Why is nazism popular today?

How should society be organised, if at all?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

gaffo wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 2:18 am
Dachshund wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 2:35 pm
gaffo wrote: Wed May 08, 2019 4:19 am if i were not cursed with dyslexia i would probably like poetry ;-/.

Ermmm, Gaffo...

Dyslexia means that you can't read the written or printed word competently, right dude?

So how come you are interested in philosophy ?

Being a philosopher, or a student of philosophy, means that you naturally enjoy doing a lot of reading, often of heavy, dense text!

I don't geddit ?

Regards


Dachshund
you are the racist right? (BTW if you found a best friend that happened to be also black - you'd become more than you are now, and serve your black friend, and he/she you if they were a true friend to you). I'm not PC - think you are reprehensible and ignorant to have the view you have, but also know you are just a guy like me - though more ignorant than you could be - and so i will talk with you.

I insulted you, and called you ignorant, so you of course have the right to ignore my posts as well. im all for talking until i no longer find it of value (and i can comparmentalise - ignore your racism and discuss other matters).

maybe you can too - or not - whatever.


Per your inquary (refer to "language" section of this forum - i posited my view of how English "Should" be written (phonetically -which is it not currently and sadly)- i'm a nobody, so my views will not make words spelled right - just saying i posted in that section of this forum on the matter and you can find it if you wish to - recently - last 2 months or so).

i digressed, per your inquiry, I'm Dyslexic, but mild affliction. i read 2-3 yrs behind my pears between 1-4 th grade, thankfully i had parents that knew this than provided reading specialists to allow me to "Catch up" - by 8th grade i was on par (on par - i.e. good enough to learn from there - and to read, though slower than average- I'd say i read about 20-percent slower than ave - a guess).

reading is "Work" for me - i get tired when reading a book, but i do read for it allows for learning.

as for spelling, that is a lost cause, i cannot spell and no amount of will will make me a good speller, but at least i'm a good reader.

others with a more acute form of Dyslexia have a much harder time - both at reading and esp spelling.

sadly.

if in your mind that make one with that handicap "dump and low IQ" - then so be it.

Gaffo,


The official spelling of English changes continually over time. If you read some of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" worked printed in their original 14th century English, you would find the spelling of most words very different from what they are in England today. In "The Miller's Tale", for example, there is a scene where a guy (Absalom) walks to his girlfriend's (Alison) house on night and knocks on a window to let her know he is outside. Inside the house there is Alison and also a guy called Nicolas; Nicolas doesn't like Absalom. So when he hears Absalom knocking at the window he quickly runs over and opens it, then sticks out his naked but to "moon" Absalom. At exactly the time the time that Nicolas does this, Absalom calls to Alison, "Say something sweet my sweet bird, so I know where you are." Chaucer then writes...


Nicolas anon leet flee a fert
As greet as it had been a thonder-dent
And he was red with his iren root
And Nicolas amidde the ers he smoot

Here's the translation into 21 century English...

Nicolas answered by ripping off an enormous fart
As powerful as thunder that nearly blinded Absalom
He was ready with the hot poker though, and rammed
It right up Tricky Nicky's butt


So if you put Chaucer in a time machine as flicked him into the West in the 21st century, he would fail any college English class. because his essays would be full of spelling errors. Ironically, in the English Lit department of the same college, students could well be studying his work, because "The Canterbury Tales" are regarded as a great works of literary art and a long occupied a prominent position. the Western Canon.


Also, these days, there is affordable technology that checks spelling for you if you have a problem with it. Not just that, but there are cheap "Apps" you can by that that sort out issues like grammar, syntax, style in things like written essays. Not only do they fix any spelling errors, and other technical (grammar/syntax) issue; they make suggestion for you about how you could change the wording of sentences to make your essay more readable.



AS to finding reading difficult and only being able to read quite slowly. For most people, reading philosophy texts and essays, is difficult and they need to proceed slowly. For example, I am a Conservative (politically) because reading Edmund Burke's political essays/philosophical theory converted me to Toryism; but Burke was a genius and he often dealt in high-level concepts; also, he writes in the English of the educated English upper class of the mid to late 18th century, so it took me a long time to plough through all of his work. It's the same thing for Kant, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Aristotle and so on. Unless you are an individual who has a sky-high IQ of 150-160, say, then reading the work of such thinker is HARD, painstaking work. Even University Philosophy lecturers complain about how difficult they find it is to read Heidegger's "Being and Time" because the text is so dense and packed with neologisms. But here's the rub, if you are talking about the writing of a famous Western Poet, Philosopher, Novelist, History - by famous, I mean someone who as automatically accepted as one of the true great/masters of their craft, then even if you find reading is a struggle, it's well worth the effort. It's well worth the effort to struggle through Kenneth Clark's books if you want to educate yourself (properly) about history;if you like drama, its worth the effort to work your way through Some Shakespeare, if you love poetry, it's worth the effort to tussle through "The Collected Works of Shelley" and so on.


Why ?


Because (1) Where there's NO PAIN, there's NO GAIN (Nietzsche would agree !) and (2) In the case of what we are talking about, i.e; educating yourself/learning through reading the classics; what you put in ,in terms of hard, steady, effort, -if reading is difficult for you -, gets paid back BIG TIME when you finish each text.


As to me being a racist. I am not a racist in the sense that Hitler was. Hitler hated ALL Jews, he wanted to murder ALL of them. Nor am I a racist in the way the Klansmen were in the 1960's in the US during the Civil Right Movement - they hated ALL Black Africans and they committed violent crimes including lynchings (murder) against Black African Americans purely for the fact they were Black Africans- in a perverse sense of the saying , for the Klan, it was "nothing personal." That's a hallmark of what you call racism, the hate and violence inflicted by, say, white Americans against black African-American is "nothing personal". It's not personal because the blacks are not perceived by the Klan or the neo-Nazis as individual persons - individual human beings.


When it comes to having a friend or best friend, these are people who you get along with quite well, people who you can easily chat with, who can understand you, and why it is you are the person you are. Its not mandatory, but people who are friends pretty much tend to have a similar level of intelligence, right? I mean, I admire Henry Kissinger, for example, he was Richard Nixon's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser and he did a lot of amazing (and good) things. From the late 1960's to the later half of the 1970's he managed to pioneer a policy of detente with the Soviets. He personally orchestrated the opening of US relations with Mao Zedong's Red China. He was "the shuttle" in shuttle diplomacy that ended the 1973 Arab - Israel War. And Kissinger was the man who negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the War in Vietnam (The untold story here is that the US WON the War in Vietnam in 1972, but Congressional Democrats betrayed America's promise to continue arming the South Vietnamese Army after the Ho Chi Minh, the NVA and Viet Cong had agreed in 1972 the result was that the US lost the war to the communists 3 years later. The Communists lied, of course, about backing down in 1972 and as soon as they saw that the Democrats had reneged on the promise that Nixon and Kissinger had made in 1972 to keep the NVA well armed, the communist went on the attack marching down through South Vietnam, without US tanks/helicopter/guns/ammunition the NVA were sitting ducks, and in 1975 Saigon fell to the communists. The Democrats refusal to honour America's promise to keep South Vietnam's NVA armed after 1972 meant that 58,000 GIs had died in vain in Vietnam. I told this story in detail in a recent post but the Mods deleted it) To cut a long story short Kissinger was a brilliant diplomat, political analyst and practitioner of realpolitic Using only his brains and his mouth, he was able to talk sense into the heads of dangerous despots like Mao Zedong and Leonard Brezhnev over a cup of coffee and successfully persuade the Arabs, Soviets and Israelis to put down their guns and end the Yom Kippur War in 1973 - a war that could have turned very, very nasty BTW. Imagine its you, GAFFO, and the President says, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, "Right GAFFO ,-you're the man ! -, I want you to get on a plane in 24 hours and fly to the Kremlin; I want you to talk to Krushchev and his advisers and persuade the crazy bastard to get those nuclear missiles off Cuba pronto!


Anyway, the point is that Kissinger was a genius, he probably had an IQ if 150-160 and lots of other high-level personality traits of the kind that make for a remarkable diplomat/negotiator. I would love to have Henry Kissinger for a friend, but that could never happen, he would find me to dumb and boring, we would have nothing to talk about. To underline the point, there was a funny ad at the cinema a few years ago when I went to watch a movie The ad starts showing this businessman taking his seat on a plane before take off. Then you see other passengers boarding the jet and taking their seats. Next thing the real Henry Kissinger (must have cost them a fortune to have him do this advert) is shown walking down the aisle looking for his seat number. Then he look up at a seat number , turns and sits down right next to the businessman. Kissinger turns his head to look at the businessman and says in his hallmark deep, gravelly voice "Hello". The businessman's jaw drops, he looks totally mortified, because everyone knows he's thinking to himself F**K (!), how on Earth am I going to be able to chat to a brilliant diplomat like Kissinger during the flight. Then he sees a political magazine (it was something like "TIME") tucked into the reading matter holder at his feet and pulls it out. His eyes close and heaves a great sigh of relief. (It was an ad for "TIME" magazine, I think), and that was it. I hate ads, but I thought that one was quite funny.


Likewise I would not be able to form what we (i.e; Westerners like you and I) generally mean by friendships, with persons whose IQs were too LOW like say 60 or 50. Suppose someone said to you GAFFO, do you think you could ever hang out REGULARLY with individuals your same age (male or female) who had Down Syndrome or some other type of Intellectual Deficit Disorder that meant they could only read at the level of of 6-8 year old, could not operate a computer, was not fully aware of the legal difference between right and wrong, probably did not know who the President of the US was, or what the basic differences between Republican and Democrats were. I think the answer is no.Right?


To continue. I am NOT a racist because I would have no problem having a friend who was Jewish (like Kissinger), Sub-Saharan African, Mexican, Cuban, Aboriginal, American Indian, African-American, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and so on PROVIDED we had ROUGHLY SIMILAR IQs and , natural, for whatever reasons : common hobbies/interests; sense of humour; taste in music; similar life-experiences or whatever, because there are many different reasons that two people become friends. I have an IQ of about 107 - nothing special, and in ALL the ethnic/racial groups I have listed there a plenty of individuals who would have an IQ roughly around my own; if ever I met such an individual and we got on well and liked each other's company then I'm sure we might very well become friends.


You need to listen carefully to what I'm about to explain to understand my position, OK? Here we go...


I am a big fan of Western civilization and Western culture. Western civilization IS the greatest OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR civilization/culture that has ever emerged in all human history (FACT).


When civilization/culture is the creation the white Western European man and his descendants. It's in the blood/DNA. Its a "BLOOD and SOIL" thing, by which I mean GENE - ENVIRONMENT thing White culture is unique because it developed in the harsh, cold landscapes of North Western Europe and what we call Scandinavia, today, the ancient Indo-European tribes who migrated to this part of the word (e.g. the Corded Ware or Battle Axe peoples) needed to adapt to the cold climate and rugged, barren environment of places like Sweden and in so do acquired the psychological/ behavioural attributes of the distinctly Western European man: sharp intelligence, conscientiousness,courage, creativity, fortitude, pragmatism, determination , the "will to power" and so on.


Take a Western country like America in the 1950's; its population is 90% (at least) white European; everything is sweet, no race riots, no social division, most people are healthy and married with kids and a family home and a car, the economy is thriving. There is no socialist/Marxist/Postmodernist craziness like political correctness, multiculturalism, policies if equality of outcome in the workplace, cultural/moral relativism screwing with everyone's head. If you vist a city in 1950's America there is, generally speaking, good infrastructure in place, the city and its suburbs are neat and tidy, people still have respect for authority (political, religious, legal, civil), they are law-abiding, polite and friendly in public, schools still provide a good education in the subjects of the core curriculum. There is ZERO-TOLERANCE for communists (socialists) and communism or socialism.


Then along comes 1965. Democrat President Lyndon B Johnson signs into law the "IMMIGRATION and NATIONALITY ACT 1965. This Act threw open America's border to non-white European immigrant from: Africa, Mexico, Cuba, Asia, the Middle East and so on; and they absolutely flooded in. The numbers of immigrants from these countries began to rise at an exponential rate and continued to do so over the next 50 years. There are so many coloured immigrant in the US today, that White European American are destined to become a demographic minority by the year 2042.


The problem is this, and lets look at Black African immigrants and Afro - Americans who were born in the US. (I'm going to call them an ethnic group, because , if you want to get all nit-picky and technical, it's true that Black Africans should not be referred to as "race", "race" is not valid scientific concept. So it's incorrect to say the "Latino race" or the "Chinese race" or the white European race", or the "African American race" even though in the majority of cases everyone can identify these "racial" groups quite quickly by their biological features). Members of any ethnic group have an innate natural tendency to socialise and reside with each other, and so they automatically tend to form black neighbourhoods and black suburbs and even black cities. A perfect example is Detroit. In the 1950's, it population was 1.8 million and over 90 white European American. Today, the population of Detroit is 700,000 and it is around 90% black. In 1950 Detroit was a boom town, with a excellent and well-maintained infrastructure, the city's finances were in good order, people had jobs - it was a good place to live. Today, Detroit is officially bankrupt, is has the second highest murder rate in the US, it infrastructure has been trashed, crime and drug abuse is rampant, vast swathes of the city are filled with 1000's of abandoned houses and buildings, basically its a third world shit-hole (as President Trump would say) Why ? The answer is AVERAGE IQ, the average IQ of Black Sub-Saharan African is 70 (which equates to mild mental retardation) and the AVERAGE IQ of Afro-Americans is 85 (one full standard deviation below the average IQ for white European American. So from the moment that the population of Detroit became black, the average IQ of the city began to fall, and it kept falling as the black majority grew. I don't know what the average IQ of Detroit is today, but it would be somewhere between 70 and 85 points. As the average IQ of the City began falling, the population became less and less able to build and main essential infrastructure, they didn't have the mental capacities to problem-solve, plan for the future, organise, manage, govern and, in short, everything the white Europeans handed to the Blacks of Detroit ( a nice, well-running, prosperous, "spic and span") was just totally TRASHED.


