tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post42046243390768127..comments2024-03-29T05:14:33.223-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Scientific American declares war on Occam's RazorUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-65587428527322052842008-05-19T18:18:00.000-07:002008-05-19T18:18:00.000-07:00truth:Actually, your posts come out in a darker fo...truth:<BR/><BR/>Actually, your posts come out in a darker font. I think Google is to blame. (It could be worse: Jews' posts are rendered right-to-left and without vowels.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-79111770528101625362008-05-19T18:17:00.000-07:002008-05-19T18:17:00.000-07:00anonymous: You might assume, though, that smart k...anonymous: You might assume, though, that smart kids (black and white) in the US are probably mostly pulled into higher education, and mostly wind up doing something arguably meaningful with their inborn gifts. (Way too many end up as lawyers and tax accountants and other lucrative but unproductive things, but that's a different problem.) Africa likely has fewer geniuses, but also fewer opportunities for them to end up as doctors or physicists. <BR/><BR/>However, Robin is surely right. If you want to harvest the brains of Africa, you can use grad schools in the US and Europe. Probably, you'd get a lot more result spending that money on medicated mosquito nets, vaccines, and nutritional supplements. But that would only make sense if you were trying to help Africans, not if you were trying to burnish your own reputation or make yourself feel important. <BR/><BR/>IMO, a *huge* amount of US and European involvement in Africa is about people here making themselves feel important. Any good done for Africans is a lucky accident.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76571769109808325432008-05-14T16:49:00.000-07:002008-05-14T16:49:00.000-07:00Re comment by "Graham": "the library where I worke...Re comment by "Graham": "the library where I worked had a complete run of (SciAm magazines) from the late 40's to the current year(1976). I gradually worked my way through them." I had a similar experience with that magazine in my H.S. library. I worked thru the entire run of issues, only not quite so much READING them as drawing male and female genitalia throughout. So,its kind of similar...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-73994794820211058162008-05-14T16:25:00.000-07:002008-05-14T16:25:00.000-07:00""Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover B...""Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover Black Man"? If so, I'm disappointed, as UBM occasionally writes smart stuff on his blog."<BR/><BR/>So what are you tryin' to say, we all WRITE alike?Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-65389020811363774602008-05-14T16:04:00.000-07:002008-05-14T16:04:00.000-07:00Robin,But it will enrich Turok, the wonderful mens...Robin,<BR/><BR/>But it will enrich Turok, the wonderful mensch. (He hopes.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31565624249857504172008-05-14T15:02:00.000-07:002008-05-14T15:02:00.000-07:00"Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover Bl...<I>"Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover Black Man"?</I><BR/><BR/>I think so. I referred to him as such some months back and he didn't deny it.<BR/><BR/><I>If so, I'm disappointed, as UBM occasionally writes smart stuff on his blog.</I><BR/><BR/>Yeah, he's gotten pretty bad lately. Maybe he's off meds?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-10012722091374421762008-05-14T12:56:00.000-07:002008-05-14T12:56:00.000-07:00If the true purpose of this project were to locate...If the true purpose of this project were to locate "African Einsteins," they could save a lot of money simply by identifying promising students and sending them to the UK or Europe for advanced studies. I'm sure they'd find some and the world would be a better place for enabling them to use their talents. As it stands, this will probably become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy and money pit that will produce large numbers of mediocre graduates and few or no true geniuses.doppelganglanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09912331980002892190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-57445234122509492482008-05-14T08:59:00.000-07:002008-05-14T08:59:00.000-07:00"Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover Bl..."Truth" is a piss-poor troll. Is he "Undercover Black Man"? If so, I'm disappointed, as UBM occasionally writes smart stuff on his blog.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-54634945926527125362008-05-14T07:43:00.000-07:002008-05-14T07:43:00.000-07:00According to psychometric studies, there a great d...According to psychometric studies, there a great deal of potential and actual talent in the United States, in our young White children.<BR/><BR/>And there is, by the same science, much less of it in Africa.<BR/><BR/>A prudent investor would seek a needle in a needle shop before seeking it in a haystack.<BR/><BR/>More billions in taxes probably down the chute that could have been used profitably.<BR/><BR/>How many White taxpayers, working at the top of their bent in a majority White country, does it take to produce one African Ph.d.? Henny Youngman, call your office.<BR/><BR/>(Doesn't Mugabe have degrees?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-59535039526856391452008-05-14T07:18:00.000-07:002008-05-14T07:18:00.000-07:00"The world of science needs Africa’s brilliant tal..."The world of science needs Africa’s brilliant talents and I look forward to meeting prospective young Einsteins from Africa,' said Hawking."<BR/><BR/>Nonsense. The world of science doesn't need most of the scientists that Europe and America already train. There are plenty of people who graduate with PhDs in physics only to end up as software engineers. The idea that has been put forth (by professors who lack grad students) that there is/will-be a shortage of scientists is a load of crap.