the neoliberal vision of the future

[onarchy]

The problem here, dear boy, is that you're not acknowledging biological reality at all.

Only this morning I was reading a fascinating piece about the latest research on the orgins of human language in that organ of statist collectivism The Economist.

It mentions in passing that, and I quote, 'One of the lines of evidence which show humanity's African origins is that the farther you get from that continent, the less diverse, genetically speaking are'.

a) first of all, recent findings show that many people have Neanderthal DNA. This partially undercuts the African origins theory, and must be revised with an African origin + blending with other human races. And if Neanderthals weren't a distinct species, but a race, then it is quite possible that the Asians have a component of Homo Erectus in them. But that's a totally different matter. b) even if the genetic variation within the category of Africans is large compared to other races, this only means that it is an older race.

The implication of this is that population of Africa are not a 'mildly inbred group of people', and are only defined by their common ancestry to the same extent the rest of us are.

It implies no such thing. What "mildly inbred" means is simply that there are genes in common for the group that have totally diffused throughout the population. If the diffusion of the genes common to Africans happened long ago then all the variation in Africans since this time will not alter this common set of genes.

As for the IQ/Race thing as a whole, what people forget is that Africa has always been a harsh environment for people living. Such a harsh environment presents persistent cognitive to individuals who wish to survive in it. If, for the sake of argument, we assume that there is indeed a substantial hereditary component in human intelligence, we would have to also admit that in a harsh environment such as that of Africa we would expect natural selection to produce pressures towards enhanced cognitive ability and intelligence among the populations inhabiting that environment.

Ah, but HARSH environments do not necessarily foster intelligence. Eurasia is harsh in its own way: it has winters. This harshness has a special quality to it: it is highly predictable. Winter comes every year and to an animal that has no fur or natural tools this requires a lot of long term planning. That's a kind of environment that could foster intelligence. You MUST have clothes and shelter, else you die. You MUST plan for winter, else you die. Africa is harsh in a different way, namely that it is unpredictable. The climate is more or less always the same. Food spoils easily, the sun destroys buildings etc. At the same time Africa is not harsh in a specific way: it is very rich in fruit and natural growing food.

Oh, and the Bell Curve drew a lot of its material from the journal Mankind Quarterly, which has some very nasty connections with nasty people of the brown-shirted variety.

Real good argument you've got there. It was said by the WRONG people. Can't even consider an argument if it ain't said by left-approved people. No, sirree. The funny thing is that this sort of thinking is eerily reminiscent of another type of people, those who refuse to listen to anyone who has the wrong color of the skin. Racists I believe they are called. Now, it may seem like a complete paradox that a left-winger thinks exactly like a racist, but not to me. I have after all established quite clearly that there is really no significant difference between a socialist and a Nazi. Both think and judge people by what group they belong to.

 

[Dillinger4]

95%

 

[Luther Blissett]

SOURCES. SOURCES. SOURCES.

Onarchy, in your post, add the sources, eg Who says Neanderthal DNA undercuts partially the Africa Origins theory and must be revised with an African origin + blending with other human races? (link/source).

Give the sources.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ah, but HARSH environments do not necessarily foster intelligence. Eurasia is harsh in its own way: it has winters. This harshness has a special quality to it: it is highly predictable. Winter comes every year and to an animal that has no fur or natural tools this requires a lot of long term planning. That's a kind of environment that could foster intelligence. You MUST have clothes and shelter, else you die. You MUST plan for winter, else you die. Africa is harsh in a different way, namely that it is unpredictable. The climate is more or less always the same. Food spoils easily, the sun destroys buildings etc. At the same time Africa is not harsh in a specific way: it is very rich in fruit and natural growing food.

Of all the things you've said so far, this has to be the most preposterous of all. Well done. One would barely have thought it possible.

 

[teqniq]

I have been following this on the quiet but I am really grateful for onarchy finally solving the riddle of my jutting brow. Seriously you wouldn't like to provide a link or two would you? I'll go down the pub while you have a think about it.

 

[Blagsta]

a) first of all, recent findings show that many people have Neanderthal DNA.
<snip>

Source?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Source?

That bit's true. That's the least of our worries about his most recent post.

