eric@snark.UUCP (06/17/87)
In response to my posting on the heritability of intelligence, an irate netter I shall spare embarrassment by leaving unnamed sent me a flame by e-mail. It unintentionally illustrates the exact points I moved this to talk.politics to see explored. I will quote it in its entirety here. >Perhaps you should stop to consider that the "data" you are basing your >intelligence postings on is based on Cyril Burt's fraud. I am well aware of Burt's fraud. You are making a completely unwarranted assumption here. More recent studies (cited in _The_Mismeasure_Of_Man_) have turned up the sorts of correlations I describe. Gould's attempt at refutation *doesn't* challenge the recent data; it depends on a philosophical criticism of factor analysis. [don't go away yet, this will get interesting in 4 paragraphs or so] > I also doubt that anyone >has a satisfactory definition of "intelligence" yet, let alone a method >for testing it--your postings have cleverly ignored most of the controversy >in this area as well. You should learn to pay more attention to what you read. I specified that the 'intelligence' I was describing was a statistical composite of the results of standardized acuity tests. Yes, I skipped over the details. This was not because of any reluctance to admit or debate the issues involved, just because it's been a while since I read anything in the area. >I suppose intellectual honesty is too much to expect from a USENET >poster--but it would make an entertaining change. I suppose a careful reading and reasoned reactions are much to expect from a USENET reader--but it would make an entertaining change. [here's where it gets interesting] Really now. That was gratuitous of you. It looks as though you saw 'intelligence' and 'heritability' in the same paragraph and charged like a bull at a red flag. Read my lips: I am not a neo-Nazi, nor an apologist for Cyril Burt and his sorry elitist ilk. I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect) cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them. Here's another one (yes, this is a test of your mental flexibility). Do you know that matings between Kalahari Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile? And that the Bushmen have significant, grossly detectable morphological differences from homo-sap-elsewhere including a region in the gluteal muscles adapted like a camel's hump for storing water? Can you say 'different species'? There. I'll bet you're reacting to that as though I'd written 'inferior species'. Sigh. That's why that fact is a Damned Thing. Some people never learn... -- Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
alin@sunybcs.UUCP (Alin Sangeap) (06/21/87)
In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
. I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned
.Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect)
.cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them.
.
When you present such a collection, you have to know a whole lot to defend it.
I have great respect for those who collect, and present, and can defend.
.Here's another one (). Do you know that matings between Kalahari
.Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile?
.
Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females
don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling.
Also, Kalahari is a desert; the Bushmen probably can't afford to increase
their population without starving. They must have developed some methods
to reduce their fertility, else they would have died out. Your source,
did it test fertility for Bush-persons away from possible social and
chemical means to reduce fertility? Or was it just casual experimentation
--
Alin Sangeap SUNY Buffalo Computer Science
CSNET: alin@Buffalo.CSNET BITNET: alin@sunybcs.Bitnet
UUCP: {bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!alin
NSA: please decode all secret cryptography ciphers; best of wishes, A.cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (06/22/87)
> In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > . I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned > .Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect) > .cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them. > . > When you present such a collection, you have to know a whole lot to defend it. > I have great respect for those who collect, and present, and can defend. > > .Here's another one (). Do you know that matings between Kalahari > .Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile? > . > Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females > don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling. Everyone knows that; I doubt that's what the original poster meant. I was so surprised by this claim, however, that I went home and dug through the Encyclopedia Britannica to see if there was any mention of this infertility. I found nothing. I did find something really amazing. The Bushmen and Hottentots are closely related -- together they form the Capoid race. A study of Hottentots (Bushmen not yet studied) found 24% had more, and 23% had fewer, than 46 chromosomes. That's a total of 47% have a non-standard number of chromosomes. Can anyone see why there might be a fertility problem? > Alin Sangeap SUNY Buffalo Computer Science > CSNET: alin@Buffalo.CSNET BITNET: alin@sunybcs.Bitnet > UUCP: {bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!alin > NSA: please decode all secret cryptography ciphers; best of wishes, A. My first reaction to the claim above about Damned Facts was, "Come on. This sounds like a conspiracy." But after reading the Britannica article, I'm a little amazed that the presentation of biology, genetics, and chromosomal abnormalities in high school biology doesn't mention a little "detail" like the Hottentot peculiarity. We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not 46 chromosomes. I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored for political reasons. Clayton E. Cramer
yarak@bnrmtv.UUCP (Dennis Yarak) (06/23/87)
In article <1651@kontron.UUCP>, cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
* We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal
* abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we
* didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not
* 46 chromosomes.