<BR/><BR/>"Neil Turok, founder of the project and professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University, where he is a close colleague of Hawking, said the aim of the centres was to 'unlock and nurture scientific talent' across Africa.....'<BR/><BR/>Turok and Hawking hope that Aims’s students will help to overturn the negative stereotypes of Africa that were recently given expression by James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA......'Watson’s views were simply ridiculous,' said Turok. 'The quality of students we are seeing at Aims is extremely high. What they need is an opportunity to learn.'"<BR/><BR/>One would think that Turok and Hawking would understand the nature of a gaussian distribution. Are they as incapable of thinking statistically as many people seem to be?<BR/><BR/>And why should Britain pay for all this? If Africa wants to find Africa's Einstein, why doesn't Africa set up it's own patent office - you know - to patent all those things they invent. Africa's Andrew Carnegie can pay for it.<BR/><BR/>P.S. David - thanks for the article.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-45392163356739507802008-05-14T00:34:00.000-07:002008-05-14T00:34:00.000-07:00david sed"..after the British government declined ...david sed<BR/>"..after the British government declined to provide funding."<BR/><BR/>That tells you what they really think. The Brits, who are astute businessmen and never hand out money for nothing, are known as über-liberals, but when it comes to placing their bets, they bet against their black friends and against that which they profess.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-35153589635379047822008-05-13T21:53:00.000-07:002008-05-13T21:53:00.000-07:00"Professor Stephen Hawking, who has devoted his ca...<I>"Professor Stephen Hawking, who has devoted his career to finding the origins of the universe, is to begin a new search – for Africa’s answer to Einstein.</I><BR/><BR/>That is disappointing. I had always assumed Hawking was smarter than that. <BR/><BR/>Africa may have its Einsteins, but finding them will not prove Watson wrong. Hawking, of all people, should understand the importance of IQ and the problems inherent in arguing against broad statistical tendencies using individual exceptions. The professor might as well begin searching for evidence of the existence of ghosts, ESP, and telekinesis.<BR/><BR/>Hawking: Astrophysical genius, sociobiological imbecile.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-84908612526232507682008-05-13T20:10:00.000-07:002008-05-13T20:10:00.000-07:00Yeah, someone might need to explain the difference...Yeah, someone might need to explain the difference between rational and irrational fears to them. For example, neither Jesse Jackson nor the most racist white guy in town reacts in fear when he sees a bunch of conservatively dressed black businessmen walking down the street toward him. <BR/><BR/>Now, it genuinely sucks that black teenage boys and young men get the fear reaction when they're just walking down the street minding their own business. But the fear reaction isn't because of racial hatred, it's because of distilled statistics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-63465357459198727252008-05-13T20:04:00.000-07:002008-05-13T20:04:00.000-07:00"Steve Nash is mediocre? Why, the next thing you'l..."Steve Nash is mediocre? Why, the next thing you'll say is that Eli Manning got his job via nepotism!<BR/><BR/><BR/>Nash is the greatest offensive player and the worst defensive player in basketball. By the law of averages, that makes him even. Eli is the Bay City Rollers of the NFLTruthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18073497343235001672008-05-13T18:56:00.000-07:002008-05-13T18:56:00.000-07:00"Contrary to what the Derb has said a few months a..."Contrary to what the Derb has said a few months ago i do not detect a cracking up of the PC cult but rather an enormous strengthening of it."<BR/><BR/>I agree. Look at TV commercials. There is always a smart, sane, wise black guy, and a white guy who is a total boob.<BR/><BR/>Yeah right, I see this in real life all the time.<BR/><BR/>Steve Nash is mediocre? Why, the next thing you'll say is that Eli Manning got his job via nepotism!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06559830693993775055noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-28671048815746166512008-05-13T18:52:00.000-07:002008-05-13T18:52:00.000-07:00Sciam was the last magazine I went out of my way t...Sciam was the last magazine I went out of my way to get ahold of every month in the '80s. Over time it's just been getting worse and worse - not just in the embrace of a leftward bias that resulted in, among other things, the hatchet job they did on Bjorn Lomborg, but also the articles have been dumbed down to the point of making the magazine a me-too version of Popular Science. All they need is a back section with ads for hovercraft and wood-burning stoves.<BR/><BR/>The last time I picked up a copy the best articles were in the "50, 100, 150 years ago" section.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67250714997474583582008-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:002008-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:00"We are being showered with mediocre black and col..."We are being showered with mediocre black and colored politicians, show people, models, sportsmen and run-of-the-mill academics."<BR/><BR/>That is in stark contrast to George W. Bush, Sean Hannity, Giselle Bundchen, Steve Nash and Jared Taylor of course. <BR/><BR/>"We all know damn well that many blacks want to live around whites."<BR/><BR/>The why are there so many people in the ghetto? Potential appalachian transplants all?Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-39515971121260530102008-05-13T15:39:00.000-07:002008-05-13T15:39:00.000-07:00Blacks apparently show unconscious bias in favor o...Blacks apparently show unconscious bias in favor of whites. If memory serves, they find them more physically (at least relatively speaking) and socially attractive.