Foreign born academics in US - creating a problem for ourselves

[Ken]

You are grossly misinformed regarding the meaning and current level of understanding of Intelligence, not that it surprises me as most people find the truth on this subject quite offensive. The historical facts you have presented are irrelevant. The findings you are claiming are actually the exact opposite of what has been reported in every legitimate credible source. In some cases in the past the fact that scores on all tests was heavily correlated was not understood because the transformation function between one type of test and it's scoring system and another was not well developed. However it has always been observed that people who do well on one type of IQ test (not knowledge tests) do well on all types of IQ tests.

 

Do you really want to get into debate about who is better informed? B)

 

You appear to be ....unacquainted with two issues in testing - that the distribution of the majority group "abilities" or culture is of overwhelming importanc in standardization of intelligence tests. That means that scores are hopelessly conflated by the unknown contribution of both genetics and environment. Thus, all conclusions drawn from tests that are statistically biased by the the unknown interaction of those two variables are built on the thin air of suspect scores.

 

The second issue revolves around the twin concepts of Validity and Reliability.

 

The results that have been obtained from all kinds of IQ tests have shown that scores are correlated across the board for any given person. If you do good on one, you do good on all.

 

Why would it be interesting that an individuals position in the standardization group is relatively proportional in other test situations with similarly constructed standardization groups?

 

Furthermore many other significant correlations have been identified with this "general intelligence factor" (or g for short).

 

Do you understand the difference between correlational research and functional research? Spearman's "G" factor is an artifact of the issue raised regarding the construction of the standardization groups. The circularity of that whole argument about a general factor really awe-inspiring.

 

Heritability for this measured g factor is around 85%. Environment has a minimal long term impact on intelligence. etc all of this information is readily available on Wikipedia and many other locations.

 

But you have to understand what you read in Wikipedia. Your statement betrays a total misunderstanding of Heritability. It reflects the common, uneducated, confusion between the genetic term "inheritance" in biology and the statistic H^2 which is an estimate of the relative proportion of variances of genetic factors and environmental factors in describing the total variance in a trait across the entire population. And it is not a %age, it is a proportion.

 

The formula derives from the proposition that Phenotype (P) = Genotype (G) + Environment (E)

 

If you consider variance (Var) then the proposition is:

 

Var(P) = Var(G) + Var(E) + 2 Cov (G,E)

 

Depending on the sampling procedure, it can usually be assumed that the Covariance = 0.

 

Heritability is the proportion between the two variances:

 

H^2 = Var(G) / Var(P)

 

The number that you mistakenly call a percentage is actually .85 and actually says that the size of the variance of Genotype is .85 of the size (amount) of variance of the Phenotype. It does NOT say that Intelligence is 85% responsible for "G".

 

What it does say is that there is variability across individuals on whatever the test is measuring ( stated more accurately - on the behavior of individuals responding to items) and that some of that variability is due to some genetic factor or factors, but the phenotype is not completely explained by genetic factors -- there are environmental factors as well.

 

While the concept of Heritability is a useful measure in Bio-Statistics it is poorly used when the measure whose variance is being estimated is statistically biased by the composition of the sample.

 

One type of complex reaction time has been shown to have at least as good of a correlation with IQ as any IQ test. A person is simply given a simple mental task such as adding numbers and timed to see how long it takes them to complete. The possibility that the ability to process information quickly is intelligence and the cause of the g factor is perfectly in line with many other things we have seen as well.

 

Your "simple mental task" is hopelessly confounded by past educational experience. Further, the notion that your mystic "G" is simply reaction time speaks more to my argument than yours. :rolleyes:

 

Vocabulary size is understood to be strongly correlated with g because we are bombarded with so many words and their contexts that the only thing that prevents us from understanding them all is how quickly we can process what is going on before information is removed.

 

And yet, you have demonstrated that over more than 24 hours you couldn't correctly process "standardization" or "Heritability".

 

But your notion of vocabulary size and "G" raises an interesting question: How many words do you have for "snow"? Are you half as smart as the Inuit people, one fourth as smart, ....?

 

But maybe you could just clarify your own position for me: Is "G" simply reaction time, or is it simply vocabulary size, or what?