That seems to be his 'method', more or less – start with something that's at least half-true and go on to draw totally illegitimate conclusions from it.

 

[Blagsta]

That bit's true. That's the least of our worries about his most recent post.

I just Googled it and found it to be true. I still want onarchy to provide sources.

 

[onarchy]

I have a question to you lefties: what if, say, 10 years from now there was produced 100% overwhelming evidence beyond a shred of doubt that a) intelligence is a real concept and highly inheritable and b) there are heritable differences between the various races? How would this affect your worldview? Would you all become Nazis then? Are you by definition a racist then? I am being quite serious. I am curious to know how you would react and if it would change your political views.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Real good argument you've got there. It was said by the WRONG people. Can't even consider an argument if it ain't said by left-approved people. No, sirree. <snip>

I don't think it works quite like that. As the Gould review I linked showed, "The Bell Curve" has nonsense for an argument, backed up with wretchedly bad scholarship. That was established prior to considerations of how some of those sources were funded.

When we follow up the references for that wretchedly bad scholarship though, the question arises of how these things got published if they were dubious. Pointing out that many of the sources were supported by funding from the Pioneer Foundation (an organisation with clear neo-Nazi links) and published via Mankind (not quite as evidently prone to fingernail inspections but still well dodgy) is an answer to that question.

You get the same thing with climate change disinformation. First you have to show that the contrarian scientific arguments are crap, which is easy enough. Then it's reasonable to answer the question of how that crap got published by showing where Exxon's money went.

 

[Blagsta]

I have a question to you lefties: what if, say, 10 years from now there was produced 100% overwhelming evidence beyond a shred of doubt that a) intelligence is a real concept and highly inheritable and b) there are heritable differences between the various races? How would this affect your worldview? Would you all become Nazis then? Are you by definition a racist then? I am being quite serious. I am curious to know how you would react and if it would change your political views.

When it happens, I'll tell you. Given that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I think I'll sleep easy.

 

[onarchy]

I just Googled it and found it to be true. I still want onarchy to provide sources.

You're a big boy. You know how to use google. I'm not going to spoon feed you. This is not a PhD dissertation.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Please give the sources for your Neanderthal/Human Origins post.

 

[Blagsta]

You're a big boy. You know how to use google. I'm not going to spoon feed you. This is not a PhD dissertation.

Can you give sources for the other things you have asserted? You'll note everyone else does it, so you could return the courtesy.

Thanks

 

[Luther Blissett]

You're a big boy. You know how to use google. I'm not going to spoon feed you. This is not a PhD dissertation.

No, Onarchy, at this point you need to prove you are not getting your information from ''Alien Jesuits ate my home-schooled hamster'' websites.

Your entire reputation as an author and politician depends giving upon your sources right here, right now.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

No, Onarchy, at this point you need to prove you are not getting your information from ''Alien Jesuits ate my home-schooled hamster'' websites.

Your entire reputation as an author and politician depends giving your sources right here, right now.

 

[Blagsta]

Preferably from peer reviewed journals, university sites, that kind of thing.

Thanks onarchy.

 

[Idris2002]

1. Even if recent studies 'have shown' that there may have been some limited interbreeding between Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens - something that is still hotly debated, as far as I can see - that would not mean that the old polygenist model of human origins would have to be revived.

Here's a quote from the New York Times in 2005:

Dr. David Serre of McGill University in Montreal described the analysis of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA found in 24 Neanderthals and 40 early modern human remains. The results seemed to exclude any significant contribution of Neanderthal genes to Homo sapiens, perhaps less than 1 percent. Therefore, he concluded, they were "two distinct biological species."

Dr. Katerina Harvati, also of the Planck Institute in Leipzig, recently conducted research applying a "quantitative method" to determine the degree of anatomical difference that justifies classifying specimens as different species. She and colleagues examined the variation of specific parts of the craniums and faces of modern humans and Neanderthals as well as 12 existing species of nonhuman primates. The two living species of chimpanzees, for example, appeared to be more closely related to each other than Neanderthals are to humans.

Dr. Harvati and Dr. Terry Harrison, a paleontologist at N.Y.U., organized the symposium, "Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives."

