And, with this multitude of possible evolutionary pressures that possibly meld sexual dimorphism, that possibly melds minds, and we have some preliminary data from the early 2000's (we'll ignore the most recent data because it further muddies the waters, tyvm since it doesn't support any particular thesis) that you think that you have the answer. I could add more to this, but it seems unnecessary.

The proper answer is "we don't ****ing know the who or the what or the where or the how or the there or the why." How someone who doesn't actually believe in wavelengths and spectrographs (I mean you, tooth) finds my "well, we don't know **** yet" to be a difficult thing to grasp, is beyond me. **** me.

Brian,
I'm just responding to your very dopey claim that:

- If men are better than women at spatial analysis as a result of evolutionary pressures, then the people best at spatial analysis should be the most muscular and attractive.

It's an absurd thing to say, no matter where you're coming from.

I'm definitely down with the idea that we know little about the brain and even less about evolutionary psychology, which is mostly pure junk science.

But we do have very reliable results on a male-female difference in spatial analysis ability, and it's an excellent predictor of certain kinds of university/job success. The discussion around evolution is just discussing hypothetical plausible paths for that differential to happen.

Your contributions on this topic have been pure pointless noise.

Also, what is this bull****? Unlike you, I've actually studied and used both. Unlike you, I've also used atmospheric models and seen how incredibly unreliable they are, and easily overcooked - in fact near guaranteed to be overcooked - when in a very poorly understood area that's trained on a historical data set which is positively biased over the training set. You of all people should appreciate that. Sophistication doesn't really overcome such a gross bias. Throw some ideologues in the mix, out to save the world, or pad their own pockets, create a publishing bias that can't be refuted because of very high levels of uncertainty and low levels of understanding, throw in a moral panic...and you have what we see.

All of my positions are "in uncertain topics, we generally know less than we asset we do, with wider error bars than we claim". There's no inconsistency, except in your head.

No denies objective measurements (well, except the humanities academics, it seems). The entire debate is about the error bars of the forward projections.

More importantly, why do you become deliberately dishonest in these debates? You've flat out lied about the science in several of these now, and when you're not lying, you're desperately trying to obfuscate. It's a sign of someone intellectually overmatched who wants to cling to his teddy bear beliefs.

I'm still looking for a reason why this might be racist. Is this just virtue signaling?

Can someone provide an explanation for me please.

What.

Is.

Virtue signalling?

It's become a slur to "shout down" someone else when you're losing an argument. For example, if someone says, "racism is bad", or "I'd like more diversity in the workplace" then the other person can just ignore the point and claim that you're virtue signalling to shut you up. Of course, a lot of people DO virtue signal, so that complicates things... lol

I'm sorry.

I could be wrong.

But it sounds like nonsense..

ToothSayer for example often plays mother theresa to me. Compared to me, he probably is. Yet, I take no insult from this...?

I think it's clear that IQ has a genetic component. But IQ having a genetic component does not imply that differences in group IQs are due to genetics.

I didn't look at it closely, but I think the 7 point difference is for 17 year olds, so you wouldn't expect the gain to be lost.

Political blame language.

Ironically, it was a half-meaningful phrase among partisan people who didn't seem to care about the particulars of virtues, but were always very certain virtue signaling was happening like a viral flu.

If someone truly believed this then they would be more worried about climate change than the consensus, not less.

Anything not 100% environment is necessarily genetic.

So if two groups have 105 average IQ and 70 average IQ, you have to make up over 2 standard deviations through environmental effects to claim the differences aren't genetic.

Or if two groups in a substantially similar environment - sufficient nutrition and medical care and schooling in both groups, for example - have 103 IQ vs 85 IQ, you have to find over a standard deviation somehow. And explain why the tail isn't far fatter and longer to the upside in the lower group, given that a decent portion of the lower group, living in the same wealthy country, will have adequate healthcare and schooling and nutrition and stimulation and social advantages. It's a tall order.

I'd like to speak to genes and heredity, in general.

There is a history of Darwinian scientists believed that traits, especially stellar traits, were passed on from Father/Mother to children .

The retort was ; if this were so then the traits or capabilities would be at the beginning of the ancestral line but in truth one often finds genius at the end of the ancestral line. If these capabilities or hereditary factors were present in the beginning then they would have shown up early on and long before the genius appears.

Then we have families of geniuses or stellar individuals such as the Bernoulli family of mathematicians or the Bach family of musicians.

I'm unsure of the mathematicians but in the case of the musicians one can say that a musician, of any worth, would have to inherit a "proper ear" and once this is effected then the soul of the genius can go to work as composer/musician. The Bach family of "proper ears" , so to speak.

And so, i can say that the genius of mathematics or music could not have been "inherited" in the conventional sense, genes notwithstanding.

