Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

So is racism the new cool?

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Otherwise how do we understand stuff like this with respect to Nicholas Wades’s retirement book A Troublesome Inheritance (revisiting Darwinian racism)?

You will learn who cannot risk publicly aligning with that position in order to maintain their position and current and future influence. And you will learn the techniques they must employ in order to walk the narrow path between sacrificing their integrity promoting the erroneous orthodoxy itself, and supporting the accurate contrarian position. Don’t hold anything against Prof. Cowen, he’s doing good work, but sometimes he writes a post the purpose of which is not to be a reflection of his genuine understanding or position, but, essentially, to allow Sailer to write in the comments section and do the actual updating of priors. Asking why people successfully avoid the subject and remain respectable by constantly talking about the Flynn Effect just might be relevant to this lesson.

Would someone like to talk about the Flynn effect?

It is well known, as a folk concept, in Canada. It just means that people who were raised here tend to be smarter than people who were raised in horror and terror overseas. It ups our school rankings, for sure. But is there a science basis? We’re not sure.

Comments
I didn't know what the Flynn effect was, so off to Google: from Wiki: "The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100." The term was apparently coined by the authors of The Bell Curve, which I thought had been somewhat discredited of late. I could be wrong. The causes of the Flynn effect could be better or improved nutrition, smaller families, or better education. I grew up with three television channels that worked and books to read if there wasn't anything on television. And I grew up in the 1970s, so there really wasn't anything on television apart from Saturday mornings. My kids, on the other hand, grew up having a computer in the house with educational games. They had computers at school. They had multiple channels (Nickelodeon, for one) with educational programming. They had the Internet. I'd say the overall environment could produce the Flynn effect.Barb
May 14, 2014
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The part that blows some of us older folk away is, it is plain old 1970s racism. This was what they said back then. Now 2000s dates. It doesn't wear well today because, well, genes just won't do that for you any more. Most of the old questions have not so much been answered as superseded. First, yes it is true. Children raised in the slums of an African city do not perform as well on IQ tests as children of diplomats of that same country who send their sons to Upper Canada College. An endless variety of speculations is on offer as to which causes take priority. I only know which side of the divide to be on.News
May 14, 2014
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The answer with many in the establishment is YES. They finally had to come right back to where they started in the first days of evolutionism. Darwin himself, right off, had to fight all the evolutionist writers who were saying aHA thats why we are superior to other races. Darwin said no. The educated classes of Europe saw it as a option and then easily a fact and allowed policies based on it. never heard of the flynn thing. It all comes back to results and then why results. tHey just don't accept the equality of man because they don't see man as created by God and uniquely smart. So they instead just score peoples and then score a century later and draw new conclusions. the results were in centuries ago. the rest are just carbon copys but can be because its no big deal for mankind to learn things. its a protestant civilization since the reformation and especially a British one. Yes identity but not race/sex. Accept it and believe in catching up. those who immigrate do despite their origins. its all a simple equation. Get smart by copying the smart. Then all will be equally smart. no more race jazz. its absurd at this point.Robert Byers
May 13, 2014
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