Imagine if we took 100 randomly selected humans from the Earth today, and a random 100 of our ancestors from 2 million years ago, and placed all 200 on a random part of the Earth 1 million years ago (equally close in time to when both species lived so neither has a home team advantage).
Who would win in the struggle of survival?
Probably modern humans would, but you might say that proves little because we’re only one lineage that just happened to become uniquely adaptable.
Now imagine if we tried the same experiment on a hundred different randomly selected species, ranging in type from insects to reptiles to plants to large mammals.
Would there be a consistent trend for the modern version to outcompete its archaic ancestor, or would it be totally random, or would perhaps the ancestors win in most cases.
Of course such an experiment can not be done, it would prove whether evolution was progressive, random, or regressive.
Pumpkin Person 
I there is something missing here—the fact that species are fit for their environment. How would this thought experiment control for that? This F&PP quote articulates the problem at hand:
“A competition among fish isn’t likely to turn on the height of trees on the shores of the pond they inhabit; but a competition among birds may very well do so. It follows that the height of the trees presents a problem of adaptation for the birds but not for the fish. Conversely, if the birds weren’t adapted to the height of the trees, that wouldn’t show that they had failed to solve one of their problems of adaptation; it would only show that coping with tree heights isn’t among the problems of adaptation that their phenotypes evolved to solve. This is a rigged game. The rule is: if a kind of creature fails to solve an evolutionary problem, it follows that that isn’t an evolutionary problem for that kind of creature. Quite generally, if a creature fails to fit an ecological niche exactly, it follows that that isn’t exactly the creature’s ecological niche. The long and short is: if evolutionary problems are individuated post hoc, it’s hardly surprising that phenotypes are so good at solving them.”
it’s a proven fact.
One more problem she brilliantly solved through adaptability
no one can “solve the problem” of being a [redacted by pp, 2022-10-18] peepee.
what an idiot!
One can solve the problem of being judged by their racial appearance by creating a fabulous persona everyone loves:
I there is something missing here—the fact that species are fit for their environment. How would this thought experiment control for that?
Our ancestors 2 million years ago would be adapted to Earth 2 million years ago. We’re adapted to Earth today. Thus we compete 1 million years ago, so we’re both equally distant from the environment we evolved for.
Puppy you’ve just explained why evolution isn’t necessarily progressive.
I’ve explained how we could test for it, if time travel were possible. With cloning there are probably more realistic ways on the horizon.
This experiment might only be meaningful if carried out within a time period narrow enough for the environment on Earth to be basically the same. For example, if you go back to dinosaur times, there was more oxygen in the air then, which might change the playing field massively.
Well the idea is to meet in the middle. Dinosaurs would have the advantage 65 million years. Their bird descendents would have the advantage today. Thus we’d have them compete 32.5 million years ago.
Now it may turn out that at that date, oxygen was too low for dinosaurs and too high for modern birds so both groups would just die which I would score as a tie
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/688127761227055153/1021418343669964891/unknown.png?width=478&height=473
i consider myself an analogous thinker using comparisons to bridge together things that seem disparate in nature. for example the Universe seems to have structured itself for the last 13 billion years yet entropy is increasing.
i believe that the Universe has a similar pattern that evolution has in which despite more complexity overall being produced over the last 4 billion years as well as diversity it seems as though the adaptability of the living organisms to their environment has decreased.
The general consensus among the ancients was that the world either grows steadily worse, or remains substantially the same. Only a handful of them posited the, “onward and upward” theory. This proves only that progressive evolution (or the underlying Hegelian philosophy of history) is by no means obviously correct.
Without a unifying principle, idea, or force there can be no universal history – only histories. When I consider the unhinged ravings of Ray Kurzweil, the theory of a universal fall (Hesiod, the Bible, etc.) seems plausible.
The “random part of the Earth”-part seems arbitrary. If you’re going down that path, why not a random part of the universe?
Or we could accept that fitness is relative to the environment.
And I predict that the more evolved the organism, the more environments it’s fited to
Big ape man would win most of the time for two reasons. He isn’t as reliant on culture to survive since he’d be more of a generalist, and a population of 100 wouldn’t play to the strengths of modern humans. Larger sample populations would increasingly favor moderns, though. Learning about a novel environment would require a lot of failure and unlike our ancestors modern humans would be able to learn from their experiences, and be able to express these experiences to others. Time would also amplify this advantage.
I mean, if moderns were popped into existence with no culture to speak of then they’d just be squishy, fat, and weak versions of their ancestors.
What does “more evolved” mean to you again?
To me it means your ancestors have been through more morphological changes caused by natural selection. sexual selection and/or genetic drift
Why do you think that those who went through more morphological changes would be “better than” others that went through less morphological change? Evolution is a local process and so if there is no reason for morphologic change to occur, then it won’t happen.
Why do you think that those who went through more morphological changes would be “better than” others that went through less morphological change? Evolution is a local process and so if there is no reason for morphologic change to occur, then it won’t happen.
That is a very good question and the answer is few habitable environments are 100% local. Thus if there are adaptations that are useful in many environments (eyes, brains etc), morphological change might tend to improve or build upon them, rather than start from zero every time a new niche is encountered.
“(5) However, there is no general trend or ‘directionality’ towards increasing complexity during the evolutionary history of hominoids, or of modern humans in particular, at least regarding the number of muscles or muscle bundles.”
https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/brv.12039
I think this example shows the ridiculousness of your claim at hand—are humans “less evolved” than other hominids on the bases of muscles/muscle bundles? So are humans less evolved in that area and not others? Are you the only one who still holds these types of views today?
Then why did brain size triple in 4 million years of human evolution?. Why did the brains of gorillas, chimps, and neanderthals also increase independently of the increase leading to Sapiens?
I would presume that they increased independently as they were living in different environments and different environments and evolutionary trajectories lead to differences in energetic metabolism and the foodstuffs that organisms eat.
I would say that it’s due to diet quality and abundance which then leads to energetics.
This new papers argues that the recent increase in human brain size isn’t a byproduct of of self-domestication, the shift to agriculture, or body size reduction.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639/full
Regarding morphological change, I wouldn’t doubt that it would be built upon, but I don’t see what that means for your point. A human can’t live in a tree exactly as a monkey does, doing what a monkey does, as well as they would be able to do it. Certain types of insects wouldn’t be able to fly near the mouths of volcanoes since they would just burn away due to the heat. An animal from the desert and an animal from the arctic switching places would both find hardship and die. The point is that necessarily species’ body plans and behaviors are necessary to survive in the environment they’ve survived in indicating localization to that environment and it speaks against the claim of comparison of species between different ecologies and niches.
I would presume that they increased independently as they were living in different environments and different environments and evolutionary trajectories lead to differences in energetic metabolism and the foodstuffs that organisms eat.
The point is if the brain increased in 4 independent hominoid lineages, then perhaps it’s not just a local adaptation, but a general adaptation. If there are general adaptations, then there’s more to evolution than just adapting to local environments.
Regarding morphological change, I wouldn’t doubt that it would be built upon, but I don’t see what that means for your point. A human can’t live in a tree exactly as a monkey does, doing what a monkey does, as well as they would be able to do it.
But humans can dominate monkeys anytime we want. They can’t do the same to us. In that sense we are superior to the creatures we evolved from.
Certain types of insects wouldn’t be able to fly near the mouths of volcanoes since they would just burn away due to the heat. An animal from the desert and an animal from the arctic switching places would both find hardship and die. The point is that necessarily species’ body plans and behaviors are necessary to survive in the environment they’ve survived in indicating localization to that environment and it speaks against the claim of comparison of species between different ecologies and niches.
But some species can live in more environments than others. Few animals can survive in as many environments as humans can and few animals have experienced as much morphological change as our ancestors have. I don’t think that’s a coincidence but I don’t have the data to prove it either so you’re welcome to your skepticism.
How would you define “general adaptation”?
In your thought experiment, you’re talking about placing “all 200 [individuals] on a random part of the Earth 1 million years ago (equally close in time to when both species lived so neither has a home team advantage)”, so that would imply that what would make humans AS A GROUP be able to “dominate monkeys anytime we want” is irrelevant, since those things wouldn’t exist back then. Even then, individual monkeys can destroy a human and rip them limb-from-limb making the body physically unrecognizable due to the force they generate. Who’s “superior”?
I don’t think these cross-species comparisons you’re hinting at work. You presume that since “few animals can survive in as many environments as humans”, that this means that since humans can presumably survive in more of them then we can say that they have progressed more than other primates? If you describe as many biomes/ecological niches as you can, and then see who can survive in how many would you say that that would provide the data we need to make the comparison on who can survive where and how many places they can? I feel that the examples I gave you speak against the idea of a comparison of that nature since humans are just so different than other animals, as they are fit for where they evolved. For these reasons, I don’t think this thought experiment works, nor would it prove that evolution is progressive.
How would you define “general adaptation”?
An adaptation that is useful in multiple environments. The eye would be a general adaptation because it has evolved independently in many lineages, as has the brain.
Even then, individual monkeys can destroy a human and rip them limb-from-limb making the body physically unrecognizable due to the force they generate. Who’s “superior”?
