Elsewhere (269)
Douglas Murray on utopian thinking and ineradicable vices:
To ‘destroy’ misogyny (or, for that matter, its opposite – misandry) you would have to arrive at a time when nobody of either sex… felt any need to seize on a secondary characteristic as a way to push their primary dislike. All divorces would have to go swimmingly. Men would pay alimony only with pleasure and enthusiasm. Conversely, any woman who caught their husband cheating would have to say: “Well that was just my husband: I wouldn’t want to express any conclusions about men in general.” Perhaps this is desirable. But achievable? Hardly. The trouble is some people – including some of the most powerful people on the planet – seem to believe otherwise.
Madison Breshears on overlooked gender gaps:
What, if anything, do ballet and tech have in common? The obvious answer is that both fields show highly disproportionate gender distributions. Less acknowledged but no less relevant is this uncomfortable commonality: Both are industries where it pays to be in the sexual minority. I know, because I was a ballet dancer for 16 years. In the ballet world, men’s unfair advantage in hiring and casting is as widely understood and as rarely acknowledged as is the rampant anorexia. A less skilled male dancer is more likely to land a role or get a job than a female dancer of comparable skill. Due to the scarcity of men, the hurdles to a professional career are distinctly lower than they are for most women. Anyone who says something similar about women in the tech industry does so at their own peril.
Duke Pesta and Dave Huber on “white privilege” shaming rituals:
There was a case at San Diego State University, where students were given extra credit for determining their level of “white privilege.” This was part of my own experience. We did a thing called a “privilege walk,” where you’re asked a bunch of questions designed to give the result the creators’ wanted. It gets a little ridiculous, in that one of the questions says, “I grew up in a two-parent household,” as if that’s some kind of inherent [white] privilege, doing the right thing.
And Jordan Peterson on IQ and its distribution:
Conservatives like to think there’s a job for everyone if people would just get off their asses, and liberals think that you can train anyone to do anything. No, there isn’t a job for everyone, and no, you can’t train everyone to do everything. The armed forces has done a lot of work on IQ and they started back in 1919. A law was passed as a consequence of that analysis that it was illegal to induct anyone into the armed forces who had an IQ of less than 83. Why? All of that effort put in by the armed forces indicated that if you had an IQ of 83 or less, there wasn’t anything that you could be trained to do in the military that wasn’t positively counterproductive. So how many people have an IQ of 83 or less? Ten percent of us. Now, if that doesn’t hurt you to hear, then you didn’t hear it properly. Because what it implies is that, in a complex society like ours, there isn’t anything for 10% of the population to do.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
In the late 1990s, at the height of the dotcom boom/bubble, I had a particularly harrowing airport rental-car shuttle ride. The driver was completely incapable of understanding the most basic requirements of the job, such as making sure everyone had gotten on or off the shuttle before starting up again. Multiple times, he started moving while people were actively stepping on or off.
It got me thinking how companies must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for these basic jobs. I started asking friends if they had seen similar things, and almost all agreed that they had.
Through the two full economic cycles since then, I have been attentive to the capabilities of people working at these simple jobs. Now my measure of whether the economy is recovering locally is the decline in capability of the people working counter service at the local fast food joints.
Usually now at our Mexican counter-service eateries, if I specify “brown rice, black beans” together, they will take a scoop of the brown rice, and then ask “what type of beans?” That didn’t happen in the recession.
Through the two full economic cycles since then, I have been attentive to the capabilities of people working at these simple jobs.
Had a similar thing. My wife worked incident support at Oracle. There was a woman for some company who was notorious with the support staff for being thick. Then one day people realized they hadn’t heard from her in a while, right after the dotcom bust. Then one day, she was calling in from a different company. That was the sign from God that we were out of the woods. People like that need to be tracked. They are our best economic indicators. But I suppose it would be too easy to manipulate such a system. Sigh…
Thanks, will take a peek when I’ve a moment.
Translation: I’ll have forgotten about it completely and permanently by tea time.
Italy has the fourth highest national IQ?
So what?
The gap from Italy to US is a nothing, 4 points. What’s more interesting is Botswana, average 70, but actually, relatively speaking, doing pretty OK.
I reluctantly believe the relative IQs, but there’s more going on in society than just IQs.
Translation: I’ll have forgotten about it completely and permanently by tea time.
