Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
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Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
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Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
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Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Saturday, April 16. 2022

Saturday morning links

 New York Times Op-ed on Holy Weekend: Let’s Get Rid of God


 Clothes Dryers Denounced as Offensive to Environment


 This is how one university event encouraged 'littles' to 'explore' their gender identity


 Mask mandates are back on campus. But they go against CDC guidance.


Can Elon Musk be stopped from taking over Twitter?


Charles Murray revisits IQ 


I understand his stats, but am not sure about innate/genetic.


 Mexican Drug Cartels Launched 9,000 Drone Incursions Into US Airspace 


 Where Did Paul Ryan’s Roadmap Go Wrong? And why it’s more important than ever to understand the challenges and complexities of entitlement reform


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:46 | Comments (30) | Trackbacks (0)

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As all the other explanations have been eliminated, innate/genetic IQ is pretty much what's left. We dislike it and keep insisting that it can't be so, but the numbers are what they are. It is as well-established a theory in the social sciences as there is, even though social scientists themselves often hate it and try to get around it.

The problem is that we overvalue it, not that it is genetic.
#1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2022-04-16 09:39 (Reply)
The problem is that we overvalue it, not that it is genetic.

ding ding ding.

Yes.

There are a multitude of character traits that help one succeed in life that don't require a high IQ to utilize.
#1.1 feeblemind on 2022-04-16 10:27 (Reply)
feeblemind: There are a multitude of character traits that help one succeed in life that don't require a high IQ to utilize.

Quite so. People have many different talents which the world can reward.
#1.1.1 Zachriel on 2022-04-16 13:08 (Reply)
Flynn now doubts much of the Flynn effect. It seems to be based on massive undernourishment in childhood, and once that is corrected for, evaporates.

@ JustMe - that has been the assertion for years, despite evidence to the contrary. The 800 -lb gorilla turns out to weigh about 20 lbs. It's what we want to be true, that if those disadvantaged groups would just buckle down and care about education, the IQ differences would resolve. The advantaged groups would tell you that, because we all like to take credit as if we have worked for our skills, or our parents instilled them in us. Twin studies and adoption studies show very little evidence this is true. Our observations that certain groups did well and also valued education was an interesting avenue of exploration decades ago, but it hasn't held up. We can now tie IQ to the Central Nervous System SNPs very clearly. the last 10 years have been stunning in genetic research. Academics in other disciplines who don't want this to be true are appalled but have little argument but "that's racist."

You can feed kids lead or bang them on the head or starve them or let them marry their cousins and create an environmental effect on IQ. That's about it.
#1.2 Assistant Village Idiot on 2022-04-16 15:03 (Reply)
Assistant Village Idiot: Flynn now doubts much of the Flynn effect. It seems to be based on massive undernourishment in childhood, and once that is corrected for, evaporates.

The Flynn Effect is a well-established observation: IQs have increased in developed countries over the last century. Perhaps you mean that the Flynn Effect can be explained by reference to nourishment. And that may explain part of it.

However, Flynn does not take that view. Rather, he views IQ tests as testing a specific type of conceptual thinking that is an important aspect of modernity. Here he is in 2013:
https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents/transcript?language=en

Once upon a time, reading and writing was considered beyond the capabilities of ordinary people, that it required someone with an extraordinary level of innate ability along with years of specialized training. Turns out, not so much.

QUOTE:
James Flynn: The 20th century has shown enormous cognitive reserves in ordinary people that we have now realized, and the aristocracy was convinced that the average person couldn't make it, that they could never share their mindset or their cognitive abilities.
#1.2.1 Zachriel on 2022-04-16 15:56 (Reply)
You are correct, "innate/genetic" is what the statistics tell us. That, plus its utter intractability in the face of attempts to improve it (e.g., enriched environments, early childhood education, etc).

Anyone who has raised more than one child knows that they come right out of the baby factory with their own temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses that persist over a lifetime. Why would it surprise anyone that people not so closely related to us as our children could be so different from us?

It is also true as you note that IQ is not everything, nor even the biggest thing. There is plenty of good paying, essential work to be done in this country by people of modest intellectual ability, but good character.
#1.3 Hairless Joe on 2022-04-17 09:18 (Reply)
Genetic IQ makes sense. Anyone who has owned dogs knows some breeds of dogs are stupid and some are smarter than you think. Some are docile and some you cannot turn your back on. This is fact, pure and simple. But no one would care about these facts so they aren't in dispute. But it is offensive to say that some races succeed more than other races simply because they are smarter.