 

 

...2 different people of different intelligences will go through the same experiences and gather completely different vocabulary sizes,

 

 

 

 

You have hard data to support this?

 

...and just information in general about everything. Low IQ people frequently make mistakes that other people just consider "common sense". For instance, frequently spilling or dropping food because they do not generalize and learn how to properly secure objects that should not be dropped.

 

So, now your definition of "G" is manual dexterity? That really is the silliest comment you have made, and you made it without a shred of evidence.

[Ken]

IQ tests used to screen students have math based portions, which again, are heavily correlated with what would be found if their vocabulary size in their native language, was to be measured. Of course I am not implying that students who don't speak English should be gauged by their English vocabulary size.

 

Haven't you considered that if all of these factors you claim (without evidence) are highly correlated there would be no need for sub-tests on any test that purported to measure Intelligence? One of the problems in reading your posts in this thread is that you embellish the few points that touch on actual data with your personal imaginative guesses.

 

It's my guess that your perceived trend in American students would probably best be understood by considering other differences between American and foreign students that have nothing to do with motivation. There is no longer any reason whatsoever for students to be dependent on professors for information on the subjects in their field. Access to information far beyond what the average college professor is familiar with is readily available to anyone with a search engine and the brains to compose information from different sources.

 

I doubt that I could convince you that it is possible to misinterpret information, to misread information, or to miss how well "information" has held up in the crucible of inquiry that is based on the belief that every idea should be critiqued and the originator of such ideas should defend their position. The fact is that you acquired some information that included the term Heritability and you completely misunderstood it.

 

Now, I don't demand that you immediately accept my statements about Heritability, but an "intelligent" person would read what I wrote and spend a little time learning more about the concept. And therein lies the problem with self-education. There is much more to be exposed to than just some blog on the Internet, or even some article on Wikipedia. There are many pitfalls in the jungle of Knowledge. You do best if you listen to your guide before making your own decisions.

 

What you may perceive as "poor motivation" may in fact be the exact opposite. When you consider that by comparison many foreign students are here for economic reasons (and thus are not motivated to do more than they have to impress their professors) and are financially dependent on the department for their livelihood the situation becomes much clearer. Also, as a place where many cultures have clashed in a battle to coexist, individualism is far more accepted here than it is in most of the places our foreign students come from. This is both true in the sense that some of their governments suppress independent thought, as well in the sense that less diverse environments inhibit social maturity. (How do you react to someone who's behavior you don't understand or accept?)

 

That's stereotypic hogwash. Your "individualism" leads you to marginalize whole groups of people to fit your preconceptions. And your notion of individualism as some grand characteristic of our society and missing elsewhere is simply jingoistic fiction.

 

 

Lets do a thought experiment for a second here. Imagine hypothetically you had an American student of extreme intelligence, analytical skills, and motivation to learn. He was financially secure and as such his motivation for being involved in academia was pure (for the pursuit of knowledge) and thus not social in nature. As this was his nature, he frequently sought information of interest to him long before he even became involved. Perhaps by the time he arrived in your class, he had amassed an enormous amount of knowledge from many different disciplines and organized them into seamless formal models. All these things being the case, 90% of what you presented in your class was already well understood by him - both because his analytical skills allowed him to recognize many of the concepts as instances of more general ideas he had seen in many other disciplines, and because he had already investigated the area on his own.

 

How do you think such a student would superficially seem to you? I personally, despite immediately knowing the correct answer to just about every question ever asked in a class (and often a formal proof of how the professor made an unfounded assumption in how he asked or answered the question), do not respond to questions unless no one else knows the answer. I do this so that lower IQ students do not lose motivation to participate.

 

In classes where I do end up answering a large percentage of the questions because the material is actually conceptually difficult enough to prevent most of the students from commenting, the professors begin to actively combat the resulting perception by making ridiculous straw man attacks on my statements or just obviously wrong counter-claims and then just forcibly denying any response. Based on their body-language both in these situations and in similar one-on-one situations their behavior is clearly driven by deep-seated emotional insecurities towards intelligent white people.

