On Nov 20, 2007, at 1:19 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> I really do not understand why you are so attached to the concept
> of IQ?
I'm not. What distresses me is the way this is playing out. IQ is assumed to be a proxy for some general intelligence, g (which it isn't); IQ/g are presumed to be heritable (which they aren't); and the heritability is supposed to be meaningful across populations (meaning blacks are inevitably dumber, on average, than whites, which is crap). Every part of that chain of illogic is nonsense, but whites are going to seize on this latest round. Conservatives will say, fuck the blacks and the Africans, they're hopeless (doesn't The Bell Curve conclude with a suggestion that black Americans be rounded up on something like Indian reservations and make baskets or something?); liberals will say, we must help the poor dears. But either way it's enough to induce projectile vomiting.
Doug