More than species differences may have kept Neanderthals and humans sexually apart, if indeed that was the case. Their opportunities may have been limited.

Dr. Ahern said in an interview that it was "surprising how little overlap there was" between the two species in Europe." It had been thought that modern humans from Africa began arriving in Europe about 40,000 years ago and so could have competed with and mingled with the local population for at least 12,000 years. But the dating of fossil and archaeological evidence is now being revised, leaving much less time when the two species could have had close contact.

"It's a real scientific problem," said Dr. Randall White, an archaeologist specializing in European ice age culture at N.Y.U. "How to interpret the overlap of Neanderthals and modern humans, their interactions and cultural exchanges, the causes of Neanderthal extinction, all depends on what are the real dates of their possible contact."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/science/15nean.html

Africa is harsh in a different way, namely that it is unpredictable.

And an unpredictable climate and environment doesn't present peculiar cognitive challenges of its own, then?

I have after all established quite clearly that there is really no significant difference between a socialist and a Nazi.

I genuinely feel sorry for you, do you realise that?

 

[onarchy]

When it happens, I'll tell you. Given that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I think I'll sleep easy.

Overwhelming evidence to the CONTRARY? As of yet I have seen a lot of people dismiss the concept of IQ based on more or less the following logic: it can't be proved 100% beyond a shred of doubt that intelligence isn't a real biological phenomenon, therefore it's a myth. In other words, the vast majority of those who oppose IQ do it negatively on the basis that they claim it can't be definitively proved. I've seen a lot of "proofs" against IQ of this type, but I've never actually seen anyone claim that there is "overwhelming evidence to the contrary." That would be quite sensational.

 

[onarchy]

And an unpredictable climate and environment doesn't present peculiar cognitive challenges of its own, then?

If those cognitive challenges are too great then there will be nothing for natural selection to work with.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Overwhelming evidence to the CONTRARY? As of yet I have seen a lot of people dismiss the concept of IQ based on more or less the following logic: it can't be proved 100% beyond a shred of doubt that intelligence isn't a real biological phenomenon, therefore it's a myth. In other words, the vast majority of those who oppose IQ do it negatively on the basis that they claim it can't be definitively proved. I've seen a lot of "proofs" against IQ of this type, but I've never actually seen anyone claim that there is "overwhelming evidence to the contrary." That would be quite sensational.

Nothing in The Bell Curve angered me more than the authors' failure to supply any justification for their central claim, the sine qua non of their entire argument: that the number known as g, the celebrated "general factor" of intelligence, first identified by British psychologist Charles Spearman, in 1904, captures a real property in the head. Murray and Herrnstein simply declare that the issue has been decided, as in this passage from their New Republic article: "Among the experts, it is by now beyond much technical dispute that there is such a thing as a general factor of cognitive ability on which human beings differ and that this general factor is measured reasonably well by a variety of standardized tests, best of all by IQ tests designed for that purpose." Such a statement represents extraordinary obfuscation, achievable only if one takes "expert" to mean "that group of psychometricians working in the tradition of g and its avatar IQ" The authors even admit that there are three major schools of psychometric interpretation and that only one supports their view of g and IQ.

But this issue cannot be decided, or even understood, without discussing the key and only rationale that has maintained g since Spearman invented it: factor analysis. The fact that Herrnstein and Murray barely mention that factor-analytic argument forms a central indictment of The Bell Curve and is an illustration of it vacuousness. How can the authors base an 800-page book on a claim for the reality of IQ as measuring a genuine, and largely genetic, general cognitive ability—and then hardly discuss, either pro or con, the theoretical basis for their certainty?

Admittedly, factor analysis is a difficult mathematical subject, but it can be explained to lay readers with a geometrical formulation developed by L. L. Thurstone, an American psychologist, in the 1930s and used by me in a full chapter on factor analysis in my 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man. A few paragraphs cannot suffice for adequate explanation, so, although I offer some sketchy hints below, readers should not question their own IQs if the topic still seems arcane.