So, what happens in the future when, say,YOUR State Gaffo, becomes majority Black or majority Hispanic (Average IQ=85) because that is what is going to happen (The Democrats just can't wait for it). I'd say the State will turn into a violent, dangerous "jungle". And do you think they will demonstrate any loyalty to basic, white European American values? Do you think they will give a flying fuck about showing respect for the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence ? I'd say the answer in "No"; (1) because they lack the cognitive capacity (i.e the smarts) to competently grasp the concepts in these documents or understand how important they are and (2) these documents were written by white Europeans and American blacks, hispanics, latinos etc have been taught to hate White Americans (who are sexist, racist, xenophobic, unjustly, privileged,tyrannical capitalist exploiters, "slavemasters") and anything they have created.


In sum, I am not a racist. I am a person who believes the the mass immigration of non - white European ethnic groups into Europe, Canada and the US is destroying the West and everything it stands for, and must be stopped.



Regards

Dachshund
gaffo
Posts: 4259
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:15 am

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by gaffo »

you wrote a book without personal vitriol (this shows that you do wish to discuss even though i think you are a racist (and hey, even racists are human, and maybe not always trolls) - and most of which i agreed with, and so will reply below


Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm Gaffo,


The official spelling of English changes continually over time. snipped the rest.

yes in know this, and so value Caucer(sp) work.

my point per English spelling is my "method" solidifies it with logic, rather than custom.

but i'm a pleab so my theory/method will not be adopted.
Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm
AS to finding reading difficult and only being able to read quite slowly. For most people, reading philosophy texts and essays, is difficult and they need to proceed slowly. For example, I am a Conservative (politically) because reading Edmund Burke's political essays/philosophical theory converted me to Toryism; but Burke was a genius and he often dealt in high-level concepts; also, he writes in the English of the educated English upper class of the mid to late 18th century, so it took me a long time to plough through all of his work. It's the same thing for Kant, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Aristotle and so on. Unless you are an individual who has a sky-high IQ of 150-160, say, then reading the work of such thinker is HARD, painstaking work. Even University Philosophy lecturers complain about how difficult they find it is to read Heidegger's "Being and Time" because the text is so dense and packed with neologisms. But here's the rub, if you are talking about the writing of a famous Western Poet, Philosopher, Novelist, History - by famous, I mean someone who as automatically accepted as one of the true great/masters of their craft, then even if you find reading is a struggle, it's well worth the effort. It's well worth the effort to struggle through Kenneth Clark's books if you want to educate yourself (properly) about history;if you like drama, its worth the effort to work your way through Some Shakespeare, if you love poetry, it's worth the effort to tussle through "The Collected Works of Shelley" and so on.


Why ?


Because (1) Where there's NO PAIN, there's NO GAIN (Nietzsche would agree !) and (2) In the case of what we are talking about, i.e; educating yourself/learning through reading the classics; what you put in ,in terms of hard, steady, effort, -if reading is difficult for you -, gets paid back BIG TIME when you finish each text.
yes of course, and concur fully.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm As to me being a racist. I am not a racist in the sense that Hitler was. Hitler hated ALL Jews, he wanted to murder ALL of them. Nor am I a racist in the way the Klansmen were in the 1960's in the US during the Civil Right Movement - they hated ALL Black Africans and they committed violent crimes including lynchings (murder) against Black African Americans purely for the fact they were Black Africans- in a perverse sense of the saying , for the Klan, it was "nothing personal." That's a hallmark of what you call racism, the hate and violence inflicted by, say, white Americans against black African-American is "nothing personal". It's not personal because the blacks are not perceived by the Klan or the neo-Nazis as individual persons - individual human beings.


then maybe there is hope for you in future, may you find an intelligent black guy to be your best bud, or a smart black gal to call your lover.

if you are able to overcome your bias and view them as intelligent - though also black - that is up to you.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm When it comes to having a friend or best friend, these are people who you get along with quite well, people who you can easily chat with, who can understand you, and why it is you are the person you are. Its not mandatory, but people who are friends pretty much tend to have a similar level of intelligence, right?
yes i agree with that. i ignore formal education in that account. my best friend never went to collage - though smart enough and wissh he had when we are kids - none of his family ever did, so nor did he. but his "horse sense" (intelligence/wisdom - was appearent when we where kids and we connected). He's white BTW - if that matter to you.



Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm I mean, I admire Henry Kissinger, for example, he was Richard Nixon's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser and he did a lot of amazing (and good) things. From the late 1960's to the later half of the 1970's he managed to pioneer a policy of detente with the Soviets. He personally orchestrated the opening of US relations with Mao Zedong's Red China. He was "the shuttle" in shuttle diplomacy that ended the 1973 Arab - Israel War. And Kissinger was the man who negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the War in Vietnam (The untold story here is that the US WON the War in Vietnam in 1972, but Congressional Democrats betrayed America's promise to continue arming the South Vietnamese Army after the Ho Chi Minh, the NVA and Viet Cong had agreed in 1972 the result was that the US lost the war to the communists 3 years later. The Communists lied, of course, about backing down in 1972 and as soon as they saw that the Democrats had reneged on the promise that Nixon and Kissinger had made in 1972 to keep the NVA well armed, the communist went on the attack marching down through South Vietnam, without US tanks/helicopter/guns/ammunition the NVA were sitting ducks, and in 1975 Saigon fell to the communists. The Democrats refusal to honour America's promise to keep South Vietnam's NVA armed after 1972 meant that 58,000 GIs had died in vain in Vietnam. I told this story in detail in a recent post but the Mods deleted it) To cut a long story short Kissinger was a brilliant diplomat, political analyst and practitioner of realpolitic Using only his brains and his mouth, he was able to talk sense into the heads of dangerous despots like Mao Zedong and Leonard Brezhnev over a cup of coffee and successfully persuade the Arabs, Soviets and Israelis to put down their guns and end the Yom Kippur War in 1973 - a war that could have turned very, very nasty BTW. Imagine its you, GAFFO, and the President says, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, "Right GAFFO ,-you're the man ! -, I want you to get on a plane in 24 hours and fly to the Kremlin; I want you to talk to Krushchev and his advisers and persuade the crazy bastard to get those nuclear missiles off Cuba pronto!

I value history and know much of it (it leads to wisdom - which i value), and yes know all about the Vietnam war and Kissinger.

per the latter, concur that he was a very smart (how smart? not sure he was a genius, but close, and good at his job) - my IQ is prob on your level, but if it were as high as Kissinger, noting is character (not his job performance - which was good) - I really do not think i'd want him as a friend personally.

I agree that the Vietnam war was clusterfook - between the "fire of conduct fire bomding/firing upon, and the fact that we American's did not afford the respect the South Vietnamese merited in the early parts of the "war".

i.e "leave no man behind" - per 1964? there was a BIG battle in the South, where we (Americans) and the South Vietnamese cordinated as one fighting unit to attack the NVA............well things did not work out well.

what happened?

US forced - via the "leave no man behind" - moved in under fire to remove the bodies of dead American's................and left the SV one behind!!!!!!!!

disshonouralbe conduct! in my book - that right there showed our mindset - Slopes are not worthy of american blood even though they are fighting with us IN THEIR COUNTRY!!!!! - so we showed ourselves as the same and the prior French assholes.

colonial war - basically.

that batter showed our true colors, and the greater "war"

..................

BTW i suspect Ho Chi Min was equally intelligent to Kissenger (though a "Slope" in your eyes) - i do not know enough about his character to know if i were as smart as him if i could a friend of his.



Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm Likewise I would not be able to form what we (i.e; Westerners like you and I) generally mean by friendships, with persons whose IQs were too LOW like say 60 or 50. Suppose someone said to you GAFFO, do you think you could ever hang out REGULARLY with individuals your same age (male or female) who had Down Syndrome or some other type of Intellectual Deficit Disorder that meant they could only read at the level of of 6-8 year old, could not operate a computer, was not fully aware of the legal difference between right and wrong, probably did not know who the President of the US was, or what the basic differences between Republican and Democrats were. I think the answer is no.Right?

correct. right.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm To continue. I am NOT a racist because I would have no problem having a friend who was Jewish (like Kissinger), Sub-Saharan African, Mexican, Cuban, Aboriginal, American Indian, African-American, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and so on PROVIDED we had ROUGHLY SIMILAR IQs
nice to hear, but still think you are racist, and so "there are no blacks with roughly similar IQ" to yours to be friends with.

I've been friends via college with several blacks with IQ similar (and higher BTW - just assumed via their higher grade point (engineering BTW) ) than mine.

and yes i've been friends with orientals (Chinese) in the same college with similar IQ.

I've met a couple of pure dumb orientals too - and blacks.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm and , natural, for whatever reasons : common hobbies/interests; sense of humour; taste in music; similar life-experiences or whatever, because there are many different reasons that two people become friends.
yes of course!
Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm I have an IQ of about 107 - nothing special, and in ALL the ethnic/racial groups I have listed there a plenty of individuals who would have an IQ roughly around my own; if ever I met such an individual and we got on well and liked each other's company then I'm sure we might very well become friends.
if this is so, then i don't think you are a racist, but i still think you are (from your many earlier posts). lol

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm You need to listen carefully to what I'm about to explain to understand my position, OK? Here we go...
ok, seatbelt fastened.
Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm I am a big fan of Western civilization and Western culture. Western civilization IS the greatest OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR civilization/culture that has ever emerged in all human history (FACT).
agreed, for some reason...............though white man lived in caves and clawed at the earth like all others for 40,000 yrs in Europe, somehow 3000 yrs ago a few thinkers in Athens were heard by their townsfolks as offering wisdom, and so Western Culture was born via the Athenians.


Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm When civilization/culture is the creation the white Western European man and his descendants. It's in the blood/DNA. Its a "BLOOD and SOIL" thing,
this is were we diverge, you are all nazi here, and i do not agree with that mindset.

Greeks were the thinkers - dark and swarthy - not nordic, the nordics were still clawing and the earth for another 2000 yrs after Plato/etc. (those "swarthy dark "arab-types" you dissparage were the trailblazers of Western Civilization).

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm by which I mean GENE - ENVIRONMENT thing White culture is unique because it developed in the harsh, cold landscapes of North Western Europe and what we call Scandinavia, today, the ancient Indo-European tribes who migrated to this part of the word (e.g. the Corded Ware or Battle Axe peoples) needed to adapt to the cold climate and rugged, barren environment of places like Sweden and in so do acquired the psychological/ behavioural attributes of the distinctly Western European man: sharp intelligence, conscientiousness,courage, creativity, fortitude, pragmatism, determination , the "will to power" and so on.
hogwash, Western civilzation was born in Greece's Athens - by a few wise man 3000 yrs ago.

then taken up first by the 9OH MY GOD!!!!!!!) Arabs, then Western Europeons a few centuries later.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm Take a Western country like America in the 1950's; its population is 90% (at least) white European; everything is sweet, no race riots, no social division, most people are healthy and married with kids and a family home and a car, the economy is thriving. There is no socialist/Marxist/Postmodernist craziness like political correctness, multiculturalism, policies if equality of outcome in the workplace, cultural/moral relativism screwing with everyone's head. If you vist a city in 1950's America there is, generally speaking, good infrastructure in place, the city and its suburbs are neat and tidy, people still have respect for authority (political, religious, legal, civil), they are law-abiding, polite and friendly in public, schools still provide a good education in the subjects of the core curriculum. There is ZERO-TOLERANCE for communists (socialists) and communism or socialism.


Then along comes 1965. Democrat President Lyndon B Johnson signs into law the "IMMIGRATION and NATIONALITY ACT 1965. This Act threw open America's border to non-white European immigrant from: Africa, Mexico, Cuba, Asia, the Middle East and so on; and they absolutely flooded in. The numbers of immigrants from these countries began to rise at an exponential rate and continued to do so over the next 50 years. There are so many coloured immigrant in the US today, that White European American are destined to become a demographic minority by the year 2042.


The problem is this, and lets look at Black African immigrants and Afro - Americans who were born in the US. (I'm going to call them an ethnic group, because , if you want to get all nit-picky and technical, it's true that Black Africans should not be referred to as "race", "race" is not valid scientific concept. So it's incorrect to say the "Latino race" or the "Chinese race" or the white European race", or the "African American race" even though in the majority of cases everyone can identify these "racial" groups quite quickly by their biological features). Members of any ethnic group have an innate natural tendency to socialise and reside with each other, and so they automatically tend to form black neighbourhoods and black suburbs and even black cities. A perfect example is Detroit. In the 1950's, it population was 1.8 million and over 90 white European American. Today, the population of Detroit is 700,000 and it is around 90% black. In 1950 Detroit was a boom town, with a excellent and well-maintained infrastructure, the city's finances were in good order, people had jobs - it was a good place to live. Today, Detroit is officially bankrupt, is has the second highest murder rate in the US, it infrastructure has been trashed, crime and drug abuse is rampant, vast swathes of the city are filled with 1000's of abandoned houses and buildings, basically its a third world shit-hole (as President Trump would say) Why ? The answer is AVERAGE IQ, the average IQ of Black Sub-Saharan African is 70 (which equates to mild mental retardation) and the AVERAGE IQ of Afro-Americans is 85 (one full standard deviation below the average IQ for white European American. So from the moment that the population of Detroit became black, the average IQ of the city began to fall, and it kept falling as the black majority grew. I don't know what the average IQ of Detroit is today, but it would be somewhere between 70 and 85 points. As the average IQ of the City began falling, the population became less and less able to build and main essential infrastructure, they didn't have the mental capacities to problem-solve, plan for the future, organise, manage, govern and, in short, everything the white Europeans handed to the Blacks of Detroit ( a nice, well-running, prosperous, "spic and span") was just totally TRASHED.
yes Detroit is a mess.

