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Originally Posted by roachboy
moments like this bring milton freidman of all people to mind. one of freidman's positions is that when a corporation tries to act ethically, it steps outside of its collective competence--which is making money--and in so doing begins making serious errors. to go after this statement requires that one step behind it and take apart the assumptions on whcih it is based (particularly the separation of economic rationality from other areas of human activity)---but putting that aside, and the political problems that go along with friedman, and just looking at the claim itself, i think it applies quite well to watson. so there's no reason to take seriously what he says as a public figure. outside his field--and even (apparently) when it comes to make extrapolations based on his research areas that run into more complicated social questions, there's no reason to take him seriously.
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Agreed. He appears to be speaking outside of his area of expertise.
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on the question, though, it seems that the classical chicken-egg question of context vs. abilities comes in here.
how exactly does one go about controlling for contextual factors?
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Well, when considering intelligence as measured by IQ tests, we can use behavior genetic methods (adoption studies, twin studies, family studies, etc.) to partial out genetic effects, shared environmental effects, and unshared environmental effects). These methods are at least better than the standard approach (it must all be caused by the environment).
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much of subsaharan africa performs (in various ways) the implications left to open by european colonialism. like it or not--there's no way around it. this obtains at one level or another across a host of areas of social life, from education to organization of agricultural production, from the nature and role of the state to questions of medical policy. so much of the infrastructure remains marked by its history since 1960 (say)...if the infrastructure if a wreck, and if education is an element of infrastructure, then it seems logical that the "post-colonial" or neocolonial history of these areas is a overwhelming factor--and that attempting to develop an "intelligence test" that would erase this as a factor seems little more than running away from the legacy of colonialism itself.
just another attempt to quantify an exercise in blaming the victims of colonialism for the effects of colonialism.
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I picked sub-saharan Africa randomly. My point was that IQ tests are culturally specific. Intelligence will be different in subsaharan africa, what it takes to be "successful" in subsaharan africa likely differs from what it takes to be successful in Chicago.
Presumably, we could design an intelligence test for that culture that could predict outcomes
within that culture. So, the effects of culture would be minimized, presuming that everyone within that culture experiences those effects equally. Who knows whether intelligence as measured by that culture's IQ scores would be heritable. It's quite possible that social forces account for a greater proportion of the variance in social outcomes than scores on an IQ test. The effects of colonialism might have less of an effect within culture. Again, I'm not comparing IQ scores in America to IQ scores on an American test in subsaharan africa.
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
Still though, I'd be interested in your thoughts if such a true 'intelligence' test were possible.
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What do you mean by a "true intelligence test"?