 

Some of these professors even try to extend this attitude into the grading, where open ended short answer questions suddenly become more specific during grading in such a manner that all favored students conveniently meet the new criteria. Or where a professor arrogantly ignores a path of argument, which could be objectively proven (and was on the paper had the professor actually read it) that isn't a strict regurgitation of simple minded concepts presented by him in class.

 

And presentations are hilarious. Imagine a professor who has been teaching the same material for 20 years, only minimally able to understand ancient prototypes of modern methods trying to make sense of a student referring to or presenting a novel contribution to cutting edge research he had gained access to through paid subscriptions to journals that weren't available in the universities collection, which the professor didn't use anyways. In my case the professor tried to participate despite his ignorance by asking completely irrelevant questions that might have made sense if directed towards the aforementioned ancient prototypes. Then the professor proceeded to give me a bad grade, which he couldn't justify when faced with a Socratic method like questioning ("So what do you think I could do to improve?") except for to say that a truck driver could have presented the same material. The material covered was the topic of several courses in the same university, and I had condensed the most important points into a 45 minute lecture which everyone completely understood the ideas. This is in addition to several novel idea presented that would help deal with current issues and were the topic of my research (he became very defensive in response to the idea when presented). What way left is there to criticize the presenter other than to naively imply that the material was easy to begin with and that is why it seemed simple when I presented it.

 

Then he went on to praise another student of his own culture who had simply presented a simple minded use (uncontrolled experiment of limited use even if had been done correctly) of tools provided in another class and passed them off as his own creation after changing a few lines in the open source code.

 

So to summarize:

1) I don't participate to capacity in class because when I do, the professor has an emotional breakdown as does half the class. The guy who sits in the front of class and repeats everything you say in the form of a question is demonstrably and objectively a mongoloid idiot by comparison. Of course any demonstration of this other than the difference in GRE scores is avoided because that person desperately avoids any confrontation with me despite trying to downplay my abilities in my absence.

 

2) The professor doesn't understand ideas I present to him, not because they aren't well presented but because they are complex and he would rather assume American students like me are stupid than take the time to follow the logic. (And probably because what is a simple logical step to me is much harder for him to follow.)

 

3) Also, I am not going to be amazed at the way the simple minded project the professor gave me turns out. I already logically deduced exactly how it would turn out 30 seconds after the project was assigned. I am not going to test 20 different parameter values and giddily show the results - I am much more likely to give a proof of how all those attempts would come out the same way.

 

Your "thought experiment" quickly turned autobiographical. You seem greatly frustrated that your teachers do not instantly recognize your genius or accept your belief that you are their intellectual superior. Let me suggest that you entertain a bizarre thought - that many of your teachers actually know more about their subject than you do and they can be a tool for you to use - to winnow the chaff from the grains of real knowledge. You don't have to believe, or agree, with them - your task as a student is to listen to what they offer and evaluate it objectively. Starting with the assumption that they have nothing to compare with your omniscience is scarcely the basis for objective evaluation.

 

4) Yes I am aware that you are that you are leeching off of my hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to fund your perverted racial fantasies in which American students are less intelligent than you. Yes I am going to raise awareness and put a stop to it.

 

Is this your campaign against American Higher Education or an indictment of me? If its a general remark then I suggest that you are unlikely to have enough contact with the breadth of American education to make such broad judgements. And if you think you know me, then you had better do a lot more independent learning.

 

:rolleyes:

 

So yeah, I propose that the above mentioned student is the exact student you would ineptly or perhaps selfishly describe as "lacking motivation".

 

Evidence? With all your claims of internet-acquired wisdom you seem to live within a data-free universe.

 

Anyone who is actually affected by your statement that "I'm not here to indoctrinate you, I'm here to give you objective information and some interpretations of that information, that will give you the opportunity to make rational judgements on your own." is not that bright. To make such a statement shows that you don't understand where a counter claim to it would come from. No professor THINKS they are indoctrinating students, they all think they are being objective. That's just what they ARE doing when they straw man all arguments in opposition to their own beliefs from sources they don't like.

 

 

You know all this about me? :P

[Kriminal99]

Haven't you considered that if all of these factors you claim (without evidence) are highly correlated there would be no need for sub-tests on any test that purported to measure Intelligence? One of the problems in reading your posts in this thread is that you embellish the few points that touch on actual data with your personal imaginative guesses.