I do think there is a difference in mean ave if intelligence bet races (shock of shocks - not PC, i'm not PC BTW) - but unlike you i do not think the difference is much (the individual differences are an order of mag more - so plenty of smart blacks and dumb orientals). so i ignore one race (unlike you) - and allow folks to show themsleves to me in order for me to determine if they are smart or not (or asshole or not/etc).

as per the IQ numbers, 70 etc is rediculous! that is borderline retarded, and no on mass blacks are not retarded!

lol, those numbers are crap IMO.

5 points or so either way on ave - blacks 5 lower than whites, and orientals 5 higher.

and again, unlike you i no note ones race prior to knowing how smart or dumb they are.
Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm So, what happens in the future when, say,YOUR State Gaffo, becomes majority Black or majority Hispanic (Average IQ=85) because that is what is going to happen (The Democrats just can't wait for it). I'd say the State will turn into a violent, dangerous "jungle". And do you think they will demonstrate any loyalty to basic, white European American values? Do you think they will give a flying fuck about showing respect for the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence ? I'd say the answer in "No"; (1) because they lack the cognitive capacity (i.e the smarts) to competently grasp the concepts in these documents or understand how important they are and (2) these documents were written by white Europeans and American blacks, hispanics, latinos etc have been taught to hate White Americans (who are sexist, racist, xenophobic, unjustly, privileged,tyrannical capitalist exploiters, "slavemasters") and anything they have created.
nothing happens, because the value codex of my Constution is based upon ones inate right and wrong - not intelligence (the philosophy of right conduct toward a minority and limited governmental powers is not all that complex - even for the retarded Sir).

there are plenty of asshats - like Hitler - who understood the concept and still rejected it as "Sentimental hogwash" - so intelligentce is nor relivent to this particular.


BTW "Histpanics" are White Catholics - generally, with some Amerind blood - 1/8 or less generally not that that matters.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm In sum, I am not a racist.

still don't believe you, but welcome your reply - it was intelligent and civil - if i can "fix you" and make you not racist (not going to happen), i'd welcome it.

if another - i.e. a black person - comes into your life, for you love - you may become more of a man than you are today (if you don't push them out) - i'd welcome that day, for your sake (not mine - i really don't give a shit if you are racist or not - there are many others like you out there and i can;t "fix the world" nor care to).that is a fools errand).


Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm I am a person who believes the the mass immigration of non - white European ethnic groups into Europe, Canada and the US is destroying the West and everything it stands for, and must be stopped.
yes that is clear, see immediate above as to why you think this is threatening.

Dachshund wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 1:48 pm Regards

Dachshund
regards back, you were civil to me and so i shall be back, i wish you well, may you find that black person in your life to make you more than you are today - i leave that up to fate.
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Belinda »

Dachshund wrote:
A perfect example is Detroit. In the 1950's, it population was 1.8 million and over 90 white European American. Today, the population of Detroit is 700,000 and it is around 90% black. In 1950 Detroit was a boom town, with a excellent and well-maintained infrastructure, the city's finances were in good order, people had jobs - it was a good place to live. Today, Detroit is officially bankrupt, is has the second highest murder rate in the US, it infrastructure has been trashed, crime and drug abuse is rampant, vast swathes of the city are filled with 1000's of abandoned houses and buildings, basically its a third world shit-hole (as President Trump would say) Why ? The answer is AVERAGE IQ, the average IQ of Black Sub-Saharan African is 70 (which equates to mild mental retardation) and the AVERAGE IQ of Afro-Americans is 85 (one full standard deviation below the average IQ for white European American. So from the moment that the population of Detroit became black, the average IQ of the city began to fall, and it kept falling as the black majority grew. I don't know what the average IQ of Detroit is today, but it would be somewhere between 70 and 85 points. As the average IQ of the City began falling, the population became less and less able to build and main essential infrastructure, they didn't have the mental capacities to problem-solve, plan for the future, organise, manage, govern and, in short, everything the white Europeans handed to the Blacks of Detroit ( a nice, well-running, prosperous, "spic and span") was just totally TRASHED.
To confuse correlation with cause gives you a simplistic conclusion.
IQ test results show who is good at IQ tests and who is not.This is because intelligence, according to IQ tests, is defined by standards that pertain less to black Americans than to white Americans.

African Americans who are bad at IQ tests, unless they have a specific cognitive disability, are bad at IQ tests because they lack the education and practice that makes people good at IQ tests. They lack education and practice because there is insufficient social mobility in the USA. There are several causes of lack of social mobility however the most frequent cause is insufficient free quality education . The UK is becoming like the USA; a country of two nations and this can be reversed by governments which put people before profits.

You yourself in the same post have claimed that you could be friends with a black man if his education and associated interests matched your own.
Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

Belinda wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 9:21 am

To confuse correlation with cause gives you a simplistic conclusion.
IQ test results show who is good at IQ tests and who is not.This is because intelligence, according to IQ tests, is defined by standards that pertain less to black Americans than to white Americans.

African Americans who are bad at IQ tests, unless they have a specific cognitive disability, are bad at IQ tests because they lack the education and practice that makes people good at IQ tests. They lack education and practice because there is insufficient social mobility in the USA. There are several causes of lack of social mobility however the most frequent cause is insufficient free quality education . The UK is becoming like the USA; a country of two nations and this can be reversed by governments which put people before profits.

You yourself in the same post have claimed that you could be friends with a black man if his education and associated interests matched your own.
Belinda,

I am not going to waste time arguing with you about this. The main reason is that what you've said has been proven to be wrong. It is not me saying that it's wrong, BTW, it's what the science says.

When you say that the performance of individuals on IQ tests merely measure "how good they are at taking IQ tests", I'm sorry to have to tell you that that's simply not true. It's not true in the same way that 2+2 does not equal 5. The debate has been had and it is over. There is conclusive, empirical research data collected by countless scientific research investigations over the past few decades that says "No, Belinda, that is NOT CORRECT. You need to brush upon on some very basic facts, girlie, if you want to engage in meaningful debate about issue like "race, intelligence and genetics". Even the hard Left in the Western academy's social science and psychology, anthropology etc departments have been forced to concede that modern standardised IQ tests designed to measure general intelligence (g-factor) DO actually do what they are intended to.

As to your second point,namely, that environmental factors like access to a good quality education/good schooling. In the US, starting in the mid -1960's trillions of dollars have been poured into programs to help raise the level of academic performance of African-American students to date......actually, Belinda, I'm weary of going through the technical details. I want you to tell me why it is that in, say, the US wrt disadvantaged African-American communities and in Australia wrt to disadvantaged Aboriginal communities ever since the 1960's the governments of both nations have bent over backwards and throw trillions of dollars at the problems of black educational failure, black unemployment, homelessness, violent crime, drug abuse, single motherhood every possible type of dys-social fuck up you can imagine and NOTHING CHANGES. Got that, Belinda ? NOTHING CHANGES

But no matter how blatantly and painfully obvious it is that this is the case, the Left in America and Australia (and the other major Western countries like the UK and Canada and those in Western Europe like Germany, etc.) always come up with some new scapegoat, some new explanation why (in the US, for example) African-American children are, generally speaking, failing at school and why when they grow up, so many of them are unemployed or in goal, relative to white American kids and so on. There are ALWAYS some new-found social or cultural or political "environmental factors" that are to blame. There is ALWAYS some new fervid explanatory theory from the academy's Leftist social science "excuse factory" whenever Joe Citizen shouts out "Hey, how come we've thrown trillions of dollars of government revenue ( provided by white tax-payers, i.e. suckers like me) trying to sort out the problems that Blacks in America have since 1965, and sweet fuck all has changed? In fact, the problems in Black community have got WORSE, not BETTER.

Here - as Shakespeare would say -is "the rub". No one, in particular the Left, has got the GUTS to face up to the root cause of the problems we are talking about, and do you know why? Well, I'll tell you, Belinda, it's because the TRUTH is so heartbreaking to face - so terribly ugly and so utterly tragic it's very hard to bear. If you've any shred of decency in your soul , it (the TRUTH) will send you into existential "free-fall". If you're a Christian it will test your faith to the breaking point. On a personal note, I can assure you the whole thing still does my head in every day. But one fact remains, and that is that if you have a serious problem to deal with and you REFUSE to look at it honestly - REFUSE to accept and
rationally deal with the issues that have created the problem, you will not solve it - not EVER. And when it's a large-scale social problem like the one we are talking about, if you lack the moral courage to expose its source, confront it, and then take rational action to remediate it, it is extremely likely to get worse , then, if still ignored or denied, at some point to become a threat the State and then...

In my opinion , if we can find the moral courage and political will to dealt honestly and openly with the social problems that are caused by genetically = based differences in the average IQ of different ethnic/racial groups, we will be able to start putting an end to the racial tension and strife that currently blights the West. Moreover, we will be able to solve these problems in a moral and humane manner such that everyone in Western society "wins". But explaining how this could be done is a subject for another post.

What I'm talking about is this, Belinda... The average IQ of Australian Aboriginals is 62 points. That's an incontrovertible scientific fact. The average IQ of Black Sub-Saharan Africans is 70 points, again that's a scientific "fact- in -the- bag", and I've already told you that modern IQ tests measure a REAL general intelligence factor ( called "g" by psychologists in the West since the 1920's), and while I 'm at it I can tell you that modern IQ tests are TOTALLY free of any cultural bias. Fact. To continue. By the long-established, official standards of Western psychiatry these score are diagnostic of mild mental retardation (mild - IDD, to use the new PC terminology) Now, here's the difficult part... According to the science ( the genetic, etc; science to date) IT LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE HUMAN IQ IS PREDOMINANTLY BIOLOGICALLY ( GENETICALLY) DETERMINED. If this is true, and it looks one hell of a lot like it is ( In any case we will soon know one way or the other because although the Left have tried to shut down ALL genetic research into human intelligence; although it has bullied and threatened geneticists who persist and although it has destroyed the careers/lives of many who refused to buckle under its vile threats, it has not succeeded), DO YOU REALISE THE WORLD-SHAKING MAGNITUDE AND EXTENT OF THE SOCIAL/ POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS THIS WILL HAVE? I'll tell you one of the smaller ones, and that is that you, Belinda, will be FORCED to abandon any kind of egalitarian, socialist political convictions you hold. I say "forced" because you would simply not be able to argue with the empirical, scientific evidence, i.e. the facts. Just like you can't argue with the force of gravity. I mean, if you drop your tea cup, it will fall down and smash on the floor. But if your attitude is such that you want to argue with the reality of gravity, then go ahead, drop as many tea cups as you like, dear, and see what happens.


Regards


Dachshund
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Dachshund wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 11:10 am
Belinda wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 9:21 am

To confuse correlation with cause gives you a simplistic conclusion.
IQ test results show who is good at IQ tests and who is not.This is because intelligence, according to IQ tests, is defined by standards that pertain less to black Americans than to white Americans.

African Americans who are bad at IQ tests, unless they have a specific cognitive disability, are bad at IQ tests because they lack the education and practice that makes people good at IQ tests. They lack education and practice because there is insufficient social mobility in the USA. There are several causes of lack of social mobility however the most frequent cause is insufficient free quality education . The UK is becoming like the USA; a country of two nations and this can be reversed by governments which put people before profits.

You yourself in the same post have claimed that you could be friends with a black man if his education and associated interests matched your own.
Belinda,

I am not going to waste time arguing with you about this. The main reason is that what you've said has been proven to be wrong. It is not me saying that it's wrong, BTW, it's what the science says.

When you say that the performance of individuals on IQ tests merely measure "how good they are at taking IQ tests", I'm sorry to have to tell you that that's simply not true. It's not true in the same way that 2+2 does not equal 5. The debate has been had and it is over. There is conclusive, empirical research data collected by countless scientific research investigations over the past few decades that says "No, Belinda, that is NOT CORRECT. You need to brush upon on some very basic facts, girlie, if you want to engage in meaningful debate about issue like "race, intelligence and genetics". Even the hard Left in the Western academy's social science and psychology, anthropology etc departments have been forced to concede that modern standardised IQ tests designed to measure general intelligence (g-factor) DO actually do what they are intended to.

As to your second point,namely, that environmental factors like access to a good quality education/good schooling. In the US, starting in the mid -1960's trillions of dollars have been poured into programs to help raise the level of academic performance of African-American students to date......actually, Belinda, I'm weary of going through the technical details. I want you to tell me why it is that in, say, the US wrt disadvantaged African-American communities and in Australia wrt to disadvantaged Aboriginal communities ever since the 1960's the governments of both nations have bent over backwards and throw trillions of dollars at the problems of black educational failure, black unemployment, homelessness, violent crime, drug abuse, single motherhood every possible type of dys-social fuck up you can imagine and NOTHING CHANGES. Got that, Belinda ? NOTHING CHANGES

But no matter how blatantly and painfully obvious it is that this is the case, the Left in America and Australia (and the other major Western countries like the UK and Canada and those in Western Europe like Germany, etc.) always come up with some new scapegoat, some new explanation why (in the US, for example) African-American children are, generally speaking, failing at school and why when they grow up, so many of them are unemployed or in goal, relative to white American kids and so on. There are ALWAYS some new-found social or cultural or political "environmental factors" that are to blame. There is ALWAYS some new fervid explanatory theory from the academy's Leftist social science "excuse factory" whenever Joe Citizen shouts out "Hey, how come we've thrown trillions of dollars of government revenue ( provided by white tax-payers, i.e. suckers like me) trying to sort out the problems that Blacks in America have since 1965, and sweet fuck all has changed? In fact, the problems in Black community have got WORSE, not BETTER.

