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Re:The Great Purge (1933) by wongarsu on Monday April 15, 2024 @05:40PM (#40045961)
Also a "climate alarmist". There is a band of climate science you can freely publish without reputational damage, but don't go over or under it.

But that's probably nothing compared to the narrow band of tolerable science when it comes to questions of race or ethnicity. Anything that could be construed as people of some descent being "inferior" in any aspect is pretty risky to publish.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by dmbche on Monday April 15, 2024 @05:46PM (#40046034)
You got some of those edgy papers near? I keep hearing things like this, but at every turn the science being published is hot trash.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Monday April 15, 2024 @08:28PM (#40047149)
You're probably not searching with a genuine effort to find the good ones.

There's the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The authors found a politically incorrect result and tried to cover it up by inventing a new hypothesis (which they hadn't tested) after they'd collected their data.

I also read a fairly comprehensive secondary research paper trying to support the no-biological-differences theory and when it came to Ashkenazi Jews, they admitted the only plausible explanation was genetic superiority.

This is an area where the science all points in one direction but popular opinion is in the other direction. People don't look at the research. Probably because they don't want to understand, they just want to spread their political ideology. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever shown that no races are inferior.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by defrost on Monday April 15, 2024 @08:54PM (#40047312)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...

where the bulk of scientists agreed in various ways that the confounding problems made it exceedingly implausible that differences were either entirely genetically based or entirely environmentally based?

> This is an area where the science all points in one direction but popular opinion is in the other direction.

Or maybe an area where the science is inconclusive but personal opinion shades the reading and subsequent presentation?

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @01:10AM (#40048563)
> exceedingly implausible that differences were [...] or entirely environmentally based

"entirely environmentally based" is the popular and un-scientific belief that I disagree with. So you agree with me?

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by dmbche on Monday April 15, 2024 @08:52PM (#40047288)
What's the conclusion everyone is missing?

I'm sure you know how unscientific IQ tests are, I'm surprised that's what you're bringing up here as being "good science" being shut down politically. Just trying to correlatw the two tests they used is absolutely subjective, I would take a step back and reexamine the parts of those studies that convinced you of whatever beliefs you have - it seems like a shoddy foundation.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @01:07AM (#40048554)
IQ test have genuine predictive power when applied to large groups. So no, they're not unscientific. In fact, the idea of IQ tests being useless or culturally biased is a now-outdated excuse that people used to use to justify the different results between ethic groups. It's now well accepted that different ethnic groups have different average IQs, and that IQ is a useful predictor of various life outcomes. What the politically-motivated researchers don't agree on is whether that's entirely environmental or partly genetic. Everyone agrees that it's at least partly environmental.

There's honestly no evidence for the environmental-only theory of intelligence. That's the popular politically correct belief but every study I've ever seen or heard of either fails to support it or supports the opposite.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @01:55AM (#40048775)
In general the thing people find obnoxious about this kind of argument is that both 'race' and 'IQ' have their origin in eugenics, but are meaningless in genetics. The genetic variation across one race (say black) is much greater than the variation between races. There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ. So, even if you do find evidence that there is a statistical correlation between these two unscientific and essentially meaningless concepts, your correlation is equally unscientific and meaningless.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by Vecr on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @02:48AM (#40049027)
Can't you train a predictor on skull shape/bone length and IQ and go from there? Yeah there's no causation there, but you should be able to give a percentage that someone's IQ is above a certain number depending on high-rez MRI scan input of skull and bone length measurements.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by actionfromafar on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:49AM (#40049396)
Or make asset worth a predictor.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @07:50AM (#40050854)
You can train a predictor on anything: that's how the famous cases of 'racist AI' came about. The point is, you can't establish a causal relationship without accounting for confounders. If you're starting with a question established by racists, with 'race' and 'IQ' as your two poles, and human populations as your data, good luck managing that.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by biorach on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @02:23AM (#40048915)
Thank you
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by te_chris on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @04:24AM (#40049584)
This guy clearly is just trying to bang on about racial superiority but coaxing it in terms of "they won't let us say the thing". Your response neatly shuts him down. Well done.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by ectopasm83 on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @08:24AM (#40051083)
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @12:33AM (#40060442)
Shut me down by saying false things? Why do you believe IQ is unscientific? It's routinely used by scientists for science and has falsifiable predictive power, which distinguishes it from unscientific things like astrology and homeopathy. Race isn't unscientific either - even if we're talking about the classic 3 races (which is not actually how people use the word anyway), they do in fact correspond to broad common genetic histories. Yes, they're an artificial classification people invented, but species are also an artificial classification. Neither is capable of classifying every individual and neither is unscientific because both are well enough defined to be useful to make predictions from.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by tdba on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @10:41AM (#40052572)
> There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ

Common misconception, sadly untrue. There are known genetic predictors of intelligence, they're just not simple genes that the layman can wrap his head around.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @12:10PM (#40053809)
I think you'd have to be a bit of an expert to understand these results, just because of words like 'intelligence', that could mean anything, really, and I think accounting for 20% of the 50% heritability of intelligence is not exactly blowing the question out of the water.

