Time-scales

--- In spacesettlers, "victoriatangoman" wrote:

> --- In spacesettlers, "Xenophile" wrote:

>> I think that maybe, just maybe, I was a bit too snarly in my
>> replies re: IQ. When I have taken such tests, I have ranged from
>> 121 to 134. This, plus what I hear about cultural bias,

> And therein lies the danger. There is a battle going on with the
> Marxists like Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and Richard

MARXISTS!? What has Marxism to do with whether or not the tests are
valid, and if valid, then how valid?

> Dawkins pushing to completely eliminate genetic basis because it
> runs counter to their peceptions of humanity and how the world
> shold work.

I'm not denying genetics. I think that genetics, childhood
nutrition, and the way your mind is trained while you are growing up
all have a lot to do with how smart one turns out. Probably more
stuff as well.

> Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" addressed the IQ question and it
> was a very influential book in its time. Through questionable
> rhetorical tactics Gould made his case and found a following. The
> book has pretty much now been debunked but it's meme lives on.

I've never read it, but that doesn't mean that a meme couldn't reach
my through roundabout ways.

> The battle to of knowledge versus what people know and hear
> continues.

Um... yes, but...

>> makes me very distrustful of such tests. All other things being
>> equal, the smarter person will score higher on an IQ test, but are
>> all other things equal? I have my doubts.

> Great strides have been made in making culture neutral tests. There
> is a lot of validation that goes into insuring this.

Maybe. I'm reminded of scientists investigating claims of the
paranormal. There was the claim that scientists were so observant
that there was just no way that some uneducated rube was going to put
one over on them. Then plenty of uneducated rubes showed up and put
one, then two, then several others over on them.

> IQ tests are most effective when taken in grade school because they
> measure your academic age over your physical age. Testing a 30 year
> old and a 50 year old starts to lose its meaning.

> Also, as Al Globus pointed out, an IQ of 100 is the population
> mean.
> You will always have the majority of people scoring 100, even
> accounting for the Flynn Effect which sees IQs rising over time.
> The mean just has to be adjusted back to 100.

True. So the quantum chip guy has made an IQ of 100 much smarter
than it used to be.

>> Also, I am into transhumanism (a little bit), and tend to look
>> on eugenics for intelligence the way a sports car buff might look
>> at racehorse breeding. Yes, if you breed fast-running mares to
>> fast-running stallions, and do so for several generations of
>> horses, then you are likely to wind up with a generation of horses
>> which run faster than any horse has run before... and any cross-
>> eyed granny in a VW bug can leave horse and rider in her dust (not
>> to mention somebody in a Ferrari!).

> Your acknowledgement of the breeding aspect puts you in another
> camp from that of Gould et al. who believe that IQ is a concept
> which can't be measured and has no genetic component.

Well of course. Wadayatank I am, a Marxist? ^_~

But in truth, I never denied genetics (though I think it is one
factor among many). A better comparison might've been the attitude
of a bionics specialist looking at horse breeding.

> We are at the start of a new age with the blossoming of genetic
> sciences. Rather than eugenics being a dirty word for how it was
> practiced in the past and how it was state directed, eugenics in
> the future will probably be decided by the parents who will seek
> preimplantation screening. A number of embryos are formed via IVF,
> and after 8 cell divisions, a cell is removed and screened for a
> variety of recognized gene sequences. People will be healthier,
> smarter, perhaps more prone to mental illness (seems to go hand in
> hand with increased intelligence) and you get the idea. Parents
> will be choosing, and already are, to give their children the best
> opportunities available, not unlike trying to get them into the
> best schools, presenting them with cultural training via music
> lesssons, language studies, etc. This will be no different.

And I have no problem with it. The parental screening OR the music
lessons.

Xenophile (who still doesn't trust these tests)