perversity or intellectual dishonesty
It’s a complete waste of time
And
I’m not half japanese
Nor living in favela
Your blog is an asylum
“backed by the statistical concept known as g (the hypothesized general factor that causes all mental abilities to positively correlate”
This is ironic because g is a product of test construction and the “agreement” of newer tests with older ones like the Stanford-Binet is deliberate—new tests that are not in agreement with it are thrown out. (See Howe, 1997; Richardson, 2002).
why the hell are you “very intersted” in black women’s periods?
because you’re a black woman?
The mechanisms that produce the differences are interesting because it is a public health matter since black girls are more likely to have an earlier menarche because they have more body fat than white girls.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/03/17/race-and-menarche/
“Even after they controlled for differences in pubic hair development and fat mass, the differences in IGF-1 and IGFBP-1 remained significant. So black girls in this study had higher levels of IGF-1 and insulin than white girls.
This is significant because higher levels of IGF-1 at age 8 are associated with earlier menarche in girls (Thankamoney et al, 2012). Earlier menarche is related to higher levels of adiposity, as noted above, and the mechanism for earlier menarche is fat cells releasing insulin which has a permissive effect on menarche. Further, there is evidence that lower levels of circulating growth hormones are related to delayed menarche (Circo, 2014).”
according to this guy rr doesn’t love black people.
Yes I think we have addressed this issue before and if I remember correctly a study on this showed that while the correlation between creativity and IQ(which is actually a lot greater than people think) reduces slightly above 120 it does not go to zero, a correlation still remains. Meaning that in all likelihood creativity is a product of IQ(or the other way round) or at the very least they share some underlying mechanism. My sense is that creativity is what happens when IQ is given free reign and it is not restrained in a traditional rule based way. I really do think that quite possibly it is a left brain right brain interaction coupled with neurons vs connections.
The fabulous Kimcubine who has anointed himself “creativity personified” keeps banging on about this supposed schism between IQ and creativity and now he has also gone on to assert that even rationality has nothing to do with IQ(utterly moronic). He somehow got it in his head that creativity is synonymous with novelty. It need not be rational nor should it be functional it just needs to be something new. Someone should tell this halfwit that this is not creativity, it is a pathological condition in which novelty is pursued for the sake of novelty. People who suffer from this condition might become shopaholics, or change their sexual partners like they change their underwear, or aren’t content with one way of looking at something they have to keep re-inventing new ways of looking at an idea or concept never satisfied or remotely concerned with any real world relation or functionality of that idea. That is not creativity, that is chronic discontent.
Creativity has been mythologized by many quite wrongly if you ask me, creativity is
not magical, it lives in the real world, it has to, if it doesn’t it will invariably lead to madness. As such it must offer us utility, or stimulate our imagination in some fulfilling or productive way otherwise it is aimless and pointless and stupid. We must not allow creativity to become stupid.
this phenomenon is/may be seen in how the PRC and overseas chinese dominate the IMO competitions but china people do NOT dominate fields medals.
2 iranians have won a fields medal. how many china people have won? and one of them was the only woman ever awarded the prize, even though, like chemistry, math majors have been about 50% women for a while (in the US). physics, engineering, and computer science still have few women.
i only count 3 china people and 1 japanese over the last 50 years of the prize. but iran did win the IMO when the PRC refused to compete because it was held in taiwan.
What if you use bricks to peacefully protest? Is that impressive?
what if you leave bricks next to a business you have insurance on?
that’s the wrong fucking link./
why?
i assumed the last link chronologically would be the right one, and i didn’t read it.
but my most recent comment isn’t even on the page!
https://www.unz.com/comments/all/?commenterfilter=Jorge+Videla
here’s the right link as apparently edited by jayman.
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/i-have-a-dream-that-this-is-the-darkness-before-the-race-realist-dawn/#comment-3979576
if peepee weren’t so poor i’d never have to post comments more than once.
bezos is more heroic than gates because gates rich kid and msft shitty monopoly.
but both of them aren’t just 140+. they’re weird. bezos’s laugh and his dick pics and affair with a telemundo anchoress or whatever and gates’s small head, left handedness, absurd voice…
but this is how all rich people used to be in a sense.
from 1945 – 1975 the poor and middle class didn’t hate the rich or envy them or wanna be like them, because rich people were WEIRD.
howard hughes was the richest american/richest non-saudi royal in the world up to his death…
and if his fortune had been invested passively in the s&p at the time of his death…
he’d be a centibillionaire today.
pp’s describing rational creativity which correlates moderately with g.
But there’s also irrational creativity, coming up with crazy out of the box shit, that schizos like phil have a lot of. It probably correlates with IQ but other factors matter more.
Friday is Slater’s nicotine binge day. It helps him get through the week.
I’m on my fifth juul pod and it’s not even 3…
[redacted by pp, June 19, 2020]being asked to resign.
why can’t he sue?
or maybe the msu graduate employees union has bargained for the right to fire people it doesn’t like.
Wow, first that professor Afro allegedly got fired, then hbd chick & now Steve hsu (who never even discussed race differences)
RIP HBD
what professor afro got fired? and what happened to HBD chick?
She was forced to buy a rifle
https://mobile.twitter.com/Afrosapiens_44/status/1236615401871675393/photo/1
Afro didn’t get Winegard fired. The person who sent the email replied to Winegard. What a bad week for “HBD”—Rushton paper retracted, Clark et al paper retracted (FOR using Lynn’s shitty data which SHOULD set a precedent to retract ALL papers that used Lynn’s shitty data) and now Hsu resigned? Not a good week for “HBD.”
Hsu resigned as VP of research and innovation—he still has his tenured position. Yes, “RIP HBD” but not for this reason.
I never thought Afro would be that evil. I thought he was a fair guy trying to fight racism and misuse of HBD theories and also some excessive all nature nothing environement positions of some HBD people.
Writing anonymously to get a scholar fired is really evil. And it’s [redacted by pp, June 20, 2020]
Hope this guy has some personal wealth that allows him to live independently.
[redacted by pp, June 20, 2020]
It would be so much nicer if it was a debate like RR is doing . But I fear that even people like RR would be ok to cancel the opposing side of the argument each time they can.
Well RR is saying Afro wasn’t part of getting him fired so I don’t understand what happened exactly
Also keep in mind that in their eyes HBD is evil because they view it as the spreading of lies (or at least unproven science) to smear entire populations
In his letter, he explains that he was first spotted by a colleague. But what got him fired was the anonymous letter with his twitter account sent to his director and all board of trustee members. It was built to be emotional and corporate oriented.
There is no doubt that Afro got the final dagger in him. What I found admirable is that he [redacted by pp, June 20, 2020] has a measured reaction.
[redacted by pp, June 20, 2020]
Afro would probably say the university has the right to know if one of their employees is using the prestige of their name to advance ideas they don’t endorse & that could hurt their brand
To clarify, Winegard didn’t get “fired”, technically speaking. His contract (tenure-track) just wasn’t renewed.
Bruno,
“It would be so much nicer if it was a debate like RR is doing . But I fear that even people like RR would be ok to cancel the opposing side of the argument each time they can.”
I mean, I do think that IQ tests should be banned since the hereditarian hypothesis is false and believing it is true will bring harm to groups. I don’t think it’s right to get people fired for their views. Hell, that edgy Spanish fascist told me many times that the 4chan trolls have tried to dox me before—I thought the right was against that stuff? In any case, while I do believe this “research” is harmful and should be banned I don’t think people should—within reason—lose their jobs just for holding the belief.
Lynn’s data is clearly good enough since it correlates highly to other databases of human capital etc. A mistake here and there doesn’t invalidate such a large database.
“I do believe this “research” is harmful and should be banned”
People who want racial IQ research banned believe in hereditarianism deep down. If they really didn’t believe in hereditarianism, then they should expect further research to disprove hereditarianism.
