On the Nature of Things | Forum

People on the right make the noise "socialist" the way people on the left make the noise "fascist", to illicit a particular emotional response among their fellows and to describe anything they personally dislike. Neither seems to know what the respective verbal noises mean.

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars, No. It isn't. Simply false. Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are ...

History and archeology have the benefits of being relatively neutral disciplines. Obviously people bring their baggage when they take them up, but the basic goal is to take written materials or recovered artifacts and figure out what probably happened, maybe. You don't have to build a theory that f...

As to intelligence some scientists say (I read a lot but I often forget where I read it) that language, self-awareness and intelligence are so intermingled and dependent on each other, that all of them must have appeared simultaneously and immediately with a high degree of complexity. Some of the b...

I was confining myself to the oldest literary traditions (Egypt, Sumer), as well as sophisticated and ancient oral traditions (India), as well as what little we have from prehistory (Chauvet). Are the Gilgamesh epic or Mahabharata lacking anything in terms of human psychology that we posses today? ...

History and archeology have the benefits of being relatively neutral disciplines. Obviously people bring their baggage when they take them up, but the basic goal is to take written materials or recovered artifacts and figure out what probably happened, maybe. You don't have to build a theory that f...

And thanks Juggernaut Nihilism for the references. I'm well familiar with Campbell and Eliade, but have never read Robert Bellah. From the essay you linked to it seems he was most interested in religion as it pertains to America. Yeah, the article kind of misrepresents that. He wrote some good stuf...

Mind you I am not talking about neolithic agriculturalists or Egyptian or Sumerian townsfolk (although I agree with Tinker that the structure of their mind is utterly alien to us, for the most part). I am talking about early homo sapiens, those who first rubbed their eyes and looked around and star...

IMO, it becomes much more about other factors once you reach a certain threshold. But a good portion of people fall below that threshold and I think failing to deal with that has negative consequences. Fully one-sixth of inner-city African Americans have IQs floating around 70. At that point, we nee...

To people alive today, the past that happened and the past that didn't are not very different, if they're even different at all. The same can be said for the various causes modern social scientists ascribe to most human events today. "You want a reason for persistent inner-city poverty? Why, s...

I have little scientific basis to support my idea, but I think both language and intelligence appeared in our species at a level of complexity very close to what we know today. Vocabulary has definitely become more complex, but not the language structure. And although we know a lot more, it doesn't...

"I'm as good as anybody!" is a statement often heard, mostly by people who fear they may not be... If we give credit to IQ measurement than we would have a way to actually prove which people are less intelligent, and these people would fear being unable to continue claiming they were as g...

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars, No. It isn't. The debate is between semi-educated lay people who oppose the idea on ideological grounds (like you) - the same kind of people who said th...

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/opinion-jason-richwine-95353.html What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions t...

I do object to the notion that social sciences "are not doing science". The subject matter is just much more complex, mostly impossible to test a theory as in a laboratory where variables are isolated and the experiment made reproducible... To do the full cycle of the scientific method on...

I have little scientific basis to support my idea, but I think both language and intelligence appeared in our species at a level of complexity very close to what we know today. Vocabulary has definitely become more complex, but not the language structure. And although we know a lot more, it doesn't...

I started a thread which was later derailed to discuss the validity or presumed validity of people outside of a religion acting as experts on the subject of that religion, and the future of such "outsider" anthropology in professional academics. While I don't share the ethical concerns, I...

Because people are afraid that if we consider racial inferiority to be a fact that we are justiofying slavery, because why shouldn't the smart people make decisions for the dumb? I honestly worry for the dumb here in the near future. And I just hope that my level of intellect is not on the wrong si...

Jason Richwine gets a chance to defend himself in Politico. I'm glad he refused to apologize to the cry babies in the media and the masses who were upset about him noticing facts and daring to mention that they exist. He explains how work, such as The Bell Curve , that is generally accepted by exper...

I have little scientific basis to support my idea, but I think both language and intelligence appeared in our species at a level of complexity very close to what we know today. Vocabulary has definitely become more complex, but not the language structure. And although we know a lot more, it doesn't...

My favorite novel is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and it's way out in front of whatever's in second place. I enjoyed EL Doctorow's stuff, especially Ragtime and The March . Roth is hit and miss for me, although American Pastoral was brilliant and The Plot Against America was fun. A lot of his ...

A big part of what the humanities do for us is to help us integrate the information about ourselves and the world that science provides, and to put it into a context that is coherent and meaningful. But that doesn't make the humanities science. Not sure this is always true or the complete picture o...

I'm remiss for not mentioning Max Weber, who was also a major inspiration for Bellah. But in keeping with my theme, for now I'll stick to what are today considered pseudo-scholars that are more popular among the educated laity than with professional academics. Julian Jaynes is most famous for his th...

Let's take political science. Some people who consider themselves political scientists and who will say that Man is naturally well disposed, inclined to solidarity, eager to promote democracy and defend human rights, are not doing science, they are selling ideology. They fail to recognize that we h...

Has anyone seen the recent documentary The Act of Killing. If not, do. God damn, son.