It is interesting that some races excel in sports and if you pay attention it is obviously genetic. But since that is viewed as a positive it doesn't offend many people so that is OK to acknowledge.
#2 JustMe on 2022-04-16 10:07 (Reply)
SE Asians and Ashkenazy Jews regularly outscore whites on IQ tests, and no one hiccoughs over it. All the angst is over statistical differences between whites and blacks or Hispanics. That alone should tell us that the problem with the conclusion is political, not scientific.

Everyone is entitled to a view about what it means for different groups to have different average IQs, but denying the existence of the differences is willful blindness. All that is ethically required of us is to decide what decisions may properly be based on IQ, and then to treat each individual on his own merits, assessing his intellectual capacity as whatever it actually, without making up our minds ahead of time what his intellectual capacity "must be" based on his membership in some class or another.

Intellectual development is related to but not identical with IQ. There's no harm in trying to maximize each student's intellectual development regardless of his IQ--as long as you don't try to degrade the development of those with the highest IQ, in a misguided effort to level society. We need our smartest people educated to their fullest potential, just as we need all special talents developed to their fullest. A student may have all kinds of valuable non-IQ talents. We can develop them without pretending they're the same as IQ, and without disparaging IQ, and without demanding an end to disparate results among various groups.
#3 Texan99 on 2022-04-16 10:10 (Reply)
"SE Asians and Ashkenazy Jews" Don't ignore the 800 lb gorilla in the room. SE Asians and Ashkenazy Jews generally are raised in families where learning and school are taken very seriously and their parents require them to put in 12 hour days studying and learning. What IQ tests measure is what you know/learned based on what you were or should have been taught.

There is an irony here which is sad and disturbing. In African-American families school/learning is not only unimportant but education is even looked down on as being contrary to their heritage. I suspect that African-Americans could with the same parental dedication as SE Asians and Ashkenazy Jews parents occupy the same bell curve of IQ as whites.
#3.1 JustMe on 2022-04-16 11:20 (Reply)
Texan99: Everyone is entitled to a view about what it means for different groups to have different average IQs, but denying the existence of the differences is willful blindness.

Differences in IQ are observed, but IQ is an imperfect measure of innate intelligence. Intelligence appears to be multifarious, that is, there are many types of intelligences, some captured by IQ tests better than others.

Furthermore, IQ has increased by nearly a standard deviation since the 1940s, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. Such a rapid increase in an expanding population cannot be explained by natural evolution. The highly complex modern environment would seemingly be a significant factor. While there are clear differences in innate intelligence between individuals, the increase in IQ in developed countries during the last century further weakens claims about differences in group innate intelligence, or even that IQ is a good measure of innate intelligence across time.

Another point is that views concerning human ethnicities have changed: Jews were commonly seen as inferior. Blacks were thought not to have the discipline for sports. Indigenous Americans were believed to lack the intellectual refinement for music (as defined by European tastes). While, a few thousand years ago, Egyptians were far more developed than illiterate and unrefined Europeans.
#3.2 Zachriel on 2022-04-16 13:04 (Reply)
The Flynn-Effect may also be related to the massive immigration of Jews and Asians during the mid-century and later. Maybe not. All of the Flynn-Effect charts/graphs I have seen show a straight line, but I wonder about that. Anyway, food for thought.
#3.2.1 TheCaptain on 2022-04-16 14:00 (Reply)
TheCaptain: The Flynn-Effect may also be related to the massive immigration of Jews and Asians during the mid-century and later. Maybe not.

Jews and Asians represent only a small percentage of the U.S. population, while the Hispanic portion of the population has increased significantly. Also, the difference in IQ is less than the difference due to the Flynn Effect.
#3.2.1.1 Zachriel on 2022-04-16 14:31 (Reply)
You can take any average high school kid who is willing/motivated and raise his/her IQ 10-20 points in one school year. You can do the same with any child and in fact if you adopt a "tiger mom" approach with a toddler and maintain that through High school the child will have the IQ of a genius. This is a simple fact, a known truth. I'm not talking about teaching the test or any questionable technique but simply teaching the child by a traditional classical education methodology.

What this illustrates is both the failure of our education system AND parents.
#3.3 OneGuy on 2022-04-16 20:23 (Reply)
No you can't. The evidence is overwhelming.
#3.3.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2022-04-16 20:48 (Reply)
You lack vision but love to disagree.
#3.3.1.1 OneGuy on 2022-04-16 22:08 (Reply)
No, you really need to understand this sort of thing. I actually know a great deal about the subject, and you are just responding to your narrative of what you think the world is like. Based on feelz, like some damn liberal. You will not be able to find any examples of tiger moms who raised some kid's IQ by 10-20 points in a year. Zero.