I do think that IQ tests should be banned since the hereditarian hypothesis is false
again. how is it actually possible for someone to be as dumb as rr?
i do think medicine should be banned, because so many diseases aren’t hereditary.
“I do think that IQ tests should be banned since the hereditarian hypothesis is false and believing it is true will bring harm to groups.”
LMAO.
See this is why people think you have an axe to grind.
“I do think that guns should be banned since shooting innocent people is wrong and letting people have guns will bring harm to innocent people”
Looks like RR isn’t libertarian after all.
“Lynn’s data is clearly good enough since it correlates highly to other databases of human capital etc. A mistake here and there doesn’t invalidate such a large database.”
Hahaha
“People who want racial IQ research banned believe in hereditarianism deep down. If they really didn’t believe in hereditarianism, then they should expect further research to disprove hereditarianism.”
Hahaha
“i do think medicine should be banned, because so many diseases aren’t hereditary.”
False.
“LMAO.
See this is why people think you have an axe to grind.”
The only axe I have to grind is one that refutes the pseudoscience of hereditarianism. Anyway, I formulated the argument back in like November and asked your thoughts and you didn’t really respond because moral relativism or something.
Actually I responded by telling you that it was ridiculous to blame IQ tests when you should hold those that misuse them accountable.
And as I just demonstrated this logic by using guns as an example same. Remember guns are just tools and cannot be inherently evil or not it depends on the person using them. The same is for IQ tests. It makes no sense to ban them unless you just hate the concept of intelligence in general.
That’s why people think you’re a blank statist, that’s why people misconstrue you’re views constantly. But can you blame them when you espouse such nonsense?
So you’re a fake libertarian.
Anyway, I am under no delusion that any arguments I give will lead to their intended outcomes—I do this for fun because I like reading, debating, and learning new things.
Anyway, I’m not here to debate my belief about the banning of IQ tests—I want to discuss Rushton and Templer, Clark et al, and Hsu.
RR is there any study that could possibly convince you HBD is true?
I know you mean something else when you say “HBD”—I do not deny that humans are biologically diverse (which is why I hate the cooption of the term Marks coined in the 90s for the ‘movement’)—you mean psychological hereditarianism, right?
Is there any possible study that could convince you some races are genetically smarter than others?
I think it’s a nonsense question—I don’t think the genetic transmission of psychological traits/mental abilities is an evidential matter.
Are humans smarter than non-humans?
“HBD” covers a lot of ground, no? I can reject the psych claims while accepting the physical claims (of which there are dozens of examples on my blog).
Are physiological responses to racism also “HBD”? I find it funny that you ask me that question because you know what I do for a living and what I go to school for so I think it’s the wrong question to ask. For the past 3.5 years psychological hereditarianism has been the object of my attack. (Along with EP and other instances in the “HBD” theory like T, aggression, etc.)
See, what does “smarter” and “geneticallty smarter” mean? I try not to have these kinds of conversations anymore because mw and the people in the discussion are too far apart—I think the genetic transmission of psychological traits is impossible and it’s not a scientific matter.
We can discuss any other “HBD” thing you’d like, but I’m bored of IQ again. Probably won’t talk about it for a long time.
I haven’t even got to genetics yet. Just wanted to know if we can even agree humans are smarter than nonhumans (for whatever reason)
RR
Do you believe that some dog breeds are smarter than others?
For example can we assert that border collies are on average smarter than bulldogs?
So if we can take a tamed version of the wolf and in about 10k years turn it into hundreds of dog breeds that are so incredibly diverse in ways that leave us scratching our heads as to how they could possibly be the same species, then would it be fair to assume that in theory a similar type of diversity could be present in humans? In particular as the border collie is smarter than the bulldog could it be possible that some human races are smarter than others? In theory that is, I’m not asking if you believe that is what has occurred, I’m asking you if it is possible.
The question should be “Is there any study that would convince you that psychological hereditarianism is true?”
I don’t really feel like discussing this right now. But PH, what would possibly bring about such differences? I’ll just drop a few more comments on this and stop the discussion.
Fair enough. Not trying to drag you into another tedious debate. Your views are just confusing to me because I know you believe humans evolved from apes which presumably means the human mind evolved too & I don’t understand how you think that happened without mental heritability.
I’m not even trying to argue, I was just curious but no need for an imminent reply. Maybe blog about it some day
Lmao you really don’t buy that shit do you Pumpkin?
He literally says demonstrably incorrect things and then runs away when people call him on his bullshit.
He doesn’t even understand Fodor’s argument.
He thinks words are things.
I was just trying to understand where he’s coming from because our views are so far apart I don’t even know how to respond to him half the time
He’s too far gone.
Most Biologists are proponents of DST. Most Scientists are Property Dualists. But almost none of them take it so literally that it devolves into pure denialism like he has.
Any other “HBD” topics I’m down to discuss, anything but IQ.
the point is you fucking retarded albanian: IQ tests have nothing to do with the heritability of IQ scores. that you conflate IQ with hereditism proves you have an axe to grind because you have a low IQ.
there are 100% legit purposes/uses for soi-disant IQ tests. IQ tests are USEFUL as a means of selection in many cases, like the military, like identifying smart people who are poorly educated and thus score low on achievement tests, supposing this is even possible.
the achievement test/IQ distinction is a “distinction without a difference”, (like the distinction between affiirmative action and quotas and discrimination) and that psychology profs still confuse this purely nominal/verbal distinction with a real distinction demonstrates that pshcyology professors have low IQs.
BUT if someone scored high on some test and low on another that fact should not be ignored in determining his placement and the resources allocated to his education.
let’s have MORE tests and let tests be MORE important in determining selection.
subjective means of selection are by definition unfairly discriminatory.
to “solve” the imperfections of objective means of selection with subjective means is something only a moron or psychopath would advocate or believe in.
the achievement test/IQ distinction is a “distinction without a difference”, (like the distinction between affiirmative action and quotas and discrimination) and that psychology profs still confuse this purely nominal/verbal distinction with a real distinction demonstrates that pshcyology professors have low IQs.
Is there any possible study that could convince you otherwise?
“I think the genetic transmission of psychological traits is impossible”
How have different species ended up with different psychological traits then?
“I don’t think the genetic transmission of psychological traits/mental abilities is an evidential matter.”
If there’s no possible evidence that can change your mind then you aren’t suited to write about empirical research at all.
So RR, there are a few things I do agree with you about. I know you don’t want to talk about IQ but hear me out. For example I am quite opposed to IQ absolutism or a very “ones and zeros” approach to hereditarianism. Any geneticist worth their salt knows that gene expression is somewhat probabilistic while there are so many variables at play that we simply cannot account for them all such that our woefully unsophisticated measurements can be interpreted in any absolute way.
I also agree that IQ absolutism can be harmful to some people. It takes a very flexible mind to wrap itself around certain ideas and concepts and given that a lot of what some scientists(like Murray) say can be taken out of context a young insecure kid can build all sorts of mental blocks from a partial understanding of the topic of IQ. I really do get that but the bottom line for me is the following: if we get everyone on the planet and put them through exactly the same environmental influences and throw at them the best that education nutrition and science can offer(lets assume we are advanced enough to make this happen) what we will eventually see is that some people will still learn faster than others and they will go on to accomplish far more impressive things than others. Their measured IQ’s will be greater and this will virtually be entirely due to their genes(since we have controlled for the environment perfectly).
So that is the theory, of course reality is not that simply which is why the environment has a much greater effect on people but not nearly as much as genes(at least not in advanced nations).
Nevertheless I am strongly opposed to stigmatizing people(some people are more vulnerable than others or have been through more trauma than others which can affect cognition) and i believe people should be given many chances to fully flesh out what they are capable of which is why I agree that IQ tests should not be taken THAT seriously(ie should not be thought of as a number for life, more like a rough estimate) but on the other hand we would be incredibly foolish to dismiss them entirely.