[ Musters best attempt at wounded indignation. ]
Er, I’ll have you know, sir, that I was distracted by the prospect of preparing a meal. It’s always a bit of a gamble and requires my full attention.
I reluctantly believe the relative IQs, but there’s more going on in society than just IQs.
If imbeciles are making decisions for themselves, they may find themselves at a disadvantage in a number of ways. If imbeciles are making decisions for the whole country, then everybody is going to find themselves disadvantaged in a lot of ways. If geniuses decide that they should make the important decisions, they’ll quickly be pushed aside by the most ruthless genius, and replaced by imbeciles who know how to follow orders.
I’d really like to be free to screw up my own life, thanks.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/374847.php
April 17, 2018
On Starbucks and “Racism”
1. Restaurants/coffee shops like Starbucks exist, in case the Social Justice Warriors weren’t aware of this, to sell things to paying customers.
2. These shops usually have chairs and tables. These are not “free” for anyone to use. They are provided as an included benefit, a laganape, for those who actually do pay for food or coffee.
. . .
The gap from Italy to US is a nothing, 4 points. What’s more interesting is Botswana, average 70…
Early 20th Century immigrants to America tested worryingly low in IQ, leading to much talk about inferior races. But in a generation or less the numbers improved dramatically. As I recall, language barriers were part of the problem. I wonder if there is something cultural going on in Botswana, such as widespread illiteracy and an overwhelming prevalence of jobs involving manual labor. But of course this is something I am far from expert on.
Call me stupid, but in so far as the details go, I think IQ is crap. Perhaps it has meaning in context of similar cultures/societies/whatever but the idea that you can give a test to someone raised by Harvard PhD parents and that person scores say 140, then give the same test to some scoundrel from the poor parts of Dublin who scores a 110 and have it mean much in relation to each other seems like waaaay too much magic. These tests taken on what day? How often? Under what conditions? At what age? They’re not even as valid as cholesterol tests, in this ignoramus’s NSHO. Not that there’s no meaning at all there but the idea that these numbers mean much outside of the very abstract, seems very unscientific. Perhaps at the low ends, the 50s, 60s, 70s there is a meaning. But supposedly Richard Feynman had an IQ of just 125. Al Gore’s was supposedly 135. Right. IQ seems to me to be whatever people want to believe.
I was distracted by the prospect of preparing a meal.
The Crock Pot is your friend! I recently realized I can even cook steak in mine. Three hours on low and I can eat it with a fork. Yum!
language barriers were part of the problem
A lot of IQ tests nowadays are pattern-recognition tests and don’t require linguistic facility. Early 20th Century tests were still in the development phase, and many were (probably deliberately) cultural knowledge tests rather than cognitive ability tests. Needless to say, those tests are no longer in use.
Usually now at our Mexican counter-service eateries, if I specify “brown rice, black beans” together, they will take a scoop of the brown rice, and then ask “what type of beans?” That didn’t happen in the recession.
You make a good point. One with a basic level of intelligence should be able to hear, remember and carry out a series of (at least) three connected tasks. “This order is to go. I’ll have a Number 6 with onion rings instead of fries and a diet Coke.” How often does such an order become an inquisition with the customer having to repeat each part of the order?
IQ seems to me to be whatever people want to believe.
It’s actually a very strong predictor of life outcomes, more so than, say, childhood circumstance. Stuart Ritchie’s book Intelligence is a pretty good introduction to the science and history.
Riposte of note
Imagine if you mentioned that women were under represented in work place fatalities.
Model students.
Overly-Dramatic SoC (Student of Color): “I’m so fucking tired of this fucking…” [various forms of “fuck” continue for some time]
Policeman trying to escort white student government members off campus: “Are you going to let us do our job?”
SoC: [screaming] “ARE YOU GONNA LET ME LIVE????”
Job offers for Overly-Dramatic SoC are sure to pour in from across the nation. Or not.
The gap from Italy to US is a nothing, 4 points. What’s more interesting…
Well, according to the wisdom of Social Media, that 4-point gap makes all the difference in the world: between Italians being normal, intelligent human beings and Americans being utter worthless morons – the election of Donald Trump being undeniable evidence.
I decided some time ago that the statistic-savvy yoots on social media are a danger to themselves and others.