 

 

 

I doubt that I could convince you that it is possible to misinterpret information, to misread information, or to miss how well "information" has held up in the crucible of inquiry that is based on the belief that every idea should be critiqued and the originator of such ideas should defend their position. The fact is that you acquired some information that included the term Heritability and you completely misunderstood it.

 

Now, I don't demand that you immediately accept my statements about Heritability, but an "intelligent" person would read what I wrote and spend a little time learning more about the concept. And therein lies the problem with self-education. There is much more to be exposed to than just some blog on the Internet, or even some article on Wikipedia. There are many pitfalls in the jungle of Knowledge. You do best if you listen to your guide before making your own decisions.

 

 

 

That's stereotypic hogwash. Your "individualism" leads you to marginalize whole groups of people to fit your preconceptions. And your notion of individualism as some grand characteristic of our society and missing elsewhere is simply jingoistic fiction.

 

 

 

Your "thought experiment" quickly turned autobiographical. You seem greatly frustrated that your teachers do not instantly recognize your genius or accept your belief that you are their intellectual superior. Let me suggest that you entertain a bizarre thought - that many of your teachers actually know more about their subject than you do and they can be a tool for you to use - to winnow the chaff from the grains of real knowledge. You don't have to believe, or agree, with them - your task as a student is to listen to what they offer and evaluate it objectively. Starting with the assumption that they have nothing to compare with your omniscience is scarcely the basis for objective evaluation.

 

 

 

Is this your campaign against American Higher Education or an indictment of me? If its a general remark then I suggest that you are unlikely to have enough contact with the breadth of American education to make such broad judgements. And if you think you know me, then you had better do a lot more independent learning.

 

:rolleyes:

 

 

 

Evidence? With all your claims of internet-acquired wisdom you seem to live within a data-free universe.

 

 

 

 

You know all this about me? :P

 

I personally have a score differential whenever I take those kinds of tests. The two most used sections are verbal and math. The idea of the sub tests is to catch people that do abnormal things with their intelligence. A person who locks themselves in a room writing formulas on the walls is not going to have as large a vocabulary as someone who is constantly interacting with other people. However this lack of exposure to vocabulary is rare. Similarly some people are geniuses with no technical ability simply because they avoid mathematics like the plague. These are not separate kinds of intelligence but rather separate things people do with their intelligence. A genius of the first type will still score higher on verbal than an average or below average person of the second type. In most programs foreign students typically participate in, math is far more directly relevant anyways.

 

This information is readily available all over the place. Your lack of awareness of the current state of knowledge on the subject is irrelevant.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

 

Is this the part where you try to imply that heritability of IQ is overestimated due to similar socio-economic conditions? Many studies involving twins reared apart, orphans etc have dis-proven such beliefs. In my experience University professors are horrible at defending actual ideas, but have a lot of skill in the areas of social manipulation, the use of debate fallacies, and petty dishonest behavior. There is a big difference between looking like you know what you are talking about and actually knowing what you are talking about.

[Ken]

I personally have a score differential whenever I take those kinds of tests. The two most used sections are verbal and math. The idea of the sub tests is to catch people that do abnormal things with their intelligence.

 

No, the subtests reflect a variety of opinions about the critical components of the metaphysical concept Intelligence.

 

A person who locks themselves in a room writing formulas on the walls is not going to have as large a vocabulary as someone who is constantly interacting with other people.

 

Data?

 

However this lack of exposure to vocabulary is rare. Similarly some people are geniuses with no technical ability simply because they avoid mathematics like the plague. These are not separate kinds of intelligence but rather separate things people do with their intelligence.

 

Again, data?

 

How are you defining technical ability? How do you know that certain groups of individuals "avoid mathematics like the plague"?

 

A genius of the first type will still score higher on verbal than an average or below average person of the second type.

 

You concluded your last paragraph with the statement that there "are not separate kinds of intelligence but rather separate things people do with their intelligence."

 

How do you reconcile that statement with this following one talking about "genius of the first type..."? Is there one intelligence or are there different types of intelligence? You can't claim both and expect to make a compelling case for either.

