The Liberal Blind Spot

[Acidbaron]

The only way genetic differences appear significant if is you exclude all other elements that have an effect on it otherwise the other elements play such a greater role that you can neglect it, not to mention if you really want to make a claim that one ethic group as a whole is smarter you have to again be very selecting in filtering out certain individuals to proof such a thing and not go by on stereotypes, stereotypes if you ever got any class on it are never to be used as universal truths for whole ethnic groups.

However this being mmo-c OT i'm not surprised one of you have literally claimed that non-brown people are smarter although that is what is being suggested here without a doubt.

[Spectral]

The only way genetic differences appear significant if is you exclude all other elements that have an effect on it otherwise the other elements play such a greater role that you can neglect it, not to mention if you really want to make a claim that one ethic group as a whole is smarter you have to again be very selecting in filtering out certain individuals to proof such a thing and not go by on stereotypes, stereotypes if you ever got any class on it are never to be used as universal truths for whole ethnic groups.

This isn't how averages work. Groups can have overlapping distributions but different averages.

However this being mmo-c OT i'm not surprised one of you have literally claimed that non-brown people are smarter although that is what is being suggested here without a doubt.

Did someone claim that? The only references I see to it are Endus bringing it up and then Osmeric saying that Asian people probably have the highest IQs. Asian people, you may be aware, are kinda brown.

[Acidbaron]

This isn't how averages work. Groups can have overlapping distributions but different averages.

Did someone claim that? The only references I see to it are Endus bringing it up and then Osmeric saying that Asian people probably have the highest IQs. Asian people, you may be aware, are kinda brown.

I wouldn't be surprised at all that this was suggested on these forums, considering the quality and quantity of shit posts regarding immigration.

[Flatspriest]

Lol, yeah, no. Do you actually believe this hogwash? Here is the reality -

The democrats want to increase spending and match it with tax increases that mostly hit the rich. The end result doesn't affect the deficit. This is what they consistently do/try to do when they are in power.

The republicans want to increase spending and cut taxes at the same time with the biggest tax cuts going to the rich. The end result balloons the deficit passing the costs onto the unborn. This is what they consistently do/try to do when in power.

Is that why, under Bush, the deficit went from 4T to 8T, but under Obama, the deficit went from 8T to 19T? Really sounds more like the democrats are the ones who balloon the deficit due to all the different "programs" the fund that have no usefulness for the majority of the citizenry.

[Themius]

Is that why, under Bush, the deficit went from 4T to 8T, but under Obama, the deficit went from 8T to 19T? Really sounds more like the democrats are the ones who balloon the deficit due to all the different "programs" the fund that have no usefulness for the majority of the citizenry.

No major economic shifts happened as soon as Obama stepped in right?

[turboether]

I wouldn't be surprised at all that this was suggested on these forums, considering the quality and quantity of shit posts regarding immigration.

I wouldn't be surprised if people knee-jerked discussion about the differences in human biology as a concept that can only be pedalled by racists and sexists either.

Oh, I was several pages too late.

[alexw]

This isn't how averages work. Groups can have overlapping distributions but different averages.

Did someone claim that? The only references I see to it are Endus bringing it up and then Osmeric saying that Asian people probably have the highest IQs. Asian people, you may be aware, are kinda brown.

The right wing have been arguing for a long time that black people have lower IQ's than whites. That argument goes back a long way and was used to justify the initial enslavement of african americans. That they were less smart and less capable and little different than animals, and so needed white masters to oversee them much as if they were cattle.

What we are now finding out is that education and surrounding society plays a huge role in intelligence. Thus given the social and economic status of non-whites in western nations and their under-developed origin countries its not surprising that whites have on average shown higher IQ's. That however appears to be changing with the spread of advanced civilization and learning -



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Is that why, under Bush, the deficit went from 4T to 8T, but under Obama, the deficit went from 8T to 19T? Really sounds more like the democrats are the ones who balloon the deficit due to all the different "programs" the fund that have no usefulness for the majority of the citizenry.

Please be serious. No-one except right-wing partisan hacks and loons are going to give such statements the slightest bit of credence. It is exceedingly obvious to all that Obama took office at a moment in time when the economy was in an extremely steep nosedive verging on depression, due to what happened under his predecessor, Bush. Given that the economy does not turn on a dime and its not possible to instantly go from steep downturn to booming economy, then the national debt was 100% guaranteed to boom under anyone who took over in 2008, whether it be Obama who did, or McCain who did not.