The human if he has a gun. something a monkey can’t invent
I don’t think these cross-species comparisons you’re hinting at work. You presume that since “few animals can survive in as many environments as humans”, that this means that since humans can presumably survive in more of them then we can say that they have progressed more than other primates? If you describe as many biomes/ecological niches as you can, and then see who can survive in how many would you say that that would provide the data we need to make the comparison on who can survive where and how many places they can?
That’s one way to operationalize the concept.
“To me it means your ancestors have been through more morphological changes caused by natural selection. sexual selection and/or genetic drift”
In graph-theoretical terms, a greater vertex height
“This new papers argues that the recent increase in human brain”
Sorry, decrease.
does anyone here believe in a hierarchy of memory? for me memory is best expressed by using fragments of the present to remember the future. i go back and forth between what is happening currently and try to map out the past accordingly.
one thing i do often is use association to remember things clearer. if i can remember something else relatable then i can piece things together to come back to the topic of interest. its very satisfying.
We should probably segregate all races since keeping them together has not removed test score gaps or IQ score gaps. After all, all cognitive tests are cultural tests and since adoption studies show that no matter the ethnicity of the parent the children average the same scores as that of their own ethnicity, it must be the country they’re living in that makes certain ethnicities adopt certain cultures. Since we can’t exactly throw out tests, it would be best to send everyone back to their ancestral homelands where everyone shares a culture and the the same tests.
Also, disparate cultures should not ever trade or engage in any intellectual discourse as that would lead to possibly biasing the tests of the other culture with different cultural expectations.
I wonder if you know that what you said is a mixture of Jensen and Cattell.
Can we segregate RaceRealist from the rest of this comments section?
Did you get that reference for your claim about IQ, adoption, and race yet?
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/5/1/1
This 2005 paper shows adoption having a positive effect.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/0033-2909.131.2.301
More evidence is reviewed in the most recent review, Nisbet et al (2012). The effects of adoption in IQ and life outcomes has been known since Skodak and Skeels (1949). These landmark studies on Iowa adoptees—called “the orphans of Davenport—refuted hereditarian assumptions 50 years ago and still do so today. The sad part is what hereditarians at the time went through to make sure the results were seen as a fantasy. Benjamin Simpson called it “dark and devious” while Lewis Terman—who claimed that IQ tests were “a beacon of light for the eugenics movement”—called the findings “absurd”, calling them authoritarian, comparing them to Stalin. But, of course, they were right then and they continue to be vindicated today.
This recent papers shows that children who were randomly assigned to high quality foster care had a 9 point IQ advantage than those who got regular care. Those abandoned, neglected, and abused has a 26 point disadvantage which was subsequently reduced to 15 points following random assignment to foster care.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2119318119
At the end of the day, your claims hold no water.
I’m curious how your views refute the idea of segregation of different cultures (and hence, races) being best.
“Can we segregate RaceRealist from the rest of this comments section?”
You just have a culturally biased opinion of his views. It’s perfectly normal to for citations about whether brain size could be correlated with IQ on a blog that has at least a hundred articles on that topic.
From the 2005 paper you gave, which agrees with my argument:
“Furthermore, the environmental influences of the adoptive family may fade as the adopted children grow older. In general,
genetic and environmental factors may not operate on the same
level across the life span. In longitudinal studies, the IQ of adopted
children has been found to become more similar to the IQ of their
birth parents with increasing age (Fulker, DeFries, & Plomin,
1988; Plomin et al., 1997), and in adulthood the correlation between the IQ of adopted children and that of their adoptive parents
appears to be much lower than the correlation with the IQ of the
biological parents (McGue, Bouchard, Iacono, & Lykken, 1993;
Plomin et al., 1997).”
“This recent papers shows that children who were randomly assigned to high quality foster care had a 9 point IQ advantage than those who got regular care. Those abandoned, neglected, and abused has a 26 point disadvantage which was subsequently reduced to 15 points following random assignment to foster care.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2119318119
At the end of the day, your claims hold no water.”
Clearly I was referring to individuals in adopted environments with different races than their parents. Severe abuse, or differing levels of care was obviously not what I was referring to. I’m talking about different ethnic cultures (white vs. black) that you would argue were the source for the test result differences.
“At the end of the day, your claims hold no water.”
My claims hold much more water than yours, unless you strawmen them to something like: one’s IQ is 100 percent inherited and that environment has no effect, and that IQ tests are 100 percent accurate representations of intelligence.
The fact that IQ/measurable intelligence has a genetic component is pretty evident.
The “fade-out effect” can be explained simply with an argument from analogy. Take going to the gym. If one goes to the gym and works out consistently with a good program, then they will see muscle gains along with health gains. Then they stop going to the gym. They lose muscle and become worse in health. So by being removed from that environment, the gains “fade out”. This argument from analogy shows why the face out occurs.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/09/13/the-fade-out-effect/
Re your race claims: see the Drew Thomas MDPI paper about attenuation. I don’t know of any high-quality race-adoption study that lends credence to hereditarian claims.
IQ isn’t a thing intelligence isn’t measurable because psychological traits are immeasurable and they can’t be caused/influenced by genes.
And by the way, Lewontin has wonderfully blown up, decades ago, hereditarian adoption claims.
“What is not usually discussed is the fact that adopted children, even though they may correlate individually with their biological parents more than their adoptive parents, are, in fact, more sinilar as a group to the adoptive parents than to their biological ones. The apparent contradiction between these two assertions arises because correlation is confused (often deliberately) with identity. The two are not the same. “
“IQ isn’t a thing intelligence isn’t measurable because psychological traits are immeasurable and they can’t be caused/influenced by genes.”
IQ is pretty highly correlated with a lot measurable life outcomes. So it’s enormously useful regardless of your nonbelief.
We decide what information is judged on tests. Bias can creep in. But we don’t decide how the testee obtains or manipulates that information in their heads. We don’t decide how they filter out that information from their subjective mental experience out through their bodies. When IQ testing, we are sussing out how well individuals can process information without any previous exposure (besides the language and paradigms used to describe the directions and questions). That’s what we’re testing. We’re not trying to find out whether or not someone’s expectations for a specific answer line up with the test creators.
At some point, information comes down to binary logic, yes-or-no. Something is either true or false, it either exists or does not exist, it is either this way, or another way. This can be quantified into more vs. less. Smarter people are able to evaluate the truth vs. falseness of more information than dumber ones. They are able to see more distinctions in concepts. They are able to find answers to a wider variety of complex problems.
(I’m not saying this is exactly how intelligence works, and it’s kind of at the edge of my abstract reasoning right now, but that it is irrefutable that information processing can be measured… there is obviously a generative aspect to cognition as well, but no matter how it is generated it must also be filtered through some sort of binary evaluation.)
“The “fade-out effect” can be explained simply with an argument from analogy. Take going to the gym. If one goes to the gym and works out consistently with a good program, then they will see muscle gains along with health gains. Then they stop going to the gym. They lose muscle and become worse in health. So by being removed from that environment, the gains “fade out”. This argument from analogy shows why the face out occurs.”
Just-so story. Another explanation is that children simply adapt as much as possible to the intelligence levels of their adopted parents, especially when taking tests (it is possible to give extra cognitive effort for a short time). Maybe their brains are more plastic at this time, and especially for fluid intelligence, and this plasticity occifies over time. This explanation makes more sense than somehow lacking continued cultural exposure given that these adopted children only have a pretty small IQ boost overall anyway. (The Flynn Effect is said to be 2-3 points per decade itself). I’m not denying that environment has an effect, but not ALL the effect, like you are stating.
You still haven’t answered as to what impact a different brain can have on the environment-mental interaction.
“What is not usually discussed is the fact that adopted children, even though they may correlate individually with their biological parents more than their adoptive parents, are, in fact, more sinilar as a group to the adoptive parents than to their biological ones. The apparent contradiction between these two assertions arises because correlation is confused (often deliberately) with identity. The two are not the same. “
What is being said here? What are the groups being referred to? Adopted parents vs. Adopted children vs. biological parents?
Why would there be ANY correlation with biological parents if everything was cultural? There should be almost no correlation unless there is significant contact. Even so, you can always make up another excuse like “systemic knowledge of their own race making them revert to that culture in adulthood” or something. It’s also a just-so story.
“IQ is pretty highly correlated with”
So what? It’s inherent in how the tests are constructed, mainly with correlations from other unvalidated tests like the Stanford-Binet.
“we are sussing out how well individuals can process information without any previous exposure”
This is nonsense. All tests and testing take place in a cultural context.
Do you have any question examples about “finding answers to a wider variety of complex problems”? Rosser 1989 shows how the SAT has changed over the years, adding and subtracting test items that favor men and women. Kidder and Rosner 2002 evaluated SAT items and showed that there was a hidden, unconscious bias due to how test items were selected based on who answered what right. Furthermore, Constance Hilliard discusses how test differences were built out of a test that showed a 15 point difference between 2 white South African groups. Terman decided that the sexes should be equal in intelligence and thusly constructed his tests accordingly and since new tests are still correlated with the Stanford-Binet and since these correlations between tests go back to that time period, then it’s still inherent today in the tests. The fact that there is a few pints difference attests to the claim that I’m arguing for.