Douglas Murray: It’s Sowell’s “utopian vision” and “tragic vision”, again. They believe that humanity is perfectable, that things like misogyny and misandry can be “destroyed” (or, in the words of that idiotic slogan of a few years back, that poverty can be “made history”), while the rest of us understand that people are flawed and that society must acknowledge and work around our flaws as best it can.
Hmm. It’s their vision of perfection that got me. It seems to involve believing self evident nonsense such as diversity is strength, global warming is actually happening, the state is your friend, Islam is a religion of peace, multiculturalism is good, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t aa frothing nutbag…
The list of nonsense is ever explaining.
Jabrwok, you should have been here for the small appliance reports. You could have cut the excitement with an electric knife.
If you can, find an old crock-pot at a yard sale. The new ones cook too fast, the meat isn’t as tender.
Those cheery chaps at ISIS have solved the “what to do with the under-83s” problem in their own characteristic way. When a flock of new recruits turns up, they are quickly sorted through, and the less aware are assigned to the Suicide Bombing Platoon.
I am doing university study now and one of the things we had to do was formulate a science class for Grade 1 students. My topic was the solar system and whilst it was hard not to tell them the facts, the kiddies enjoyed it. The teacher suggested overseeing this lesson suggested I let the kids think for themselves to arrive at the correct answers that I was after, like the biggest planet etc. I responded with something about climate change and allowing students to think for themselves, which was met with a scowl of disapproval. The things we need to learn now is a mish mash of identity politics, What Trump Said and grievance settling.
Imagine if you mentioned that women were under represented in work place fatalities.
Did chuckle.
“cow-orker”
Does use of this word signify another former Alt.Folklore.Urbanite or has this made its way into other parts?
Squid : most schools have a wildly different number of the bottom 10%, because they sort by area — hence wealth of parents, hence brains.
My school takes a very average pool, and takes special care of the bottom — we get our share. NZ areas tend not to be as uniform as some other countries, with rich and poor living in very close proximity.
This was not true when I taught at a private school.
In NZ only the very, very lowest are non-mainstream. I’ve had kids with IQs in the low 70s — they learn to read, slowly, and not much more. I’ve had full on autistics but no Down’s (they’re pretty rare in NZ).
IQ is often maligned, especially by the egalitarian left, but it is far and away the best predictor of school success. Over 50% of the difference in grades is attributable to IQ. Hard work is next. Teachers and schools far less.
Most of the complaints that the wealthy do better at school are actually wrong, because the hidden variable is brains. Money doesn’t help your grades (although it will obviously give you a leg up in post-school, at least initially).
Spending money on poor schools has far less effect than the reformers would wish (although taking money from rich schools by the same token does them little harm, so I’m all for a system like NZ’s, where poor area schools get a bit more. Money doesn’t change brains or work ethic and barely changes the quality of teaching.
Well, I think we all knew this was coming. Fat-body-builder Tumblrinas are up in (bingo-winged) arms that a retailer dares stock petite sizes. It’s dangerous and irresponsible, you see? Apparently, small women must be shamed for being slim, dammit.
(>_<) (For what it's worth, my ex-gf is 5'11", (20 years ago) weighed 130-135 lbs, and wore a US size 4. She wore a size 2 in high school. She might weigh 145 now. She's just naturally slim.)
Does use of this word signify another former Alt.Folklore.Urbanite or has this made its way into other parts?
I first heard it on alt.sysadmin.recovery.
In one of my first jobs, I worked with a woman who was lovely and bubbly and friendly and dumb as a stump.
I’ve mentioned this before, but an acquaintance of mine is a woman in her forties who often texts me from the store asking how to calculate 20%, 30%, or 60% off of some round number (sale prices). When I point out that she’s holding an $800 calculator, she complains she can’t figure out how to find the calculator app.
She’s a primary school teacher.
Fat-body-builder Tumblrinas are up in (bingo-winged) arms that a retailer dares stock petite sizes.
“Tory MP Bob Blackman also claimed idealising such small sizes could lead to young women developing eating disorders.”