* I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored
* for political reasons.
* Clayton E. Cramer
While the last statement tantalizingly lets the individual imagination
run wild, and while I would be the last to dispute that high school texts
have been subject to severe content emasculation (mostly by the Texas
School Textbook Commission, or whatever its formal name is), I wonder
if Mr. Cramer might detail what "political reasons" he attributes to
this presumed deliberate witholding of information from him?
Dennis Yarak
{amdahl, hplabs}!bnrmtv!yarakcramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (06/25/87)
> In article <1651@kontron.UUCP>, cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes: > > * We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes. We learned about chromosomal > * abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males. But we > * didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not > * 46 chromosomes. > > * I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored > * for political reasons. > > * Clayton E. Cramer > > While the last statement tantalizingly lets the individual imagination > run wild, and while I would be the last to dispute that high school texts > have been subject to severe content emasculation (mostly by the Texas > School Textbook Commission, or whatever its formal name is), I wonder > if Mr. Cramer might detail what "political reasons" he attributes to > this presumed deliberate witholding of information from him? > > Dennis Yarak Racial difference doesn't mean racial inferiority -- but because studies of racial difference have frequently been used by various jerks promoting such attitudes, it seems as though the legitimate scientific study of human populations has been marked "unclean" by the left. If you want to argue that the population isn't smart enough to be taught things the way they are without drawing the wrong conclusions, fine. But don't tell me the population is then smart enough to have unlimited governing authority. And worst of all, pretending that racial difference doesn't exist suggests that who are doing the pretending have at some level accepted the idea of "racial difference == racial inferiority". Clayton E. Cramer
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (06/27/87)
In article <3728@sunybcs.UUCP>, alin@sunybcs.UUCP (Alin Sangeap) writes: > Most matings between humans are infertile. It's because human females > don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling. Some sort of sexist remark seems almost required here, but since I'm not a sexist (and wouldn't care to arouse the ire of the net's ferocious feminists if I were) I'll let that perfect straight line slide right by... > Also, Kalahari is a desert; the Bushmen probably can't afford to increase > their population without starving. They must have developed some methods > to reduce their fertility, else they would have died out. Your source, > did it test fertility for Bush-persons away from possible social and > chemical means to reduce fertility? Several people have asked me for an exact reference on this. I am very sorry I can't supply one. I recall reading the information; I even have exact visual memories of a cross-section diagram of a Bushman's head pointing out the lower density of cortical folding. The whole business startled and amazed me. I believe it was one of my college anthro textbooks. It's not the facts themselves that have been tabooed, just the clear implication that there is more than one species of genus homo on earth. The implication of my source was that the infertility was extraordinarily high and due to biological incompatibilities, so much so as to make hybrids unheard of or nearly so. This in itself doesn't establish speciation (there's a classic example of similar stuff going on between populations at opposite ends of the circumpolar range of a species of seagull) but together with the morphological differences it makes the case pretty strong. Of course, some biologists would take the easy way out: "So what's a 'species', anyhow?". They have a point -- life is a continuum. But if we're going to describe (say) wolves and dogs as different 'species' based on peoples' more-or-less intuitive notion of mutually-infertile-populations-with- gross-morphological-differences, it's time to write homo kalaharensis into the taxonomies. Personally, I'd like to see that shouted from the housetops -- it's time for us as a species for us to deal with the idea that the self-awareness, abstraction-handling and tool-using skills we're so proud of, and the vaguer qualities we call 'humanity', aren't restricted to beings with the DNA of a homo sap. Whales, dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas and even some species of octopi and squid have demonstrated the ability to think, plan and handle abstractions in a rather humanlike way. Whales and dolphins have native languages of their own; chimps and gorillas can be taught language and use it creatively, and there's some reason to believe that the cephalopods do language-like things with chromatophore excitation patterns (though no one has caught them communicating abstractions yet). Chimps and gorillas make and use tools. One of the spookier data I have on this is that one gorilla who'd been taught language (Ameslan, I think), a female named Koko, expressed a primitive but unmistakable notion of afterlife when discussing the recent death of her pet kitten (I do have a source for this, but it was a 'new-age' magazine; you may not care to trust it). Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
phs@lifia.UUCP (Philippe Schnoebelen) (06/28/87)