Here - as Shakespeare would say -is "the rub". No one, in particular the Left, has got the GUTS to face up to the root cause of the problems we are talking about, and do you know why? Well, I'll tell you, Belinda, it's because the TRUTH is so heartbreaking to face - so terribly ugly and so utterly tragic it's very hard to bear. If you've any shred of decency in your soul , it (the TRUTH) will send you into existential "free-fall". If you're a Christian it will test your faith to the breaking point. On a personal note, I can assure you the whole thing still does my head in every day. But one fact remains, and that is that if you have a serious problem to deal with and you REFUSE to look at it honestly - REFUSE to accept and
rationally deal with the issues that have created the problem, you will not solve it - not EVER. And when it's a large-scale social problem like the one we are talking about, if you lack the moral courage to expose its source, confront it, and then take rational action to remediate it, it is extremely likely to get worse , then, if still ignored or denied, at some point to become a threat the State and then...

In my opinion , if we can find the moral courage and political will to dealt honestly and openly with the social problems that are caused by genetically = based differences in the average IQ of different ethnic/racial groups, we will be able to start putting an end to the racial tension and strife that currently blights the West. Moreover, we will be able to solve these problems in a moral and humane manner such that everyone in Western society "wins". But explaining how this could be done is a subject for another post.

What I'm talking about is this, Belinda... The average IQ of Australian Aboriginals is 62 points. That's an incontrovertible scientific fact. The average IQ of Black Sub-Saharan Africans is 70 points, again that's a scientific "fact- in -the- bag", and I've already told you that modern IQ tests measure a REAL general intelligence factor ( called "g" by psychologists in the West since the 1920's), and while I 'm at it I can tell you that modern IQ tests are TOTALLY free of any cultural bias. Fact. To continue. By the long-established, official standards of Western psychiatry these score are diagnostic of mild mental retardation (mild - IDD, to use the new PC terminology) Now, here's the difficult part... According to the science ( the genetic, etc; science to date) IT LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE HUMAN IQ IS PREDOMINANTLY BIOLOGICALLY ( GENETICALLY) DETERMINED. If this is true, and it looks one hell of a lot like it is ( In any case we will soon know one way or the other because although the Left have tried to shut down ALL genetic research into human intelligence; although it has bullied and threatened geneticists who persist and although it has destroyed the careers/lives of many who refused to buckle under its vile threats, it has not succeeded), DO YOU REALISE THE WORLD-SHAKING MAGNITUDE AND EXTENT OF THE SOCIAL/ POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS THIS WILL HAVE? I'll tell you one of the smaller ones, and that is that you, Belinda, will be FORCED to abandon any kind of egalitarian, socialist political convictions you hold. I say "forced" because you would simply not be able to argue with the empirical, scientific evidence, i.e. the facts. Just like you can't argue with the force of gravity. I mean, if you drop your tea cup, it will fall down and smash on the floor. But if your attitude is such that you want to argue with the reality of gravity, then go ahead, drop as many tea cups as you like, dear, and see what happens.


Regards


Dachshund
Pseudoscience. All 'IQ' tests tell you is whether or not you are good at that particular IQ test. Some people have a very practical intelligence and can build and fix anything, but they might not get a single answer right in an 'IQ' test. Many seemingly brilliant people who score high have no common sense at all and can barely dress themselves or keep clean, with pitiful social skills.
Your 'scientific fact' claims are just more of your bullshit (how's that mushroom farm coming along?).
The aborigines are so 'stupid' that they managed to survive in extremely harsh conditions for at least 60 thousand years. I wonder how long you would survive alone in the outback.
Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm

Pseudoscience. All 'IQ' tests tell you is whether or not you are good at that particular IQ test. Some people have a very practical intelligence and can build and fix anything, but they might not get a single answer right in an 'IQ' test. Many seemingly brilliant people who score high have no common sense at all and can barely dress themselves or keep clean, with pitiful social skills.
Your 'scientific fact' claims are just more of your bullshit (how's that mushroom farm coming along?).
The aborigines are so 'stupid' that they managed to survive in extremely harsh conditions for at least 60 thousand years. I wonder how long you would survive alone in the outback.
I will get back to you shortly, it is difficult to explain the concepts involved. I need a minute or two to think how I can best teach you.

Regards

Dachshund
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Belinda »

Vegetariantaxidermy wrote:
All 'IQ' tests tell you is whether or not you are good at that particular IQ test. Some people have a very practical intelligence and can build and fix anything, but they might not get a single answer right in an 'IQ' test. Many seemingly brilliant people who score high have no common sense at all and can barely dress themselves or keep clean, with pitiful social skills.
Your 'scientific fact' claims are just more of your bullshit (how's that mushroom farm coming along?).
The aborigines are so 'stupid' that they managed to survive in extremely harsh conditions for at least 60 thousand years. I wonder how long you would survive alone in the outback.
The first move, Dachshund, is to begin by defining intelligence. Your explanation implies that intelligence can be artificially selected for in some hypothetical breeding programme.
If you were breeding men for some specific task or tasks then you could make use of intelligence testing. But men are as a matter of fact wild animals in the sense that selection of genes is natural not artificial. If you seek to make society such that men are artificially bred to breed true to desirable types then you should explain who would benefit from a society that bred men to perform tasks.

I think you will agree with me thus far, Dachshund. However I put it to you that the state of the biosphere is so dangerous that urban upper class male dominated culture will quite soon be less viable than for instance Australian aboriginal culture, or for instance rural working class American culture.
Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

Dachshund wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:40 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm

Pseudoscience. All 'IQ' tests tell you is whether or not you are good at that particular IQ test. Some people have a very practical intelligence and can build and fix anything, but they might not get a single answer right in an 'IQ' test. Many seemingly brilliant people who score high have no common sense at all and can barely dress themselves or keep clean, with pitiful social skills.
Your 'scientific fact' claims are just more of your bullshit (how's that mushroom farm coming along?).
The aborigines are so 'stupid' that they managed to survive in extremely harsh conditions for at least 60 thousand years. I wonder how long you would survive alone in the outback.

Kia Ora, Cuzzie !! :D


Here is my reply to your objections, (and to some of those forwarded by Belinda)


Let's start of with a simple question : "Is IQ a good predictor of success in life ?


The answer is "Yes" it is, absolutely! If you take a "real" IQ test - (that means NOT some dodgy, online test -most of these and their ilk are pretty much scams to generate online traffic) -, app, or "Test Your IQ" book that you can buy in a supermarket, etc. Ninety nine percent of these so-called "IQ" tests are simply scam to generate online traffic/cash. They are not properly designed and have next to zero scientific validity) - by which I mean one that is administered by a professional psychologist/psychiatrist and licensed to him/her by one of the major test publishing companies - such as "Welscher" or "Stanford-Binet", then the result you score is a strong STATISTICAL predictor of multiple, important future life outcomes, such as: income (in particular); education level; health and even longevity. There are hundreds and hundreds of papers published in the reputable, mainstream, scientific literature confirming this. It's a "scientific-fact-in-the-bag", Veggie/Belinda, no scientist working in psychology or cognitive science, etc. today questions this any more. It's "yesterday's news."


OK, next... IQ tests ( the real ones that are properly administered and constructed are said to test for general intelligence ("g-factor"). However, it is true that there is a lots of debate as to what IQ tests actually measure. This is a point Belinda emphasises, and it is a valid ,"academic" point. Debates regarding what is actually meant by the concept of "intelligence" are ongoing. There are a broad spectrum of theories competing for the "Holy Grail" that is a precise, completed scientific account of what is meant by the term "intelligence." If you watch any "u tube" video clips of two or three expert neuropsychologists or cognitive scientists, etc; talking among themselves about what they believe human intelligence really is, you'll soon find the conversation unbearable. I can't bring myself to watch them anymore. It's like listing to a group of bitchy women gossiping about some sordid, neighbourhood rumour, or 19 year-olds theorising about the true meaning of life ( i.e; there's more bullshit in the air than at a Socialist Workers' Party conference, Belinda :D !).The bottom line is that psychologists cannot agree on a scientific definition for what is meant by the term "intelligence." Belinda's objection that we must begin this discussion by defining what intelligence actually is actually not valid, and I will explain why below.


To continue. Everyone is naturally disposed to define intelligence in their own image. So, Belinda defines intelligence in a way that is a consequence of all of her unique life experiences to date. If she happens to be an artist, then I would not be surprised if her definition of intelligence was expressed in terms of the work of a master like Van Gogh (despite the fact he was psychotic!) or Leonardo da Vinci. Veggie, on the other hand, because she has an entirely different set of unique life experiences, because she was born and grew up in a different country with a different physical geography and different(in some respects) national culture, will doubtless have a different view if she is asked what defines intelligence. For me, intelligence - in the sense of "smarts" = is best measured by an artistic mastery of the written word; so I would regard a great, lyric poet like Percy Shelly as being a genius (having a very high IQ), and as far as I am concerned Shakespeare was far more clever than the famous physicist like Albert Einstein (though Einstein would probably perform better on a modern IQ test than Shakespeare). Given this, I think its a good idea to say that "intelligence" is a folk concept.


Saying intelligence is a folk concept doesn't mean that is is primitive and in need of development. Lots of folk concepts are extraordinary nuanced and complicated; they do not need to be translated into the language of scientific concepts any more than the music of "The Beatles" needs to be re-written in the form of operas. The point I would like to make, however, is that there have been rock-and -roll operas ( if you are old enough you will remember the English rock band, "The Who", produced a "rock opera" called "Tommy" in 1975 about a deaf, dumb and and blind boy called Tommy who was a pinball wizard.( Ah, now they were the days, when cool was cool, I can still hear remember all the lyrics from "Tommy" now...


"Ever since I was a young boy
I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all
But I ain't seen nothing like him in any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball :D :D :D


I mean, what have today's kids got that even come close to bands like The Who, AC-DC, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac? Ermmm we got Taylor Swift, dude, and Miley Cyrus and, um, Justin Timberlake - he's cooler than Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan put together, man, and we got lots more on top of that !! :shock: :shock:)


My apologies. I go a bit carried away and off track there. To continue. Just as there have been "rock operas" like "Tommy"; it's possible that scientific concepts can inform a folk concept like "intelligence". It's true that "Intelligence" is a concept that only has meaning at the intersection of person, situation and culture. For instance a 30 year old Black African pygmies who sees a poisonous snake crawl into his hut in a pygmy village in the Congo that he lives in needs to solve the problem quickly; the 24 year-old Captain of Australia's "Wallabies" has figure out how he can stop the NZ "All Blacks' Jonah Lomu running through his forward defence, and figure it out fast, or he will lose this Test Match to the Kiwis (and there is nothing on Earth worse than losing to NZ at rugby); a 56 year-old Japanese businessman in Tokyo has a difficult decision to make about his multi-million dollar company's cash-flow within a 24 hour deadline. But, still, the meaning of intelligence is stable enough that is can be MEASURED in individuals and that useful THEORIES about it can be constructed.


The point, however, is, WHO CARES ? Who cares whether or not we can precisely, accurately and completely define the concept of "intelligence in scientific terms"? So far we haven't done very well all; but who cares, anyway, how many scientific concepts we might manage shoehorn into the construct of "intelligence in the future?. It's nothing to get your knickers in a knot about, Belinda; I mean, the sky wont "fall" if we don't manage to provide an exact and complete scientific explication of the meaning of the actual nature of human "intelligence.". For well over 100 years now, since the field of intelligence testing first emerged with the work of the French psychologist, Alfred Binet, in 1904, there has been no looming crisis over the lack of a consensus (among the mainstream Western psychological community and cognitive scientists) regarding the precise meaning of the concept of "intelligence." A German psychologist called William Stern ( who, incidentally first coined the term, "IQ", or "Intelligence Quotient") summed it up very nicely in 1914 in his text, "The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence", on the second page of this book he wrote:...


"The objection is often made that the problem of intellectual diagnosis (i.e; measuring intelligence) can in no way be made until we have exact knowledge of the general nature of intelligence itself. But this objection seems to me not to be pertinent... We measure electromotive force (EMF) without knowing what electricity is, and we diagnose with very delicate test methods many diseases of which we know as yet very little."


I do not think we will ever be able to provide an exact, completed, scientific (objective) account of the nature of human "intelligence." Here's why...


There are literally hundreds of definitions of the concept of "intelligence" in the mainstream, reputable scientific literature. I have chosen on by Robert Sternberg to demonstrate a point. I chose Sternberg because he is one of the world's foremost authorities on the psychology of intelligence. He is currently IBM professor of psychology at Yale university and a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Sternberg hold 13 (!) honorary doctorates from leading universities around the world in North America, Europe and Asia. When it comes to the psychology of intelligence Sternberg is an academic giant in the field. Here is his definition of human intelligence...


"Human intelligence is a MENTAL QUALITY that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts and use knowledge to manipulate one's environment."


I have highlighted the term "mental quality" and I would like you to note that all of the four abilities Sternberg list involves THINKING/THOUGHT. Right ?


First of all a "mental quality" is something that exists in human CONSCIOUSNESS. Human consciousness does not equate to the human brain, BTW. There are certainly correlations between brain activity and particular states of consciousness, but the gooey purpley/red lump of blood and nerve tissues that is the human organ called the brain is NOT identical with lived waking consciousness ( there is also dream consciousness, but that's not really relevant to what we are discussing). The first fact is this: consciousness is something that as human beings we know everything about, but we know NOTHING about it as scientists - ZERO.


Next. When we are awake, consciousness can contain an assortment of different types of contents. For example, there are sense perceptions like colours and sounds and tastes (of food/drink, etc.) Imagine someone gives you a bunch of red roses, and you are asked to explain what red looks like. Could you do it ? Or, suppose I plat middle C on a piano for you and then I ask you "What was it like to hear that middle C note I just played ? Could you do it ?