 

In most programs foreign students typically participate in, math is far more directly relevant anyways.

 

:o Do you really have a break-out of all disciplines with foreign students and the distribution of those students across those fields? If you are trying to say that most foreign students are studying in the fields of the natural sciences you may be correct, but what is that relevant to?

 

You previously stated that you accept differences in English language tests based on differences in native tongue, so why is it relevant now?

 

This information is readily available all over the place. Your lack of awareness of the current state of knowledge on the subject is irrelevant.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

 

Have you actually read those wiki articles? ;)

 

The first two sentences of your second article read "The study of the heritability of IQ is a field of research that includes biology, genomics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Heritability is "an estimate of the genetic and environmental contributions to the variance of any phenotypic measure around the mean for a given population."

 

Apparently you don't understand how Wiki articles are created or critiqued. At best they can summarize actual research, at worst they are simply filled with misstatement and misinterpretation that haven't drawn the attention of members of the Wiki community. Regardless of their placement on that axis, they are secondary, tertiary, and sometimes further removed sources of information.

 

Until you've read both sides of the arguments (including the primary sources) you hardly qualify as expert.

 

Is this the part where you try to imply that heritability of IQ is due to similar socio-economic conditions? Many studies involving twins reared apart, orphans etc have dis-proven such beliefs. In my experience University professors are horrible at defending actual ideas, but have a lot of skill in the areas of social manipulation, the use of debate fallacies, and petty dishonest behavior. There is a big difference between looking like you know what you are talking about and actually knowing what you are talking about..

 

You still don't understand Heritability. Heritability is not "due" to any variable, it is a statistic which describes the proportionality of the variances of measures of the variables Genotype and Phenotype. To say that Heritability is, or isn't, due to one variable class is monumentally wrong.

 

Perhaps your problem is that you don't understand what is meant by "a statistic"?

 

Its really a case of the common saying that you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. In this instance you are entitled to an opinion about the adequacy of the statistic H^2, but you are not entitled to redefining it and then using your version of the definition to attempt to find support for your preconceived notions.

 

BTW, twin studies haven't disproved anything. The results are a mixed bag, confounded by the use of different measures and more importantly by the two sources of error -- the frequent failure to actually determine if the twins are truly monozygotic or simply dizygotic siblings, and the impossibility of guaranteeing even identical environmental experiences for monozygotic twins reared together.

 

As far as your experience with university professors, you hardly have enough data to differentiate between professors at your own university much less all university professors in the U.S. Of course your personal experience with your professors has absolutely no bearing on the adequacy of your arguments about intelligence, nor does it inform you of my level of "knowing" in this area.

 

I suggest that on your next foray into Wikipedia you review the articles on ad hominem arguments. :rolleyes:

[Kriminal99]

No, the subtests reflect a variety of opinions about the critical components of the metaphysical concept Intelligence.

 

 

 

Data?

 

 

 

Again, data?

 

How are you defining technical ability? How do you know that certain groups of individuals "avoid mathematics like the plague"?

 

 

 

You concluded your last paragraph with the statement that there "are not separate kinds of intelligence but rather separate things people do with their intelligence."

 

How do you reconcile that statement with this following one talking about "genius of the first type..."? Is there one intelligence or are there different types of intelligence? You can't claim both and expect to make a compelling case for either.

 

 

 

:o Do you really have a break-out of all disciplines with foreign students and the distribution of those students across those fields? If you are trying to say that most foreign students are studying in the fields of the natural sciences you may be correct, but what is that relevant to?

 

You previously stated that you accept differences in English language tests based on differences in native tongue, so why is it relevant now?

 

 

 

Have you actually read those wiki articles? ;)

 

The first two sentences of your second article read "The study of the heritability of IQ is a field of research that includes biology, genomics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. Heritability is "an estimate of the genetic and environmental contributions to the variance of any phenotypic measure around the mean for a given population."

 

Apparently you don't understand how Wiki articles are created or critiqued. At best they can summarize actual research, at worst they are simply filled with misstatement and misinterpretation that haven't drawn the attention of members of the Wiki community. Regardless of their placement on that axis, they are secondary, tertiary, and sometimes further removed sources of information.