All the same, I guess I am out of date (in 2017, they were getting 1% - perhaps in 2030, they will be up to 50%? Or back down to 2%?)

In general, I don't think there's any problem with saying some traits we call intelligence are heritable and that has a genetic component. I'm less sympathetic to the idea that intelligence is a simple scalar or a quantity that should be used to prejudge candidates for given technical or social tasks. I mean, if you're good, does it matter that any given person is as dumb as hell? I certainly would rather a talented dumbass than a useless genius as a coworker.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by octopoc on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:40PM (#40056283)
True, intelligence is not simple. But no matter how complex it is, the difference between an IQ of 100 and an IQ of 70 is undeniably a difference in intelligence.

The difference between a society with an average IQ of 100 and a society with an average IQ of 70 is one of intelligence. That's why, for example, any policy that allows emigrations from IQ 70 societies to to Western countries, which usually average around 100 IQ, is a bad policy for those Western countries.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by matheusmoreira on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @07:44PM (#40058752)
It would be a bad policy... If the people of those western countries were having children. They aren't. They need those immigrants.

There is no nation without natalism.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @01:27AM (#40060792)
I mean, nationality is obviously an enviromental factor, right? There's no 'german gene'. Ethnicities like 'French' don't actually exist in genes. So even if there is this nation-by-nation IQ variation, it shouldn't matter if you let people live where they want.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by defrost on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @01:36AM (#40060857)
> The difference between a society with an average IQ of 100 and a society with an average IQ of 70 is one of intelligence.

Strong claim, hard no.

In 20th century scientific records that's about the difference between pre WW German country schools and the same regions in the later part of WWII under siege and under supplied.

That large difference has been attributed to nutrition rather than intelligence given the same genes, the same schools, the same society, etc.

> True, intelligence is not simple.

At yet there you are, mere sentences later, over simplying it and ignoring significant confounding factors. Deliberate malfeasance, oblivious blind ignorance, ... ?

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @09:15PM (#40059344)
Finding evidence to be obnoxious because of political associations is anti-science. You could make a moral argument that humans shouldn't be allowed to know certain things because we can't be trusted with that knowledge, but that's separate from trying to understand reality.

> The genetic variation across one race (say black) is much greater than the variation between races.

Why did you say that? Are you implying that there must be a wider range of IQs among various ethnicities within a race than between races? That's not a logical conclusion. Do you have some other chain of logic in mind?

By the way, I only use the word race loosely. I really mean ethnicity. Although the findings do still broadly apply to the classic 3-ish races.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @01:31AM (#40060817)
So IQ is a word used to describe the results of a bunch of tests first established by eugenicists in the late 19th century, and has no scientific extraction whatsoever. Genetics is a field of science, and you can identify groups that carry particular genes. However, the 'races' don't map to distinct genetic groups, which is very unsurprising: the 'races' or 'ethnicities' are just administrative or cultural groupings from the 19th century.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @10:49PM (#40072487)
The origin isn't relevant to whether it's valid or not.

No, ethnicities are absolutely not just administrative or cultural groupings. You've clearly done no research into this topic whatsoever and are just repeating some misinformation you got fooled by. Even the classic races which are unnecessarily crude by modern standards do actually partly correspond to distinct genetic groups. We can now classify ethnicities at a much finer level of detail and they're still distinct genetic groups.

Ironically given the article this is under, IQ was considered to be dirty Jewish science by the Nazis, probably because it showed Jews to be superior.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by pasabagi on Thursday April 18, 2024 @07:15AM (#40074963)
... That's just nonsense. Normal scientists working in genetics don't believe in race. The field has moved on from the 40s. It's not a conspiracy, there's just no evidence, because why should there be? It would be very surprising if a bunch of 19th century racists had accidentally discovered a deep truth about genetics before anybody had even discovered DNA.

Honestly, you just sound like you're a racist. Which is sad, but it's also indicative of a lack of common sense that you expect the universe to conform to your prejudices.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Thursday April 18, 2024 @05:36PM (#40080983)
I can't understand how you can say that when it's transparently false. There's an enormous quantity of research on ethnicity and genetics. Researchers have found all sorts of correlations. Even common sense tells you things about eye color, hair color, etc. but it goes far deeper than that. It's more precise than classic race but both are still valid classifications.

You must also think scientists don't believe in the distinction between planets and dwarf planets, or even stars. Yes it's an arbitrary classification, but it's still useful.