In brief, a person's performance on various mental tests tends to be positively correlated—that is, if you do well on one kind of test, you tend to do well on the other kinds. This is scarcely surprising, and is subject to interpretation that is either purely genetic (that an innate thing in the head boosts all performances); the positive correlations in themselves say nothing about causes. The results of these tests can be plotted on a multidimensional graph with an axis for each test. Spearman used factor analysis to find a single dimension—which he called g—that best identifies the common factor behind positive correlations among the tests. But Thurstone later showed that g could be made to disappear by simply rotating the dimensions to different positions. In one rotation Thurstone placed the dimensions near the most widely separated attributes among the tests, thus giving rise to the theory of multiple intelligences (verbal, mathematical, spatial, etc., with no overarching g). This theory (which I support) has been advocated by many prominent psychometricians, including J. P. Guilford, in the 1950s, and Howard Gardner today. In this perspective g cannot have inherent reality, for it emerges in one form of mathematical representation for correlations among tests and disappears (or greatly attenuates) in other forms, which are entirely equivalent in amount of information explained. In any case, you can't grasp the issue at all without a clear exposition of factor analysis—and The Bell Curve cops out on this central concept.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html

 

[Blagsta]

Overwhelming evidence to the CONTRARY? As of yet I have seen a lot of people dismiss the concept of IQ based on more or less the following logic: it can't be proved 100% beyond a shred of doubt that intelligence isn't a real biological phenomenon, therefore it's a myth. In other words, the vast majority of those who oppose IQ do it negatively on the basis that they claim it can't be definitively proved. I've seen a lot of "proofs" against IQ of this type, but I've never actually seen anyone claim that there is "overwhelming evidence to the contrary." That would be quite sensational.

I've linked to a couple of studies showing how attachment affects IQ and language ability. Have you read them?

 

[butchersapron]

Dialectics - mastery of.

Africa is harsh in a different way, namely that it is unpredictable. The climate is more or less always the same

 

[Idris2002]

If those cognitive challenges are too great then there will be nothing for natural selection to work with.

Yes, because the affected population would be extinct.

 

[phildwyer]

Evidence is mostly pointing to an overall cognitive (and therefore by default a biological) improvement with use of the Internet. This isn't to say that some forms of using new media can't ever be harmful, but there's simply no evidence that the changes induced in thinking and behaving through the use of new media are worse than what went before.

I'm looking at the evidence right now.

 

[phildwyer]

As a result, some 20% or so of Americans can't read. Their functional illiterates.

Just a little too obvious. I was believing in him up until here.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ta for the link on factor analysis, Bernie. It sounds a bit like the fact that it has been mathematically proved that if you have a table that is wobbly and you rotate it on the spot, there is always at least one position in which it will not wobble. Finding that position is very useful if you don't want your drinks to spill, but once you are in an unwobbly position, that in itself tells you nothing about whether or not it would wobble in other positions.

Finding the particular orientation of dimensions that gives you g and then postulating the existence of g seems equivalent to finding the position of stability of a table and then postulating that the ground is completely flat.

The wobbly table problem

 

[phildwyer]

Ah, but the role of IQ in wealth creation and business was in general NOT appreciated. I.e. it was not appreciated that business is hard mental work and that therefore it favors the intelligent.

The capitalist way of doing business produces the concept of IQ. It assumes that human life is a thing, an object, that can be sold as a commodity. As a result, it seems natural to study the human mind in quantitative terms.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ta for the link on factor analysis, Bernie. It sounds a bit like the fact that it has been mathematically proved that if you have a table that is wobbly and you rotate it on the spot, there is always at least one position in which it will not wobble. Finding that position is very useful if you don't want your drinks to spill, but once you are in an unwobbly position, that in itself tells you nothing about whether or not it would wobble in other positions.

Finding the particular orientation of dimensions that gives you g and then postulating the existence of g seems equivalent to finding the position of stability of a table and then postulating that the ground is completely flat.

To be fair, there is some argument about that stuff from what I understand, but I think Gould makes a reasonable case. Lewontin wrote something about this too but I didn't find it on a quick trawl.

 

[phildwyer]

Now, the debate about race, IQ etc. is GOING to come, there is no way of stopping it

This is certainly true. Such debates will arise, no matter how dehumanizing and degrading they are, because our economic system will force them into being.

I do hope the U75 worshippers of "science" are taking note of the conceptual connections between Onarchy's science and his economics. He is what I've been telling you about.