“A spokesman for charity Eating Disorder Support said that […] smaller sizes do not cause problems with eating disorders”
This was not true when I taught at a private school… IQ is often maligned, especially by the egalitarian left
It’s remarkable to me just how many politicians and media commentators hold forth on the supposed moral and intellectual superiority of state comprehensive education while having little or no personal experience of it, or of the range of people it supposedly serves. About 10 years ago, the then-Labour Party schools minister Andrew Adonis, whose educational experience is basically boarding schools and Oxford, made some extraordinary comments. Specifically,
Again, there’s the assumption, mentioned upthread, that an IQ is something you can just pour into a head, any head, given a sufficient number of years spent being bored in school. And so you have to wonder, has Andrew Adonis actually met a selection of children from across the entire ability range? Has he met them gathered in one room? I suspect not. And if he were to, would he close one eye and pretend that the child at one end of that spectrum (who may not be able to read GCSE questions let alone answer them correctly) is inherently as capable as the child at the other extreme? Or would be, somehow, magically, if not for the evils of capitalism and what Adonis called “social privilege”?
At my school, the span of ability ranged from a girl who’d memorised the periodic table to people who didn’t know their own postcodes and couldn’t be relied on to find out, or to retain the information until the following day. Their inability to do this, or other simple things, didn’t seem to have much to do with capitalism or “social privilege.” And the conceit that these extremes are interchangeable, and that the latter group could easily be enthusing about the properties of iridium, or parsing Chaucer, is ludicrous.
And this, remember, was Labour’s Minister for Schools.
Call me stupid, but in so far as the details go, I think IQ is crap.
Possibly, but it’s a good indicator as to how well someone will do in a modern, advanced economy.
One with a basic level of intelligence should be able to hear, remember and carry out a series of (at least) three connected tasks. “This order is to go. I’ll have a Number 6 with onion rings instead of fries and a diet Coke.”
I invite readers to try this in Nigeria and report back with the results.
I’ve had kids with IQs in the low 70s — they learn to read, slowly, and not much more.
They go on to become props.
a girl who’d memorised the periodic table
Happy Henry Licks Betty’s Big Cu…
I’ll stop there.
[ Fetches Stool of Shame.* ]
“She’s a primary school teacher.”
I guess asking a student for technical support might undermine her authority somewhat.
“you can just pour into a head, any head, given a sufficient number of years spent being bored in school”
It’s just like computers! Just give everyone the right software and they’ll all be geniuses (or at least they’ll be able to generate push-button output that is difficult to distinguish from competence without extended squinting and careful inspection)!
Regarding the aforementioned undermining of minority students’ life chances by supposedly ‘progressive’ educators, here’s a thing.
Further to this and the first item here, quoting Katherine Kersten’s coverage of leftist indoctrination, racist dogma and plunging standards in Minnesota’s public schools, take a look at this rather telling footnote, on the subsequent ‘journalism’ by Minnesota Public Radio.
Because if you dare to uncover the scale of the indoctrination and its ugly racial fixations, you’ll be smeared as a happy bedfellow of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
I invite readers to try this in Nigeria and report back with the results.
I have trouble when I try that in American cities.
[ Fetches Stool of Shame.* ]
But meanwhile henchlesbians look speculatively at Tim.
Because if you dare to uncover the scale of the indoctrination and its ugly racial fixations, you’ll be smeared as a happy bedfellow of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
It’s beyond question now, that the MSM refuses to engage in good faith debate. (See, e.g. Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman). If censorship, “no-platforming,” rioting, etc. don’t work, the Left will simply lie. We are on the cusp of a new “Samizdat Era,” where we’re passing around mimeographed slips of paper with web addresses of places where one can get alternative information.
It’s actually a very strong predictor of life outcomes, more so than, say, childhood circumstance. Stuart Ritchie’s book Intelligence is a pretty good introduction to the science and history.
Thanks, will take a peek when I’ve a moment. Maybe after tea…Just kidding. Thanks for the recommendation. Wish I’d have the time for it. I did glance over the parts available on Amazon. It looks like it probably has at least some secondary value even if I do find I disagree with it’s conclusion. The opening parts about the history of the study of intelligence is itself something I’d be interested in reading about. I certainly agree with some of the criticism of the criticisms of IQ mentioned in the intro. And I of course agree that certain people are more intelligent than others and that such can be measured to some degree within certain contexts, as I allude to above. Maybe I will pick it up this summer if I have time and remember. But in general, and yes I’m just going with my ignorant, though fairly well trained gut here, I’m suspicious of IQ scores and such for the same base reason I’m suspicious of the global warming arguments, both pro and con. And also due to how much of what we had been told decades ago about health and the studies of such that are now being backtracked.