So I am with you in fighting those that want to start strictly dividing people in terms of IQ but I am opposed to you in terms of pretending that a 120 IQ person can accomplish the same stuff a 160 IQ person can. The gap is simply too great.
yes obviously there are FACTS which would convince me the two could be de-convolved…even though they are always convolved.
unlike rr i do not say the distinction CAN’T be real. the distiction is real in the case of computers, supercomputers vs tablets or whatever. but a super computer is just a piece of junk in africa.
what i say is the evidence and my own experience is that existing tests with name “IQ test” can’t suss out the distinction, supposing it exists. and mental chronometry tests aren’t enough…and even they may be the coachable. idk.
i’m not a little albanian girl hiding behind semantics.
Mugabe, I conflate IQ with hereditism because I know the history of “mental tests.”
PP I do believe we descend from a common ancestor with apes—I disagree that mental faculties can be selected for since they’re not physical and due to Fodor’s argument against natural selection. Other than that, I can confidently say “I don’t know”.
Some guy, what is a “psychological trait”? How would nucleotide sequences cause differences in cognitive ability between people? What is the causal relation? Even if they could be selected for, what’s there is still the problem of selection-for and the fact that Darwinian observations are underdetermined by all observations which makes them unverifiable.
PH, regarding your explanation of what hereditarianism is, what do you think about motivational and other similar factors that would affect prep/score outcomes? You seem to be implying that IQ is causally efficacious—how?
RR I think the distinction between physical & mental is useful at one level but ultimately illusory since the brain is a physical organ & thought must be explained by physical processes. The problem is the human brain can not be smarter than itself & thus we may never understand the mechanical process.
I can’t convince you of this because by definition it’s beyond human comprehension but by submitting to this useful assumption, the world seems to make more sense, at least to me
“because I know the history of “mental tests.””
No you don’t.
“I think the genetic transmission of psychological traits is impossible” – RR
“Some guy, what is a “psychological trait”?” – RR
Why are you first making claims about X and afterwards asking what X is? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_theory
” How would nucleotide sequences cause differences in cognitive ability between people? What is the causal relation?”
I’ve answered that before: Genes code for proteins. Proteins make up the brain. Cognitive differences are caused by brain differences: https://inductivist.blogspot.com/2019/08/study-you-can-tell-if-someone-is-smart.html That’s why brain damage affects mental traits…
It’s no different than how genes cause skin color differences. Genes code for the proteins that make up the skin. Different proteins reflect light differently.
You surely know this but you’re mired in mumbo-jumbo. The empirical results are what they are regardless of whatever philosophical problems you can think of. It’s like if you learned about Zeno’s Arrow Paradox* and you started believing that all motion really is impossible, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Metaphysical problems” or whatever it is you struggle with have never stopped science before. Plenty of people thought AI would never beat humans in Go right up until it did because the game supposedly needed “human creativity” or something. You’re denying something that already has a ton of evidence. Will you believe it when genetically modified people who clearly differ from normal humans in whatever traits they were engineered to differ are standing right in front of you? What about when polygenic scores can accurately diagnose mental disabilities and disorders?
*In the arrow paradox, Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (duration-less) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not.[16] It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
PP, I hold a similar view. I believe we can never know how the mind arose. I believe that since the mental is not physical then any attempted physical definition is by definition a fool’s errand. If we can’t describe something using only physical words then it is immaterial and that is what the mind is.
Some guy, yes I am asking you what a psych trait is. The brain is a necessary pre-condition for human mindedness but not a sufficient condition and this is why brain damage affects the mental. Skin color is a physiological (physical) trait—“IQ/intelligence” is not. And buddy, don’t cite Inductivist. I don’t take motivated racists seriously.
“PH, regarding your explanation of what hereditarianism is, what do you think about motivational and other similar factors that would affect prep/score outcomes?”
Of course motivation matters, everyone and their dog knows this. We all have a sense of what we are capable of and what it takes psychologically to be at our best. The assumption is however that most reasonable people make sure that they are at their best(or close enough to it) when taking an IQ test. Some people are better at handling this than others(ie timing their energy output focus and motivation accordingly) and though some could argue(semi-validly) that being consistent and reliably producing the goods is also another aspect of intelligence that potentially all tests, test for, I am willing to admit that there are so many extenuating circumstances that it would be unfair to mercilessly judge people on a singular bad performance(which may just so happen to be on IQ test day).
Some people are more neurotic than others, some can handle pressure less well than others, some people’s performance is far more variable than others and vulnerable to external factors. I am fully prepared to admit these things have an effect on performance of any kind. The thing is however that our education system does account for this somewhat, after all we have been trained on taking tests from a very young age and taught how to compartmentalize personal issues and perform adequately on call. This lesson in life is very valuable and most will do well to take it to heart. Life very often does not give us second chances, life doesn’t care if we have other personal issues, life just keeps trotting along weather we are keeping up with it or not. Developing a tough mindset and learning how to be a performer come rain or shine is vital to success and most people know this and put their heads down and keep powering through no matter what(90%+ of people). It’s all about building character and having the right attitude and if you are fortunate enough to have the right teachers and mentors in life you will realize that getting caught up in excuses(however valid they are) is generally a step in the wrong direction. People CAN(and should) learn how to deal with their performance issues, life is too short to be hampered by such things. Though we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of powering through life by disregarding reality(which is a coping mechanism that some people adopt) the idea is to power through life despite of it…. sure, acknowledging/addressing some valid excuses, but also errors and making sure to put them in the proper context and above all not getting too caught up in them.
“You seem to be implying that IQ is causally efficacious—how?”
Multiple studies showing the correlation of income to IQ, life success to IQ and the OBVIOUS conclusion any reasonable person would arrive at in working out that all else equal(attitude to life, motivation, character, perseverance, luck etc) a person who has a higher IQ tends to solve all sorts of problems along the way a lot faster and a lot more effectively than a person with a lower IQ. It’s all about making small gains that over a long period of time add up to huge disparities.
PS: Some people not only disregard reality, they go as far as to deny reality altogether. Though this coping mechanism may work for a short while, in the long run it may prove to be catastrophic to the individual but even more tragically to society at large. Reality is reality, whether we like it or not. Our duty is to make real substantive progress by accounting for reality not pretending to make progress by discounting it.
“Some guy, yes I am asking you what a psych trait is.”
First you make claims about psych traits, then when I answer you suddenly you’re confused about what they are. Seems like you intentionally become confused about terms whenever you want to weasel out of an argument. Well, I linked you an answer what psych traits are.
“The brain is a necessary pre-condition for human mindedness but not a sufficient condition and this is why brain damage affects the mental. Skin color is a physiological (physical) trait—“IQ/intelligence” is not.”
The skin is a necessary pre-condition for skin color but not a sufficient condition, since there also needs to be light and someone to see the skin. Color is in the eye of the beholder after all, unlike wavelengths, so why do you consider it a physical trait but not IQ?
“And buddy, don’t cite Inductivist. I don’t take motivated racists seriously.”
So read the study yourself: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/E5749#sec-1
Why do heritability estimates give similar results for many physical and physiological traits, if only physical traits are heritable? And don’t just say heritability estimates are flawed, explain how they are flawed in such a way as to give that specific result.
Do you believe who a sperm donor is has no effect on the psychological traits of the resulting person?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Some guy, RR is an endangered species of Sea lion who can only repeat refuted arguments ad nauseasm.
Some guy, maybe you can explain how you can get around the Berka/Nash measurement objection. Are psychological traits physical traits? Anything that cannot be described in material terms using only words that described material properties is immaterial. The self cannot be described in material terms using only words that describe material properties. Therefore the self is immaterial. “Some thing” is being measured by personality and IQ tests, right? The test/questionnaire is designed first and then they set out to “find the meaning” of the numbers that generated—thinking that “some thing” is generally being “measured.” You seem to also be claiming that mind-brain identity theory is true—what’s the argument? That’s not a causal relation regarding gene > IQ and you know it. I’d rather not get into skin color physiology. Look it up. IQ isn’t a physical trait in virtue of (supposedly) being a mental ability. The way heritability estimates are generated are fatally flawed and we therefore should not accept the genetic conclusions argued for.