So putting this all together, if one has different presumptions about a group then they can build a test to show what they want and then claim that the test shows these differences between groups. Thus, a priori biases influence how certain groups score and since test items are specific to certain cultures, this is then reflected in score differences since knowledge exposure isn’t the same between them. Fagan and Holland’s papers argue for this point very well.
It’s a just-so story that if one leaves an environment that they were doing something in that changes their body that they will be affected negatively? If you don’t know what a just-so story is then don’t use the term.
It depend what the person who has the brain is exposed to. Do brains learn or think or do humans learn and think?
The fact of the matter with Lewontin’s example is that individual correlations say nothing about group correlations. Adoption has positive effects for IQ and this keeps being shown time and time again, year after year.
Also, in 1992 Janet Helms proposed 2 hypotheses: “(a) Acculturation and assimilation to White Euro-American culture should enhance one’s performance on currently existing cognitive ability tests, and (b) inclusion of Black African-American culture in Cognitive ability assessment procedures should result in fairer (more equivalent) assessment of Black Americans’ general cognitive ability levels.”
Hypothesis (a) has been borne out—check Flynn and Dickens (2006) where they show that blacks gained 5 or 6 IQ points in the last 30 years. What does that mean? It means that Helms’ hypothesis was confirmed. When it comes to (b), that’s a necessary consequence of test construction—if one places items where one group has experience with them and knows the answers to the questions, they shockingly score higher!
RR, you apparently have a different idea about what intelligence is than I do, or most scientists do. You think it’s a 1 or 0 thing and can’t be measured yet also believe that one can only hold finite amount of cultural knowledge. Why can’t blacks and whites hold infinite amounts of cultural knowledge and get 100 percent on every test? For the pure environmentalist, there is no explanation because nothing mental can be measured. Where exactly is knowledge stored anyway if intelligence is simply an on/off button for humans? Oh wait, it can’t be stored because that would imply it was finite and measurable, but how can an immeasurable trait be made up of something measurable unless… It actually isn’t immeasurable? Mind = blown.
Classes are cultural subsets. Different classes are exposed to different information. If a test has a certain kind of information not familiar to a certain class, then it is therefore biased against that class. The explanation is a cultural one since IQ test items, again, reflect different cultural knowledge. The arguments I’ve linked that I’ve made show that I’ve successfully argued for the cultural context conclusion. There is no avoiding that.
I’ll say for the last time that if X is posited to be a psychological trait and psychological traits are irreducible to the physical and physical processes, as the argument for the immateriality of thought successfully concluds, then if X is psychological then X can’t be measured.
You’re just assuming that something is being measured, and not demonstrating it with argument. Can got describe how psychological traits, despite not being physical with no specified measured object, object of measurement and measurement unit, are measured as if they are physical?
I’ve provided many arguments arguing that differences in IQ are cultural due to item selection and analysis and that explains IQ differences between groups. The arguments I’ve provided about test construction and the examples of questions lend further credence to my point. The adoption studied also support my point and fade-outs aren’t a knock against my position. Hereditarians always talk about differences in IQ or whatever score that measures “intelligence” and accept it without thinking about the kinds of items that are on the tests. The references I’ve provided show that differences are cultural due to the items on them, a fact you’ve hardly contested. So then I can make the following arguments:
(1) If children of different class levels have experiences of different kinds with different material; and
(2) if IQ tests draw a disproportionate amount of test items from the higher classes; then
(c) higher class children should have higher scores than lower-class children.
Blacks are more likely to be low class. This affects the knowledge they are exposed to. Thus, what explains differences is knowledge exposure. Fagan and Holland showed that when access to the same knowledge was ensured, that there are no differences between them, so what explains the differences are cultural (class) differences in exposure to knowledge. The critical point here is how items are chosen for inclusion/exclusion on tests, which the references you have been given attest to, which then clinches and licenses my conclusions about the reasons for differences in a score on a test between 2 cultural groups.
It’s an undeniable fact that the IQ gap between blacks and whites has narrowed. Since the gap has narrowed, then Helms’ hypothesis (a) is confirmed.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324074343_Has_the_Black-White_IQ_Gap_in_the_United_States_Narrowed_A_Literature_Review
We wont know if it’s narrowed (in adults) until the WAIS-V comes out
Pearson does the WAIS, right? The IV was normed in 08, so when should we expect the V? What do you think of the references that show an improvement in the previous paper I linked that show that the gap has narrowed?
Yes Pearson publishes the WAIS.
The WAIS-III was normed in 1995 (published in 1997)
The WAIS-IV was normed in 2006 (published in 2008)
So you’d expect the WAIS-V would be normed and published by now, but covid likely derailed the process and perhaps even made them question the safety of in-person testing in the covid age. Perhaps the WAIS-V will be designed for zoom.
It’s hard to know how to interpret the references without reading each individual study. My own research suggests that since the 1970s, there’s been a huge decline in young adult achievement tests but no decline in adult IQ tests, though this might be an artifact of the WAIS including super old adults in their recent norms, which would mask any decline in younger adults.
But if there’s still no decline in the WAIS IQ gap by the time the WAIS-V finally comes out, I think that settles it.
https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/11/13/the-black-white-gap-has-dramatically-shrunk-on-scholastic-tests-but-not-on-official-iq-tests/
“Classes are cultural subsets. Different classes are exposed to different information. If a test has a certain kind of information not familiar to a certain class, then it is therefore biased against that class. The explanation is a cultural one since IQ test items, again, reflect different cultural knowledge. The arguments I’ve linked that I’ve made show that I’ve successfully argued for the cultural context conclusion. There is no avoiding that.”
You said they reflect cultural knowledge, which means they measure it. Yet you said intelligence is immeasurable, but intelligence is an ability to acquire and apply knowledge. Therefore intelligence is measurable according to you.
“I’ll say for the last time that if X is posited to be a psychological trait and psychological traits are irreducible to the physical and physical processes, as the argument for the immateriality of thought successfully concluds, then if X is psychological then X can’t be measured.”
Doesn’t matter what thought consists of, the fact is that we can measure it’s applicability to the material/physical world. How hard is that to grasp?
“You’re just assuming that something is being measured, and not demonstrating it with argument. Can got describe how psychological traits, despite not being physical with no specified measured object, object of measurement and measurement unit, are measured as if they are physical?”
The specified measured object is whether they can solve problems, i.e. Use their mind to acquire and apply knowledge in novel ways.
“I’ve provided many arguments arguing that differences in IQ are cultural due to item selection and analysis and that explains IQ differences between groups. The arguments I’ve provided about test construction and the examples of questions lend further credence to my point. The adoption studied also support my point and fade-outs aren’t a knock against my position. Hereditarians always talk about differences in IQ or whatever score that measures “intelligence” and accept it without thinking about the kinds of items that are on the tests. The references I’ve provided show that differences are cultural due to the items on them, a fact you’ve hardly contested. So then I can make the following arguments:”
Like I said before, everything is ultimately cultural if you broaded the meaning, including universal human experience. Every thing that exists has a specific context it exists in. We exist in 3D space, we exist on Earth where gravity’s acceleration is 9.8 m/s. etc.
The fact that Asian Americans score better on white-made tests disproves your point doesn’t it? But there is no such thing as proof in this case because like I said, you make any case about X item being cultural after the test is taken. That’s why we don’t claim IQ tests are exhaustive, they are simply a sample of applied knowledge.
“(1) If children of different class levels have experiences of different kinds with different material; and
(2) if IQ tests draw a disproportionate amount of test items from the higher classes; then
(c) higher class children should have higher scores than lower-class children.”
Do you think I don’t understand this is your argument? The fact is I simply don’t agree. You can just-so story your way out of any particular test and say it is “biased”… it’s unfalsifiable.
“Blacks are more likely to be low class. This affects the knowledge they are exposed to. Thus, what explains differences is knowledge exposure. Fagan and Holland showed that when access to the same knowledge was ensured, that there are no differences between them, so what explains the differences are cultural (class) differences in exposure to knowledge. The critical point here is how items are chosen for inclusion/exclusion on tests, which the references you have been given attest to, which then clinches and licenses my conclusions about the reasons for differences in a score on a test between 2 cultural groups.”
Bro, literally everyone who is a heriditarian on this blog already understands this argument and doesn’t agree to it. This is not the crux of the disagreement.
I have read dozens and dozens of attempted descriptions of intelligence and there is one consistent theme—they posit it as action. The main aspect of IQ test-taking is thinking. Thinking is irreducible. So the main aspect of IQ test-taking is immeasurable. I can measure how long my finger is. But according to you, just because one can answer questions on a test (which necessarily indicates that they were exposed to the information) this therefore means that a mental quantity is being measured—that’s ludicrous.
“The specified measured object is whether they can solve problems”
Knowing the answer to a test question isn’t a specified measured object. You keep bringing up “using knowledge in novel ways” when merely knowing the answer to a multiple choice question by definition isn’t novel… What’s the measurement unit for IQ?