Being born into a family of musicians or mathematicians is another order of consideration for it is no doubt that to be born into the Bach family can and does set one on a path of musicianship; in this case so, but not always.

I believed the idea of "nature" has been debunked, above, and we are left with "nurture". If, only physical human beings, we believe we receive the "make up" of our ancestors then we are back to the genius at the end of the line. this is the trump card of materiality without soul, without spirit, without a creative precursor within the lives of men; it appears nonsensical(no pun intended).

Going back to ancient times and in the present if one has a "soul" then that to which this soul incarnates becomes the paint and palette for the soul. there is big jump here, but the thought process can be followed appropriately.

The body to which the individual soul and spirit of man incarnates is/are his paints and palette but are not the man. Some are born into fine physicialities and others born into bodies such as that of a Down's Syndrome. In each case the soul and spirit of the man are not ill but the body entered into carries its particular agreement with the supersensible being ,Man, and can display illness.

The question then becomes; does this demiurge give perfect fitness and goods on earth to one while another is abjected as to become an "untouchable" as even now, in India. The variations on this theme are multitudinous, from the most elegant to a downright decadence in physicality. An answer, which is no answer, is the statistical or randomness which is supposed to make the Down's Syndrome man understand but certainly not feel better.

Aphoristically for its too long already, the entering human being into conception, has by and large "planned' his entrance and in fact was involved with the creation of this body, perfect or otherwise. He enters into a family of "alike kin" carrying with him his capabilities and strengths prom previous incarnations and that to which he has been schooled in his travels through the higher worlds, which as noted somewhere,last about 800 years, at present.

This being,man, could have been an ancient Chaldean astronomer who has plumbed the depths of the cosmos and yet if he enters into a body of a mediocre ear, he might be musical but not genius as he has been in a previous life.

Each of us has his history and carries powers into a new life in the hopes of more improvement of our being and in this, we could very well have "planned' to enter the body of a Down's Syndrome to which our improvement would be manifested.

Between heaven and earth we would have "demanded" our suffering knowing that in this we would be the better but also to know that the cosmos would also progress onto the future stage aided by the "sacrifice" of this man, the genius of ancient Chaldea. This "sacrifice", in its purest state, is the sacrifice of one's self for the community of men and cosmos alike, in a selfless act of being.

There are many questions that one can glean from this but in any case the cosmos is based upon "sacrifice" and in this the scholling of man, in his movement to higher realms, is gaining the work of the "sacrifice" through cosmic Love.

Of course (and it would likely be partial anyway), but the behavior here doesn't make sense for a non-genetic, non-very-early-environment explanation.



Right, you *wouldn't* expect it to be lost if something funky weren't going on. Non-adopteds correlate well to parents in childhood and still correlate pretty well in adulthood. Adopteds correlate well to adoptive parents in childhood (better than to bios i think) and then *revert* to higher correlation to bio parents in adulthood. What in the actual **** is that?

To make an admittedly ****ty analogy, it's like you take fat guys, have them adopted by women who cook decent meals for them, they lose weight while together, then they break up and starting putting weight back on on average. It's evidence that the women in the adoptive environment have an influence, but it's also evidence that there's a baseline determined pre-adoption that they revert to.

I don't see how you can explain the big correlation flip without invoking a parental baseline (you can say it might be all prenatal/very early and not at all genetic, but you have no evidence that it actually is- clearly the existence of this effect increases the probability of genetic differences)


(all assuming I have the paper right because I haven't looked at it again)

That isn't at all what I said. I said that populations that have greater sexual dimorphism due to evolutionary pressures ought to have greater sexual dimorphism. This is why it is a well-known stereotype that Asians have good math skills, don't need glasses and are well-hung, spry and overly-muscled. Individual variance within the population notwithstanding since that is irrelevant.

It would be totally weird to expect that a mathematically inclined person (due to genetics) would even need spectacles if spatial analysis skills were a DNA-based response to evolutionary pressures. How the **** are you supposed to bring home the bacon and fight off suitors and get the respect of your fellow males if your eyes don't work during the imaginary period that you invented?

I agree with that. Yet, you persist in pretending that you know something that the rest of us cannot see.

It isn't an "excellent" predictor. We've found nothing that is an "excellent" predictor. You will have to trust me that we've actually looked pretty hard. It is kind of the holy grail of social science.

It *might* be DNA-based. It might not be. We really don't know. If you think you know, you are showing what should be an illegally small amount of creativity.

I'm fairly certain that no one, in this entire thread, has done anything more than make pointless noise. Well, of course, I don't include myself in that because I am pretty darn awesome.

RGT material.