PH, correlation isn’t causation. Even assuming “equalized environments”, it is erroneous to then claim that “genes cause IQ” (a supposed psychological trait/mental ability).
This is my last reply. I owe PP a reply should he respond and I owe Melo one reply when he responds. If anyone wants to discuss Rushton and Clark et al retraction I’ll discuss that an just about anything else but psychology.
believe it or not the mezzogirono did produce one thinker esteemed by some.
Giambattista Vico.
getting the right answer vs the wrong answer.
getting the right answer in 10 s vs 20 s.
winning a chess game.
these are physical.
for behavioralism the mind is a ding-an-sich, a black box, but it shows itself in behavior.
using rr’s mafia logic he is the only person on earth. everyone else is an automaton.
behavior is the phenomena occasioned by the ding-an-sich, the mind.
Of course psychology is ultimately just physics because everything is just physics. https://xkcd.com/435/
“IQ isn’t a physical trait in virtue of (supposedly) being a mental ability.”
This is just a semantic distinction, a way of categorizing things to make them easier to talk about.
“The way heritability estimates are generated are fatally flawed”
And yet you never explain how those flaws just happen to lead to the result that hereditarians expect. Hereditarian predictions about the world keep being right, while everyone else keeps being wrong.
“PH, correlation isn’t causation. Even assuming “equalized environments”, it is erroneous to then claim that “genes cause IQ” (a supposed psychological trait/mental ability).”
What? Correlation is NOT causation. As in there are absolutely no instances where a correlation exists due to a causal relationship between the variables in question? That is one of the most ill informed statements i have heard in quite a while from a supposed non amateur no less. Remember, that saying “correlation is not causation” is not meant to be taken literally and is used to deprogram first year psych/statistics students. What is alluded by that rather idiotic statement is that correlation is not necessarily due to causation….but very often it is.
Height is a physical variable, brain size is a physical variable, the ability to dunk is a performative variable positively causally linked to height, the ability to score high on IQ tests is a performative variable positively causally linked to brain size. Both brain size and height are coded for by our genes, ergo there is a causal link of genes to IQ(not perfect, there is a lot more at play but surely you understand the nature of the correlation). See how simple that is, how do you not get this man? If not genes once the environment has been controlled for then what is it that allows for IQ differences, magic?
If I jump in the air it could either be because
a) I produced enough force to push my body away from the earth
or
b) I produced enough force to push the earth away from my body
or
c) both a and b
If we know for a fact that the earth is far too massive for me to have any impact on it whatsoever then which is it, a) b) or c)?
In the above example the massive earth is akin to controlling for the environment in our IQ experiment.
PS: I never claimed that “genes cause IQ” I said that genes are responsible for IQ….by coding for quantitative and qualitative aspects of the brain which then allow for a certain level of cognition which is the variable tested by IQ tests. This last part is implied when i say genes are “responsible” for IQ.
You really are not a very bright person RR, I’m sorry to say, nice you are, bright you are not. Running into walls like this all the time must not be good for your ego, why do you keep doing it?
Some guy, psychology doesn’t reduce to physics—physicalism is false and the mental is irreducible to and underdetermined by the brain so these “things” can’t be selected-for. Psychometry isn’t science.
Melo, if people think I’m a “blank slatist” for that reason then that’s their foolishness. Such tests are used to mark social value and in effect attempt to justify social inequalities.
PH, in lieu of a causal relation between the mental and the physical, such reduction is impossible. I obviously said what I said about correlation because just because there is a relation doesn’t mean it’s a causal relation—you would need to explain how SNPs are caudalt regarding IQ. In any case, such an experiment to establish the so-called causal relation between IQ and genotype is impossible and psychphysical reduction is impossible—refuted by dozens of arguments.
It’s not their fault that you can’t properly explain yourself without sounding like a retard.
“Such tests are used to mark social value and in effect attempt to justify social inequalities.”
No dumbass, they’re used to mark intelligence which some people derive social value from.
WHY ARE MY COMMENTS APPEARING OUT OF TIME ORDER?
You’re the only one struggling with the comment section. It’s not a conspiracy but sadly it could be cognitive decline
all of these comments are HILARIOUS…
from haifa.
“refuted by dozens of arguments.”
There’s your problem: you think an argument can refute an experiment, when experiments are what settle arguments.
Again, I’m curious to whether you believe who a sperm donor is has no effect on the psychological traits of the resulting person? Would you care whether your children were your own biologically, since it won’t affect them mentally? Might as well just get the best looking, healthiest man you can find to father them eh? What about the heritability of mental illness, is that also impossible?
RR
Are you one one of those people that is incapable of connecting the dots? I would suggest you study Aristotelian syllogisms.
What is “caudalt”? Did you mean causal?
Do you agree that genes/SNPs code for height, hair color skin color, and all physical aspects of human beings?
Would this coding extend to the brain? For example is there a gene(s) that codes for the size of the cranial vault and size of brain? A gene(s) that codes for the size of the frontal lobe, the gray matter to white matter ratio, the level of myelination, the mechanisms that produce neurotransmitters and by extension the quality and amount of neurotransmitters, any and all physical aspects of the brain that directly or indirectly bring about cognition?
Is neural activity in the brain(among other things) responsible for thinking? Is this neural activity brought about by mechanisms that were coded for by our genes? Is the ability to think what produces cognition? Is cognition what IQ tests are testing for?
If you can answer yes to the above questions then you already know the answer to the gene to IQ relationship and you are one of two things.
a) Playing dumb in order to serve your contrarianism and inability to accept that you backed the wrong horse with regard to the IQ debate.
b) You are experiencing cognitive dissonance of epic proportions and are employing olympic levels of cognitive dissonance reduction to prevent your brain from turning to mush.
Evidence is irrelevant to a priori arguments. Mind-brain identity is false. You’re confused if you think genes “code for” anything.
You didn’t make any priori arguments.
The concept of a word is generated by the words usage.
Words and concepts do not encapsulate reality.
The brain is the mind in the same way that H2O is water even though they are distinct concepts.
And there are many different ways to formulate Fodor’s argument. Selection-for is intensional so one would have to explain how, sans laws and an agent doing the selecting, traits can be “selected-for” leading fixation in biological populations.
See, even if Fodor’s argument is correct, it doesn’t mean traits are not selected for. In fact it’s pretty well established that we can elucidate a trait’s selection history. All Fodor proposes is that TNS has nothing to do with said elucidation because it cannot distinguish coextensive traits.
Fodor is not making an argument regarding ontology. So his argument is completely irrelevant to whether Psychological traits can be inherited.
I guess it’s b) then.
Bloody lunatic.
Some questions for you RR out of curiosity:
1. Roughly how many people have you argued about this kind of stuff with online?
2. Roughly how much time have you spent on it?
3. What fraction of the hereditarians you’ve argued with have come to understand your position that genetics don’t affect the mind?
4. Would you agree with this statement: “A cognitive test is to the brain what a sprint is to legs”?
Alright I’ll bite, what’s the function of genes then if not to code for the human body.
That is it’s function. RR hides behind semantics like a coward because he can’t prove a point any other way.
He’ll say “GeNes aRe jUsT sLaVeS tO pHySioLoGicAl sYsTeMs”, be absolutely correct, and still not contradict what you said in any way, shape, or form.
He literally doesn’t know the difference between words and things.
Selection-for is intensional so one would have to explain how, sans laws and an agent doing the selecting, traits can be “selected-for” leading fixation in biological populations.
rr is either misspelling “intentional” or misusing “intensional”.
the laws of gravity, electro-magnetism, the weak force, and the strong force are intentional so one would have to explain how it is possible for someone to be as dumb as rr.
“Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions”
Would you mind the nickname “Sea Lion”, RR? 🙂
Some Guy, King meLo
Well he did not answer ANY of my questions, he just kept coming back to me with the most disjointed, removed from reality argument(if you can even call it that) in an attempt to obfuscate the crux of the issue and try to sound clever at which point I realized either this guy is a moron or he is just fucking with me. Well I don’t have time for neither, while I’m sure that even if i was charitable enough to address his point(thereby giving a level of credence to his non-argument it did not deserve, however marginal) I’m sure his next move would have been to deny the existence of reality itself in order to get out of that one. The guy is a complete buffoon who nevertheless has a blog, that people take seriously?
rr’s not trolling in my opinion (though he does like to debate for debate’s sake), he just had his Road to Damascus moment in rejecting Jensenism and went so far to the opposite extreme that he now rejects all evolutionary psychology, all psychometrics and even the mildest forms of genetic determinism. This is classic fervour of the converted behavior.
Part of the problem is semantic. Some refer to genes as only the protein coding strips of DNA while others use the term to refer to all DNA variants. RR also obsesses over the word “cause”, how can we prove A caused B? How can we prove natural selection caused a trait to evolve? What does cause even mean?
Lastly, he exploits the fact that humans don’t understand how the physical causes the mental to argue that the mind can’t be fully explained by the physical brain.
Yes I know the history of mental tests, I’ll let you find the a priori argument, the brain is not the mind because psychophysical reduction is impossible, along with the impossibility of trait fixation through selection, the fact that mind brain identity theory is false is another reason why EP fails (Fodor’s original reason for formulating his argument against NS), yea they are used to attempt to justify social value, to justify social positions.
Some guy, (1) I’ll just make it even and say about 50. (2) it’s a hobby of mine so I spend some of my free time on it whether it’s debating about it or reading about it. (3) ~5 percent. (4) No. https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/12/30/athletic-ability-and-iq/
PH, genes (DNA sequences) aren’t a code, “GeNes aRe jUsT sLaVeS tO pHySioLoGicAl sYsTeMs”, and due to the impossibility of psychophysical reduction, they can’t cause/influence psychological traits.
Take this as my last reply. I won’t respond.
Anyway, Winegard didn’t get fired—his contract didn’t get renewed though some could see that as a firing. PP when did that stuff with hbd chick happen? Was it recent? And Hsu still has a tenured spot at MSU, he just resigned from his other position. How is this exactly “RIP HBD”? Now when it comes to Rushton’s BS and Clark et al getting retracted, that is grounds for saying “RIP HBD”, since precedents are being set against shitty “HBD theorizing.”
I thought it happened recently since she mentioned it this month, but turns out it was over 8 years ago.
“PH, genes (DNA sequences) aren’t a code, “GeNes aRe jUsT sLaVeS tO pHySioLoGicAl sYsTeMs”, and due to the impossibility of psychophysical reduction, they can’t cause/influence psychological traits.”
Of course they can, first of all not enough is known about the full genome to assert definitively what the full role of our genes is. Some 2% of the genome is responsible for coding for proteins which are the building blocks of 50% of the human body(including the brain). The rest of the genome is largely unknown but is now thought to in part code for how much of a specific protein to code for depending on the part of the body. Essentially they control the switching on and off of genes responsible for building proteins depending on how much are needed for each body part. Kind of like building a house and knowing that the kitchen needs x amount of concrete and the bedroom needs less and so on and so forth. This gives us a clearer picture of how genes act as the blueprint of the human body(including the brain). In other words the 2% is responsible for coding for the raw materials while the rest is responsible for which raw material to use and how much and in what configuration it is needed for each body part.
Now I hear you arguing(in your characteristic reductio ad absurdum style) well genes just build the brain they don’t tell the brain how to function(ie your forced dichotomy of psychology and the physical). Alright einstein, lets say a particular blueprint instructs us how to design left turning cars. All this car can do is turn left, that is if it is going to do something it can only turn left. Are these restrictive parameters capable of giving us predictive power as to where that car is likely to be at any one time? Perhaps not where it could be exactly but for sure we can start crossing areas out where it definitely couldn’t be and we can work out it’s range. Now, while this may sound ludicrous(to build a car that only turns left) once we add this to a system where there are right turning cars, and all sorts we start to allow for greater and greater flexibility until we arrive at something that is collectively as complicated as the human brain and while the original singular blueprint for left turning cars could not have possibly anticipated the full complexity it was being recruited for when seen as a part of a much larger whole it starts to make sense.
Now the fact that we can identify the blueprint for left turning cars gives us the ability to gain insight of at least one parameter of the system(say our ultimate goal is to predict traffic patterns akin to predicting behavioral/psychological patterns) and if we identify enough of these blueprints we start to build a picture of the greater system. If the blueprint coded for a super car that had absolutely no limits as to what it could do then I could accept your argument that the car’s behavior is not necessarily dictated by the blueprint(in an identifiable/predictive way) but since we have countless such mini blueprints of single operation cars we CAN say that a set of genes code for certain range of behaviors(either collectively) or even singularly given that they allow for only a specific type of function. An example of this could be the part of the brain that is responsible for hearing, or controlling your toes etc etc. These functions had to have been coded for by specific genes(protein genes plus on/off genes for specific areas of the brain) otherwise they would randomly be positioned in different parts of the brain for different people. The fact that most people have brain regions responsible for specific functions means there is a common coding between all these people.
This by necessity implies that psychology arises from the brain which itself arises from the coding dictated by the genome. At least in principle while of course given that the brain is an interactive organ the environment also injects it’s influences.
Note that there is simply no part of the body which our genes via the coding for amino acids, does not produce and regulate(including our neurotransmitters). In other words even our brain chemistry is to a large extent genetic.
Comprende my dimwitted friend?
PH, nonsense: cats have blueprints, organisms don’t.
PP, didn’t she say that SSC banned the word “HBD” which banned her in his blog?
LMAO
You didn’t even get the point
“rr’s not trolling in my opinion (though he does like to debate for debate’s sake), he just had his Road to Damascus moment in rejecting Jensenism and went so far to the opposite extreme that he now rejects all evolutionary psychology, all psychometrics and even the mildest forms of genetic determinism. This is classic fervour of the converted behavior.
Part of the problem is semantic. Some refer to genes as only the protein coding strips of DNA while others use the term to refer to all DNA variants. RR also obsesses over the word “cause”, how can we prove A caused B? How can we prove natural selection caused a trait to evolve? What does cause even mean?
Lastly, he exploits the fact that humans don’t understand how the physical causes the mental to argue that the mind can’t be fully explained by the physical brain.”
I agree with your evaluation of my views.
“cats” cats=cars
So about 5% out of 50 hereditarians have understood your position, Sea Lion. 2 to 3 people. What do you attribute our lack of understanding to? Are people like Pumpkin and Melo not smart enough? Open-minded enough? Rational enough? Haven’t read enough of the right stuff?
“and due to the impossibility of psychophysical reduction, they can’t cause/influence psychological traits.”
Utter hogwash, you are quite literally one of the dumbest people on this blog. What do you mean impossibility of psychophysical reduction. Are you saying that our psychology is removed from the physical function of our brain? Where’s your evidence for this? If so where does our psychology exist if not within a physical realm(in this instance our brain) like everything else in our universe?
Are you fucking insane? If i slap you across the face, do you feel anything? How is that pain generated? Does that pain affect your psychology? How does your psychology then affect your body? If you can answer these questions without establishing a psychophysical connection then I might be willing to entertain your drivel. Oh and one more thing, you’re not allowed to cite magic as a possible mechanism, I want you to use physics and chemistry or any other verifiable proven scientific principle to explain this to me.
I am developing a growing disdain for psychologists or most people involved in psychology, it seems to me they are all too often scraping the bottom of the barrel when recruiting “pioneers” in their field.
PP
“Lastly, he exploits the fact that humans don’t understand how the physical causes the mental to argue that the mind can’t be fully explained by the physical brain.”