The image of redness you have in your mind - in your CONSCIOUSNESS - when you see the roses and the sound you experience in your consciousness when you hear the note middle C played on the piano are called quales (plural: qualia). Qualia is SPOOKY, mysterious "STUFF" (it is qualitative, subjective consciousness) that no purely informational or functional description of the brain will ever approach. What I mean is that when you see the red roses, certain neurones (nerve cells) in your brain will start "firing" at such and such a rate; likewise, when you hear the middle C note played, it will make tracts of neurones in a particular region of your brain start to "fire", but what has these nerve cells in your brain got in common with redness? (nerve cells aren't coloured rose - red for a start). Nerve cells have got nothing to do will the experience of hearing middle C, either, bunches of neurones don't give off musical notes !


Emotions are another type of mental content that exists in human consciousness. For instance, anger, jealousy, sadness, joy and grief are human emotions that we experience in consciousness. But can you tell me precisely what it feels like to be angry, or could you explain to a friend what it feels like when you are overcome with sorrow? Then there are bodily sensations , these are yet another content of consciousness and include feeling you experience like , say, the pain of a bad toothache. Apart from saying to a dentist it sux -it REALLY hurts - can you tell him EXACTLY what you are experiencing in your consciousness, can you provide a complete, accurate and precise account of your pain ? Have you ever experienced "Deja Vu", if you have do you think you could provide an exhaustive explanatory account of what it is like when you become aware of an episode of "Deja-Vu" in your consciousness ?


OK, we are discussing intelligence and intelligence at baseline is all to do with thoughts, cognition. Right? These are the basic mental pillars of intelligence: without the ability to have thoughts (e.g. "What a nice sunny day it is"!), without the capacity for cognition ( i.e; the process of thinking) one would have no intelligence, Thoughts and cognition happen in your mind - in your consciousness, but there has been a tendency in, Philosophy of Mind, to make a distinction between thoughts/cognition one the one hand, and qualia (qualitative, subjective consciousness on the other. Solving a mathematical equation, mastering scientific concepts, writing computer programs, delivering a lecture on theory of Darwinian evolution, building rockets for NASA what is taking place in consciousness during activities like these is viewed as somehow different from the experience of qualia like: seeing colours the redness of a rose, hearing sounds ( a beautiful song sung by Linda Ronstadt - my teenage pin-up !), feeling emotions ( the sorrow of of a friend's passing ), sensing pain, itching and so on. But that view has to be mistaken. Consider...


How do you know you have a train of thought at all ? How do you know that you think (cogitate)? What is it like to successfully prove a tricky mathematical theorum? What is it like to solve "The Times" cryptic crossword ? What is it like (if you are a young student of Classics) to successfully translate an a difficult ancient Greek poem ? What is it like to compose a poem - as I am sure that you both (Belinda and Veggie) have done so. In particular, how do you know that you've done so ? Do you see it written in your head ? If so, in what font ? Do you hear it spoken ? If so, in whose voice ? You might be able to answer the font/voice questions, BUT only on reflection - i.e; when I pressed you, you came up with an answer. But, up to that point you simply perceived ( not conceived) the poem in some terms whose QUALITATIVE aspects were indeed genuinely qualitative, but did not seem to fit into the standard seeing, hearing categories.


So here's the bottom line. ANYTHING we experience directly in consciousness whether is is the redness of a rose or a tomato, or something associated with dry, emotionless cognition, or remembering, etc ; is QUALITATIVE. By definition, all I ever experience is qualitative, subjective consciousness, that is QUALIA; spooky, mysterious, irreducible, ineffable, irreducible QUALIA. Even if I am asked to recall the driest, most black-and-white, seemingly qualia-free fact, for example a kid asks me: "When and where was Percy Shelly born" ? I say to the kid: "He was born on August 4th, 1792, at "Field PLace", near Horsham in Sussex, England.", there is STILL a palpable what-is-it-like when I do so. To the extent that cognition is manifest?prest itself before us in our mind (consciousness) in the form of something that is grasped all at once, whether in the form of something perceptual: the taste of "Coca Cola"; the feeling of running one's hand down a silk bed sheet, the sound of a Blue bird's song, the pink-coloured skin of a pig or something more abstract, it is QUALITATIVE.With regard to the more abstract, let me share with you a little eight-line poem written by Percy Shelly when he was 22 years old.It's called "Music, When Soft Voices Die, and ere it is...


Music, When Soft Voices Die
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou art gone
Love itself shall slumber one.


Grasping the sentiment that Shelly is trying to communicate here involves cognition, the concepts are subtle and reasonably sophisticated. One needs to think rationally in order to properly appreciate it . It is a very clever little poem and when you DO properly understand it, it is impossible not to be affected . I find it - although it is only an eight-line poem, exquisitely beautiful. I mean, one cannot just process this poem like some information-processing, "mechanical, artificial intelligence contraption. There is something-it is-like to read, contemplate and grasp the author intention in writing this little poem.


So to conclude. What we call "intelligence" is a collection of mental state/events and processes that occur in the human mind, that is, in CONSCIOUSNESS.Top class theoretical and research scientists (neuroscientists , cognitive psychologists, clinical psychologists, neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists and so on, have singly and in high-powered, well-funded research teams focused INTENSIVELY on the problem of trying to provide an explanatory scientific account of human consciousness over the past 25 years. They all agree it (consciousness) exists. But to date they have made ZERO, literally no progress whatsoever in their attempts to understand it's nature. Why? Basically, for the same reason that you can not tell me what it is like to see the redness of a red rose, the same principle applies to cognition and the cognitive processes that undergird "intelligence".


PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING OF INTELLIGENCE USING IQ TESTS


An IQ score is just an abstract number like: 70; 105; 150, etc; right ? It is a number that is STATISTICALLY correlated with a bunch of other abstract numbers, such as: future annual income: $35,000; $50,000; $ 70,000; $250,000; or how long people live: 50 years; 70 years; 95 years, or what your GPA was when you completed your degree course at university: 3.2; 5.6; 7.5; 9.2, etc: or how many days in total you spent in hospital being treated for a medical/psychiatric condition: 2; 15; 45; 104, etc.


So, in short, "yes" IQ scores DO predict success in life, BUT, if you are arguing that we can't therefore jump to any philosophical, political, PERSONAL conclusions from this "yes" from this, then I cannot really totally disagree. Rather, what I would say is that I think we need to be VERY cautious about doing this.


To continue. An IQ score correlates with success in life but it doesn't DICTATE it, and that is one of your points, right ? OK, it's a good point, Veggie. I totally agree, saying that IQ scores predict success in life is a bit like saying that the colour of your skin at birth predicts your future income. It's TECHNICALLY true, but we can both see the problems: causality is an issue, the significance of multiple other factors is an issue, etc.


More in the abstract - and this is the point I have stressed time and time again in my posts about race/ethnicity and intelligence/IQ - (the point that boneheads like Belinda - just kidding B :D :D - don't or wont understand) is that what we know ,for a fact, about IQ score correlations relates to GROUPS of people. These are STATISTICAL measures. Their relevance for the individual is difficult to evaluate, at best. To put it another way, while for a LARGE GROUP of people ( like, say, the population of Detroit City in America today), average IQ is one of the STRONGEST predictors of future success that we know of, for an individual, it is a weak indicator. What I'm saying is, imagine, for arguments sake, that a town in Noisyland - let's say Dunedin - had an average IQ of 75. That means, we performed a scientific, research investigation; we made sure that everyone over 18 was off the "puss" and "cinnabis" and any other illicit, psychoactive drugs on a certain day, and then we ("we" are registered clinical psychologists, BTW) gave every kunt 18- years- old or over who lives in Dunedin a real, "kosher" (professionally - designed/scientifically-validated) IQ test. Then, when everyone had completed their tests, we sat down and graded them and added up all the individual IQ scores to work out the average score for the population, and the average IQ score turned out to be 75 points. Now let's imagine another town in Kiwi-Land roughly the same size as Dunedin, say Hastings, and we do exactly the same thing there, we get all the adults to sit a legit IQ test, then we grade them and calculate the average IQ score for an adult in Hastings, and we found it turned out to be 100 points. In this hypothetical scenario, we can now be pretty damn confident that one of the two towns - either Dunedin or Hastings - is going to be HIGHLY LIKELY to have serious social problems( either now or in the future) with issues like: crime (violent and non-violent); domestic violence; single motherhood; marital breakdown; homelessness; youth unemployment; poor public schools with a high drop-out rate and relatively low average performance on SATS tests (i.e; the standardised government tests that measure academic performance/aptitude/skills; drug abuse; mental illness (like major depression for example); lower life expectancy, and so on. So, the $64,000 question is (drum roll), .... "Which town do think it is, Veggie" ?


This post is now too long for me to respond to you points about Australian Aboriginals and "practical intelligence. So I will do that in a separated post.

Regards

Dachshund

PS: I meant to ask you, are you a Jafa, bro'? :D


PSS: Did I tell you that I visited Noiseyland about 10 years ago, Veggie ?. I went out to the Wop Wops in the South Island and I met this Kiwi chick (pakeha) there. She had nice fear hear and a nice pair of ta-tas but was a bit of a munter and a kind of borderline grenade. Anyway, I was chatting to her for a while and then I sez would you like to hang out at my bach for a while (it wasn't mine, but I said it was) we can take a Tiki Tour and stop off where it is? She said, "Chur, sweet as, bro', I'll jist put me jandals on and git some scroggin from the Dairy for the trip and thin we cen fuck off "! I'm a bit of a skux, so when we got to my buddies crib and I put the hard word on her, you know. And it turned out she's a great woodpecker, and I'm standin' there on the verandah thinking "CHOICE" (!) Then after a while, I threw her in the fart sack inside the bach, but when the time came to "get down to business", if you know what I mean, I just couldn't handle the jandal because it turns out she's got a bad problem with the old "Huanga Teke" syndrome (rotton as a fuckin' chop, cuz !). And I'm thinkin' to myself "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, I can't cop this caper at all - I'll get crook as a chook"( !), but I was, you know, to embarrassed to broach the topic. So ,the next day I made up a story, I said: "Shit , I've gotta go back to Oz urgently, there's a family crisis at home ! So I gapped back to Oz, and that was the end of my adventures in NZ, bro'!
Belinda
Posts: 8030
Joined: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:13 am

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Belinda »

Dachshund, the people who were not as good at the IQ test were so because , one, they had not had the advantage of systems that maximise their potentials or , two, they had regressed due to trauma.

Instability in a society or subgroup is caused by poverty, unemployment, poor housing, poor health care, and where relevant selective suffrage. One serious social deficit is corruption which is endemic to some extent in societies where at or about their inception they suffered from exploitation. In the USA this early exploitation affected both the African slaves and their owners. The US still suffers from the effects of it.
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Dachshund wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 8:53 pm
Dachshund wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:40 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:00 pm

Pseudoscience. All 'IQ' tests tell you is whether or not you are good at that particular IQ test. Some people have a very practical intelligence and can build and fix anything, but they might not get a single answer right in an 'IQ' test. Many seemingly brilliant people who score high have no common sense at all and can barely dress themselves or keep clean, with pitiful social skills.
Your 'scientific fact' claims are just more of your bullshit (how's that mushroom farm coming along?).
The aborigines are so 'stupid' that they managed to survive in extremely harsh conditions for at least 60 thousand years. I wonder how long you would survive alone in the outback.

Kia Ora, Cuzzie !! :D


Here is my reply to your objections, (and to some of those forwarded by Belinda)


Let's start of with a simple question : "Is IQ a good predictor of success in life ?


Who are you quoting?? :?


The answer is "Yes" it is, absolutely! If you take a "real" IQ test - (that means NOT some dodgy, online test -most of these and their ilk are pretty much scams to generate online traffic) -, app, or "Test Your IQ" book that you can buy in a supermarket, etc. Ninety nine percent of these so-called "IQ" tests are simply scam to generate online traffic/cash. They are not properly designed and have next to zero scientific validity) - by which I mean one that is administered by a professional psychologist/psychiatrist and licensed to him/her by one of the major test publishing companies - such as "Welscher" or "Stanford-Binet", then the result you score is a strong STATISTICAL predictor of multiple, important future life outcomes, such as: income (in particular); education level; health and even longevity. There are hundreds and hundreds of papers published in the reputable, mainstream, scientific literature confirming this. It's a "scientific-fact-in-the-bag", Veggie/Belinda, no scientist working in psychology or cognitive science, etc. today questions this any more. It's "yesterday's news."


OK, next... IQ tests ( the real ones that are properly administered and constructed are said to test for general intelligence ("g-factor"). However, it is true that there is a lots of debate as to what IQ tests actually measure. This is a point Belinda emphasises, and it is a valid ,"academic" point. Debates regarding what is actually meant by the concept of "intelligence" are ongoing. There are a broad spectrum of theories competing for the "Holy Grail" that is a precise, completed scientific account of what is meant by the term "intelligence." If you watch any "u tube" video clips of two or three expert neuropsychologists or cognitive scientists, etc; talking among themselves about what they believe human intelligence really is, you'll soon find the conversation unbearable. I can't bring myself to watch them anymore. It's like listing to a group of bitchy women gossiping about some sordid, neighbourhood rumour, or 19 year-olds theorising about the true meaning of life ( i.e; there's more bullshit in the air than at a Socialist Workers' Party conference, Belinda :D !).The bottom line is that psychologists cannot agree on a scientific definition for what is meant by the term "intelligence." Belinda's objection that we must begin this discussion by defining what intelligence actually is actually not valid, and I will explain why below.


To continue. Everyone is naturally disposed to define intelligence in their own image. So, Belinda defines intelligence in a way that is a consequence of all of her unique life experiences to date. If she happens to be an artist, then I would not be surprised if her definition of intelligence was expressed in terms of the work of a master like Van Gogh (despite the fact he was psychotic!) or Leonardo da Vinci. Veggie, on the other hand, because she has an entirely different set of unique life experiences, because she was born and grew up in a different country with a different physical geography and different(in some respects) national culture, will doubtless have a different view if she is asked what defines intelligence. For me, intelligence - in the sense of "smarts" = is best measured by an artistic mastery of the written word; so I would regard a great, lyric poet like Percy Shelly as being a genius (having a very high IQ), and as far as I am concerned Shakespeare was far more clever than the famous physicist like Albert Einstein (though Einstein would probably perform better on a modern IQ test than Shakespeare). Given this, I think its a good idea to say that "intelligence" is a folk concept.