<BR/><BR/>We all know damn well that many blacks want to live around whites, for much the same reason whites do. The difference is probably essentially that black and white ingroup loyalty are working in different directions. In other words, without black ingroup sentiment, they'd probably overwhelmingly prefer to live and work around whites.<BR/><BR/>There's also the fact that most whites have had their racial spines removed at a young age, and yobs always love a sucker.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-30600464764596377792008-05-13T14:24:00.000-07:002008-05-13T14:24:00.000-07:00Isn't that sort of what usually happens right befo...<I>Isn't that sort of what usually happens right before the big crackup?</I><BR/><BR/>Yep. You don't have to sweat and heave when the ball's rolling on its own.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-58383958518648759582008-05-13T13:12:00.000-07:002008-05-13T13:12:00.000-07:00It is true that people harbor stereotypes about ra...It is true that people harbor stereotypes about race etc. What is false is the Scientifc American's belief that this is a bad thing. On the contrary, hearing the sound of footsteps behind you and seeing a white person, not a black person, is a relief because black people are more dangerous. Our brains understand this, and thus are biased. In fact, I would prefer to see an Asian woman walking behind me -- There would be ~0% chance that I would be in danger<BR/><BR/>What the article should be saying is that we have these biases because it prevents us from having to use our conscious mind to worry about things that it does not need to.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-73674515979753800542008-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:002008-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:00Yeah, Scientific American used to be really good. ...Yeah, Scientific American used to be really good. I lived in rural Sweden briefly in the 70s, and one of the things that stopped me dying of boredom was that the library in the school I worked in had a complete run of SciAm from the late 40s to the current year (1976). I gradually worked my way through them.Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10748485660099592412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-83534901067243842342008-05-13T11:50:00.000-07:002008-05-13T11:50:00.000-07:00Scientic American is not in fact American. The mag...Scientic American is not in fact American. The magazine I subscribed to since I was a teenager got bought by the Germans in 1986. (See Wikipedia).<BR/><BR/>At that time it radically changed its editorial viewpoint. It had long beeen mildly liberal especially in advocating greater federal funding of the sciences. After the Germans took over it began to push several lefty agendas and to dial back general science content.<BR/><BR/>The famous Jesse Jackson fear of strangers is hardly a function of some kind of inate mechanism. Egon Brunswick showed that even seeminly intrinsic psychomotor functions such as depth perception are acquired and maintained by brain mechanisms that calculate probabilities of the validity of external stimuli. That is to say you can experimetally train a person to value, for example, binocular parallax over motion parallax.<BR/><BR/>Similarly a person's autonomic fear response to an approaching elderly asian woman will be very different from that of an approaching black male youth. There is no intrinsic inborn knowledge of elderly asian women. There is however an inborn concept of a survival danger. The fact that the survival danger is associated with young black males is a learned association.<BR/><BR/>Earlier we associated danger with the short faced bear or the sber toothed cat. That probability calculating mechanism is with us still when we walk down an urban alley alone.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47940401883221309582008-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:002008-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00Race and Sex PC dogma are weakening, if nothing el...Race and Sex PC dogma are weakening, if nothing else Rev. Wright pushes that into people's faces where they can't escape it.<BR/><BR/>And the popularity of that guy "Mystery" and his watered down evo-psych theories is a potent effect, principally because it works on the broad popular level (rather than appealing to scientific thinkers).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37088077098211057192008-05-13T11:24:00.000-07:002008-05-13T11:24:00.000-07:00if blacks "show no average preference" for blacks ...if blacks "show no average preference" for blacks over whites, then how come Chris Rock gets howls of laughter from black audiences saying,"people say black folks hate Jews? Naw, we ain't got time to make distinctions like that - we just hate white people!"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-86512835675189333042008-05-13T09:57:00.000-07:002008-05-13T09:57:00.000-07:00Contrary to what the Derb has said a few months ag...<I>Contrary to what the Derb has said a few months ago i do not detect a cracking up of the PC cult but rather an enormous strengthening of it.</I><BR/><BR/>Isn't that sort of what usually happens right before the big crackup? The authorities tighten their grip, try harder and harder to push the product because they find fewer people are buying it? Kind of like Zimbabwe, come to think of it.<BR/><BR/>All I know is that just a few days ago we had a conversation at the office which I couldn't have imagined having a year ago. And, yes, it centered on race.<BR/><BR/>The entire nation is now getting a graduate level education in black racism and radicalism. It used to be you had to come from a city with lots of blacks for people to understand. Today all you have to say is "Reverend Wright." Then just mention the fact that blacks are voting 92% for the brother in a Democratic primary (for a guy who, otherise, is attracting mostly Bobos).<BR/><BR/>Muslims and 9/11. Hispanics and "La Raza" and illegal immigration. Blacks and their politics. Suddenly people's eyes are opening - and their mouths, too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com