COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Kitsuma]

Peter Schiff tweets:

Since Princeton University is removing Woodrow Wilson's name from its buildings due to his racist thinking and policies, I think we should also repeal the Federal Income Tax and The Federal Reserve, as both acts were signed into law by Wilson. Letting either law stand is racist.

You know...maybe some good can come out of this BLM movement. Afterall, the civil war ended black slavery, and 1913 brought it right back...for all Americans. We're all slaves now.

And, here's a Message to all White Liberals (Twitter) from the perspective of a young black man.

[alsbos]

Many experts in the field do believe in the usefulness and validity of IQ testing. The tests have been developed to eliminate cultural and environmental factors as much as possible. Twin studies are just one of the methods used to prove the validity of IQ testing. I can agree that there may be some unintended bias, but that doesn't render testing ineffective. High test scores strongly correlate with many factors that most consider positive, such as high income, low criminality, and marital stability.

Why would you believe that selective evolutionary pressures wouldn't select for higher intelligence in certain populations? We were able to breed dogs with specific traits in just a few hundred years; humans have had far longer for variance to develop, and intelligence is an incredibly useful trait, especially in unforgiving climes.

To your point on hip displasia, you're correct that phenotypic expression for an individual cannot be perfectly predicted from genetic sequencing, but accurate predictions on group outcomes can be made.

They're not everything, but genetic differences between populations are important factors to look at when considering the causes for various group outcomes.

I do believe that different races could end up with different distributions of 'intelligence'. What isn't proven, is that we can accurately measure the differences. We also don't know how fluid intelligence is, over time with different groups. I'm certainly not going to accept a correlational study done by a social scientist as solid enough evidence to draw a grand conclusion. Big conclusions require strong evidence. Many journals won't even publish correlational studies any more, or at least discourage them. And these studies, as I understand, have really plagued the value of social sciences research.

[zinedine kilbane]

They're not everything, but genetic differences between populations are important factors to look at when considering the causes for various group outcomes.

It’s more important than just looking at causes for outcomes, population differences should also be used to direct policies.

For example if you noticed there was a problem with new mothers not re-entering the workforce you could use state funds to subsidise welding apprenticeships.

Similarly if you want to get inner city kids (feel free to insert race here) off welfare you could subsidise philosophy degrees at local colleges.

Both of these policies would of course be huge wastes of money. Because they ignore the fact that very small numbers of these populations would care about these things. And trying to force people to do things they are not interested in or suited to just because of their sex or race seems counterproductive to me.

Despite the fact that the guy got fired for putting it out The google memo is a pretty good balanced read on this for those interested:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/doc...ho-Chamber.pdf

[Sean Berry]

Almost 1000kg IPF total...in a mask.

Impressive.

Hope everyone foolish enough to attend that meet doesn't die. First we were trading lives for money, now we are trading lives for (granted amazing) powerlifting totals? Think of the children!

Oh wait, they wore masks. Never mind, carry on.

sb

[Barry Charles]

Impressive.

Hope everyone foolish enough to attend that meet doesn't die. First we were trading lives for money, now we are trading lives for (granted amazing) powerlifting totals? Think of the children!

Oh wait, they wore masks. Never mind, carry on.

sb

Pro tip. Since the masks don’t meet any defendable standards. A good way to wear one, is to fold up the bottom just enough that it looks like your breathing though the material but you actual are breathing underneath it. Much better for big air.Thats what I do.

[Staccato]

“You’d think we would have noticed” is not a compelling argument. See what I’m saying?

You do not see people with sub-average scores doing well in difficult subjects like engineering, mathematics, or the natural sciences. If these tests didn’t predict performance–if people with low scores excelled, the tests would be worthless.

We know people with lower IQs don’t invent railroads or transistors or penicillin: what comparably important and useful things have they done?

[mpalios]

https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/...250289158?s=19

Will take 2 minutes to watch. This forum will enjoy it. Good stuff.

[Mark Rippetoe]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1277146474250289158

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

[ltomo]

You do not see people with sub-average scores doing well in difficult subjects like engineering, mathematics, or the natural sciences. If these tests didn’t predict performance–if people with low scores excelled, the tests would be worthless.

We know people with lower IQs don’t invent railroads or transistors or penicillin: what comparably important and useful things have they done?

Taleb did a paper on IQ scores a while back. It's floating around Medium if anyone wants to search for it, but I refuse to link their stuff aftet they started censoring stuff over Covid.

He shows how IQ tests are great for finding out who isn't very intelligent and for identifying people who may have cognitive impairment, but that they're not actually that useful for measuring anything empirical for people on the right side of the bell curve.

[alsbos]

You do not see people with sub-average scores doing well in difficult subjects like engineering, mathematics, or the natural sciences. If these tests didn’t predict performance–if people with low scores excelled, the tests would be worthless.

We know people with lower IQs don’t invent railroads or transistors or penicillin: what comparably important and useful things have they done?

But people with substandard math scores don't do well in any of those fields either. From what I read on Wiki, the tests that the 'bell curve' were based on weren't just 'IQ' tests. There was also a trig math test. The math test portion wasn't used in the 'bell curve' data. But interestingly, the math test was a better predictor of later success than the IQ test. So now we go round in a big circle, and we conclude that a math test is a better predictor of success than an IQ test. But math skills are based on a mix of education and genetics...and so you can't make any grandiose claims that your pen and paper test is a window to the genome.

Anyways, if you wish to believe the conclusions of a social scientist based on a correlational study, then feel free to. But, you must then believe ALL conclusions from ALL correlational studies to be true. I don't know what exactly that entails, but you're likely going to have to start believing some weird stuff.