Indeed, you have given a perfect example of what I mean, that republicans spend like water (the Iraq war), cut taxes (bushes tax cuts which turned the surplus into a deficit), and leave a huge debt which is passed onto the unborn (the massive debts arising from the crash that Bush oversaw). So thanks. I really mean it. Thanks for providing me with a perfect example of Republican clusterfuck.

[Masark]

Is that why, under Bush, the deficit went from 4T to 8T, but under Obama, the deficit went from 8T to 19T? Really sounds more like the democrats are the ones who balloon the deficit due to all the different "programs" the fund that have no usefulness for the majority of the citizenry.

If you can't tell the difference between debt and deficit, you're not someone worth listening to regarding fiscal policy.

[Pangean]

The thing is, the conservatives in the US are actually the ones who want smaller government with less oversight of the people. Every time the Democrats are in office, new departments are opened up in the government mainly for more oversight on the population and spending goes up drastically. The democrats are also the ones who try and raise taxes rather than freezing them or even lowering them as the republicans try to do when congress doesn't block them. Lower taxes means more money in your pocket rather than the governments. It also means that what you earn is more yours to do with as you will rather than all the "social" policies that want to take your money and give it to those to lazy to work for it themselves.

You were saying?

[Deleted]

I'm not ignoring the statistics, I'm saying they exclude obviously relevant factors.

It's no different than looking at crime rates by racial group in the USA and declaring that black people are "just more prone to be criminal, biologically". You're deliberately ignoring a huge swath of cultural and socioeconomic factors that all contribute. You can't just ignore relevant variables and pretend that the one variable you selected out of the pack is what's responsible for the variance in the statistics.



I don't consider it "axiomatically true", I consider the idea that such a variance exists to be an extraordinary claim, and as such, I require conclusive evidence of such before I'll give it any real consideration.

That evidence would require a controlled study that eliminated culture, variance in parental treatment, social pressures, and so forth. Since those all have well-tested results that affect outcomes within populations, so there's little reason to expect that they don't contribute between populations.

That's the central issue. I could use outcomes-based studies like this to "prove" that people from wealthy families are biologically "better" than people from poor families. And that this biology will magically shift in a couple generations of being poor, even if you exclusively marry other ex-rich families. None of that has to do with anything inherent, it has to do with the advantages and disadvantages that arise from social class and wealth.

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I think you're arguing that increased spending is "left", and I'd fundamentally dispute that assertion for a whole bunch of reasons.

Neither party's economic policy has sought to reduce and minimize class divides, both have pursued policy that has led to increasing wealth inequality and so forth. That's right-wing policy. Though to clarify the time frames, at least, I was referring to a variation in where the parties are today with where they were in, say, the early '80s, not where they were 5 years ago or something.

But the claim was made from statistics, so the statement that was made was true.

The claims you make can not be verified, because our knowledge simply isn't there yet. This doesn't mean that am saying that things as upbringing, education and other external factors do not exist or come into play. It means that we can not exclude that there are fundamental differences between the sexes that would also cause certain types of behavior that we observe.

To hold the standpoint that everyone can do anything just isn't realistic, it is basically suggesting that evolution isn't a thing. Its really very simple, gender roles are a thing, and for good reason. Generally speaking woman where of more importance to a society then males. This because of the simple fact that the females can give birth. So if you lose 60% of the males in any given civilization it will suck for them but within a generation or two the population will be restored, but if 60% of the females where to die it will take much longer for the population to recuperate from its losses because males can't give birth.

Because of the worth of the females and the physical superiority(strenght) of the males (you can't deny these obvious physical differences between the genders) different tasks would be assigned to them. This would mean that people who where good at for filling their assigned role where more likely to succeed and eventually breed passing these qualities by doing so.

To keep things easy lets pick one role given to each gender and lets see how this pans out. Lets take "hunting" for the males and lets take "living in social settings" as a female role. If you want to be a good hunter you need a different skill set as when you need to lead a conversation or when you need to plan something. So as a hunter you would need a skill set that involves hand-eye coordination, stamina, short term planning and a "feeling" for physics/3d environment (don't know exactly what to call it, but like when you throw a rock, or something like that, you need to be able to guess at what speed you need to throw it and what the trajectory of your rock will be in order to hit the thing you want to hit).
In order for someone to be successful in a social setting you will need to be able to size people up/reading facial expressions, have empathy, longer term planning and working together. Now of course there is more to both then just that, but these traits have been wanted for the sexes for a long time. It would be weird that all these thousands of years of breeding these traits in our sexes does not reflect the general skill sets of the sexes.