No no no, that is not what he is doing, he is using the fact that we might not be able to explain things fully and impeccably when it comes to the brain-psychology connection as a reason to reject the purpose of DNA and the connection of DNA to cognitive function(by extension IQ). He then concludes that genes have nothing to do with IQ and IQ itself is not a valid way of measuring intelligence. In fact I’m pretty sure he has rejected the notion of intelligence altogether.
This would be like claiming gravity does not exist because we have yet to come up with a fundamental explanation of how it is brought about and if we were to come up with a good explanation rejecting reality itself might be the next step for a psychotic fool like RR. Problem is gravity is something we measure and has very real implications in our lives(just like IQ). Of course he does not even bother to address this massive hole in his theory.
“he just had his Road to Damascus moment in rejecting Jensenism”
This is not a road to Damascus moment, it’s a mental breakdown.
“RR also obsesses over the word “cause”, how can we prove A caused B? How can we prove natural selection caused a trait to evolve? What does cause even mean?”
What does prove even mean? What does trait even mean? What does even, even mean? There is simply no end to this idiot’s insanity.
The guy is either a troll of epic proportions or he may just be one of the dumbest people to own a blog. So if you think he’s not trolling then….
But no, he’s a troll with sociopathic tendencies(i think he enjoys fucking with people’s heads). Q.E.D.
PH, seeing how emotional you get at words on a screen makes my day. Seeing you call me “the dumbest person on this blog” and whatever else you say about my character cracks me up.
It’s not “utter hogwash”—if psychology doesn’t reduce to the brain then psychphysical reduction is impossible and it is defeated by many, many a priori arguments. You can… You know… Stop talking to me and stop talking about me if I’m “the dumbest person on this blog” and if I’m “dimwitted” why are you talking to me? Physicalism is false. Mind-brain identity is false. So if they are false then, by proxy, hereditarianism is false to and mental traits cannot be genetically transmitted.
Enjoy your week guys.
Psycho-physical reductionism is not an ontological question.
I hope you have a good week too, try to relax you seem pretty angry.
“you seem pretty angry”
You meant to type that to PH, not me, as nothing in any of my comments indicates that I “seem pretty angry.”
Well he’s angry too. I can see why though Lol.
You do seem angry, from the way you responded throughout the conversation.
The fake laughs, ignoring counterpoints, claiming your bored of an argument you started, etc.
It just seems like you’re upset is all. So as I said, relax, enjoy your week,and maybe we can pick up when you’re ready to have a real discussion.
“Physicalism is false. Mind-brain identity is false. So if they are false then, by proxy, hereditarianism is false to and mental traits cannot be genetically transmitted.”
Evidence, proof? You can’t just say things this outlandish without even providing a modicum of evidence.
I could claim that because we don’t know definitively how the universe came to be and why, then the big bang theory is false by extension general relativity is false, quantum physics is false and in fact the universe lies on the back of a giant turtle(this last bit i added for effect, everything else is perfectly equivalent to the type of claims you are making) but none of what i claim holds any water until i prove it.
My insults are an attempt to wake you up, but it seems there is absolutely zero chance for that either because you are literally brain dead or you are fucking with everyone(methinks the latter).
“PH, seeing how emotional you get at words on a screen makes my day. Seeing you call me “the dumbest person on this blog” and whatever else you say about my character cracks me up.”
Yup thought so! You just proved my point about you being a troll. You’re a bigger troll than Kimcubine. The only other option is that you’re retarded so if i were you I’d adopt the troll shtick(if for some wild reason you aren’t really a troll).
Melo, the arguments that refute psychophysical reduction are a priori. PH, haha stay mad at words on a screen.
Post this one Pumpkin.
Are any of them not intensional fallacies?
That still doesn’t mean psychophysical reduction is ontological.
We both believe that Biology is not reducible to Physics, correct?
We also both believe that Biology does not violate any Physical laws and is subservient to them correct?
If you say yes to both of these then you should in theory understand what people mean when they say that P=M.
The problem, I think, is that you’re switching between these two types of dualism with no regard to how each one has completely different implications on what we know about our world.
What kind of dualist are you?
Predicate? Property? Answering this will allow our conversations to run much more smoothly.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#VarDuaOnt
one thing that would make rr angry…a columbus statue is taken down in NYC.
“columbus day” is really just “st patrick’s day for guineas”.
“PH, haha stay mad at words on a screen.”
You’re a child. I’m not angry, I find all this quite entertaining, it’s not every day you find someone with such a woeful grasp of fundamental topics yet weaves them together with the confidence of an aerialist….that is incapable of proper debate nor of adequately substantiating his claims yet pretends to have some higher knowledge bolstered with a conviction no sane person that is this cognitively inert should have. I honestly think you should be studied by psychologists cause something ain’t right upstairs.
RR
You should not be reading stuff you are ill equipped to understand. I realize now what your problem is, you probably waste many hours a day reading various books on psychology, philosophy, possibly biology(but probably not math/chemistry/physics i suspect your science understanding is at best around the 7th grade level) filling your head up with all sorts of improperly categorized/managed knowledge and not once thought of verifying whether you properly understood what you read. This is why i keep telling you that you should start testing yourself, try a game, try a math course or a physics course, something that will allow you to re-calibrate your self belief and appreciation of where your abilities lie and hopefully start addressing some of your gaps in knowledge and understanding instead of torturing people online with your off key nonsensical responses and inability to properly engage in debate.
RR, doesn’t actually understand half of what he reads
It’s pretty funny.
One last thing and I’m done with this conversation(some people are beyond help). Lets just say that your dualism stands, that in fact the mind lives outside the physical world. Nevertheless this mind would still have to interact with the real world and even more so the body that accompanies that mind. In fact it would be fair nay necessary to argue that the body(ie brain) is what gives rise to the mind. After all how do we explain brain damage, the correlation of brain waves to thinking and mood the fact that tinkering with different parts of the brain can have real world effects on the mind, the different brain sizes and structures of different animals which bring rise to starkly different behaviors and abilities. So if the brain brings rise to the mind(even in a non physical form) this implies that the architecture of the brain has a great influence on the mind and what is it that dictates that architecture, yes that’s right our DNA. So you can differentiate the mind from the brain all you want but you can never sever the link of DNA to the mind as long as the mind depends on the brain in order to exist.
This is elementary stuff and i never touched on it because i gave you enough credit to have already known it. It seems i overestimated your abilities.
RR, only endorses interactionism when it is convenient for him.
King meLo
“RR, doesn’t actually understand half of what he reads
It’s pretty funny.”
Right, that is, when he’s not reading rubbish books(which appears to be quite often). He seems to be able to assimilate intellectual garbage quite well, it’s the moderate to high quality stuff that he appears to have trouble understanding.
“RR, only endorses interactionism when it is convenient for him.”
Convenience seems to be his modus operandi, only answers questions that are convenient to address. Engages in proper debate only when it’s convenient, the rest of the time it’s single nonsensical sentences designed to get a rise out of someone. Conveniently cherry picks various principles(even contradictory ones) and attaches them to his half baked ideas only to deny these principles at the next opportune moment.
You never know what you are going to get with this guy. Which is why I’m convinced he’s trolling, i refuse to believe that someone could be this dumb yet have a level of conviction and perseverance to rival the most prolific scientist.
If P = M then the mental is physical. But many a priori arguments refute the claim that P = M. So the mental isn’t physical.
Facts about what it is like to have any experience are (irreducibly) subjective, they have first person experience inseparably attached to them. But physical facts are objective. Therefore qualia facts aren’t physical facts.
Physical parts of the natural world lack intentionality, meaning they are not “about” anything in the same way thoughts are. No arrangement of intentionality-less parts will ever count as having intentionality. Therefore a mind cannot be an arrangement of physical parts.
There are two arguments for you guys against the reduction of mind to brain. The mind is irreducible to and underdetermined by the brain.
PumpkinHead haha are you still going on about your bullshit? Hahaha. The brain is a necessary pre-condition for human mindedness but not a sufficient condition so that explains what you bring up—talk about simple.