This is not how science works at all. You can't say "We found an environmental effect that accounts for 50% of the difference, therefore the rest is genetic." Given the history of scientific racism, this is not a shortcut to take. If there is some genetic reason for a difference in IQ among populations it needs to be shown empirically--ideally by identifying genes that correlate significantly with intelligence.

Not really. Obviously there are a lot of environmental effects that we don't yet understand. In the example above it's important to remember that IQ has increased in recent generations, i. e. the Flynn Effect. It's hard to reconcile a dominant genetic basis for IQ with gains of 15 points in just a couple of generations. These changes have to be environmental. Moreover, the reasons for those gains are poorly understood, so whatever is causing them could absolutely be the cause of IQ differences between populations.

[My Bold]

Reasonable points. However, I take issue with "These changes have to be environmental". A hypothesis that may or may not be testable depending on the average IQ point gain and its significance and error margin and consistency of testing. To blanket the issue and say "These changes have to be environmental " is to commit the same crime you accuse TS of. Since many factors go into IQ testing and scores and since science has yet to tease out genetic components of IQ and their possible significance or rate of change (if any) then to automatically preclude it for the recent generational gains is not the best scientific thinking or rational approach. This is just a general viewpoint. I have no expertise in IQ testing or scores or the varied parameters and influences that cause differential in scores.

I personally consider most debates about IQ and SAT to be marginally silly - Drinking a good beer is a much more valuable use of my time.

The Flynn effect has been too rapid for genetic selection to be the cause.[21]

The above from Wiki.

Well, well. Is that gospel?

geneticsandsociety.org/topics/genetic-selection

Genetic Selection seems only one parameter to any overall genetic component of A or B or C or etc.

By "atmospheric models" you mean weather models, correct? Those have nothing to do with climate models.

The entertaining bit is where people think that there is even decent evidence on brain differences. There is a name for the effect where you will note errors in something that you are grossly familiar with and then just assume that everything you read (that you aren't particularly familiar with) is pretty darn accurate. The name for it is escaping me at this time.

Great SAT scores and entry exams and you name it big tests are perfect predictors for future potential in scientific society. In bs current human society politics and luck plays the most important role to having careers unless your out of this world IQ, most importantly your brilliance (which is a bit different), luck factor and aggressive attitude finally railroads the mfers and creates a new world! Yes bring it! If it doesnt happen that way then spend an entire life and also bring it to mfers even ever so little!

So anyone who says that being an exceptionally good student early is not a good indicator is simply supporting the mfcrap we have in our world out there.

Since its the only one we have we will work with it and improve it but its still a mfup wasted opportunity world.



You can improve from worse scores and should be given endless chances to do that. But being good already is super advantageous. The human determination to attain wisdom and performance against all odds is at the core of western civilization and scientific society. We can improve by the work of everyone. Imagine bounds on nobody. But lets not railroad perfectly good methods we have to tell who is the most equipped to have a productive educational experience if all else that also needs to go right are provided by a caring world that is not a mfup.

I take issue with the bold. It is exactly how naïve science works.

I take issue with the italicized. It is how slightly less naïve science works. I can easily cause any gene to be correlated with anything you like, so long as you give me decent funding and immunity from prosecution for myself and my henchmen. We'll use most of the funds to procure a small active army, but this is all in the name of science - it is just to ensure that no one can run away from the treatment protocol. Pick any allotrope of any gene and I will ensure that everyone with that allotrope favors their left hand. I just need to see them when they are under the age of 5 for approximately 10 minutes each. Any gene and I can guarantee nearly perfect results (it won't work for those who don't have a left hand, obviously). It is all about interactions, man.

The debates go down well with some beer. My favorite debates about IQ are the ones where someone pops up and says that they mean some sort of theoretical IQ score instead of actual IRL IQ scores as a weird argument to support the conclusions they have reached about the deep meanings of actual IRL IQ scores.

I only like them because they make me feel better about myself on a comparison basis. "****, I might be a dumbass, but look at that guy over there! He just pissed in his coffee and then drank it. Goddamn, that boy is special! Bless his heart."

This sort of thing is helpful when I've had a difficult day. Don't judge me.

I will again point out the link between intelligence and types of alcohol

Real ale is brain food.

Ok I read like 0 of this but you literally typed that white men are supreme:

And my question was directly relevant to that. No other context is required as it pertained to the my question.

Is my statement false? The point is that it's a weird group to attack. The culture of white men led to the emancipation of women, the freedom of children from predation, laws that protect the week and vulnerable and minorities, a world where people are free to determine their own governments and be governed by their own kind - all done voluntarily. Why would you attack white men? It doesn't make much sense.

White supremacy is the belief that white people are inherently superior, and will remain so going forward due to some special advantage in the genes. I don't subscribe to that view, and nothing I posted indicates that view. So no, what I posted doesn't make me look like anything other than perfectly reasonable.