Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

JonB

Facewon wrote:

JonB wrote:

Facewon wrote:

Am I the only non-cynic in here right now?

It's kind of ironic that you've just linked to that Peterson article (which I enjoyed BTW) and not noted the parallels.

No irony. I'm posting links as I go down the various rabbit holes. peterson came up earlier, and lo has he done a poddo with Harris. Which I doubt I could stomach.

I mean parallels between the way the discussion has gone in here and the criticisms of Peterson in the article.

Facewon

Oh yeah, I noticed that too. (but I'm being optimistic.)

Facewon

Further full disclosure: I have posted stuff from and about Harris in my time. Including the Ted talk on moral landscape that lead to the book, and his excellent piece on expertise in politicians and why it would be bad to have Sarah Palin in charge. (man, does that age that piece.)

Ive also posted stuff about stifling free speech and safe places etc. There definitely is a point where people need to deal with uncomfortable ideas.

Anyhoo.

hunk

JRPC wrote:

What is he killing exactly?

I haven't been defending The Bell Curve.

I've said that many times.

Stop being obtuse and vague and point out what it is that you are defending about Murray and Harris' viewpoint. You point out the genetic nature of IQ. Do you assume IQ difference in whites to be higher due to 'superior' genes? If yes, can you explain your assumption?

No 2hr video answers like the Pinker one please as that was interesting but hardly an argument that the quality of iq can be attributed to 'hq iq' genes due to the identification of a few clustered knock out genes in Ashkenazi jews. We want to hear it in your own words although relevant sources are of course allowed.

hunk

@face
Good job, couldn't have pointed it out better.

monkey

JPRC went down an alt-right rabbit hole on YouTube once and now thinks he’s hit on some secret truth that libtards can’t handle. He’d explain what he means but he doesn’t actually know because it’s all assembled from other people’s views that he found convincing at the time. It’s why he replies in podcasts rather than prose.

If you disagree though, you’re a libtard and can’t face the truth. It’s not because of his reliance on vague assertion, lack of specifics and continuous backtracking, no sir.

[Deleted User]

JRPC wrote:

What is he killing exactly?

I haven't been defending The Bell Curve.

I've said that many times.

Lol

[Deleted User]

monkey wrote:

JPRC went down an alt-right rabbit hole on YouTube once and now thinks he’s hit on some secret truth that libtards can’t handle. He’d explain what he means but he doesn’t actually know because it’s all assembled from other people’s views that he found convincing at the time. It’s why he replies in podcasts rather than prose.

If you disagree though, you’re a libtard and can’t face the truth. It’s not because of his reliance on vague assertion, lack of specifics and continuous backtracking, no sir.

Wrong. His preferred term for libtard is "regressive left". To coin a term, you're not even mong.

JRPC

OK so this has been a fairly maddening conversion.

Ill try to do a second post to make clear my opinions about race and IQ and all that stuff. I thought they had been, but apparently I thought wrong.

Firstly though, a post-mortem of Bell Curve-gate. Now this is heavily abridged to preserve peoples sanity and I’ve tried to stick to what I see as what’s been the main narrative thrust here. There was obviously more going on that just this.

What I’m trying to do here is give you a sense of what it’s been like to be me during this exchange.

1. In a conversation about Noam Chomsky, Goober outs me as a Sam Harris fan. I am now tied to Harris forever more.

2. People say bad things about Sam Harris, to whom I am now tied.

3. I say I’d be quite happy to not talk about Chomski or Harris anymore.

4. I say something about not all religions being equally bad and I am labeled a racist. I am now a racist forever more.

5. There are links to a couple of what I consider to be totally trash articles defaming Harris for being a racist (note: these articles have nothing to do with The Bell Curve).

6. Hunk points out that Harris, to whom I am now tied, endorses The Bell Curve and people start talking about Harris and the Bell Curve.

7. I say that I am not going to defend The Bell Curve and post a video of Prof Pinker, who knows far more about this stuff than all of us combined, talking about race and IQ and I suggest he should be listened to.

8. I respond to a post pointing out that Pinker (and Harris for that matter) is not saying that IQ is “100% genetic” and another pointing out that IQ has been shown to strongly correlate with success. In the same post I point out that you can infer nothing at all about someone’s IQ from their race.

9. I grant that the motives of the authors of The Bell Curve may well have been the worst imaginable, but whatever ultimately turns out to be the truth about race and IQ is the truth regardless or where it comes from.

10. Hunk totally misrepresents this as me ‘buying into the rhetoric of the Bell Curve’

11. In response to Face I make a point about it being better to face difficult truths rather than ignoring them as this leaves the bad guys to interpret them as they wish. I think this is an important point.

12. Right, then there’s a key post from Face for two reasons:

a) He says “I'm taking the liberty here of assuming you and Harris are in lockstep with your thinking” when I have already said that I am not trying to defend the Bell Curve.

b) He then first expresses a confused idea about genetics, that because traits like intelligence have both genetic and environmental factors then you can’t say anything definitive about them. “it seems to me clear that this isn't the sort of science you can talk about as simple true/false, Facts or not. Every step has too much subjectivity”. Does it indeed?

13. Face posts a ”mic drop” link refuting The Bell Curve, seemingly directed at me despite me saying that I wasn’t defending The Bell Curve.