Saying intelligence is a folk concept doesn't mean that is is primitive and in need of development. Lots of folk concepts are extraordinary nuanced and complicated; they do not need to be translated into the language of scientific concepts any more than the music of "The Beatles" needs to be re-written in the form of operas. The point I would like to make, however, is that there have been rock-and -roll operas ( if you are old enough you will remember the English rock band, "The Who", produced a "rock opera" called "Tommy" in 1975 about a deaf, dumb and and blind boy called Tommy who was a pinball wizard.( Ah, now they were the days, when cool was cool, I can still hear remember all the lyrics from "Tommy" now...


"Ever since I was a young boy
I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all
But I ain't seen nothing like him in any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball :D :D :D


I mean, what have today's kids got that even come close to bands like The Who, AC-DC, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac? Ermmm we got Taylor Swift, dude, and Miley Cyrus and, um, Justin Timberlake - he's cooler than Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan put together, man, and we got lots more on top of that !! :shock: :shock:)


My apologies. I go a bit carried away and off track there. To continue. Just as there have been "rock operas" like "Tommy"; it's possible that scientific concepts can inform a folk concept like "intelligence". It's true that "Intelligence" is a concept that only has meaning at the intersection of person, situation and culture. For instance a 30 year old Black African pygmies who sees a poisonous snake crawl into his hut in a pygmy village in the Congo that he lives in needs to solve the problem quickly; the 24 year-old Captain of Australia's "Wallabies" has figure out how he can stop the NZ "All Blacks' Jonah Lomu running through his forward defence, and figure it out fast, or he will lose this Test Match to the Kiwis (and there is nothing on Earth worse than losing to NZ at rugby); a 56 year-old Japanese businessman in Tokyo has a difficult decision to make about his multi-million dollar company's cash-flow within a 24 hour deadline. But, still, the meaning of intelligence is stable enough that is can be MEASURED in individuals and that useful THEORIES about it can be constructed.


The point, however, is, WHO CARES ? Who cares whether or not we can precisely, accurately and completely define the concept of "intelligence in scientific terms"? So far we haven't done very well all; but who cares, anyway, how many scientific concepts we might manage shoehorn into the construct of "intelligence in the future?. It's nothing to get your knickers in a knot about, Belinda; I mean, the sky wont "fall" if we don't manage to provide an exact and complete scientific explication of the meaning of the actual nature of human "intelligence.". For well over 100 years now, since the field of intelligence testing first emerged with the work of the French psychologist, Alfred Binet, in 1904, there has been no looming crisis over the lack of a consensus (among the mainstream Western psychological community and cognitive scientists) regarding the precise meaning of the concept of "intelligence." A German psychologist called William Stern ( who, incidentally first coined the term, "IQ", or "Intelligence Quotient") summed it up very nicely in 1914 in his text, "The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence", on the second page of this book he wrote:...


"The objection is often made that the problem of intellectual diagnosis (i.e; measuring intelligence) can in no way be made until we have exact knowledge of the general nature of intelligence itself. But this objection seems to me not to be pertinent... We measure electromotive force (EMF) without knowing what electricity is, and we diagnose with very delicate test methods many diseases of which we know as yet very little."


I do not think we will ever be able to provide an exact, completed, scientific (objective) account of the nature of human "intelligence." Here's why...


There are literally hundreds of definitions of the concept of "intelligence" in the mainstream, reputable scientific literature. I have chosen on by Robert Sternberg to demonstrate a point. I chose Sternberg because he is one of the world's foremost authorities on the psychology of intelligence. He is currently IBM professor of psychology at Yale university and a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Sternberg hold 13 (!) honorary doctorates from leading universities around the world in North America, Europe and Asia. When it comes to the psychology of intelligence Sternberg is an academic giant in the field. Here is his definition of human intelligence...


"Human intelligence is a MENTAL QUALITY that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts and use knowledge to manipulate one's environment."


I have highlighted the term "mental quality" and I would like you to note that all of the four abilities Sternberg list involves THINKING/THOUGHT. Right ?


First of all a "mental quality" is something that exists in human CONSCIOUSNESS. Human consciousness does not equate to the human brain, BTW. There are certainly correlations between brain activity and particular states of consciousness, but the gooey purpley/red lump of blood and nerve tissues that is the human organ called the brain is NOT identical with lived waking consciousness ( there is also dream consciousness, but that's not really relevant to what we are discussing). The first fact is this: consciousness is something that as human beings we know everything about, but we know NOTHING about it as scientists - ZERO.


Next. When we are awake, consciousness can contain an assortment of different types of contents. For example, there are sense perceptions like colours and sounds and tastes (of food/drink, etc.) Imagine someone gives you a bunch of red roses, and you are asked to explain what red looks like. Could you do it ? Or, suppose I plat middle C on a piano for you and then I ask you "What was it like to hear that middle C note I just played ? Could you do it ?


The image of redness you have in your mind - in your CONSCIOUSNESS - when you see the roses and the sound you experience in your consciousness when you hear the note middle C played on the piano are called quales (plural: qualia). Qualia is SPOOKY, mysterious "STUFF" (it is qualitative, subjective consciousness) that no purely informational or functional description of the brain will ever approach. What I mean is that when you see the red roses, certain neurones (nerve cells) in your brain will start "firing" at such and such a rate; likewise, when you hear the middle C note played, it will make tracts of neurones in a particular region of your brain start to "fire", but what has these nerve cells in your brain got in common with redness? (nerve cells aren't coloured rose - red for a start). Nerve cells have got nothing to do will the experience of hearing middle C, either, bunches of neurones don't give off musical notes !


Emotions are another type of mental content that exists in human consciousness. For instance, anger, jealousy, sadness, joy and grief are human emotions that we experience in consciousness. But can you tell me precisely what it feels like to be angry, or could you explain to a friend what it feels like when you are overcome with sorrow? Then there are bodily sensations , these are yet another content of consciousness and include feeling you experience like , say, the pain of a bad toothache. Apart from saying to a dentist it sux -it REALLY hurts - can you tell him EXACTLY what you are experiencing in your consciousness, can you provide a complete, accurate and precise account of your pain ? Have you ever experienced "Deja Vu", if you have do you think you could provide an exhaustive explanatory account of what it is like when you become aware of an episode of "Deja-Vu" in your consciousness ?


OK, we are discussing intelligence and intelligence at baseline is all to do with thoughts, cognition. Right? These are the basic mental pillars of intelligence: without the ability to have thoughts (e.g. "What a nice sunny day it is"!), without the capacity for cognition ( i.e; the process of thinking) one would have no intelligence, Thoughts and cognition happen in your mind - in your consciousness, but there has been a tendency in, Philosophy of Mind, to make a distinction between thoughts/cognition one the one hand, and qualia (qualitative, subjective consciousness on the other. Solving a mathematical equation, mastering scientific concepts, writing computer programs, delivering a lecture on theory of Darwinian evolution, building rockets for NASA what is taking place in consciousness during activities like these is viewed as somehow different from the experience of qualia like: seeing colours the redness of a rose, hearing sounds ( a beautiful song sung by Linda Ronstadt - my teenage pin-up !), feeling emotions ( the sorrow of of a friend's passing ), sensing pain, itching and so on. But that view has to be mistaken. Consider...


How do you know you have a train of thought at all ? How do you know that you think (cogitate)? What is it like to successfully prove a tricky mathematical theorum? What is it like to solve "The Times" cryptic crossword ? What is it like (if you are a young student of Classics) to successfully translate an a difficult ancient Greek poem ? What is it like to compose a poem - as I am sure that you both (Belinda and Veggie) have done so. In particular, how do you know that you've done so ? Do you see it written in your head ? If so, in what font ? Do you hear it spoken ? If so, in whose voice ? You might be able to answer the font/voice questions, BUT only on reflection - i.e; when I pressed you, you came up with an answer. But, up to that point you simply perceived ( not conceived) the poem in some terms whose QUALITATIVE aspects were indeed genuinely qualitative, but did not seem to fit into the standard seeing, hearing categories.


So here's the bottom line. ANYTHING we experience directly in consciousness whether is is the redness of a rose or a tomato, or something associated with dry, emotionless cognition, or remembering, etc ; is QUALITATIVE. By definition, all I ever experience is qualitative, subjective consciousness, that is QUALIA; spooky, mysterious, irreducible, ineffable, irreducible QUALIA. Even if I am asked to recall the driest, most black-and-white, seemingly qualia-free fact, for example a kid asks me: "When and where was Percy Shelly born" ? I say to the kid: "He was born on August 4th, 1792, at "Field PLace", near Horsham in Sussex, England.", there is STILL a palpable what-is-it-like when I do so. To the extent that cognition is manifest?prest itself before us in our mind (consciousness) in the form of something that is grasped all at once, whether in the form of something perceptual: the taste of "Coca Cola"; the feeling of running one's hand down a silk bed sheet, the sound of a Blue bird's song, the pink-coloured skin of a pig or something more abstract, it is QUALITATIVE.With regard to the more abstract, let me share with you a little eight-line poem written by Percy Shelly when he was 22 years old.It's called "Music, When Soft Voices Die, and ere it is...


Music, When Soft Voices Die
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou art gone
Love itself shall slumber one.


Grasping the sentiment that Shelly is trying to communicate here involves cognition, the concepts are subtle and reasonably sophisticated. One needs to think rationally in order to properly appreciate it . It is a very clever little poem and when you DO properly understand it, it is impossible not to be affected . I find it - although it is only an eight-line poem, exquisitely beautiful. I mean, one cannot just process this poem like some information-processing, "mechanical, artificial intelligence contraption. There is something-it is-like to read, contemplate and grasp the author intention in writing this little poem.


So to conclude. What we call "intelligence" is a collection of mental state/events and processes that occur in the human mind, that is, in CONSCIOUSNESS.Top class theoretical and research scientists (neuroscientists , cognitive psychologists, clinical psychologists, neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists and so on, have singly and in high-powered, well-funded research teams focused INTENSIVELY on the problem of trying to provide an explanatory scientific account of human consciousness over the past 25 years. They all agree it (consciousness) exists. But to date they have made ZERO, literally no progress whatsoever in their attempts to understand it's nature. Why? Basically, for the same reason that you can not tell me what it is like to see the redness of a red rose, the same principle applies to cognition and the cognitive processes that undergird "intelligence".


PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING OF INTELLIGENCE USING IQ TESTS


An IQ score is just an abstract number like: 70; 105; 150, etc; right ? It is a number that is STATISTICALLY correlated with a bunch of other abstract numbers, such as: future annual income: $35,000; $50,000; $ 70,000; $250,000; or how long people live: 50 years; 70 years; 95 years, or what your GPA was when you completed your degree course at university: 3.2; 5.6; 7.5; 9.2, etc: or how many days in total you spent in hospital being treated for a medical/psychiatric condition: 2; 15; 45; 104, etc.


So, in short, "yes" IQ scores DO predict success in life, BUT, if you are arguing that we can't therefore jump to any philosophical, political, PERSONAL conclusions from this "yes" from this, then I cannot really totally disagree. Rather, what I would say is that I think we need to be VERY cautious about doing this.


To continue. An IQ score correlates with success in life but it doesn't DICTATE it, and that is one of your points, right ? OK, it's a good point, Veggie. I totally agree, saying that IQ scores predict success in life is a bit like saying that the colour of your skin at birth predicts your future income. It's TECHNICALLY true, but we can both see the problems: causality is an issue, the significance of multiple other factors is an issue, etc.


More in the abstract - and this is the point I have stressed time and time again in my posts about race/ethnicity and intelligence/IQ - (the point that boneheads like Belinda - just kidding B :D :D - don't or wont understand) is that what we know ,for a fact, about IQ score correlations relates to GROUPS of people. These are STATISTICAL measures. Their relevance for the individual is difficult to evaluate, at best. To put it another way, while for a LARGE GROUP of people ( like, say, the population of Detroit City in America today), average IQ is one of the STRONGEST predictors of future success that we know of, for an individual, it is a weak indicator. What I'm saying is, imagine, for arguments sake, that a town in Noisyland - let's say Dunedin - had an average IQ of 75. That means, we performed a scientific, research investigation; we made sure that everyone over 18 was off the "puss" and "cinnabis" and any other illicit, psychoactive drugs on a certain day, and then we ("we" are registered clinical psychologists, BTW) gave every kunt 18- years- old or over who lives in Dunedin a real, "kosher" (professionally - designed/scientifically-validated) IQ test. Then, when everyone had completed their tests, we sat down and graded them and added up all the individual IQ scores to work out the average score for the population, and the average IQ score turned out to be 75 points. Now let's imagine another town in Kiwi-Land roughly the same size as Dunedin, say Hastings, and we do exactly the same thing there, we get all the adults to sit a legit IQ test, then we grade them and calculate the average IQ score for an adult in Hastings, and we found it turned out to be 100 points. In this hypothetical scenario, we can now be pretty damn confident that one of the two towns - either Dunedin or Hastings - is going to be HIGHLY LIKELY to have serious social problems( either now or in the future) with issues like: crime (violent and non-violent); domestic violence; single motherhood; marital breakdown; homelessness; youth unemployment; poor public schools with a high drop-out rate and relatively low average performance on SATS tests (i.e; the standardised government tests that measure academic performance/aptitude/skills; drug abuse; mental illness (like major depression for example); lower life expectancy, and so on. So, the $64,000 question is (drum roll), .... "Which town do think it is, Veggie" ?


