Jordan Peterson book banned and university invite rescinded.

I listened to a 3 hour podcast of Jordan being interviewed .. very smart guy. The though police cant handle the truth.

 

You don't know what you are talking about - if you did you would have come up with a better analogy. This is censorship full on - The thought police can't handle the truth.

 

Anybody can have an opinion - but - is it informed. You have not spent any significant time studying Eugenics or Social Darwinism - that much is clear.

In addition - your knowledge of modern genetics is not up to snuff.

There is no "German" genetics - a genetics unique to all Germans - not now - and not at the time of History. While back then they did not know this - we do now.

You can only speak about genetic predisposition in relation to an individual. Just like in any cultural grouping - there are smart Germans and dumb ones.

When it comes to an individual - that the parent is smart - is no guarantee that the kid will be. That that parent had certain "potential" is no guarantee that the kid will have that "potential.

Now even if one does have a genetic potential - actualizing that potential is a whole different matter. This is called the "nature-nurture debate" and this debate has a long history and has been the subject of much study.

It turns out that it is a mixture of both. One can have a certain potential but, if that potential is not exercised it is lost.

For example: if one is locked up in a room for the first 5 years of life - with no communication or outside interaction - one can never attain complex language skills. This is called "Critical Period Theory" - google it.

Now if we are talking Eugenics/Social Darwinism - this is a whole different thing - related, but different. This is the belief that people rise or fail on the basis of certain strengths or weaknesses in character - and that these are rooted in ones genes.

The idea goes on to suggest that hierarchy in society is then the natural outcropping of the genes desire to survive - survival of the fittest.

To help the poor or the "working man" - the lower classes - would then be an affront to the "natural order" This would pollute the gene pool. Structures and hierarchy in society are there because this is the "natural order" .. to tamper with this would be to tamper with the natural order.

While this has appeal to the elite It is mostly nonsense. A King can have an idiot child. Just because someone is born into the hierarchy does not make that person genetically superior.

 

And give you nightmares. Honestly, to encounter such evil is unnerving, especially in book so ploddingly mundane in a general way. Page on page of crushing boredom punctuated by the maddest ravings you´re likely to ever see. Difficult stuff.

 

It must have been exhausting to investigate the majority of businesses in the US.

 

Not really but the no competition agreements were.

 

It impressed me at eight years of age but not later in life.

 

Perhaps not. But I don't think I commented on Eugenics or Social Darwinism

But there are clusters of genes we can identify as Germanic. That is why DNA testing can identify heritage.

But there are statistical differences between groups. The smart Germans are smarter than the smart Kenyans, for example.

In fact, due to a curious property of polygenic traits, called regression to the mean, the child is likely to be less smart than smart parents. Also the children of dumb parents are likely to be smarter than the parents.

This is hardly surprising. If you malnourish a kid during the first five years of his life. he is unlikely to become a star athelete. Even more so if you starve him to death. You can damage a smart kid through nurture, but you can't improve a dumb kid through nurture.

The race is not always to the swift nor the contest to the strong. But it pays to bet that way.

In the nature vs. nurture debate the science is tilting way towards nature and towards the understanding of substantial differences between human populations. And I will point out that eugenics has been wildly successful in the breeding of plants and animals.

I appreciate that you have moral objections to racial discrimination but it does your side no good to pretend that science has not discovered substantial racial differences.

 

His ideas might be bad or good, his research bad or good however there is no reason to censor him he is still a scholar and therefore should have the right to have his idea out there. This is why Trump did his new executive order to force campuses taking government money to provide free speech to everyone or lose money. I don't care if someone is a holocaust denying neo-Nazi scumbag their stupid race theories should be out there to show how stupid they are without censorship otherwise who do you know who to keep an eye on. Forcing them into the shadows and dark places of the internet and worse mail and mailing lists pre-internet try to monitor that?

 

If this was America I would consider utter stupidity y academics who are responsible for educating the next generation a major issue

But its NZ so who knows what is normal over there?

 

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You did not use those terms but, that is the subject matter under discussion. This is like having a conversation about wealth redistribution as Gov't policy and saying that one is not commenting on Socialism

This is true but finding such a cluster can not be linked to someone necessarily being intelligent.

Just because statistics tell us that one group has a higher percentage of "smart" does not mean it is genetic. As stated in my post - this could - and is - easily attributable to environment.

For example - if we compare two groups on Piano ability
Group 1) all those in this group were in a home where all kids are given piano lessons starting at a young age
Group 2) Kids growing up in a poor environment - not having a Piano - and never even having access to a Piano until later in life.

and then claim "Group 1 is better at piano due to genetics" - you would laugh .. right. ?

The second issue is that there are all kinds of intelligence - Some are good at Math, some at language, some at art, some at invention, some at politics (understanding people) and so on.

If we took some scientist who grew up the city - and put that person in the Bush with some Kalahari Bushman .. the Scientist would be the stupidest person in the tribe - on the basis of what constitutes intelligence in that society.

I already stated that there is a genetic component to potential on a statistical basis. Your flaw is attributing that genetic potential on the basis of race rather than on an individual basis. There are Black nuclear physicists. Are there more Jewish Nuclear Physicists than Black on a Statistical basis ... absolutely - but "chuckle chuckle" look how each was raised !

Given equal environment - certain traits can be enhanced - no doubt about it. This experiment could be done with any population .. as the potential exists in each population. Having human DNA - makes one smart - in general.

Science has not discovered substantial racial differences with respect to "intelligence - what ever that means" with respect to a particular race. On an individual basis - yes - but not on a race.