The explanation for high Asian achievement is hyper-selectivity—those who left Asia have a higher educational attainment than those who stayed and this then passed on to their children.
My argument isn’t a just-so story, the premises follow and the conclusion follows from the premises.
Regarding the Fagan and Holland paragraph, that proves my point. IQ tests have specific items. These items have a sampling of certain knowledge. It was shown that when it was experimentally guaranteed that both groups had access to the information that there was no gap—which licenses the claim I’ve argued for, that the differences are cultural. Again, the West African Binet argument proves the point.
I don’t think you understand that there are questions and there are (multiple choice) answers to the question. Whether or not one knows the answer to the question hinges on the fact of being exposed to the content of the question. You should check out the examples of test items that I’ve linked. You should then provide your own that back your claims.
Also, to reiterate my point about physical labor having no impact on your views of the mental or intelligence:
Anyone who has exhausted themselves physically know it impacts their mental state. After hard labor for hours, it is very hard to focus one’s mind on anything they do not want to focus on. The link between mental states and physical body state is pretty clear to anyone with this experience. Maybe you simply haven’t paid attention to it, which seems ridiculous, as even lack of sleep can make one exhausted and impact one’s mental ability (which is also evident in performance on tests, if all you care about are peer-reviewed lab studies). It is hard to imagine anyone who has not experienced the effects of sleep deprivation. The worldview of anyone who has used their body rigorously and is not keenly aware of the body-mind connection is incomprehensible to me from an intuitive level, especially since you seem to be so interested in the mind and intelligence.
These experiences alone would show that intelligence and mental problem solving can be clearly distinguished, even internally, to more degrees/levels than simply having it or not.
Another point about physical work is that it reinforces the notion that there are right or wrong answers, and that you actually have to pay attention to what is around you if you want influence physical reality in some particular way. You actually have to put effort in making your internal states receive and process information about physical reality.
Things like these are generally how people are able to understand intelligence in their everyday life. Not sure why you ignore them.
I’ve lifting weights for well over 10 years and have physically exhausted myself from heavy deads, heavy OHPs, and heavy pull-down but sure I’ve never physically exhausted myself. Of course if you’re tired you can’t think as well as you could have if you weren’t—the physical is necessary for mental life, so that doesn’t hurt my position.
“there’s been a huge decline in young adult achievement tests but no decline in adult IQ tests”
So, the apparent inability of ‘kids these days’ to write coherent sentences is due to declines in education and attention span, not in intelligence?
i’m talking about decline in black-white gap,
Did you guys see this on the topic of racial gaps? https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2021/07/06/critiquing-charles-murray-on-changing-iq-gaps/
very interesting
“I have read dozens and dozens of attempted descriptions of intelligence and there is one consistent theme—they posit it as action. The main aspect of IQ test-taking is thinking. Thinking is irreducible. So the main aspect of IQ test-taking is immeasurable. I can measure how long my finger is. But according to you, just because one can answer questions on a test (which necessarily indicates that they were exposed to the information) this therefore means that a mental quantity is being measured—that’s ludicrous.”
The mental quality that is being measured is the ability of the individual to model reality in their own mind (subconsciously or unconsciously) and come to the correct conclusion. Reality can be modeled, because everything in reality is informational and conceptual, and all content of the mind is also informational and conceptual.
“The specified measured object is whether they can solve problems”
“Knowing the answer to a test question isn’t a specified measured object. You keep bringing up “using knowledge in novel ways” when merely knowing the answer to a multiple choice question by definition isn’t novel… What’s the measurement unit for IQ?”
The measurement unit for IQ is IQ points.
Knowing the answer to a test question indicates your mental content corresponds with reality.
“The explanation for high Asian achievement is hyper-selectiity—those who left Asia have a higher educational attainment than those who stayed and this then passed on to their children.”
Another just-so story.
“My argument isn’t a just-so story, the premises follow and the conclusion follows from the premises.”
You don’t have a premise because you don’t even know what intelligence is.
“I’ve lifting weights for well over 10 years and have physically exhausted myself from heavy deads, heavy OHPs, and heavy pull-down but sure I’ve never physically exhausted myself. Of course if you’re tired you can’t think as well as you could have if you weren’t—the physical is necessary for mental life, so that doesn’t hurt my position.”
Weightlifting for an hour is not the same as exhausting yourself lifting stuff on a farm (or basically doing any vaguely physical job for 8+ hours), but props on that. But basically I was making an analogy, and stating your view was autistic and compartmentalized from actual conscious experience.
Your theory of intelligence/mind doesn’t even explain why tiring the body would exhaust the mind and make it harder to get the same score on ALL tests (of ANY cultural bias) for that specific person – which indicates that there is a degree to mental activity which waxes and wanes according to tiredness – which indicates that intelligence is quantifiable.
If it is mental then it can’t be measured.
“The measurement unit for IQ is IQ points”
Strange, IQ points are like inches and pounds that have a physical basis? That’s where you crumble.
“Another just-so story”
It’s OK if you’re ignorant to Lee and Zhou’s work and thesis on Asian American achievement. It’s not a just-so story; it has a mountain of empirical support. The “children of different classes” argument isn’t a just-so story.
I’ve done physical labor, I know what it’s like at the end of the day hardly being able to think about certain things.
Why would tiring the body tire the mind? Because the physical is necessary for it. What is the argument that psychological traits are quantifiable? You’ve yet to provide one, you’re merely writing words without structuring the argument needed to make your case.
“If it is mental then it can’t be measured.”
Proof?
Reality could be mental for all you know. Measurement is always relative btw.
“Strange, IQ points are like inches and pounds that have a physical basis? That’s where you crumble.”
It was a joke you would need a few more IQ points to understand.
“It’s OK if you’re ignorant to Lee and Zhou’s work and thesis on Asian American achievement. It’s not a just-so story; it has a mountain of empirical support. The “children of different classes” argument isn’t a just-so story.”
It is a just-so story because there is no absolute proof. only your belief in its truth because you feel it is the best explanation. You realize most of the studies you cite rely on a million agreed upon cultural assumptions, right? Science takes place in a cultural context, which is why the replication crisis exists. Basically, I have no reason to believe their study or their conclusions are accurate or even imply what they conclude.
“I’ve done physical labor, I know what it’s like at the end of the day hardly being able to think about certain things.
Why would tiring the body tire the mind? Because the physical is necessary for it. What is the argument that psychological traits are quantifiable? You’ve yet to provide one, you’re merely writing words without structuring the argument needed to make your case.”
I’ve literally been making arguments about that the whole time, if not explicitly. What else would we be talking about?
The physical is necessary for the mind, I agree. So why would energy levels also be necessary for ease of thought? Because there is a quantifiable element to intelligence.
I’m not saying the “mind” is quantifiable, because consciousness either exists or does not exist, but intelligence IS, as it is akin to thinking and problem solving, and since the mind is necessary for thought… the intelligence aspect of the mind can be quantified. Therefore, psychological traits are quantifiable.
“Proof”
Since the mental is irreducible to and underdetermined by the physical and the fact that psychophysical reductionism is false it then follows that the mental can’t be measured.
“It was a joke”
I’m not here to joke around I’m here to have serious discussions where people give serious answers to serious questions.
“It’s a just-so story because”
Those who emigrate have a higher educational attainment than those who stay. Those values are then passed on. I find it so funny that hereditarians claim that Nigerian immigrants are a selected population and to ignore them but they don’t follow THEIR VERY OWN LOGIC that then holds for Asian Americans, too.
“So what explains the higher educational attainment of Asians? A mixture of culture and immigrant (hyper-) selectivity along with the belief that education is paramount for upward mobility (Sue and Okazaki, 1990; Hsin and Xie, 2014; Lee and Zhou, 2017) and the fact that what a Chinese immigrant chooses to do is based on national context (Noam, 2014; Lee and Zhou, 2017). Poor Asians do indeed perform better on scholastic achievement tests than poor whites and poor ‘Hispanics’ (Hsin and Xie, 2014; Liu and Xie, 2016). Teachers even favor Asian American students, perceiving them to be brighter than other students. But what are assumed to be cultural values are actually class values which is due to the hyper-selectivity of Asian immigrants to America (Hsin, 2016).”
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2020/04/19/chinese-iq-immigrant-hyper-selectivityand-east-asian-genetic-superiority/
Are you claiming that “energy levels” are how to quantify mentality? That presumes a psychophysical identity between the two—laughable.
“it is akin to thinking”
And thinking is an immaterial and irreducible process and so it cannot be measured. Thought has determinate semantic content which makes it immaterial and so not able to be measured. And thinking is the main aspect of IQ test-taking, so the main aspect of IQ test-taking is immaterial and therefore immeasurable. Again:
“since thinking is related to beliefs and desires (without beliefs and desires we would not be able to think), then thinking (cognition) is irreducible to physical/functional states, meaning that the main aspect of test-taking (thinking) is irreducible to the physical thus physical states don’t explain thinking which means the main aspect of (IQ) test-taking is irreducible to the physical.”