This post is now too long for me to respond to you points about Australian Aboriginals and "practical intelligence. So I will do that in a separated post.

Regards

Dachshund

PS: I meant to ask you, are you a Jafa, bro'? :D


PSS: Did I tell you that I visited Noiseyland about 10 years ago, Veggie ?. I went out to the Wop Wops in the South Island and I met this Kiwi chick (pakeha) there. She had nice fear hear and a nice pair of ta-tas but was a bit of a munter and a kind of borderline grenade. Anyway, I was chatting to her for a while and then I sez would you like to hang out at my bach for a while (it wasn't mine, but I said it was) we can take a Tiki Tour and stop off where it is? She said, "Chur, sweet as, bro', I'll jist put me jandals on and git some scroggin from the Dairy for the trip and thin we cen fuck off "! I'm a bit of a skux, so when we got to my buddies crib and I put the hard word on her, you know. And it turned out she's a great woodpecker, and I'm standin' there on the verandah thinking "CHOICE" (!) Then after a while, I threw her in the fart sack inside the bach, but when the time came to "get down to business", if you know what I mean, I just couldn't handle the jandal because it turns out she's got a bad problem with the old "Huanga Teke" syndrome (rotton as a fuckin' chop, cuz !). And I'm thinkin' to myself "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, I can't cop this caper at all - I'll get crook as a chook"( !), but I was, you know, to embarrassed to broach the topic. So ,the next day I made up a story, I said: "Shit , I've gotta go back to Oz urgently, there's a family crisis at home ! So I gapped back to Oz, and that was the end of my adventures in NZ, bro'!
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 12:30 am
Dachshund wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 8:53 pm
Dachshund wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:40 pm


Kia Ora, Cuzzie !! :D


Here is my reply to your objections, (and to some of those forwarded by Belinda)


Let's start of with a simple question : "Is IQ a good predictor of success in life ?


Who are you quoting?? :?


The answer is "Yes" it is, absolutely! If you take a "real" IQ test - (that means NOT some dodgy, online test -most of these and their ilk are pretty much scams to generate online traffic) -, app, or "Test Your IQ" book that you can buy in a supermarket, etc. Ninety nine percent of these so-called "IQ" tests are simply scam to generate online traffic/cash. They are not properly designed and have next to zero scientific validity) - by which I mean one that is administered by a professional psychologist/psychiatrist and licensed to him/her by one of the major test publishing companies - such as "Welscher" or "Stanford-Binet", then the result you score is a strong STATISTICAL predictor of multiple, important future life outcomes, such as: income (in particular); education level; health and even longevity. There are hundreds and hundreds of papers published in the reputable, mainstream, scientific literature confirming this. It's a "scientific-fact-in-the-bag", Veggie/Belinda, no scientist working in psychology or cognitive science, etc. today questions this any more. It's "yesterday's news."


OK, next... IQ tests ( the real ones that are properly administered and constructed are said to test for general intelligence ("g-factor"). However, it is true that there is a lots of debate as to what IQ tests actually measure. This is a point Belinda emphasises, and it is a valid ,"academic" point. Debates regarding what is actually meant by the concept of "intelligence" are ongoing. There are a broad spectrum of theories competing for the "Holy Grail" that is a precise, completed scientific account of what is meant by the term "intelligence." If you watch any "u tube" video clips of two or three expert neuropsychologists or cognitive scientists, etc; talking among themselves about what they believe human intelligence really is, you'll soon find the conversation unbearable. I can't bring myself to watch them anymore. It's like listing to a group of bitchy women gossiping about some sordid, neighbourhood rumour, or 19 year-olds theorising about the true meaning of life ( i.e; there's more bullshit in the air than at a Socialist Workers' Party conference, Belinda :D !).The bottom line is that psychologists cannot agree on a scientific definition for what is meant by the term "intelligence." Belinda's objection that we must begin this discussion by defining what intelligence actually is actually not valid, and I will explain why below.


To continue. Everyone is naturally disposed to define intelligence in their own image. So, Belinda defines intelligence in a way that is a consequence of all of her unique life experiences to date. If she happens to be an artist, then I would not be surprised if her definition of intelligence was expressed in terms of the work of a master like Van Gogh (despite the fact he was psychotic!) or Leonardo da Vinci. Veggie, on the other hand, because she has an entirely different set of unique life experiences, because she was born and grew up in a different country with a different physical geography and different(in some respects) national culture, will doubtless have a different view if she is asked what defines intelligence. For me, intelligence - in the sense of "smarts" = is best measured by an artistic mastery of the written word; so I would regard a great, lyric poet like Percy Shelly as being a genius (having a very high IQ), and as far as I am concerned Shakespeare was far more clever than the famous physicist like Albert Einstein (though Einstein would probably perform better on a modern IQ test than Shakespeare). Given this, I think its a good idea to say that "intelligence" is a folk concept.


Saying intelligence is a folk concept doesn't mean that is is primitive and in need of development. Lots of folk concepts are extraordinary nuanced and complicated; they do not need to be translated into the language of scientific concepts any more than the music of "The Beatles" needs to be re-written in the form of operas. The point I would like to make, however, is that there have been rock-and -roll operas ( if you are old enough you will remember the English rock band, "The Who", produced a "rock opera" called "Tommy" in 1975 about a deaf, dumb and and blind boy called Tommy who was a pinball wizard.( Ah, now they were the days, when cool was cool, I can still hear remember all the lyrics from "Tommy" now...


"Ever since I was a young boy
I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played them all
But I ain't seen nothing like him in any amusement hall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball :D :D :D


I mean, what have today's kids got that even come close to bands like The Who, AC-DC, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac? Ermmm we got Taylor Swift, dude, and Miley Cyrus and, um, Justin Timberlake - he's cooler than Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan put together, man, and we got lots more on top of that !! :shock: :shock:)


My apologies. I go a bit carried away and off track there. To continue. Just as there have been "rock operas" like "Tommy"; it's possible that scientific concepts can inform a folk concept like "intelligence". It's true that "Intelligence" is a concept that only has meaning at the intersection of person, situation and culture. For instance a 30 year old Black African pygmies who sees a poisonous snake crawl into his hut in a pygmy village in the Congo that he lives in needs to solve the problem quickly; the 24 year-old Captain of Australia's "Wallabies" has figure out how he can stop the NZ "All Blacks' Jonah Lomu running through his forward defence, and figure it out fast, or he will lose this Test Match to the Kiwis (and there is nothing on Earth worse than losing to NZ at rugby); a 56 year-old Japanese businessman in Tokyo has a difficult decision to make about his multi-million dollar company's cash-flow within a 24 hour deadline. But, still, the meaning of intelligence is stable enough that is can be MEASURED in individuals and that useful THEORIES about it can be constructed.


The point, however, is, WHO CARES ? Who cares whether or not we can precisely, accurately and completely define the concept of "intelligence in scientific terms"? So far we haven't done very well all; but who cares, anyway, how many scientific concepts we might manage shoehorn into the construct of "intelligence in the future?. It's nothing to get your knickers in a knot about, Belinda; I mean, the sky wont "fall" if we don't manage to provide an exact and complete scientific explication of the meaning of the actual nature of human "intelligence.". For well over 100 years now, since the field of intelligence testing first emerged with the work of the French psychologist, Alfred Binet, in 1904, there has been no looming crisis over the lack of a consensus (among the mainstream Western psychological community and cognitive scientists) regarding the precise meaning of the concept of "intelligence." A German psychologist called William Stern ( who, incidentally first coined the term, "IQ", or "Intelligence Quotient") summed it up very nicely in 1914 in his text, "The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence", on the second page of this book he wrote:...


"The objection is often made that the problem of intellectual diagnosis (i.e; measuring intelligence) can in no way be made until we have exact knowledge of the general nature of intelligence itself. But this objection seems to me not to be pertinent... We measure electromotive force (EMF) without knowing what electricity is, and we diagnose with very delicate test methods many diseases of which we know as yet very little."


I do not think we will ever be able to provide an exact, completed, scientific (objective) account of the nature of human "intelligence." Here's why...


There are literally hundreds of definitions of the concept of "intelligence" in the mainstream, reputable scientific literature. I have chosen on by Robert Sternberg to demonstrate a point. I chose Sternberg because he is one of the world's foremost authorities on the psychology of intelligence. He is currently IBM professor of psychology at Yale university and a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA). Sternberg hold 13 (!) honorary doctorates from leading universities around the world in North America, Europe and Asia. When it comes to the psychology of intelligence Sternberg is an academic giant in the field. Here is his definition of human intelligence...


"Human intelligence is a MENTAL QUALITY that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts and use knowledge to manipulate one's environment."


I have highlighted the term "mental quality" and I would like you to note that all of the four abilities Sternberg list involves THINKING/THOUGHT. Right ?


First of all a "mental quality" is something that exists in human CONSCIOUSNESS. Human consciousness does not equate to the human brain, BTW. There are certainly correlations between brain activity and particular states of consciousness, but the gooey purpley/red lump of blood and nerve tissues that is the human organ called the brain is NOT identical with lived waking consciousness ( there is also dream consciousness, but that's not really relevant to what we are discussing). The first fact is this: consciousness is something that as human beings we know everything about, but we know NOTHING about it as scientists - ZERO.


Next. When we are awake, consciousness can contain an assortment of different types of contents. For example, there are sense perceptions like colours and sounds and tastes (of food/drink, etc.) Imagine someone gives you a bunch of red roses, and you are asked to explain what red looks like. Could you do it ? Or, suppose I plat middle C on a piano for you and then I ask you "What was it like to hear that middle C note I just played ? Could you do it ?


The image of redness you have in your mind - in your CONSCIOUSNESS - when you see the roses and the sound you experience in your consciousness when you hear the note middle C played on the piano are called quales (plural: qualia). Qualia is SPOOKY, mysterious "STUFF" (it is qualitative, subjective consciousness) that no purely informational or functional description of the brain will ever approach. What I mean is that when you see the red roses, certain neurones (nerve cells) in your brain will start "firing" at such and such a rate; likewise, when you hear the middle C note played, it will make tracts of neurones in a particular region of your brain start to "fire", but what has these nerve cells in your brain got in common with redness? (nerve cells aren't coloured rose - red for a start). Nerve cells have got nothing to do will the experience of hearing middle C, either, bunches of neurones don't give off musical notes !


Emotions are another type of mental content that exists in human consciousness. For instance, anger, jealousy, sadness, joy and grief are human emotions that we experience in consciousness. But can you tell me precisely what it feels like to be angry, or could you explain to a friend what it feels like when you are overcome with sorrow? Then there are bodily sensations , these are yet another content of consciousness and include feeling you experience like , say, the pain of a bad toothache. Apart from saying to a dentist it sux -it REALLY hurts - can you tell him EXACTLY what you are experiencing in your consciousness, can you provide a complete, accurate and precise account of your pain ? Have you ever experienced "Deja Vu", if you have do you think you could provide an exhaustive explanatory account of what it is like when you become aware of an episode of "Deja-Vu" in your consciousness ?


OK, we are discussing intelligence and intelligence at baseline is all to do with thoughts, cognition. Right? These are the basic mental pillars of intelligence: without the ability to have thoughts (e.g. "What a nice sunny day it is"!), without the capacity for cognition ( i.e; the process of thinking) one would have no intelligence, Thoughts and cognition happen in your mind - in your consciousness, but there has been a tendency in, Philosophy of Mind, to make a distinction between thoughts/cognition one the one hand, and qualia (qualitative, subjective consciousness on the other. Solving a mathematical equation, mastering scientific concepts, writing computer programs, delivering a lecture on theory of Darwinian evolution, building rockets for NASA what is taking place in consciousness during activities like these is viewed as somehow different from the experience of qualia like: seeing colours the redness of a rose, hearing sounds ( a beautiful song sung by Linda Ronstadt - my teenage pin-up !), feeling emotions ( the sorrow of of a friend's passing ), sensing pain, itching and so on. But that view has to be mistaken. Consider...


How do you know you have a train of thought at all ? How do you know that you think (cogitate)? What is it like to successfully prove a tricky mathematical theorum? What is it like to solve "The Times" cryptic crossword ? What is it like (if you are a young student of Classics) to successfully translate an a difficult ancient Greek poem ? What is it like to compose a poem - as I am sure that you both (Belinda and Veggie) have done so. In particular, how do you know that you've done so ? Do you see it written in your head ? If so, in what font ? Do you hear it spoken ? If so, in whose voice ? You might be able to answer the font/voice questions, BUT only on reflection - i.e; when I pressed you, you came up with an answer. But, up to that point you simply perceived ( not conceived) the poem in some terms whose QUALITATIVE aspects were indeed genuinely qualitative, but did not seem to fit into the standard seeing, hearing categories.


So here's the bottom line. ANYTHING we experience directly in consciousness whether is is the redness of a rose or a tomato, or something associated with dry, emotionless cognition, or remembering, etc ; is QUALITATIVE. By definition, all I ever experience is qualitative, subjective consciousness, that is QUALIA; spooky, mysterious, irreducible, ineffable, irreducible QUALIA. Even if I am asked to recall the driest, most black-and-white, seemingly qualia-free fact, for example a kid asks me: "When and where was Percy Shelly born" ? I say to the kid: "He was born on August 4th, 1792, at "Field PLace", near Horsham in Sussex, England.", there is STILL a palpable what-is-it-like when I do so. To the extent that cognition is manifest?prest itself before us in our mind (consciousness) in the form of something that is grasped all at once, whether in the form of something perceptual: the taste of "Coca Cola"; the feeling of running one's hand down a silk bed sheet, the sound of a Blue bird's song, the pink-coloured skin of a pig or something more abstract, it is QUALITATIVE.With regard to the more abstract, let me share with you a little eight-line poem written by Percy Shelly when he was 22 years old.It's called "Music, When Soft Voices Die, and ere it is...


Music, When Soft Voices Die
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou art gone
Love itself shall slumber one.