But also from a scientific perspective, I view with an extremely jaundiced eye the use of an entity or what have you to measure the entity itself. And what with the IQ being (popularly anyway) bandied about as a discrete whole number from zero to, what 200 or so? Not that I’m a fan of the Briggs-Meyers personality tests either, but it would seem to me that a proper measure of intelligence should consist of more than one dimension.
“cow-orker”
Does use of this word signify another former Alt.Folklore.Urbanite or has this made its way into other parts?
The term “cow-orker” originate back in the early days of Dilbert popularity and the internet, possibly pre-web? Scott Adams had a newsletter he would send out (pre-blog ages) and decided to hold a contest to have his readers pick a group term for those with whom we work who most disturb us, or something like that. “Cow-orker” was the winner and made its way into a few Dilbert strips, but not sure how long Adams continued to use it.
Thanks for the recommendation. Wish I’d have the time for it.
It’s a short and very readable primer on the subject, only 100 pages or so. There’s no needless jargon, it covers most of the bases, briefly, and debunks most of the usual anti-IQ woo. You could read the whole thing in an afternoon.
Oi, Newman, no. The front row union is the intellectual powerhouse of any side. This explains why props drunk so much beer after a match; it takes at least half a dozen pints to bring us down to the level of a scrum half and at least another three more before the winners start making sense.
Ah…and having read further on….to be clear, I do believe that there is somewhat significant degree of variability of potential intelligence that is innate or hereditary or whatever. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as dear old Mom used to say. It’s more the measurement and what we infer from such that I have a good bit of discomfort with. The complexities of Nature vs. Nurture are, as I see it today, beyond human comprehension. Somewhat similar, though stretching it a bit, to what the excerpt of the book refers, that rationality was once seen as divine and could only fleetingly be tapped into by humans.
I have also in the last one or two dozen years become very much aware of the shift of the idea of “intelligence” being the ability to memorize things versus and ability to use logic well or to properly infer when inferences are valid and to not infer when they are not. Schools over the last 100-200 years or so placed considerable emphasis on rote learning but very little on understanding. This makes sense in the context of how modern education has evolved in that the former leads itself much more to economies of scale.
I see now where it’s 160 pages. Perhaps I will order it later on today but need to get to work. Thanks.
s/winners/wingers/
Prop fingers and diddy on-screen keyboard are not necessarily a match made in heaven…
Oi, Newman, no.
It’s all going to kick off now.
I’m suspicious of IQ scores and such for the same base reason I’m suspicious of the global warming arguments, both pro and con.
At least in Peterson’s case, he’s honest enough to state explicitly that for all of IQ’s strength in predicting student outcomes, it still leaves 70% of the equation up for debate. Which is to say, it’s a good indicator, but it’s hardly the sole defining characteristic for any given individual.
The really important thing I took from that part of the discussion was how poorly most other social & behavioral measures perform. I think he said IQ was 3 or 4 times more reliable as a measure than these others, and given the limits of IQ measurement, it speaks volumes to the fact that we’re making social and educational policy based on very shaky measurements.
(PS: I picked up “cow-orker” from alt.sysadmin.recovery, and have been an evangelist for the term ever since.)
it would seem to me that a proper measure of intelligence should consist of more than one dimension.
Most good intelligence tests have mutliple dimensions, yielding multiple scores, of which the “IQ” value is some kind of average. But the various scores tend to be relatively well correlated with each other, implying an underlying factor.
Stay classy, professor: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article209197719.html
Why do I suspect that Barbara Bush’s campaigns and initiatives against illiteracy have done more to improve the lives of other people than the activities of Professor Jarrar?
Stay classy, professor
You could easily get the impression that they only employ arrested adolescents.
OK, I’ll share any snippet, because this one takes the cake – or at least has eaten the whole thing.
From the esteemed journal, Fat Studies, Tempo-rarily fat: A queer exploration of fat time.
Okeedokee – “queer” time (other than DST) will become a thing now, I guess. Perhaps new watches will be needed with “fat” minutes that are 112 seconds.
Also, seeing as how it was in the side bar, Sedentary lifestyle: Fat queer craft.
“Leveraging the fat body” – for some reason Archimedes comes to mind.
You could easily get the impression that they only employ arrested adolescents
Maybe the problem is that so few of them do get arrested. 😐