At the end of the day your claim reduces to “IQ is genetically heritable” to “thinking is genetically heritable.” Thinking, being an action IS NOT a genetically heritable trait since it is immaterial.
“Since the mental is irreducible to and underdetermined by the physical and the fact that psychophysical reductionism is false it then follows that the mental can’t be measured.”
Assertions are not proof.
The fact that we can measure the physical is simply apriori agreed upon because we assume as observers we have a universal context for measurement, as I’ve shown about length.
“Psychophysical reductionism” is not what IQists believe, is it? No one’s saying the psychological is generated only by the physical.
“I’m not here to joke around I’m here to have serious discussions where people give serious answers to serious questions.”
Me too, but I think you’ve dodged some of my important questions (like why human brains are so big, or why different races have different sized brains) and made assertions and talked down to me so I thought a joke was in order.
“Those who emigrate have a higher educational attainment than those who stay. Those values are then passed on. I find it so funny that hereditarians claim that Nigerian immigrants are a selected population and to ignore them but they don’t follow THEIR VERY OWN LOGIC that then holds for Asian Americans, too.”
Undoubtedly the immigrants are generally smarter or more hard-working academically, but Japanese and Singaporeans for example also get higher test scores in their own countries.
“So what explains the higher educational attainment of Asians? A mixture of culture and immigrant (hyper-) selectivity along with the belief that education is paramount for upward mobility (Sue and Okazaki, 1990; Hsin and Xie, 2014; Lee and Zhou, 2017) and the fact that what a Chinese immigrant chooses to do is based on national context (Noam, 2014; Lee and Zhou, 2017). Poor Asians do indeed perform better on scholastic achievement tests than poor whites and poor ‘Hispanics’ (Hsin and Xie, 2014; Liu and Xie, 2016). Teachers even favor Asian American students, perceiving them to be brighter than other students. But what are assumed to be cultural values are actually class values which is due to the hyper-selectivity of Asian immigrants to America (Hsin, 2016).”
That’s literally you’re apriori assumption that Asians are not genetically predisposed to higher intelligence compared to Hispanics.
“Are you claiming that “energy levels” are how to quantify mentality? That presumes a psychophysical identity between the two—laughable.”
Yes there is a connection. You apparently agree with it but then deny it for the sake of your own woke environmental-ist argument. That is laughable.
“And thinking is an immaterial and irreducible process and so it cannot be measured.”
False, we’ve shown how it can be measured in regards to solving problems in physical reality. Stop asserting that the physical does not determine anything mental unless you have proof.
“Thought has determinate semantic content which makes it immaterial and so not able to be measured. And thinking is the main aspect of IQ test-taking, so the main aspect of IQ test-taking is immaterial and therefore immeasurable. Again:
“since thinking is related to beliefs and desires (without beliefs and desires we would not be able to think), then thinking (cognition) is irreducible to physical/functional states, meaning that the main aspect of test-taking (thinking) is irreducible to the physical thus physical states don’t explain thinking which means the main aspect of (IQ) test-taking is irreducible to the physical.”
Nope. Thoughts are conceptual. Physical reality is made up of concepts. Therefore there is a correlation between the two. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to have this conversation, since words are merely abstract reference objects to real concepts, meaning by having a conversation we are applying abstract conceptual thought to reality.
“At the end of the day your claim reduces to “IQ is genetically heritable” to “thinking is genetically heritable.” Thinking, being an action IS NOT a genetically heritable trait since it is immaterial.”
No, my claim reduces to “the propensity for the ability to think in certain ways and to certain degrees is genetically heritable.”
Thinking, being influenced by the environment which includes the brain and the body of the thinker IS genetically heritable since those aspects are NOT immaterial. (Not that you’ve proven that reality isn’t fundamentally immaterial anyway)
Because I anticipate my latest comment will still be met with more objections without getting closer to the heart of the matter, I will write a final long description of my argument to you. I don’t really want to take anymore time responding after this unless it is to something very specific:
Objection: “The mind does not cause anything physical because it is abstract”
The concept of “physical” itself is an abstraction (as any word is).
If the physical does not itself correspond with something abstract, we could not refer to the physical and be referring to anything.
Therefore, the physical DOES correspond with something abstract.
Therefore, the mind DOES correspond with the physical, both being abstract.
Therefore, insofar as the physical can be conceptualized (described in abstract terms like language) mind and physical are NOT dualistically separated.
Furthermore,
The idea of physical causation is an abstraction, which we validate or test by operationalizing it to correspond with certain physical facts. (Bat hits baseball, baseball then goes in other direction when the bat hits it as we predicted)
It follows that science accepts abstract principles as accurately corresponding to physical facts.
Therefore, it follows that according to science: Abstract principles, being concepts, and the mind, also being abstract and conceptual, can accurately correspond to physical facts.
Can we measure the abstract and intangible?
Well, can we measure length? We can only measure it relative to the speed of light. Lightspeed is the absolute objective reference phenomena.
What is the absolute objective reference point for usefullness of thought or information processing? The applicability of one’s mental concepts to concepts in the physical world.
Basically, an IQ test is the same thing as a scientist making an abstraction about reality and then testing the world.
The hypothesis is the testee’s answer, and the experiment results are the real answer.
The testee can learn from the results, and can be proven correct or incorrect by the test results.
“But the test results are not physical results and therefore abstractions.”
All of your perceptions are themselves, abstractions. The mind is inherently abstract which means our understanding of it is abstract.
“The test items only need be consistent with the culture/worldview/opinion of the test maker, and we know people have differing worldviews.”
If we communicate with language, which is abstract, it is assumed we can mutually refer to the same objective reality, up to a certain point.
Bias is eliminated in IQ tests by
1. measuring as many concepts from as many contexts as possible,
2. measuring as many people (with their own subjective worldviews) as possible,
3. measuring from the most distributed/nonlocal concepts/contexts (those not bound by environment but which are universal such as pure mathematics/logic).
“There are no test items without a cultural context.”
This applies to any abstraction about reality, including scientific abstractions. By stating “I dont’t believe one can test abstract models in the physical world” you are stating all of science is impossible.
The quantification is based on the reference to other testees.
The absolute objective reference point for intelligence is the ability to get the correct answer to any test item, which is equivalent to having the set of possible knowledge, or being able to model anything conceptually in any possible context.
Is this a useful measurement?
It’s debatable in the details, but given it’s correlation with many other things people want, it is safe to say IQ is a useful measurement.
Some questions are not related to physical reality, but within their own context, can be logically deduced.
The other questions are simply matters-of-fact about physical reality (SAT general knowledge).
“Maximum knowledge is impossible.”
The absolute objective reference point for any measurement need not be possible in reality. Nothing can reach the speed of light but light itself, but we can still measure relative speed and distance.
The set of all theoretically possible knowledge is infinite? So is theoretic speed.
All knowledge is based on a subjective worldview or cultural context? So then, the speed of light must also be subjective, since it is merely a concept/knowledge.
“How do we eliminate the inherent subjectivity that comes with making test items about fictional scenarios that do not necessarily represent physical reality?”
Any test item with a correct answer can be shown how in the intended context (the fictional scenario), the conclusion logically follows from the premises.
“What if two or more answers are possible given the same question, depending on the culture?””
Then a person with more knowledge (higher IQ), would be more likely to understand the context a question was written under (such as the culture of the test maker), and hence would be more likely to get the correct answer.
So obviously IQ tests measure one’s ability to take IQ tests, but all else being equal, the person with more knowledge and ability to utilize that knowledge will get more correct answers. That is why it is said nearly any general knowledge test can be used as an IQ test with a good sample size.
“What if we decide IQ tests are stupid and waste of time and it’s better to actually accomplish things? Isn’t the one taking the test actually dumber?”
Perhaps, and perhaps that person who forgoes IQ measurements will become a rich entrepreneur, and be able to make the IQ researcher or high IQ individual look like an idiot.
The point is, it’s tautological: All else being equal, those with more knowledge will come up on top, always. It’s literally irrefutable. It’s like natural selection, of course that which is more capable of surviving will survive.
“NOT dualistically separated”
Mental causation is intentionally constituted whereas physical causation isn’t (it’s event causation). You’re description of bat hitting baseball is literally event causation.
Of course, a human intends to hit a ball but the descriptor is part event causation too.
We can measure length as it is a property of what is being measured, like the length of a stick. Items are added and removed until the desired distribution is gotten, test constructors can create any score distribution they want, which logically follows from item analysis and selection.
A person with more knowledge and experience with that knowledge and structure will be more likely to get the right answer and score higher on the test… Shocking. The fact of the matter is, there is no logical reason to accept one set of items that gives one set of group distributions over another set of items that gives another set of distributions. Bias is why one accepts one and not the other. Furthermore, IQ and achievement tests have similar item content and so they are different versions of the same test. Take the Rosser SAT item examples—adding or subtracting items so that one group would score higher is a direct example of my claim, as is the Kidder and Rosner examples.
We don’t need IQ tests, you’re right that it’s a tautology, so it is vacuous. IQ tests show one’s acculturation, what one is exposed to at the very best.
Dictionaries index word usages. Your claim that brains think isn’t even wrong it doesn’t make any sense and is an example of the mereological fallacy.