Grasping the sentiment that Shelly is trying to communicate here involves cognition, the concepts are subtle and reasonably sophisticated. One needs to think rationally in order to properly appreciate it . It is a very clever little poem and when you DO properly understand it, it is impossible not to be affected . I find it - although it is only an eight-line poem, exquisitely beautiful. I mean, one cannot just process this poem like some information-processing, "mechanical, artificial intelligence contraption. There is something-it is-like to read, contemplate and grasp the author intention in writing this little poem.


So to conclude. What we call "intelligence" is a collection of mental state/events and processes that occur in the human mind, that is, in CONSCIOUSNESS.Top class theoretical and research scientists (neuroscientists , cognitive psychologists, clinical psychologists, neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists and so on, have singly and in high-powered, well-funded research teams focused INTENSIVELY on the problem of trying to provide an explanatory scientific account of human consciousness over the past 25 years. They all agree it (consciousness) exists. But to date they have made ZERO, literally no progress whatsoever in their attempts to understand it's nature. Why? Basically, for the same reason that you can not tell me what it is like to see the redness of a red rose, the same principle applies to cognition and the cognitive processes that undergird "intelligence".


PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING OF INTELLIGENCE USING IQ TESTS


An IQ score is just an abstract number like: 70; 105; 150, etc; right ? It is a number that is STATISTICALLY correlated with a bunch of other abstract numbers, such as: future annual income: $35,000; $50,000; $ 70,000; $250,000; or how long people live: 50 years; 70 years; 95 years, or what your GPA was when you completed your degree course at university: 3.2; 5.6; 7.5; 9.2, etc: or how many days in total you spent in hospital being treated for a medical/psychiatric condition: 2; 15; 45; 104, etc.


So, in short, "yes" IQ scores DO predict success in life, BUT, if you are arguing that we can't therefore jump to any philosophical, political, PERSONAL conclusions from this "yes" from this, then I cannot really totally disagree. Rather, what I would say is that I think we need to be VERY cautious about doing this.


To continue. An IQ score correlates with success in life but it doesn't DICTATE it, and that is one of your points, right ? OK, it's a good point, Veggie. I totally agree, saying that IQ scores predict success in life is a bit like saying that the colour of your skin at birth predicts your future income. It's TECHNICALLY true, but we can both see the problems: causality is an issue, the significance of multiple other factors is an issue, etc.


More in the abstract - and this is the point I have stressed time and time again in my posts about race/ethnicity and intelligence/IQ - (the point that boneheads like Belinda - just kidding B :D :D - don't or wont understand) is that what we know ,for a fact, about IQ score correlations relates to GROUPS of people. These are STATISTICAL measures. Their relevance for the individual is difficult to evaluate, at best. To put it another way, while for a LARGE GROUP of people ( like, say, the population of Detroit City in America today), average IQ is one of the STRONGEST predictors of future success that we know of, for an individual, it is a weak indicator. What I'm saying is, imagine, for arguments sake, that a town in Noisyland - let's say Dunedin - had an average IQ of 75. That means, we performed a scientific, research investigation; we made sure that everyone over 18 was off the "puss" and "cinnabis" and any other illicit, psychoactive drugs on a certain day, and then we ("we" are registered clinical psychologists, BTW) gave every kunt 18- years- old or over who lives in Dunedin a real, "kosher" (professionally - designed/scientifically-validated) IQ test. Then, when everyone had completed their tests, we sat down and graded them and added up all the individual IQ scores to work out the average score for the population, and the average IQ score turned out to be 75 points. Now let's imagine another town in Kiwi-Land roughly the same size as Dunedin, say Hastings, and we do exactly the same thing there, we get all the adults to sit a legit IQ test, then we grade them and calculate the average IQ score for an adult in Hastings, and we found it turned out to be 100 points. In this hypothetical scenario, we can now be pretty damn confident that one of the two towns - either Dunedin or Hastings - is going to be HIGHLY LIKELY to have serious social problems( either now or in the future) with issues like: crime (violent and non-violent); domestic violence; single motherhood; marital breakdown; homelessness; youth unemployment; poor public schools with a high drop-out rate and relatively low average performance on SATS tests (i.e; the standardised government tests that measure academic performance/aptitude/skills; drug abuse; mental illness (like major depression for example); lower life expectancy, and so on. So, the $64,000 question is (drum roll), .... "Which town do think it is, Veggie" ?


This post is now too long for me to respond to you points about Australian Aboriginals and "practical intelligence. So I will do that in a separated post.

Regards

Dachshund

PS: I meant to ask you, are you a Jafa, bro'? :D


PSS: Did I tell you that I visited Noiseyland about 10 years ago, Veggie ?. I went out to the Wop Wops in the South Island and I met this Kiwi chick (pakeha) there. She had nice fear hear and a nice pair of ta-tas but was a bit of a munter and a kind of borderline grenade. Anyway, I was chatting to her for a while and then I sez would you like to hang out at my bach for a while (it wasn't mine, but I said it was) we can take a Tiki Tour and stop off where it is? She said, "Chur, sweet as, bro', I'll jist put me jandals on and git some scroggin from the Dairy for the trip and thin we cen fuck off "! I'm a bit of a skux, so when we got to my buddies crib and I put the hard word on her, you know. And it turned out she's a great woodpecker, and I'm standin' there on the verandah thinking "CHOICE" (!) Then after a while, I threw her in the fart sack inside the bach, but when the time came to "get down to business", if you know what I mean, I just couldn't handle the jandal because it turns out she's got a bad problem with the old "Huanga Teke" syndrome (rotton as a fuckin' chop, cuz !). And I'm thinkin' to myself "Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, I can't cop this caper at all - I'll get crook as a chook"( !), but I was, you know, to embarrassed to broach the topic. So ,the next day I made up a story, I said: "Shit , I've gotta go back to Oz urgently, there's a family crisis at home ! So I gapped back to Oz, and that was the end of my adventures in NZ, bro'!


Hmm. My answer seems to have got lost in that black hole of a tabloid. If you have several hours on your hands and enjoy playing with needles in haystacks then by all means, feel free :|
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Actually when Kiwis try to say 'New Zealand' it sounds more like 'nyu zund'. Dreadful accent. No vowels and virtually no consonants either.
Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 12:39 am Actually when Kiwis try to say 'New Zealand' it sounds more like 'nyu zund'. Dreadful accent. No vowels and virtually no consonants either.
Veggie, you ARE a KIWI. I know for a fact. So don't pretend you're not.

Kiwis pronounce "New Zealand" as "Niz-Lend", BTW.

Kindest Regards

Dachshund
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Dachshund wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 1:25 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 12:39 am Actually when Kiwis try to say 'New Zealand' it sounds more like 'nyu zund'. Dreadful accent. No vowels and virtually no consonants either.
Veggie, you ARE a KIWI. I know for a fact. So don't pretend you're not.

Kiwis pronounce "New Zealand" as "Niz-Lend", BTW.

Kindest Regards

Dachshund
I'm not 'pretending' anything and I don't need to. Why would I give a crap what you think? You know all about me 'for a fact'? That much? :lol:
I don't recognise 'Niz-Lend' as anything in particular btw.
Dachshund
Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: Why is nazism popular today?

Post by Dachshund »

[quote=Belinda post_id=409116 time=1557649266 user_id=12709


To confuse correlation with cause gives you a simplistic conclusion.
IQ test results show who is good at IQ tests and who is not.This is because intelligence, according to IQ tests, is defined by standards that pertain less to black Americans than to white Americans.

African Americans who are bad at IQ tests, unless they have a specific cognitive disability, are bad at IQ tests because they lack the education and practice that makes people good at IQ tests. They lack education and practice because there is insufficient social mobility in the USA. There are several causes of lack of social mobility however the most frequent cause is insufficient free quality education . The UK is becoming like the USA; a country of two nations and this can be reversed by governments which put people before profits.

You yourself in the same post have claimed that you could be friends with a black man if his education and associated interests matched your own.
[/quote]


Belinda


Here is a imaginary interview between you and me...


DACHSHUND
: Well Belinda, I know you're a socialist, so I wonder could you tell me a little bit about how your political ideology influences your view of the human condition ? In particular, I'd be interested to know whether you think we are more a product of "nature" or "nurture" ?

BELINDA: Yes, that's right, Dachshund, I've been a socialist ever since 1997 when Tony Blair beat John Major in the General Election and became Prime Minister. Tony let half of the Muslims in the Middle East into England and luckily for me they all came to live in the Midlands - that's where I live - and now we have this wonderfully diverse, multiracial, multicultural,inclusive, melting pot to call home. It was all part of "Cool Britannia."

DACHSHUND
: So, I take it you see "nurture", that is, "social factors", rather than "nature" in the sense of biological/genetic factors as being really the most important influences when it comes to determining human behaviour and human psychology (like cognitive functioning, for instance), and that the harmonious integration of Muslim immigrants into the Midlands provides clear evidence of this.

BELINDA: That's exactly right, Dachshund ! I think all this talk about intelligence being largely genetically based is complete and utter nonsense - pure pseudoscience. There's been a recent revival of it, unfortunately, scientific racism, that is, and it's something we must all join together in condemning unequivocally. The people behind it all are poisonous vipers- RACISTS of the worst kind. You would think people had learned the lesson about the danger of allowing nutters to peddle racist pseudoscience after the horrors of the trans-Atlantic eugenics movement and some of its appalling consequences in the United States, not to mention the role that eugenics and racial pseudoscience played in generating Nazi Holocaust! Well, it seems they have not learned the lesson; and if I were not the strong woman I am, it would be enough to make me lose my faith that human nature can be improved, and one day, perfected..

DACHSHUND
: I read an article recently by the eminent, Harvard geneticist, Professor David Reich, who was basically saying that we simply can not, any longer, deny the fact that there are genetic differences among the main human "racial" groups, and his arguments seemed quite sound and reasonable. What's your take on that, Belinda? ?

BELINDA: HA ! Don't be fooled, Reich is a Nazi - a scientific charletan. He's a sexist pig as well, by the way; says that men and women are biologically and genetically very different.HA ! All lies ! Reich is part of the conspiracy to keep power concentrated in the hands of white males in the West, to fortify (God forbid ! God forbid !) the vile patriarchy that currently exploits women and ethnic minority groups living in the West.

DACHSHUND
: I see. So, my next query is, how does evolution fit into the picture of human variation, Belinda ? I notice that David Reich talks a lot about evolution. What are your thoughts here ?

BELINDA: Yes, he does talk a lot about evolution - a lot of RUBBISH ! The fact is that we human beings are the only species on Earth unaffected by recent (or ancient) evolution. Homo sapiens is the only species where, for instance the natural biological differences between male and female have no importance or salience at all ( for ex, in areas like the division of labour). We are certain that natural variations - like what some people call "race" and gender are ENTIRELY social constructions, and therefore subject to reinvention. That's why I'm a socialist, Dachshund, I'm working with my comrades in "The Midlands' Socialist Workers Party" to reinvent man, to progress humanity, to develop and re-devolop men and women as better, more loving and more moral people ! You see, we are alone on this planet, and we are all born as "blank slates" to be written on by culture, all differences between races and between men and women are a function of this environmental, social effect. What this means is that we can use social methods to correct any undesirable attributes in human beings. For example, males in the West (and in general) are psychopathic, violent bullies and pigs, but with the right kind of feminist social programs we can make them more like women, that is, sweet and caring. This is what the Swedish government have done and its been a roaring success, Dachshund! The same principle applies with a "racial" group like the African-Americans, at present they do not perform all that well academically as a group; but by providing them with, say, individualised tutoring, modern high-tech learning aids, enrichment resources and so on, we could easily eliminate the gap in educational performance between white American kids and Black American kids.

DACHSHUND
: Yes, there are many inequalities in the West, I agree, and I 'd be interested to hear your view of how they began, Belinda ?I mean, was there any prime cause or - set of causal factors - that are responsible for the most pressing social problems that have beset the modern West ?

BELINDA: Well, I very glad you've asked me that question , Dachshund. Let me answer it like this. If, in aggregate, any differences in the most important life outcomes ( economic, educational, health, longevity etc.) emerge between ethnic/racial groups and between men and women in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Western European countries, in short, "The West", it is ENTIRELY because of oppression, patriarchy, white supremacy and Conservative politics, in particular,reactionary, racist, misogynist Conservative leaders like Donald Trump. So, it is a matter of great urgency that we we use whatever power we have to combat men like Trump. They've always been with us, you know; in my grandparents' day it was Churchill, with his "Keep England White" campaign, in my parents'', it was devils like Enoch Powell, preaching race hate to the nation from Westminster. We need to put these kind of monsters to the sword whenever they raise their ugly heads. My last word is equality of outcome; people now understand that a civilised society must provide equality of opportunity, but they don't understand the need for equality of OUTCOME, and that's one of the big issues we are currently campaigning in The Midlands Socialist Workers Party!

DACHSHUND
: But isn't that all about setting fixed quotas for things like what percentage of workers in a company, say, in The City in London are male and female and from racial minority groups.

BELINDA: Yep, sure is.

DACHSHUND
: But I heard that there were some serious practical problems and ethical concerns with doing that ?

BELINDA: All disgusting lies from the Conservative press, and right - wing politicians, I'm afraid, Dachshund. This is the kind of thing we're up against every day, I'm afraid.

DACHSHUND
: Well thank you for sparing the time to chat about these important issues, but I'm afraid I'll have dash, I 've got to meet an old friend for lunch in The City.

BELINDA: Oh, how nice, anyone special?

DACHSHUND
: Boris Johnson, actually; we were in Boy Scouts together.

BELINDA: :shock: :shock: :shock: :evil: :evil: :evil:


Regards


Dachshund WOOF !! WOOF !!
Last edited by Dachshund on Fri May 17, 2019 5:46 pm, edited 10 times in total.
Post Reply