14. I say that I am not defending The Bell Curve but then I do say that I believe there is a genetic element to IQ.

15. Tin downplays the usefulness of IQ and calls “any conversation about it is spurious bullshit”. I reply by pointing out a couple of hastily googled examples of some practical uses of IQ in his own field (I believe) of doctoring (I would have written a different response to this in retrospect). I again agree that IQ and race plays nicely into the hands of right-wingers and so there is a need to grapple with it honestly. I post a video that I agree with, conceding that there are some facts that could be socially harmful to know and that we must question the motives of those who want to find out.

16. Face quotes himself again (an annoying habit - if it didn’t help the first time it’s unlikely to the second or third) implying that I am ignoring linked articles that refute The Bell Curve despite me saying on multiple occasions that I am not defending The Bell Curve.

17. Face posts a wall of copied text from the same linked articles refuting the Bell Curve in response to something I’ve said. I ask him why and point out again that I have not been defending The Bell Curve.

18. Face tells me that ‘the onus is on me’ to explain the funding of The Bell Curve.

19. I tell face that I am not defending The Bell Curve.

20. Stoph tells Face that he has ‘a seamlessly endless amount of patience’ and I want to shoot myself in the head.

21. Face continues to demonstrate a clear confusion about how genetics work and in an attempt to clarify he posts his previous response verbatim, for the third time.

22. Everyone tells Face how totally awesome he is and how he has totally nailed me on this.

That is pretty much my experience of how this has gone. There’s stuff I’m not including, obviously. Towards the end I guess a made some accusations about a political/ethical bias here. I do stand by that but it’s a different point really.

Kow

tldr - You don't believe in vaccinations either? What a cunt.

djchump

23. Whining and playing the victim.

Facewon

Let's start with 5. Those articles had nothing to do with the bell curve because they were still about the chomsky stuff.

1 was a summary, "biased" I guess. But jesus christ, I've read the full email exchange, I linked it because it's a 2 minute read to get the dot points, assuming your face doesn't melt hearing Sam Harris being called a racist.

To summarise the second as "calling Sam Harris racist" highlights the point about you ignoring shit. Jesus. I direct quoted hoping to give a sense of some of the substance of the piece and point out it wasn't just Sam is a dick, noam is awesome for 5000 words.

Facewon

Also, re 4. I'm the biggest fucking godless heathen on this fucking forum, and I'll not be told otherwise by an upstart convert.

I was linking to fucking four horsemen articles fucking years ago.

djchump

JRPC wrote:

1. In a conversation about Noam Chomsky, Goober outs me as a Sam Harris fan. I am now tied to Harris forever more.
...

JRPC wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

Are you a Sam Harris kind of guy JRPC?

Might be, yeah.

I’m busy right now, but I’ll come back later and do the rest. Promise, honest to goodness.

(Lol no I won’t)

Facewon

12 a. It hasn't even been established that Harris agrees 100% with the bell curve, do you mean Murray? Because otherwise my assumption of your lockstep with Harris doesn't require you to bold nothing to do with the bell curve again.

Brooks

I do say that I believe there is a genetic element to IQ.

Did we decide why IQ isn't a really fucking dodgy metric in the first place?

WorKid

Seems like we keep conflating IQ and intelligence here. Some more precision in language would be helpful.

Plus "intelligence" is a pretty ill-defined thing anyway.

JonB

JRPC, it seems clear to me that you've not fully understood the connotations of your own position, which is what Face (and others) has been trying to illustrate.

I've no intention of going over it any further, as it's all there in the thread already, and the aggregate of everyone disagreeing with you probably does feel like a big pile on, which can't be pleasant.

Facewon

If I was any good with paint there's gotta be a good bell curve visual gag in here somewhere.

AJ

This looks fun.

tenor.gif?itemid=4655891

afgavinstan

My mum says I'm intelligent.

Facewon

WorKid wrote:

Seems like we keep conflating IQ and intelligence here. Some more precision in language would be helpful.

Plus "intelligence" is a pretty ill-defined thing anyway.

Well this is where some of the controversy lies. From listening to the podcast, I would say that Murray - and Harris - because he seems to hmm yes along, think General intelligence (g) is quantifiable and that IQ does a good job of that. So kinda conflated by default I guess.

To summarise really roughly. Harris and Murray in the pod are strong on intelligence being important, well understood as a descrete (fucking halp on spelling) thing to be measured and that IQ does a good job of that. They assert the literature on this is pretty well a consensus.

Part of the exasperation of jrpc may also be everyone chiming in with I reckon IQs a bit sus hey, as laymen. Which is where the pod comes from in the first place. Laymen think IQ is sus and we can't measure intelligence, the experts think we can.

I dunno, have I made sense.

regmcfly

I've never once cheated on a test

hylian_elf

regmcfly wrote:

I've never once cheated on a test

You can cheat intelligently.

hylian_elf

AJ wrote:

This looks fun.

Yeah. I don’t come in here often. Maybe I should.

I might learn a thing or two.

djchump

I cheated in all my exams by learning everything I might need to know about the subjects beforehand. Lol they’ll never catch me.

AJ

hylian_elf wrote:

Yeah. I don’t come in here often. Maybe I should.

I might learn a thing or two.

I literally never come in here, but heard shit was going down.

Unlikely

Read that as "beard shit was going down" and am now feeling faintly disappointed.

hylian_elf

djchump wrote:

I cheated in all my exams by learning everything I might need to know about the subjects beforehand. Lol they’ll never catch me.

I had the answers up my sleeves. It helped that I had long arms cos I was studying law.

(Not really)

AJ

Having long arms didn't help?

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