When it comes to Asian hyper-selectivity, nothing you wrote refutes the argument that I laid out.
Finally, these two arguments that argue that all facts can’t be described using physical vocabulary and that the mental can’t be described using words that only refer to physical properties allow me to tightly conclude that the mental and physical are two different substances where the mental is irreducible.
Anything that cannot be described in material terms using words that only refer to material properties is immaterial.
The mind cannot be described in material terms using words that only refer to material properties.
Therefore the mind is immaterial; materialism is false.
——
If physicalism is true then all facts facts can be stated using a physical vocabulary.
But facts about the mind cannot be stated using a physical vocabulary.
So physicalism is false.
If baseball is true then all facts can be stated using a baseball vocabulary.
But facts about basketball cannot be stated using a baseball vocabulary.
So baseball is false.
rr presumes that he can say things about reality based merely on analyzing what he can say per se and by redefining ordinary words in bizarre ways. yet he fails to grasp that this is idealism. i went through this stage when i was 13.
the physical and the material are abstractions. none has ever experienced either.
so-called physical vocabulary always refers to mental phenomena.
the meaning is the use.
what rr is jiving about is ultimately what i would term “the misplaced absolute”.
psychologists and physicalists are equally guilty.
i will explain this when peepee proves her race and gender.
Perspective is everything. if you see a tree and decide that it is a tree how you define it has so many variables involved that eventually you cannot categorize something as something else.
for example categorizations are just words we put into our reality as a way of defining and objectifying things. there are a limit on the words we can use and the world is much more complex than that. the universe serves as a template for things that can be defined but not everything can have a definition because the concepts we have in our head are merely reflections of our senses.
anyways if we look at something from one perspective for one time and then we look at it from another we can see a disparity between the two that is why we fail to define things wholly.
Okay I lied and I’ll reply.
“Mental causation is intentionally constituted whereas physical causation isn’t (it’s event causation). You’re description of bat hitting baseball is literally event causation.”
Not my point. Both mental and “event causation” are exactly equivalent on every other measure except one is accompanied with a feeling of “intention”. That’s the only thing that separates them in our minds, which means they both are ABSTRACTIONS.
Hence, causation is our CONCEPTUALIZATION of physical facts which we gather through SENSORY EXPERIENCE. Everything goes through sensory experience, which is simply raw content (qualia) and is conceptualized through our mind. Which means, the MIND and PHYSICAL are NOT separated.
They are CONCEPTUALLY equivalent, meaning they correspond completely on the conceptual level. Conceptual reasoning is information processing, which is what we measure with IQ tests. We do NOT measure raw experience or qualia. We do NOT care if someone is a P-zombie.
“We can measure length as it is a property of what is being measured, like the length of a stick. Items are added and removed until the desired distribution is gotten, test constructors can create any score distribution they want, which logically follows from item analysis and selection.
You missed my point. The length of the stick is not absolute unless there is a reference point. The reference point is the speed of light. The reference point for IQ is how much information you can process, or how much knowledge you’ve acquired.
“A person with more knowledge and experience with that knowledge and structure will be more likely to get the right answer and score higher on the test… Shocking.”
If you actually grasped that I already engaged with this objection you might be shocked.
“The fact of the matter is, there is no logical reason to accept one set of items that gives one set of group distributions over another set of items that gives another set of distributions.”
Yes there is. One set of items can be shown to be more fair across different cultures. If I make a test about your life history, you would ace it compared to me. And vice versa. Or your hometown. Conversely, if there was a test about mathematics or general pop culture knowledge, we’d get scores much closer. The fact that you believe we cannot bridge cultural gaps is incomprehensible to me. I’m not sure why you aren’t for segregation.
“Bias is why one accepts one and not the other.”
Yes, if you’re a bad IQ tester who knows nothing about culture-fair test items.
“Furthermore, IQ and achievement tests have similar item content and so they are different versions of the same test.”
But you don’t even know what the test is because you have a incoherent/incomplete idea of what intelligence is.
Instead of the top-down looking at IQ tests as subsets of all possible knowledge, let’s start from the bottom-up.
Culture is made up of shared concepts, or notions, or symbols. In order to first learn culture from the environment and favor it, we must acquire these concepts.
But that implies that conceptual thinking is innate. But conceptual thinking being innate means that anything closer to raw conceptual thinking is more culturally fair.
Test items correspond to concepts in that one must use one’s own conceptual understanding of a test item and logically deduce an answer. Logic and deduction are also concepts.
But if there is no test item that is culturally fair, that implies no concept comes more naturally for all people than others.
(Certain concepts being easier to learn would imply that certain test items would be universally easier and therefore unbiased)
Given that each concept is completely unique and nothing is more basic or universal, environmental input is necessary, which can only take the form of raw sensory data.
But if raw sensory data input is necessary to form concepts, it follows that human beings form concepts by processing data from the outside world.
Hence there are two possibilities, both proving intelligence is inherited:
If human beings form concepts through qualia, those with larger or more efficient organs for processing qualia (brains and nervous systems) will be faster at acquiring new concepts and organizing concepts. Therefore, physical traits will impact one’s information processing, impacting one’s intelligence.
If human beings do not form cultural concepts through qualia, this implies that they must internally form concepts or have them pre-existing and pre-formed. But that implies that genetics determine what concepts you know or can know, with the environment not impacting one’s conceptual knowledge of the world at all.
“Take the Rosser SAT item examples—adding or subtracting items so that one group would score higher is a direct example of my claim, as is the Kidder and Rosner examples.”
Already answered this as best I can.
“We don’t need IQ tests, you’re right that it’s a tautology, so it is vacuous. IQ tests show one’s acculturation, what one is exposed to at the very best.”
False. As I’ve shown, they show that one has access to more knowledge.
“Dictionaries index word usages. Your claim that brains think isn’t even wrong it doesn’t make any sense and is an example of the mereological fallacy.”
Yes, and I assume we are using the words as they are commonly used, so a dictionary is fine.
Brains think at least in the way computers think. They process information. As to where the conscious/experiential aspect is located or processed or received, I obviously cannot answer. I never claimed brains are sufficient for creating consciousness; consciousness may be a latent property of the universe so I didn’t commit the mereological fallacy.
“When it comes to Asian hyper-selectivity, nothing you wrote refutes the argument that I laid out.”
Nothing you wrote refutes Asians being genetically smarter than white and blacks. You gave some test results that suggest Asian immigrants to the West are hyperselected but you didn’t test all East Asians and all whites. That’s what I call a biased test item!
“Finally, these two arguments that argue that all facts can’t be described using physical vocabulary and that the mental can’t be described using words that only refer to physical properties allow me to tightly conclude that the mental and physical are two different substances where the mental is irreducible.”
Thank you for laying out these arguments, but I don’t know why after all I’ve said you think I’m either a physicalist or materialist when I said I wasn’t explicitly. I’ve said probably ten times already that IQ tests measure the mental only insofar as it is measurable physically (i.e. mental information processing that corresponds to reality)
“Anything that cannot be described in material terms using words that only refer to material properties is immaterial.
The mind cannot be described in material terms using words that only refer to material properties.
Therefore the mind is immaterial; materialism is false.”
Never did I say materialism was true. The material world is only known through the mental, which is why everything we know is conceptual and everything we experience is qualia, whether or not it is physical or mental.
——
“If physicalism is true then all facts facts can be stated using a physical vocabulary.
But facts about the mind cannot be stated using a physical vocabulary.
So physicalism is false.”
I’m not a physicalist, and saying intelligence can be quantified does not make IQists physicalists.
Nor is physicalism the same as saying the physical and mental can only be known through the same abstract conceptualizations of the mind, which is my view.
“the physical and the material are abstractions. none has ever experienced either.
so-called physical vocabulary always refers to mental phenomena.
the meaning is the use.”
Exactly. Even if physical results defy our expectations they still must be conceptualized through the mind’s pre-existing conceptual worldview. And all results are filtered through our sense organs that send signals to the brain and the mind then produces the qualia/experiences. It’s what Immanuel Kant said about not knowing reality directly.
I’m not sure where RR gets the notion that just because experience is intangible that our conceptualization of it is intangible. If that were the case, we couldn’t even talk the physical world since it is filtered through the mind.
Conceptualization =/= Experience
Both can occur in the mind, but one deals with contextualized information while one deals with disconnected/uncontextualized, raw input.
the senses are the forces by which we are governed. everything else is just a hallucination. if this makes sense then there is a shared connection you and i may have.
empathy seems to work in this way that we share senses with one another. i think we can define consciousness as our ability to sense things.
we are manifestations of the words around us too. we can transcend the manifestations though by actions.
OK tbh I missed RR’s point here:
“We can measure length as it is a property of what is being measured, like the length of a stick. Items are added and removed until the desired distribution is gotten, test constructors can create any score distribution they want, which logically follows from item analysis and selection.”
Yes, I agree that if the test judger changes the items around and changes how they value certain items, etc. then that messes up heavily with the proper measurement. But still, if you can say one can accurately measure knowledge about some specific field, such as a bar exam, without culture affecting scores too much, then one should be able to measure general knowledge/problem-solving ability. Because test items can be even more surprising and varied than field-specific tests I think IQ tests should be even less prone to test-prepping.