Aside from the fact that doing an experiment to validate such a claim would be next to impossible - there is evidence to the contrary without even doing the experiment - such as the "Black Nuclear Physicist" example given previously.

 

Yes, you have. And you did so again when you, yet again, called this an attack on free speech. It is not. They didn't take away his right to speak. They just refused to provide him a platform. If you think that refusing someone your platform is an attack on free speech, then yes, you are indeed arguing for such an entitlement. No one owes you a bullhorn. Taking away their own bullhorn from you is not a violation of your free speech.

 

Oh, I see. You regard your misstated opinion is actually a fact.

It's not.

 

You said they have violated his free speech. What have they done except refuse him a platform? Try actually addressing the situation.

 

Science has discovered substantial racial differences with respect to intelligence and linked them to genetics.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/Race-differences-in-average-IQ-are-largely-genetic.aspx

But I tell you what, I'll treat people as individuals if you promise not to complain that only seven Black individuals were selected for Stuyvesant High School.

 

"Substantial"is a loaded term ... especially when talking about "average intelligence" based on "IQ" testing - testing that is notoriously culturally biased.

If you promise to treat people as individuals I will promise to not look down on you because your "IQ" is not even close to mine. How about that Just joking. I could care a less about the black students.

The point here - is that you can't take some black person - put them side by side with some white person - and claim "that person is more intelligent" on the basis of race.

Then there is the problem of how we value and measure intelligence. For example " Black children sit, crawl, walk, and put on their clothes earlier than Whites or East Asians" Obviously black kids are smarter by this measure are they not ?

"Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause," write the authors.

And this is key - there is still considerable debate on "the cause". There are numerous methodological issues with this study - and these studies in general are prone to considerable methodological error - part of this is for reasons given previously.

In any discussion where some paper or study is presented - it is important to look at the dissenters and what they have to say. Some of these dissenters are listed in the article.. unfortunately the rational for that dissent is not given.

So lets look at the other side. Keep in mind that your article was from 2005. Below is from 2019

Nobel-winning scientist’s claims linking race and intelligence have been ‘debunked over and over’

https://globalnews.ca/news/4849650/james-watson-race-comments-dna/

The above was merely to show some comments from the other side. Unfortunately this issue is so politically charged that it is very difficult to get an unbiased opinion - regardless of the person's credentials. In the case of pseudo Scientific studies like this - where there is critics on both sides - it is really sketchy to give credibility to the conclusions of any side without digging into the details and methodology of that study

The most substantive scientific thing I found in your article was the comparison of cranial size.

So first question .. what is a correlation of 0.4 ?

"correlation coefficient". NCME.org. National Council on Measurement in Education. Retrieved April 17, 2014. correlation coefficient: A statistic used to show how the scores from one measure relate to scores on a second measure for the same group of individuals. A high value (approaching +1.00) is a strong direct relationship, values near 0.50 are considered moderate and values below 0.30 are considered to show weak relationship.

OK - so ... yeah ... there is basically a moderate to weak correlation between brain size and IQ. Still I found this difference interesting but, unfortunately it does not help us much with respect to linking "intelligence" to genetics.

The second problem is that we know - as in for a fact- that the physical nature of the brain is altered by environment/nurture. So the environment in which the brain is developing - actually changes the physical neural connections that happen. It actually changes the growth and development of the brain.

How do we account for this fact when looking at relative brain size in adulthood ? This is a tough one - aside from the fact that there is not much of a correlation to begin with

I am a research Scientist - with decades of experience, too many to count conference papers - and numerous journal articles. Trust me when I tell you that "bad science" especially in relation to statistical comparison - is rampant in the hard sciences - never mind the pseudo science.





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Yeah, I didnt say it translates 100% perfectly, but it and Dutch and literally the closest langages to English. No translation is going to make hitler not a dumbass.

 

I am sure you are joking. But I'd take that bet.

But I know which side of the bet I'd take. And I bet that you would take the same side as I would.

Yes, you have a lot of alibis to explain away the differences consistently found to explain away the hard evidence of racial differences in IQ. And I think you've hit them all. That is all your links "debunking" the studies are: a collection of alibis.

But alibis aren't evidence.

I have no doubt that statistics are often poorly done. I was a statistician and often consulted with grad students writing dissertations on experimental design.

But oddly enough no study I've seen, no matter how poorly the data were handled found "no significant difference" in IQ between races.

As a research scientist, what do you call it when a research scientist discounts all findings adverse to his pet theory? Especially when there is no data to support it?

 

It's a great book and a direct loss to the students. Given that Peterson is also a renowned professor their response makes no sense. In fact it runs against every tenet any free educational center hopes to achieve. If it doesn't then it is not a worthwhile academy.

 

That's right. Are these people really smart enough to tell you what you can or cannot read, watch, eat, or wear?

What happened to a man's right to choose?

 

England devolving into mob rule is not news... yawn.

 

Probability is probability - after all.

Don't think you read my post - I said myself in the post that the link does not debunk anything.

 

Go ahead and link to the post where I used the word "violated" ---- it's not a word I would use. And the context you presented is woefully inaccurate. Falsely introducing a term or terms that I haven't used but which suit your argument seems to be your favoured technique.

Try, at least, to be factual.

 

Pretty much my own view, Fred. The actions taken against Petersen suggest an unpleasant atmosphere that I had never once imagined might occur during the course of my life hitherto. But is it happening now.

Intolerance is a terrible thing and we should recognise and understand where this can (and might very well) lead us in the longer term.

And then ask why?