When we look at who does what job we can begin to see correlations in what kind of work what sex does. Where the males excel in things as architecture, manual labor or short term problem solving. While females excel in things like making commercials/rallying people/getting people excited for something, organizing events or giving care to others among other things.

This isn't to say that one sex is better in some way then the other, or that one is smarter or more caring. It is just that generally speaking some traits occur more often in one sex then the other because of thousands of years of playing a certain role. To suggest that gender roles are "only learned behavior" is underestimating what evolution can do with selective breeding.
So there is no problem and this is not sexist as long as everyone regardless of gender can choose to do the study/have a job in the field that they want to.

[Pangean]

This is just flat-out untrue. You're just expressing misogyny. Go ahead; talk about how the smartest person alive has always been a white person, because white folks are smarter than everyone else. Same difference, applied to race rather than gender. Don't pretend that this isn't explicitly discriminatory.

Your entire argument boils down to confusing cultural advantages and societal pressures and privilege with biology.

I am sure if he continues to claim this he can demonstrate his claim with studies specifically showing an innate difference as opposed to other factors .

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I really do not believe that facts are misogynistic, they just are. Just have a look at the nobel prize winners, most of them are men. This is largely because of gender roles over the ages, but that doesnt make it less true nor misogynistic. And that brings us to the white person thing you felt you needed to drag into this. When you look at the whole of history then it is a really stupid thing to say, there have been cultures blooming all over the world at different times. Most of the time they will have the smartest person alive. But, in recent history it have been white males that have hold this position, again, not because others are stupid but because of a better education systems. But in very recent history this has luckily changed a lot. Brilliant people are starting to come from all over the world, simply because they get a chance to bloom.

This is not racist, this is not sexist, this simply is how we have evolved/came out off the industrial revolution. This isn't to say that everything that evolved like it did is a good or a bad thing, it just is. So, the root problem here isn't racism or sexism but rather a lack of education or a lack of interest in certain fields.

"In addition, cross-national data show that the gender gap in mathematics performance narrows or even reverses in societies with more gender equality (e.g., Sweden and Iceland), compared with those with more gender inequality (e.g., Turkey)" (Else-Quest, Hyde, & Linn, 2010; Guiso, Monte, Sapienza, & Zingales, 2008).

[Endus]

But the claim was made from statistics, so the statement that was made was true.

This is not accurate. A host of unjustified and baseless assumptions were made about the statistics, and that is what the statement was. Statistics tell you what a certain value is. They don't tell you why that value is what it is. They don't demonstrate factors that affect that value. They don't determine whether that value has any significant merit as a measure (IQ as a measure of intelligence basically does not have any real merit). And so forth.

It's essentially a version of Carl Sagan's point regarding "Observation: We can't see anything. Conclusion: Dinosaurs".

To hold the standpoint that everyone can do anything just isn't realistic, it is basically suggesting that evolution isn't a thing. Its really very simple, gender roles are a thing, and for good reason. Generally speaking woman where of more importance to a society then males. This because of the simple fact that the females can give birth. So if you lose 60% of the males in any given civilization it will suck for them but within a generation or two the population will be restored, but if 60% of the females where to die it will take much longer for the population to recuperate from its losses because males can't give birth.

This is a grossly oversimplistic view, and it flat-out ignores a great deal of evidence that we have. The gender roles we have are almost entirely cultural, not biological. Plenty of cultural groups had gender roles that completely flout the roles you're claiming, which is a clear demonstration of how fundamentally cultural they really are.

The rest of your post just extrapolates off this fundamentally indefensible position.

[Deleted]

This is just flat-out untrue. You're just expressing misogyny. Go ahead; talk about how the smartest person alive has always been a white person, because white folks are smarter than everyone else. Same difference, applied to race rather than gender. Don't pretend that this isn't explicitly discriminatory.