You're thinking is just like the people in TFA. Rejecting some science for arbitrary and nonsensical political reasons. You've replaces dirty Jewish science with dirty racist's science.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Monday April 15, 2024 @08:37PM (#40047187)
There's a dirty fashion in climate science to include political activism or call to action in their papers. Especially if they've found something that shows good news about climate change. They qualify it with "... but we must all make an effort to reduce fossil fuel use".

I used to teach science and would tell students not to give life advice to the reader, because that's what we were supposed to teach them. But then all these climate change papers started doing just that. It's equivalent of ancient mathematicians saying "glory to the king" in their work and reveals that the authors are bound by a conflict of interest and can't be expected to do honest work.

I recently read one about childhood safety, and they said that following the government's safety rules was important, while also defining their own idea of what kinds of safety are valuable or harmful. If the government already knows better than you, why are you even researching this? It's obviously just some effort to pressure people into not making their own dangerous decisions. But again, that's not science, that's activism and non-objective.

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by silverquiet on Monday April 15, 2024 @08:46PM (#40047243)
Ah yes, those political activists with their conflict of interest in wanting the Earth to remain habitable for their children and grandchildren; perhaps they can learn to be more objective.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @01:00AM (#40048513)
Nothing wrong with wanting it, but a research paper is not the place to express personal opinions on how other people should behave. It's not a result they got from their own work, just rhetoric they know they're supposed to repeat, perhaps for safety of their careers, or perhaps because they unethically want to use their platform for activism.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by silverquiet on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:26AM (#40049239)
I've accepted that we are going to destroy ourselves and there is essentially nothing to be done at this point, but isn't that generally considered a bad thing? I'm surprised that endeavoring to continue the existence of humanity is so controversial.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by EnigmaFlare on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @10:35PM (#40072379)
Climate change is no threat to the existence of humanity. You've been misled by extremists.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by lynx23 on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @01:06AM (#40048543)
Think of the children!

> In debate, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore may become a logical fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by silverquiet on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:28AM (#40049251)
Yes, I never really got the appeal myself, but I'm told that people do in fact place great value on children which is why I'm so surprised at their willingness to destroy the planet.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by lynx23 on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:30AM (#40049270)
"destroy the planet" is pretty much an exaggregation which demonstrates nicely that you seem to be alarmist. No point in having a discussion then.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by silverquiet on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:39AM (#40049335)
6 degrees Celsius will basically render the Earth inhospitable for human occupation, but perhaps with some remnants remaining near the poles. Some of the latest work from James Hansen (whose previous work has been quite prescient) is suggesting that 10 degrees is likely. I apologize for my hyperbole.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by lynx23 on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @03:46AM (#40049374)
6 deg of what? fahrenheit, celsiius? And what, increase or decrease? Inaccurate alarmists are even wrose. Please dont even reply, I couldnt care less about your opinions.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by silverquiet on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @04:17AM (#40049554)
I specified Celsius. And being willfully foolish as to the direction of the temperature change is childish.
Re:The Great Purge (1933) by brabel on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @02:29AM (#40048946)
I've just watched a documentary on Netflix, "Three Identical Strangers" (SPOILER ALERT), about a 1960's to 1980's study about identical twins/triplets separated at birth and who grew up in intentionally distinct conditions (of the triplets, one grew up in a blue collar family, one in middle class, and one in a upper class family, all with an older sibling in the family as a sort of "control").

Apparently, the study ran for decades, but the results were never published... it's unclear why but it seems plausible to me that, aside from the ethical concerns, the study came to uncomfortable conclusions about the polemic "nature VS nurture" debate. Initially, they show how all siblings in the study, despite the intentionally very different environments, all came to like and do the exact same things... but later in the documentary, it also shows there were differences enough that the similarities were only superficial (in what I can't see as anything other than trying to appease the "nurture" crowd - as there seems to be no justification for that, as much as I tried to find it in what was shown).

The documentary also mentions the study may even actually have been about the influence of different parenting styles on the children, or even about mental illness, given many of the participants in the study had biological parents who may have been mentally ill (who the hell would give up their children if they didn't have some serious mental issues?!), which again seems to point at trying to divert from the study findings in my opinion.

The documentary is a little sensationalistic as it tries to outrage the viewers instead of trying to understand the actual circumstances of the study (siblings were always separated at birth at the time in most adoption agencies, apparently, that was not the fault of the study), which is a pity but understandable as that makes for better entertainment which is what Netflix really needs for its viewers to be happy, but still it's well worth a watch.

These articles talk a little bit about the controversies:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208369-three-identical...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/11/nature-or-nu...

Re:The Great Purge (1933) by Anotheroneagain on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @04:58AM (#40049807)
>uncomfortable conclusions about the polemic "nature VS nurture" debate

These always seem to miss the effect of nutrition (and other) in the womb, which is massive. You need nonidentical twins as controls.