And PH I never argued that disembodied minds are possible. You need physical facts to have any mental facts at all.
RR, even if you don’t believe DNA differences cause mental differences, doesn’t the mere fact that DNA differences PREDICT mental differences mean that nature could select for mental differences? That if the “smartest” apes consistently have certain genomic variants, and the smartest apes are more likely to survive & pass on these variants, wouldn’t smart behavior become more common, regardless of what’s driving the correlation.
Yea that’s the “natural selection” argument—even if I assume that there could be selection for mental traits there is still the fact that the mental is irreducible to and underdetermined by the physical and the fact that “natural selection” for specific traits leading to trait fixation is impossible.
“Selection-for” is an intensional contexts and that presupposes either a mind or laws of selection that can distinguish between causes and correlates of causes.
Priori to experimental manipulation,
If natural selection explains the fixation of phenotypic traits in biological populations, then it must be possible for selection to distinguish between traits that cause fitness and traits that are merely correlated with the traits that cause correlations with fitness.
If T and T’ are correlated traits, then the distinction between selection for T and T’ depends on counterfactuals about which of the traits would be selected in a possible world where the correlation doesn’t hold.
The truth-makers for the counterfactuals are either (i) the intensions of the agent that are doing the selecting or (ii) laws governing the relative fitness of having T or T’ in a possible world where the correlation doesn’t hold.
~ (i) since there is no agent of selection; ~ (ii) since contextual-sensitivity renders it unlikely that there are general laws of relative fitness that hold across all ecologies. Thus, natural selection doesn’t explain the fixation of phenotypic traits in biological populations.
I actually explained this to him like a year ago.
He erroneously believes that Fodor’s argument circumvents this. Fodor’s arguments, if assumed as true, only go as far to establish that NS cannot be an explanatory theory of individual trait selection. It does not imply that trait fixation from exogenous influence does not actually occur. We know it does, all Fodor argues is that TNS does not. He makes this abundantly clear in his book and his responses to other critiques. I can also provide quotes from RR agreeing with this assertion too if you’d like, but as I and PH said, he’s dishonest.
Something I find pretty funny is that Fodor himself disagrees with RR about his contentions on the natural selection of mental traits. Fodor was a predicate dualist, meaning he believed that there was ontologically only one substance but that you could not break mental predicates down through physical descriptions. Most scientists agree with this view.
RR takes this a step further : Until the early part of the twentieth century, it was common to think that biological phenomena (‘life’) required property dualism (an irreducible ‘vital force’), but nowadays the special physical sciences other than psychology are generally thought to involve only predicate dualism. In the case of mind, property dualism is defended by those who argue that the qualitative nature of consciousness is not merely another way of categorizing states of the brain or of behaviour, but a genuinely emergent phenomenon.
So it’s a type of argument from ignorance that creationists sometimes used to defend their drivel.
I should also note that this idea that RR has that priori arguments cannot be refuted by empirical evidence or do not need empirical evidence is itself a controversial view within philosophy.
Yo PH, this is just a hobby for me. Whatever you say to me is funny to me because you don’t know me. I believe the mind is irreducible to and underdetermined by the brain. I believe psychological states can’t be selected and genetically transmitted. These beliefs arise from a priori arguments. I study nutrition so you think I don’t read (oR uNdErStAnD) chemistry? Hahaha.
PH just stop responding to me and stop reading what I write—it’d save you a lot of time and mental (physical? Haha) anguish.
PH here’s an example of my expertise. I oh so hope it passes your smell test.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/02/20/strength-and-neuromuscular-coordination/
I wrote this paper for a reasoning course.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/12/17/correlation-and-causation-regarding-the-etiology-of-lung-cancer/
Here’s my professor’s comments:
Initial Argument: 3/3 – Good work here
Research: 2/3 – Draw parallels to the textbook more clearly
New Argument: 3/3
Writing: 3/3
Assignment: 3/3
Total:14/15 = 93%
LOL, RR is so mad he’s posting college papers to “prove” he’s not a dumbass
LOL I’m posting my college papers to “prove” that my writing and argumentation are, obviously, up to standard.
But I thought they were just “words on a screen” RR? Why do you feel like you have to prove yourself?
And only 93%? Wow what a dumbass, LMAO
Why not? And yea, 93%—I got an A in the class.
PH why do you care about my education, what I do for a living and what I do in my free time? Seems irrelevant to PP’s blog.
fichte might’ve asked not “how does the mind arise from inanimate matter?” but “how does inanimate matter arise from the mind?”
to be is to be perceived. esse est percipi.
everyone with a mind knows what mind is. no one knows what the physical is. kant called it the thing-in-itself which occasions phenomena. fichte and hegel asked, “why do we need this thing-in-itself at all?” it’s impossible to get outside one’s own mind, so what does it even mean to say, “there are things outside my mind.”? rr makes me more sympathetic to solopsism as rr obviously doesn’t have a mind. he fails the turing test. he isn’t even a chinese room.
rr is so not an actually existing mind, that he takes courses in “reasoning”.
philosophy is merely a genre of belle lettres. anilingus “philosophers” don’t be unnunstannin dis yo.
it’s funny how anilingus “philosophers” are just failed mathematicians and linguists. if you’re interested in mathematical logic/formal semantics/formal linguistics/etc. you don’t get a baby degree in anilingus “philosophy”; you get a degree in math or computer science. drrr!
So whatever the outcome is, how does “natural selection” predict it?
there is no argument you stupid albanian cunt.
there is descent with modification.
and this modification is spoke of as if the effect of “natural selection”.
focusing on words and not things is low IQ. the term “natural selection” is merely a piece in a language game.
the game as a whole explains a lot of things.
rr is like a guy who thinks chess is boring because the queen is the strongest piece.
the problem with darwinism as a theory is the time scale of evolution is so long any lab expirements have to be via artificial/human scientist imposed selection.
rr’s professor:

peepee,
do you know why jay man is moderating comments for unz?
do you work with him in haifa?
FACTS:
1. i posted a comment via a proxy on derb’s latest at unz. a proxy ip i’ve used many times after unz banned mine.
2. my fake email and name…i’d never used before…except maybe here i used the name “The Mountain”.
and whoever moderates comments replaced my name with “jorge videla” and linked it to a bunch of comments i’d made in 2013 on jayman’s blog, BEFORE i’d ever commented at unz!
3. the black guy screwed up or he was never black. pathetic.
https://www.unz.com/jman/keeping-it-real/#comment-1062624
You can’t hide behind a sock puppet. Your writing style & opinions are too distinctive
I TYPE CTRL+F AND THEN “AWAITING MODERATION” AND ONLY ONE COMMENT COMES UP?
that is, you have to measure something which is partially independent of biography and then you have to show that this something is correlated with higher achievement.
[redacted by pp, june 24, 2020]
an example of one finding which must be found:
1.
group A vs group B
certain physical measures of the brain over which the individual has no control are higher in group A than in group B
group A’s childhood biography is much worse than group B’s by every measure.
group A outperforms group B across the board on IQ/achievement tests.
2.
these same brain differences performance correlation is repeated across the universe.
In the Minnesota transracial adoption study adopted blacks did about 0.66 SD better on a scholastic test than on the WAIS
According to Lynn, a study found verbal IQ benefited more from adoption than performance IQ
A study of canal boat kids who were kept out of school found that performance IQ declined much more precipitously with age (a proxy for missed school) than Stanford Binet IQ
The gap between adults & kids is much greater on Vocabulary than on block design, suggesting the former is more experience dependent
1)Grass is to cattle as bread is to?
2)Pupil is to teacher as Aristotle is to?
In theory the first question measures fluid ability while the second measures crystallized (in the general U.S. population)
Achievement tests seem more loaded in crystallized though they could be quite fluid if everyone taking them took AP classes
Although it might be unfair to dismiss crystallized tests as achievement tests while crowning fluid tests as real brain power. A high crystallized score may reflect a good long-term memory rather than just a cultural edge
yes.
i will REPEAT.
such FACTS MUST be found to distinguish ability to achieve vs achievement.