And the point remains that all else being equal, the person able to put themselves in greater numbers of cultural contexts, who understands more things and to a greater depth, will always come up ahead of the others given enough questions.
It’s not like Oprah, who could read at such a young age, was somehow raised in a different culture than her black peers. And how could a random poor black kid absorb specific cultural information much faster than even wealthy white kids with lots of academic opportunities? When there are outliers, like Oprah, or Chris Langan, or John Von Neumann, or Isaac Newton, who created a new field of mathematics, they are creating their own culture and thoroughly leaving behind their peers. There is no explanation in your world view. And if building entirely new knowledge bases is possible where no culture came before, why are we to assume everyone is bound strictly in the same way to the culture they are exposed to? (Even if you want to claim Newton and co. were exposed to a private culture that promoted breaking scientific paradigms, you are them claiming that culture does not at all prevent certain individuals from breaking cultural boundaries, and hence having knowledge not bound in their culture).
Oprah didn’t have an amazing singular culture, she just has a giant brain and a lot of ambition.
Culture defines the basics of what we do and then we coagulate towards the end goal.
“Which means, the MIND and PHYSICAL are NOT separated.
They are CONCEPTUALLY equivalent, meaning they correspond completely on the conceptual level.”
This claim is refuted by the 2 arguments I’ve given you above along with arguments that refute mind-brain identity/neuroreduction.
“If you actually grasped that I already engaged with this objection you might be shocked.”
That’s what you said, I just rearranged the words.
“The fact that you believe we cannot bridge cultural gaps is incomprehensible to me. I’m not sure why you aren’t for segregation.”
We agree that all testing takes place in a cultural context. So it follows that the items on the test are from a certain culture. I’m not for segregation. I’m not a racist and ending segregation had positive impacts for all, see Children of the Dream (Johnson and Nazaryan).
“Yes, if you’re a bad IQ tester who knows nothing about culture-fair test items.”
“Culture-fair test items” are impossible as are “culture-fair” IQ tests
“But you don’t even know what the test is because you have a incoherent/incomplete idea of what intelligence is.”
I know what IQ tests are and I know what achievement tests are.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2021/11/28/the-arbitrariness-of-iq-intelligence/
“If human beings form concepts through qualia, those with larger or more efficient organs for processing qualia (brains and nervous systems) will be faster at acquiring new concepts and organizing concepts. Therefore, physical traits will impact one’s information processing, impacting one’s intelligence.”
This is an empirical claim and so requires empirical evidence.
“If human beings do not form cultural concepts through qualia, this implies that they must internally form concepts or have them pre-existing and pre-formed. But that implies that genetics determine what concepts you know or can know, with the environment not impacting one’s conceptual knowledge of the world at all.”
The concept of “innateness” is bunk; “innate” traits develop and therefore require experience. (See Blumberg, Development Evolving: The Origins and Meaning of Instinct.)
I said “IQ tests show one’s acculturation” then you said “they show that one has access to more knowledge.”
“Brains think at least in the way computers think.”
Neither of these two things think. Humans think. Mereological fallacy. I do say that the brain is necessary for mentality, but that doesn’t mean that I believe that brains think.
“Nothing you wrote refutes Asians being genetically smarter than white and blacks.”
How can this claim be evidenced? You’ve not refuted the hyper-selectivity hypothesis; that’s the best explanation of their achievements. Nevermind the fact that they used to be looked at in sinilar ways as blacks and when they started to see economic up turns they switched gears (Lieberman (How “Caucasoids” Got Big Crania and Why They Shrank: From Morton to Rushton). Strange, huh?
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/09/08/mongoloid-idiots-asians-and-down-syndrome/
“You gave some test results that suggest Asian immigrants to the West are hyperselected but you didn’t test all East Asians and all whites. That’s what I call a biased test item!”
This is ridiculous. As a group, hyper-selectivity explains Asian achievement.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2020.1678760
My readings and thinking on philosophy of mind and measurement have led me to the belief that only physical things can be measured and so if X isn’t physical then X is quantifiable then X cannot be measured. You claiming that aspects of mind can be measured is directly against that. For in my philosophy of mind, if X is a psychological trait then X is immaterial and X is immaterial, then X able to be quantified and therefore X is immeasurable. The point is, at the end of the day, there are 2 substances—mental and physical—and one is irreducible to the other. You talk about being “genetically smarter” which is a claim that reduces a psychological trait to a physical structure.
I’ve given you about 4 examples on my point on test construction—I believe the most salient of which are the 2 SAT item citations. Showing bias against/for men/women and blacks/whites.
It’s not like Oprah wasn’t taught to read by her grandmother and so presumably had books and the right environment to read in. You’re acting like those individuals DIDN’T have people to converse with to shape their views. I need only explain group differences, I don’t pretend to be able to explain one’s life circumstances and analyze their lifestyle and how they grew up and whatnot.
rr is albanian 100%. or just a bedouin.
no southern italian can be THAT naive.
it’s GENETICALLY impossible.
Peeps,
Which do you think is the greatest ethnicity?
Which do you think is the smartest ethnicity?
What is the greatest movie ever made in your opinion?
Why did you name yourself pumpkin person?
How is this Hindu so stupid? Hindus must really be low in sentience! Complete dog tier subhumans.
any one who uses “dog” as an insult is lower than a dog.
dogs are the most brainwashed most pathetic animals. anyone who likes dogs is just that…a bitch.
Actually muslims the world over and in india are considered sub-humans.
You clearly are mentally ill. Even peeps said so. Don’t talk to me like that because I will end up talking badly to you and you might not handle it and get depressed. Stop talking to me completely.
im not scared of you retard. you sound like an overgrown manchild. get a life and stop asking stupid questions.
Peeps….answer dear! I know these questions are not related to this article but so are most of the comments here.
you are fucking stupid all the comments are related except yours. do you know how to read? do you know how to understand concepts?
Do you understand the following concept?:
You and your religion are sub-human. Even your country. That is why God punished your evil country with devastating floods due to climate change even though your country is very lightly responsible for climate change.
If i talk to you any more, you will [redacted by pp, 2022-10-22]
you wont do shit your life is as meaningless as any one elses get off your high horse and act like a human and not an animal.
dude you have Aspergers. what are you talking about having a mental illness.
all you do is ask stupid questions that will never get answered because you have no self awareness.
has anyone noticed how the most r-selected races are the most ugly? if it wasnt for their r-selected sexual features they would be unable to reproduce. its crazy!
like pakistanis.
i meant more like mexicans and blacks but trailer trash whites like you Mug of Piss fall into this category as well.
Blacks have more T and are less neotenous. They have less cute features. Probably, being r-selected, they are less symmetric and have other random disabilities/genetic abnormalities as well. Don’t know for certain. I think the rate of twin births is highest among them.
Australian Aborigines look most like our ancestors IMO. Some of them literally they are still evolving into homo sapiens.
I mean I feel horrible that so many of them died, like Native Americans, but there is a sense where if you met them hundreds of years ago you’d literally wonder if they were the same species. You’re ancestral memories of killing off other hominids would kick in.
Tbf I think Aborigines have just particularly bad facial features. On average they are probably not morphologically different than sub-saharans were before modern times.
i have Papuan and Abo ancestry only a little bit like 2% Oceanian and i also have Andamanese ancestry from my South Indian side.
You spew nothing but bullshit, it seems. Blacks don’t have higher T than whites, and even if they did it wouldn’t mean anything for them because T doesn’t cause what they need it to.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2018/01/28/race-testosterone-aggression-and-prostate-cancer/
“Probably, being r-selected”
Sad how Rushton defenders still use these terms when they were shown to be bunk decades ago. Rushton didn’t even use “alpha selection”. Anderson showed that Rushton reversed what was “r” and “K”, so blacks would be K and Asians would be r.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2017/06/24/rk-selection-theory-a-response-to-rushton/
“You spew nothing but bullshit, it seems. Blacks don’t have higher T than whites, and even if they did it wouldn’t mean anything for them because T doesn’t cause what they need it to.”
Fair enough point.
I just meant they have more masculine phenotype/less-neotenous. Which is basically Rushton’s hierarchy but you want to quibble about specific facts like “K v. r” or “alpha selection” that don’t really impact the general point that the black-white-asian hierarchy is based on neotenous features and also corresponds with IQ.
Please take a charitable analysis and steelman instead of strawman.
Mug you are one of the dumbest and most irrational people ive ever met. you fail to learn anything new.
your whole life goal is to become the stereotypes people make of you instead of breaking out of them like me. i am a person who hates being stereotyped but people love boxing me in.
Mug on the flipside embraces this form of living and is comforted by the lifestyle of appealing to certain qualities instead of breaking the barrier.
he is a dog. a brazen dog. who has nothing but a lack of empathy for himself and others. truly pitiful and disgusting.
Puppy you said the east asians are the most genetically superior. But the jews are the most genetically superior race according to Rushton/E.O Wilson’s criteria.