In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >In response to my posting on the heritability of intelligence, an irate >netter I shall spare embarrassment by leaving unnamed sent me a flame by >e-mail. It unintentionally illustrates the exact points I moved this >to talk.politics to see explored. I will quote it in its entirety here. As an aside, I must say that moving this to talk.politics is the surest way to replace scientific discussion by plain chaotic shouting. This is in contradiction with what you say about looking for rational thinking >I am well aware of Burt's fraud. You are making a completely unwarranted >assumption here. More recent studies (cited in _The_Mismeasure_Of_Man_) >have turned up the sorts of correlations I describe. Gould's attempt at >refutation *doesn't* challenge the recent data; it depends on a philosophical >criticism of factor analysis. [ Gould described how, during the last two centuries, all the "scientific theories" proving the inferiority of some races or social groups have all been built on top of false reasonnings and erroneous methodology. Of course, making a mistake when proving something does not mean that you were trying to prove something false, it just mean that you do not prove anything, thus Gould does not try to tell what is true and what is false, he just shows what is not proven, and it turns out that very little has been convincingly proven (I use "convincingly" because the notion of what is a proof is subjective, but let's not enter this debate). ] Now I think you are wrong when saying that Gould made "a philosophical criticism of factor analysis". It is the word "philosophical" which is wrong (and if you do not use it the way I understand it, then you will be misunderstood by almost all readers.) This word seems to imply that Gould does not believe what is "proved" by factor analysis, and that this is a "philosophical question" because one cannot force somebody into being convinced when he does not want to see the truth. This is misleading because it let you think that one can as well regard factor analysis as a convincing argument, that some people may believe in it while some (e.g. Gould) do not, and that there is no way to convince either side. On the contrary, and this is clear in Gould's presentation, factor analysis cannot prove anything, and it is a mistake to believe that it can. No scientific person can possibly believe that FACTOR ANALYSIS BY ITSELF can prove anything, and this has nothing to do with philosophy. >> I also doubt that anyone >>has a satisfactory definition of "intelligence" yet, let alone a method >>for testing it--your postings have cleverly ignored most of the controversy >>in this area as well. > >You should learn to pay more attention to what you read. I specified that >the 'intelligence' I was describing was a statistical composite of the >results of standardized acuity tests. Yes, I skipped over the details. >This was not because of any reluctance to admit or debate the issues >involved, just because it's been a while since I read anything in the area. Thus you clearly say that your definition of intelligence is merely a "statistical composite of results of tests". Now you should be aware that this definition has NOTHING TO DO with the common understanding of the word, that any result about "your" intelligence has (up to now) no established connection with the "usual informal notion of intelligence". Nevertheless, whatever you will further about "your" intelligence will inevitably be mistaken a referring to "usual" intelligence. This comes from your using a well known word with a new, different meaning. You must be aware of this and you are not allowed to blame people taking the word it in its usual sense (and thus your referring to "learning to pay more attention .." is rather arrogant). If you did not realize this, then it is too bad, while if you made this on purpose, it is dishonnest and not scientific at all. In that sense, entitling your article "Stupidity about Intelligence" is unfair because even though you do not explicitly mention whose side should be considered stupid, everybody will consider that you were referring to your opponent. >>I suppose intellectual honesty is too much to expect from a USENET >>poster--but it would make an entertaining change. > >I suppose a careful reading and reasoned reactions are much to expect from a >USENET reader--but it would make an entertaining change. I agree with your opponent. You think that he has misunderstood you, but this was inevitable given the words you use. His reaction is reasoned because your posting must be considered at best dangerously unclear, at worst dishonnest. > Read my lips: I am not a neo-Nazi, nor an apologist for >Cyril Burt and his sorry elitist ilk. I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned >Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect) >cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them. In that case, you should ask yourself why (almost) everybody misunderstand you. The problem is with the way you say things. Don't ask people to abstract from it, you know that it is impossible. Just saying "I am not a neo-Nazi ..." cannot be sufficient. >Can you say 'different species'? > >There. I'll bet you're reacting to that as though I'd written 'inferior >species'. Sigh. That's why that fact is a Damned Thing. Some people never >learn... Clearly you are conscious about the fact that it is dangerous to say what you say, ... and though you say it. Maybe you think this is heroic ? I just think it is immature. -- Philippe SCHNOEBELEN, LIFIA - INPG, UUCP : phs@lifia.imag.fr 46, Avenue Felix VIALLET 38000 Grenoble, FRANCE "Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about."