MUST.
but group A especially outperforms on tests which market/brand theyownselves as “IQ tests”.
no such test exists today.
but obviously…
the distinction between the tests currently marketed as IQ tests and the tests marketed as achievement tests is NIL.
if you disagree you have a low IQ.
But about a third of the wechsler contains relatively novel tasks almost devoid of culture like making designs out of blocks. Even inner city school kids will not be unfairly penalized compared to upper class private school kids on such tasks, however the same can’t be assumed for the SAT
But then these extreme cases are rare & most ghetto kids don’t take the SAT anyway so the difference might not matter 95% of the time
river phoenix and john belushi (albanian) both died from a “speedball”, a combination of heroin and concaine.
this is so deadly because cocaine MASKS/DELAYS the effects of heroin, and thus the decedants overdose on heroin.
floyd had enough fentanyl in his system to [redacted by pp, June 20, 2020], but he also had meth.
depressant vs stimulant.
equivalent to a speedball?
EXDS.
sudden death.
RR a tenure-track assistant professor contract is something extremely difficult to get after a PhD because depending of the faculty you have between 40% and 80% chances of getting the tenured.
So he has not just lost a contract but a tenure track-path.
If you take 60%. This a job for life at 150K.
So 35 to 85, that 7,5M. Plus you have also in the tenure the budget for you research and students. And then you have the prestige of being a tenured professor that gives you many books and lectures opportunities. I would put that at 2,5M.
So this guy thanks has lost 6 million dollars. Plain and simple.
I don’t know him and I have never read anything from him nor
seen any of his tWeet, but I can tell he has not lost a contract, but a tenured track position valued 6 000 000 dollars
The most stupid thing is that he had been warned twice, and he didn’t leave the social media entirely. After the first warning, he should have been extra cautious until being awarded the tenure. I guess the guy must have been really over-confident and not paranoid enough .
Too bad. And now, maybe he can go to Liberty university or something like that. Else it’s over …
And now he would really need a good IQ to bounce back from there …
You can tell bruno is autistic because of the last sentence.
Nothing autistic about that particular sentence. If he had said that at a party maybe but this is an IQ obsessed blog.
Philo, for this specific sentence, as I am not a strong believer in the continuous positive correlation between IQ and success contrary to Pumpkin – because I believe above 145, there is lot of mental health issues kicking in – my comment was more of a sad sarcasm about this guy situation.
Pill’s social IQ is too low to recognize sarcasm in others despite using it all the time himself. He’s mind blind
Bruno it explicitly said in the article that he’s returning to his tenured position.
Following opposition to his comments and views, Michigan State University on Friday announced its senior vice president for research and innovation has resigned from that role and will return to a tenured position.
So, again, it’s not the end of the world for “HBD” for this reason. Also read John Jackson’s blog for more info on the Hsu case
“Too bad. And now, maybe he can go to Liberty university or something like that. Else it’s over …”
You’re acting like he’s leaving MSU.
RR I am not speaking about Hsu who has nothing to do with Afro. I am speaking about BW at Marietta University who was ousted by the email.
Hsu as a much higher standing. He could become a billionnaire in China !
There is a world apart among the 2
I thought he was at Pomona college but he was at an average university from Midwest (10th there but 500th nationally) with an average SAT of 50th percentile and ACT of 75th percentile … So I guess you have to slash by 66% my evaluations because it was not that good.
RR may well be the smartest person to have ever commented here.
RR is right. WIthout a brain many people live very intellectually stimulating lives. Look at those children born near chernobyll. Really high IQs!
hahaha. actually the inhabitants of chernobyl and environs show no signs of the disaster. nuclear is the asnwer to the world’s energy and environmental needs, just not the kind of reactors currently in operation.
It’s impossible to take the environmental movement seriously when they oppose nuclear power and support mass third world immigration. The latter is especially crazy because the data on immigrants’ carbon footprints are crystal clear.
Their cope for this is that they’ll soon be “climate refugees” because drought and sea level rise but it’s complete bullshit. The evidence doesn’t support that.
They don’t care about overpopulation anymore, either. That was the flagship environmental issue well into the 80s.
Now that lockdown restrictions are lifting are you guys going to go back to normal life? I’m not for a long time—maybe I’ll evaluate how I feel on the matter around the jew year but I have it in my head that it’ll be at least a year before I do so. I don’t think we should be lifting the restrictions so early. Traffic is pretty much back to normal. After these protests let’s see what it looks like in a week or two regarding the COV. I miss getting beer at the bar but home-drinking will suffice for now.
rr’s drinking buddies:

LOL
I believe it.
pumpkinhead said that his head height and width are over the 99%ile and his head length is about average. I imagine a skull that is 200 mm long, 170 mm broad and 150 mm in terms of auricular height. Are these values correct?
Psycho-physical reductionism is not an ontological question.
I hope you have a good week too, try to relax you seem pretty angry.
Am I tripping or is the entire comment section in Intalics?
University of Western Ontario released this about Rushton today.
https://psychology.uwo.ca/people/faculty/remembrance/rushton.html
Nice.
that letter is retarded.
rr is so autistic he can’t grasp that academia (especially non-STEM) is suffused with politics and ideology and whenever academics use the word “racism” they are even less credible than a BLM protester, because they should know better.
how the world works for rr, an embarrassment to all albanians:
capital in his three piece suit and top hat is about to get brained by the 99%. but then capital points and says, “look! racism!” the 99% turns its head to look and capital runs away.
They actually edited Rushton’s old obituary and changed it to something more accurate—I agree with the move.
It’s about time Rushton and Lynn get what was coming to them. The Rushton-Templer paper should never have been published but it’s better later than never to retract.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2020/06/22/a-bad-week-for-hbd-retractions/
rr thinks the blind guy can see.
RR i have just read your essay and it’s very interesting.
Congrats for the well deserved outstanding score. I agree with you that when you are debating with someone, you shouldn’t in the middle of it, ask for scholastic credencies.
I have some little remark I write quickly from memory so there may be some inaccuracies on my part :
1) First, the scepticisme of Eisenck resemble a lot the way you handle science. It’s more of a higher standard – no correlation and consecution are not proof of causation – in science. It’s very much like the skepticism you have with adoption studies, twin studies or even Gwas studies (polygenic scores)
(2) The fact he was biased because paid by the industry doesn’t proof in itself he was wrong. It would have been nice to get all the proofs of the causation . And also show what was misleading in his hypothesis that genes caused both smoking and cancer. Also you could still have genes causing smoking that would in itself cause cancer. So it would be nice to develop this part wich would be both the state of the science and the rebuttal of Eysenck hypothesis and maybe the errors in his (misleading) argumentation and/or data. This aspect would be the more scientific and philosophical in the paper and you could elaborate much more on the different hypothesis and on what reasoning and data they were based and what’s the current knowledge (if the scientific have reached agreed conclusions)
(3) then you make a sort of parallel between the criticized hypothesis genes cause smoking and cancer with another one genes cause Intelligence ans maybe social aspects but without developing. It seems you have never accepted such a thing as intelligence measured like an activity as smoking or an ilness as cancer. And you main criticism, they did for money because they were corrupt people, doesn’t transfer easily to genes and intelligence. So it looks like it’s more a moral stance : some scientists will use genes for money as they will use genes to satisfy their own racist impulses. But the comparison is not very useful except if your point is saying genes haven’t been proven to cause anything physical nor a behaviour . Then you could elaborate a bit more on this aspect wich is quite interesting
(4) your moral condemnation sounds a bit to harsh because we don’t know how others in the field were founded (maybe everyone had an industry paying for his research) and we don’t know if it was a pattern. So if that was important for you, it would have been nice to have more examples of this researcher malpractices and compared it to other renowned in the same field
Hope one of those points may interest you RR.
Has rr taken an IQ test as a child and as an adult? If so were the results different?