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serenesam

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Moronium Newbie

Moronium

Posted
Posted (edited)

This story is disgusting.

 

Personally, I can't agree that IQ is strictly a product of genetics. As a co-discoverer (with Crick) of the structure of the DNA molecule perhaps his high regard for DNA is understandable. That said, I think Watson is far too dogmatic about that issue. 

 

 

But however that may be, the attempt to disgrace and ostracize the guy just because you don't personally agree with his honest convictions is absurd.  I like all of your quotes from above, but his one seems especially appropriate:

 

"The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians." ― George Orwell

 

Edited by Moronium
Moronium Newbie

Moronium

Posted
Posted (edited)

A couple of professors wrote a book called "IQ and Global Inequality" in 2006.  According to their findings the vast majority of countries on the Afican continent have average IQ's of 70 or less, which falls into the "moron" range. The few that are above that are on the Mediterranean coast and are only around 80 (the "mentally deficient" range).  There's a color-coded map here:

 

https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.ht

 

In 2007, Watson was suspended from all of his positions held at the New York lab following a scandal centering around his claim about the "inherently gloomy" future of the African continent. “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really,” he told the Times newspaper at the time.

 

When asked more than a decade later whether his views about race and intelligence have changed, he told the PBS documentary they haven’t.

 

“Not at all. I would like for them to have changed, that there be new knowledge that says that your nurture is much more important than nature,” the scientist was quoted as saying in a recently previewed PBS documentary, titled American Masters: Decoding Watson. “There’s a difference on the average between blacks and whites on IQ tests. I would say the difference is, it’s genetic.

 

 

I don't know how accurate the IQ findings are, but if true they do seem to present some significant obstacles to progress in Africa, whatever the "cause." 

 

Given the interview in question (excerpts quoted above), it appears that Watson was originally fired for citing the findings, without even saying the differences were due to genetics.

Edited by Moronium

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