I have adopted children, and foster children, and raised biological children. I have been studying this subject (as an amateur, but still, I've found some very good people, including Murray) since the 1980s. I used to believe as you did - hence the $100K I spent on private schooling for children and the hours of reading aloud and enrichment, etc - and have been dragged kicking and screaming to the genetic conclusion by

Wait for it...

Reading the actual research and observing reality. The day you decide to try these things will be the day that begin to understand things like IQ, vaccinations, etc. You have not done this. I realise I am being rude, but I no longer care. You are unable to admit even 1% error. That is a terrible sign. I have put in the time. You pretty obviously haven't.
#3.3.1.1.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2022-04-17 14:19 (Reply)
Moscow Warns US In Diplomatic Letter: Arming Ukraine To Result In "Unpredictable Consequences"

QUOTE:
Russia’s protest highlights the danger of the US-led campaign to pour weapons into Ukraine and the risk of provoking Moscow. On top of arming the Ukrainians, the US is also providing them with intelligence for attacks on Russian forces. The huge amount of support raises questions about at what point Russia would consider the US a co-belligerent in the war.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/moscow-warns-us-diplomatic-letter-arming-ukraine-result-unpredictable-consequences
#4 feeblemind on 2022-04-16 10:15 (Reply)
How to Cure Inflation.

a 29 minute 1979 video.

Presents a documentary which provides Dr Milton Friedman's prescription for a troubled economy by having government diminish the supply of money and accepting a resulting period of recession. Follows with a debate between Dr Friedman and others on whether this is the properway to control inflation.

https://archive.org/details/howtocureinflationpart1_201504
#5 feeblemind on 2022-04-16 10:19 (Reply)
Thanks ... this will be handy to share! Not to mention see again ;-)
#5.1 Frankns on 2022-04-16 10:35 (Reply)
18-month, data-driven probe concludes 2020 election was stolen

Smartphone pings, video reveal at least 4.8 million fraudulent votes

https://www.wnd.com/2022/04/18-month-data-driven-probe-concludes-2020-election-stolen/
#6 feeblemind on 2022-04-16 10:31 (Reply)
Cartel Drones. The guy who was president before Biden offered to take out the cartels, but the Mexico government did not take his offer. Violation of US airspace that many times is an invasion and needs to be dealt with accordingly.
#7 SgtBob (Link) on 2022-04-16 10:52 (Reply)
Karl Denninger's proposal to reform health care:

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949
#8 Abelard Lindsey on 2022-04-16 11:42 (Reply)
NYTimes let's get rid of God...It's the devil that is ruler of this earth. Blame him.
Blaming clothes dryers...then don't use one.
IQ is important but more important is the 2 parent culture that has the biggest effect on most outcomes.
Paul Ryans roadmap was GPS gone bad...he was a uniparty rino.
University encouraging "littles" are just paid grooming institutions.
#9 indyjonesouthere on 2022-04-16 14:25 (Reply)
I would say there are a lot more people who would prefer to get rid of the New York Times than to get rid of God.
#9.1 Abelard Lindsey on 2022-04-16 15:04 (Reply)
New York Times Op-ed on Holy Weekend: Let’s Get Rid of God:
Howzabout God SMITES the NYT?????

Can Elon Musk be stopped from taking over Twitter? (I'm with Elon on that.)
#10 Sam L. on 2022-04-16 14:50 (Reply)
"Elon Musk will not save free speech online. Even if his intentions really are good ones, the scale of the problem goes beyond one platform. And free speech online is too important to rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But his attempted takeover of Twitter has already done us a great service, in revealing how important censorship now is to America’s permanently hysterical elites."

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/15/why-elon-musk-has-rattled-them/
#11 Erasmus on 2022-04-16 20:55 (Reply)
re: clothes dryers

Green energy is for slaves and peasants. Sun, wind, candles, oil lamps, water wheels; It's what people use when they don't have access to better sources of energy.
#12 jack walter on 2022-04-16 21:22 (Reply)
#13 ErisGuy on 2022-04-16 21:41 (Reply)
The author of the New York Slimes article mentioned the "God of Jews, Christians and Muslims." I was pleasantly surprised to see a Leftist actually aknowledge Islam as being problematic. It's something, I guess.
#14 Maniac on 2022-04-17 10:52 (Reply)
It is typical of atheists to lay blame upon the God Whose existence they deny. Their errors in logic blind them to the reality that the ills they bemoan can thus only derive their source in humanity. They also fail to realise that their claim to be the arbiters of what exists necessarily bestows upon themselves properties which can only be attributed to an omniscient being, thus anointing themselves as the god of which they claim such fear.
#15 DeGaulle on 2022-04-18 06:26 (Reply)

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