Except there is no compelling data to suggest that skin colour relates to intelligence.
There is however for gender.
Best example is Chess - You know there has never been a female world champion, virtually all grand masters are male, and Only one singular woman has been ever ranked in the top 10.
IQ testing consistently show male apex superiority - This is not without drawbacks, the dumbest people in the world is also largely male.
The male bell curve is simply broader.

Your entire argument boils down to confusing cultural advantages and societal pressures and privilege with biology.

Its not an argument, its reality - you are the one to suggest that reality is unrealistic - Because it does not conform to your desired outcome.

[Endus]

Except there is no compelling data to suggest that skin colour relates to intelligence.
There is however for gender.

This is patently untrue. In both directions. There's IQ studies that show a racial disparity, and those are just as uncompelling as the gender studies for the same reasons; because they are strongly biased by cultural factors and social class and so forth.

Best example is Chess - You know there has never been a female world champion, virtually all grand masters are male, and Only one singular woman has been ever ranked in the top 10.

Proves absolutely nothing, since you're talking about a cultural expression.

IQ testing consistently show male apex superiority - This is not without drawbacks, the dumbest people in the world is also largely male.
The male bell curve is simply broader.

This doesn't really demonstrate anything, because again;
1> IQ is heavily affected by culture and privilege, and
2> IQ is a really piss-poor measure of "intelligence" in the first place


Edit: http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/...273(12)00584-3 , just by way of example.

[Deleted]

This is not accurate. A host of unjustified and baseless assumptions were made about the statistics, and that is what the statement was. Statistics tell you what a certain value is. They don't tell you why that value is what it is. They don't demonstrate factors that affect that value. They don't determine whether that value has any significant merit as a measure (IQ as a measure of intelligence basically does not have any real merit). And so forth.

It's essentially a version of Carl Sagan's point regarding "Observation: We can't see anything. Conclusion: Dinosaurs".



This is a grossly oversimplistic view, and it flat-out ignores a great deal of evidence that we have. The gender roles we have are almost entirely cultural, not biological. Plenty of cultural groups had gender roles that completely flout the roles you're claiming, which is a clear demonstration of how fundamentally cultural they really are.

The rest of your post just extrapolates off this fundamentally indefensible position.

I know how statistics work, and what was said was correct. It is just that you can basically prove anything you want with statistics as long as you ask the right question.

The only one who is grossly oversimplifying things is you by denying that evolution exists. Of course there are cultural gender roles in place, if you had bothered to actually read what i wrote you would have noticed that i said so and that this is how it started in the first place and why. And yes, again, there are exceptions as is with almost every social construct that exists. But that doesn't exclude a biological factor by any means.

[Deleted]

I don't consider it "axiomatically true", I consider the idea that such a variance exists to be an extraordinary claim, and as such, I require conclusive evidence of such before I'll give it any real consideration.

You are positing that the idea that all people are fundamentally the same (I.E zero genetic and evolutionary variance) - And my claim is the extraordinary one?
Do you think male muscular strength relative to women is a 'social construction' too?

[Endus]

The only one who is grossly oversimplifying things is you by denying that evolution exists.

I'm not denying it exists. I'm disputing your baseless claim that European gender roles are somehow "evolutionary" in origin, rather than cultural.

[Deleted]

You are positing that the idea that all people are fundamentally the same (I.E zero genetic and evolutionary variance) - And my claim is the extraordinary one?
Do you think male muscular strength relative to women is a 'social construction' too?

Amazing isn't it!? Apparently evolution doesn't exist for humans, who would have thought that...

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I'm not denying it exists. I'm disputing your baseless claim that European gender roles are somehow "evolutionary" in origin, rather than cultural.

It is not just European gender roles, it are gender roles in basic. You will not send out a mother that is still breast feeding a child to hunt if you can manage it any other way.

[Endus]

You are positing that the idea that all people are fundamentally the same (I.E zero genetic and evolutionary variance) - And my claim is the extraordinary one?

No, that's not what I'm positing. Congrats on not reading my posts.

I'm pointing out that the variance within a given group is not significantly different from the variance overall. And that this is dwarfed by sociocultural factors, in any case. Sure, you might see a family of smart people, but you don't see a race or gender of "smarter people".

Your only attempt to defend the idea that no women are as smart as smart men are studies that are deeply flawed, using a poor measurement in the first place (IQ), and one which has much-studied ethnic and gender biases.

[Deleted]

You were saying?

Virtually all of that growth and cut, were military.
Also, Clinton's Congress was republican.