Jews are not superior. ONLY the American/british ones score higher than East Asians and they’re only superior in intelligence. East Asians are superior in law abidingness & mental stability & health & appearance, and hair straightness, especially the women. And Jews are not a race, they’re just Caucasoids bred to be smart just like the Dutch are Caucasoids bred to be tall and pygmies are blacks bred to be short and South Asians are Caucasoids bred to be dark.
Mongoloids are an actual new morphological category that emerges in the fossil record.
Well jews are so different to other caucosoids they might as well be an entire different race. Theres nothing like them.
Straight hair is ‘genetic superiority’? WTF.
mongoloids include hispanics and south americans. the yellow man is directly related to these very unstable and violent group of people. how do you reconcile that Pumpkin?
not only are Mongoloids dumber but they are also more violent and less stable than even blacks. and its not their european ancestry that defines them but rather their mongoloid ancestry.
very serious question here you have to address.
Native Americans are only a small percentage of the Worldwide Mongoloid race so they don’t drag down the Mongoloid average down to Caucasoid level. Similarly, American Jews are a tiny percentage of the Worldwide Caucasoid average so they don’t push the Caucasoid average up to Mongoloid level.
i think mongoloids and caucasoids overall are on par with each other. some caucasoid populations are very smart and very prosocial.
i think southeast asians who are mongoloid drop the intelligence down in a subtle way and i think some caucasoid populations like the Finns bring up the intelligence levels in a subtle way as well.
But hispanics and aboriginal americans are the same robustness as whites from what I’ve read. It’s like they have mongoloid facials features, skin, and hair, but on a caucasoid body. So probably they don’t have the bigger brains to get the east asian IQ boost.
I tend to feel that humanity will evolve in the east asian direction in the future because of brain size, but I do question the superiority of having smaller, weaker bodies, and being more obeying to authority and being collectivistic. Being weaker makes you less likely to be aggressive, which is one reason they are peaceful. Obviously working together is better, but it comes at a cost since you could be obeying the wrong authority (I wonder if that’s why North Korea has been able to keep its control over its population for so long… I think most other peoples would either revolt or corruption would be so high they couldn’t even organize their prisons and forced labor… it’s like east asians can obey and keep order even in the literal worst form of society possible)
“pygmies are blacks bred to be short”
How do you distinguish that from “Mongoloids are just Homo Sapiens bred to live in the cold/East Asia”?
woke! preach!
One more argument why IQ tests don’t only test acculturation:
If knowledge is accumulative, we can measure it. More knowledge = more intelligence.
If knowledge is not accumulative, only one’s interpretations are what is tested.
But where do interpretations come from? Culture. But how does one become acculturated? By their brains interpreting sense data.
But how does one interpret sense data? Only through a pre-built interpretative cognitive framework.
It’s a vicious circle.
(One can say we only experience sense data without interpreting it, but in order to start interpreting we have to already be able to organize the data and draw conclusions in some fashion, which is equivalent to interpreting it.)
If you believe all cultural interpretations of data exist in every individual, but that it gets reinforced by the environment, and so is like a muscle that needs exercise… That implies that there can be bigger stronger, muscles, capable of interpreting under any interpretation faster (and also implicitly implies that cultural knowledge, a subset of knowledge, is measurable, which implies that all knowledge is measurable).
some people have discrepancies in their knowledge than other people. that should be a basic understanding of the human experience.
knowledge reflects actions and thus actions can be a reasonable way to assess how people perceive their knowledge and how they incorporate their knowledge into fundamental aspects of future orientation.
if intelligence isnt knowledge then we can say it is prioritization of knowledge and the application of knowledge into aspects of growth!
Steve Bannon looks homeless most of the time. He looks terrible. He must be a chain smoker.
Evolution would be progressive if the environment never changed. Better-adapted species would outcompete lesser-adapted ones, only to eventually get replaced by even better-adapted species and so on.
It gets tricky when you start accounting for environmental changes that aren’t externally imposed. One species may replace another only to later be driven extinct by a predator/famine/etc. that the original would have been better suited for. On the whole though, you’d expect evolution to remain progressive (albeit at a lesser rate) even with these new variables because scenarios like these probably happen less frequently than not.
Macro forces like ice ages, meteorite impacts, climate change, etc. probably make it impossible for evolution to remain progressive on large time scales. The environment of today bears little resemblance to the environment of 1 million years ago, and the species in each case have had to adapt to completely different conditions (and with different amounts of time to do so). In PP’s example, the results would probably be completely random.
Evolution would be progressive if the environment never changed.
It never completely changes. Thus I don’t think it’s completely non-progressive.
Most would agree that evolution is progressive within specific environments, but specific is relative. Relative to other planets the entire Earth is a specific environment, so I would expect there’s at least a small long-term tendency to become better adapted to the planet in general.
At the highest level, evolution is probably progressive. If there was a perfect quantitative measure of the “advanced-ness” of any given species relative to every species of life that has ever existed and you plotted this value for every species beginning with the earliest lifeforms, I think you’d see a noisy, shallow upward trend with huge variations in average values across shorter time intervals.
Of course an average increase in “advanced-ness” would not be enough to silence the critics. They would simply say “advanced-ness” takes time to evolve so of course average advanced-ness increases as a function of time, but that doesn’t prove advanced-ness is generally favoured by natural selection.
That’s a good point. Maybe some overall measure of fitness would be better. One that takes into account an organism’s fitness for its current environment as well as it’s ability to adapt to change. You’d probably see a similar trend.
But critics could still just say that adaptability is a function of variability and that greater variability over time doesn’t necessarily imply that it was selected for.
That’s a good point. Maybe some overall measure of fitness would be better. One that takes into account an organism’s fitness for its current environment as well as it’s ability to adapt to change. You’d probably see a similar trend.
I was thinking adaptability as measured by number of environments the species lives in. For example our species is ranked as the most adaptable (terrestrial) species because we live in so many diverse places (though not sure how that’s quantified)
But critics could still just say that adaptability is a function of variability and that greater variability over time doesn’t necessarily imply that it was selected for.
Exactly. That’s why it’s not enough to just show that the mean or median adaptability of all species has increased over time, because starting from zero, it had nowhere to go but up. One must show that even among complex organisms (who can in theory evolve in both directions), most organisms are more adaptable than their ancestors. It’s certainly true for humans, but we might be the exception.
I’ve wondered whether evolution would favor organisms that can phenotypically adapt quickly to novel environments. Not necessarily methods of adaptions that retain the exact genes from one species iteration to another but instead for the retention of malleable blueprints that exhibit biased genetic drift for traits that historically didn’t have the precise reasons for faithful transmission like, for example, the precise structure of the heart or the structure of any complex organ. So for things like size, coloration, bone density, or anything whose alteration wouldn’t immediately or in the short-term impact the survival of an organism, some amount of variability would both be expected and at times be adaptive if variation in these traits at some point in history had been advantageous. Variability would be expected just from the nature of the hypothetical, if a trait doesn’t immediately or in the short-term impact the fitness of an organism then variation wouldn’t be under as much selection pressure as a trait that does.
It wasn’t until Steve Hsu introduced to me the idea of additive variance, where having more or less of a particular gene would add or subtract to the variation of a particular trait, that I realized I’m pretty stupid. Evolution would favor transmission structures or methods that best retain the adaptive phenotypes of an organism, and if sexual reproduction requires the recombination of genes then a transmission structure that doesn’t require near absolute faithful genetic reconstructions for adaptive phenotypes to express themselves then conceptually a method that uses additive variance would be advantageous.
Perhaps I’m not wording this right. But what I want to get at is that on the level of transmission there is a reason to think evolution is progressive (not that progress entails selection that universally favors a particular transmission method). If progress is defined in this sense, then I would say evolution is progressive. If the question is instead whether particular phenotypes are more progressive than other phenotypes, let’s use progression in the sense of greater fitness across a wide variety of environments, I would tentatively agree only if structures and not the total makeup of an organism is what’s being measured.
Almond eyes don’t have an absolute advantage, or even relative advantage, in every environment, neither does straight hair, kinky hair, blonde hair, black hair, etc etc. I’ll just be repeating what Pumpkin has already said in relation to intelligence on this blog so I’ll just state that culture should probably be viewed as something analogous to an organ and that it’s extraordinarily adaptive if a species is able to make use of it, and that humans that are best capable of making use of this organ are more progressive than humans that haven’t.
we need to start looking at wokeness unironically. it can define us in a lot of ways.
2 million year old ancestors? They had pretty small brains. Probably had good instincts but that is about it. The moderns may outsmart them if it is a zero sum game.
Now try 50,000 year old ones just before behavioral modernity. They hadn’t reached the peak Sapiens brain size but were pretty big brained so its a more proximal comparison. And they probably had good instincts to live in a late middle to early upper paleolithic era.
Who would fair better here? Unless modern people retain the particular ways in which later upper paleolithic people outcompeted their rivals, the moderns may not emerge on top and would be lucky to carve out a niche.
Adaptations to situations could be undone by later adaptations. People have plenty of built up knowledge now, but can those 100 random people really rebuild civilization? I doubt it.