 

Until you've read both sides of the arguments (including the primary sources) you hardly qualify as expert.

 

 

 

You still don't understand Heritability. Heritability is not "due" to any variable, it is a statistic which describes the proportionality of the variances of measures of the variables Genotype and Phenotype. To say that Heritability is, or isn't, due to one variable class is monumentally wrong.

 

Perhaps your problem is that you don't understand what is meant by "a statistic"?

 

Its really a case of the common saying that you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. In this instance you are entitled to an opinion about the adequacy of the statistic H^2, but you are not entitled to redefining it and then using your version of the definition to attempt to find support for your preconceived notions.

 

BTW, twin studies haven't disproved anything. The results are a mixed bag, confounded by the use of different measures and more importantly by the two sources of error -- the frequent failure to actually determine if the twins are truly monozygotic or simply dizygotic siblings, and the impossibility of guaranteeing even identical environmental experiences for monozygotic twins reared together.

 

As far as your experience with university professors, you hardly have enough data to differentiate between professors at your own university much less all university professors in the U.S. Of course your personal experience with your professors has absolutely no bearing on the adequacy of your arguments about intelligence, nor does it inform you of my level of "knowing" in this area.

 

I suggest that on your next foray into Wikipedia you review the articles on ad hominem arguments. :rolleyes:

 

 

Dealing with your absurd claims

 

Let me start by saying that data is not required for deductive arguments like "2+2 = 4". A person of infinite intelligence unexposed to any vocabulary of a given language will not score high on that language's vocabulary test. In this case it is a poor measure of the person's natural ability. There is one intelligence. Not using it to learn farsi does not mean that you are then unintelligent in farsi but intelligent in english.

 

The goal is to get an accurate reading of that one intelligence. Similarly to the above simple deductive argument, lack of exposure to English even if it is your main language can cause a less accurate reading.

 

Yes Heritability is a study of genetic and environmental contributions. A study which in this case, has found an 85% heritability of IQ (and 15% of IQ attributable to environment). Although it won't do much good if you can't understand what you read... The actual value determined for heritability shows the ratio between genetic and environmental. A heritable trait is one that is dependent on genes. Your constant reference to heritability basics shows that you do not understand how to interpret the meaning, which is perfectly in line with what I have been arguing. I am sure seeing all those formulas when you opened up the heritability wiki page must have been quite dazzling for you. Ultimately though, it just explains how what I am saying is true.

 

Heritability has nothing to do with the relationship between the g factor and "intelligence". What on earth are you talking about? If you were able to follow the basics of heritability to completion, you would quickly realize their irrelevance in the current discussion. Heritability is indeed a proportion. The only time it is not is when you are unable to separately measure environmental and genetic factors. The point about it being a proportion of variances is equally irrelevant. This has no impact on how it is to be interpreted.

 

By guessing that you were going to cite environmental causes for heritability to preserve your naive views of equality, I was not implying anything about my beliefs. However, with a tested 85% heritability of iq, there is very strong reason to believe that IQ is dependent upon genes (which by the way, is a direct consequence of IQ variance being dependent upon genes).

 

There are no problems with twin studies of the kind you mention. Despite a large amount of variance of all kinds in these kinds of studies, it is more than possible to draw meaningful conclusions when the trends persist despite these limitations instead of because them. The twin and children reared apart studies have consistently shown extreme heritability of IQ

 

Thus to return to the original argument which you are now conveniently avoiding, General intelligence is a real measurable phenomenon that is mostly determined by genes and has a large impact on how much information the student in question is able to gather and process. A low iq student who depends on you financially and for knowledge who does a phd thesis on watching movies or makes some no risk no reward revision to someone else work is not comparable to a financially secure high IQ student who constantly challenges his professors and develops novel approaches to problems.

 

Dealing with your lack of character

 

Dear Nerdseeksblonde

 

The only arguments here turning autobiographical are your own. A clear picture of your capabilities and personality is beginning to develop. Finding yourself constantly struggling among people of far greater intelligence, you look to what you perceive as your social skills to keep afloat. Only, those people like me that you fear so much have far greater social skills as will be proven in the long run, as people are ultimately just another one of those complex systems that people like me can formally model and understand while you cannot. Cheap use of debate fallacies, dishonest social manipulation etc will eventually blow up in your face and get you in far more trouble than they are really worth.