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (07/02/87)
In article <2386@lifia.UUCP>, phs@lifia.UUCP (Philippe Schnoebelen) writes: > In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > As an aside, I must say that moving this to talk.politics is the surest way > to replace scientific discussion by plain chaotic shouting. This is in > contradiction with what you say about looking for rational thinking Perhaps -- but *you* are the first person that has responded with anything resembling chaotic shouting. > [ Gould described how, during the last two centuries, all the "scientific > theories" proving the inferiority of some races or social groups have all > been built on top of false reasonnings and erroneous methodology. Of You are confusing a number of issues here. I made it very clear in my first posting that I am interested in the theory and practice of psychometry. I have no sympathy for attempts to prove the inferiority of races and social groups. I find the reactions of people who can't seem to separate the two issues amusing -- they seem to reveal a fear that the development of accurate psychometry might somehow make racism respectable. That sounds like prejudice to me... > [Gould] just shows what is not proven, and it turns out that very little has > been convincingly proven (I use "convincingly" because the notion of what > is a proof is subjective, but let's not enter this debate). ] But this is precisely the debate you've invited by replying to me. What pychometric method *would* constitute such a 'proof'? > [much expostulation on what he thinks I meant by "philosophical criticism"] > No scientific > person can possibly believe that FACTOR ANALYSIS BY ITSELF can prove > anything, and this has nothing to do with philosophy. I don't believe that factor analysis by itself proves anything either. But when the *results* of factor analysis can be used predictively then it's hard to argue that the results are meaningless. And this *is* a philosophical observation -- looking for the meaning of evidence in correlations between not-obviously-related data is straight empiricism, while Gould's position that the correlations don't mean anything unless you have some formal a priori reason to believe them has the effect of a return to Platonism and the notion that experimental data are some kind of dispensible approximation to a world of ideal forms addressible by purely theoretical ratiocination. > Thus you clearly say that your definition of intelligence is merely a > "statistical composite of results of tests". Now you should be aware that > this definition has NOTHING TO DO with the common understanding of the > word, Ah, I recognize this technique. This is called "trying to prove your point by introducing it as an assumption". Tell me -- when did you last hear of a drooling idiot scoring 150 on the Sanford-Binet scale? It is certainly true that many of the things we informally lump under 'intelligence' aren't currently measurable. It is equally true that many of the characteristics we associate with 'intelligence' are quite easy to measure -- vocabulary size, spatial visualization capability and the ability to solve logical puzzles make three excellent examples out of many. The distribution of these aspects of 'intelligence' and their correlations with each other are quite well predicted by the the 'g' factor and hereditarian hypotheses. Are you going to argue that these aren't 'real' intelligence? > [various strident accusations of flim-flam and intellectual dishonesty] > I agree with your opponent. You think that he has misunderstood you, but > this was inevitable given the words you use. His reaction is reasoned > because your posting must be considered at best dangerously unclear, at > worst dishonnest. This is the funniest thing you've said yet, because the 'unknown flamer' wrote me an apologetic note after seeing my reply, admitting that he'd gone off half-cocked and should have examined my posting more carefully. > >Can you say 'different species'? > > > >There. I'll bet you're reacting to that as though I'd written 'inferior > >species'. Sigh. That's why that fact is a Damned Thing. Some people never > >learn... > > Clearly you are conscious about the fact that it is dangerous to say what > you say, ... and though you say it. Maybe you think this is heroic ? I just > think it is immature. I think you, sir, are a self-righteous twit. There, do we feel better now? <***FLAME ON***> I write about 'Damned Things' because I *care* about knowledge and life and infinite possibility. I believe that clear thinking is powerful and liberating even (especially!) when the results don't fit current intellectual fashion and political correctness. If this makes me 'immature' than you can take your 'maturity' and insert it in a random body orifice till it rots. <***FLAME OFF**> If you can come up with an attack on psychometry that a) doesn't rely on gratuitous insult and b) addresses the issue rather than trailing off into irrelevancies about racism etc. etc., I will be very happy to listen. > Philippe SCHNOEBELEN, > LIFIA - INPG, UUCP : phs@lifia.imag.fr > 46, Avenue Felix VIALLET > 38000 Grenoble, FRANCE -- Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718