 

I am sure in your own mind you are a legend. In reality your childish behaviors in the classroom are disturbingly transparent, and you depend mostly on fears of financial repercussions to keep the majority of grad students from calling you out on your behavior. Meanwhile, they are joking about it after class.

 

"Self-education" as you put it (nonsense considering it involves reading and interacting with many different sources other than emotionally immature university professors) for people of higher intelligence creates a level of understanding that someone of your ability is physically incapable of reaching. No amount of social participation will allow you to solve novel problems, respond to inquiry or criticism gracefully, or make a significant contribution to the human race's current understanding.

 

Your bitterness towards Wikipedia smacks of someone who's shameless attempts at self - promotion have been thwarted by a well tested-system of content mediation.

 

I have no problem avoiding attacks on each others character and focusing on just the reason. Perhaps next time you shouldn't start and then I won't respond in kind.

[Ken]

Dear Nerdseeksblonde

 

The only arguments here turning autobiographical are your own. A clear picture of your capabilities and personality is beginning to develop. Finding yourself constantly struggling among people of far greater intelligence, you look to what you perceive as your social skills to keep afloat. Only, those people like me that you fear so much have far greater social skills as will be proven in the long run, as people are ultimately just another one of those complex systems that people like me can formally model and understand while you cannot. Cheap use of debate fallacies, dishonest social manipulation etc will eventually blow up in your face and get you in far more trouble than they are really worth.

 

I am sure in your own mind you are a legend. In reality your childish behaviors in the classroom are disturbingly transparent, and you depend mostly on fears of financial repercussions to keep the majority of grad students from calling you out on your behavior. Meanwhile, they are joking about it after class.

 

"Self-education" as you put it (nonsense considering it involves reading and interacting with many different sources other than emotionally immature university professors) for people of higher intelligence creates a level of understanding that someone of your ability is physically incapable of reaching. No amount of social participation will allow you to solve novel problems, respond to inquiry or criticism gracefully, or make a significant contribution to the human race's current understanding.

 

Your bitterness towards Wikipedia smacks of someone who's shameless attempts at self - promotion have been thwarted by a well tested-system of content mediation.

 

Dealing with your absurd claims

 

Let me start by saying that data is not required for deductive arguments like "2+2 = 4". A person of infinite intelligence unexposed to any vocabulary of a given language will not score high on that language's vocabulary test. In this case it is a poor measure of the person's natural ability. There is one intelligence. Not using it to learn farsi does not mean that you are then unintelligent in farsi but intelligent in english.

 

The goal is to get an accurate reading of that one intelligence. Similarly to the above simple deductive argument, lack of exposure to English even if it is your main language can cause a less accurate reading.

 

Yes Heritability is a study of genetic and environmental contributions. A study which in this case, has found an 85% heritability of IQ regardless of environmental conditions. Perhaps you should read past the second line? Although it won't do much good if you can't understand what you read...

 

By guessing that you were going to cite environmental causes for heritability to preserve your naive views of equality, I was not implying anything about my beliefs. However, with a tested 85% heritability of iq regardless of environmental conditions, there is very strong reason to believe that heritability of IQ is mostly due to gene inheritance.

 

You didn't look up ad hominem did you?

 

I question your conclusions, you question my being. It's pointless to continue.

 

I hope you find peace from your personal demons.

[Kriminal99]

You didn't look up ad hominem did you?

 

I question your conclusions, you question my being. It's pointless to continue.

 

I hope you find peace from your personal demons.

 

Hey you started it Mr. my first sentence in the thread was "I find your diatribe a sad cry for help from the monsters created in your own mind." Since you don't actually read more than a sentence or so of my posts, know that I am completely familiar with the basics of heritability and it's irrelevance to the interpretation of 85% heritability of IQ. One thing you did say of value though amounts to that I do not need other people to understand my unique strengths and if they did, they wouldn't be unique any more. I have the power to benefit people using knowledge in ways they cannot benefit themselves. From now on I will focus on doing just that, and see how many foreign university professors believe themselves in a position to straw man my claims while living off my tax dollars then.