This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world.
No, it doesn't. That's not what begging the question means. Perhaps it raises that question. Begging the question is assuming the wanted conclusion.
So, for instance, if the professor said, "IQ tests measure immutable intelligence. Women do less well on IQ tests. Therefore, women are less intelligent," when it's not precisely known if there is a single thing measurable as intelligence (as opposed to a number of factors which tend to correlate, but don't lend themselves to organizing humans on a Great Chain of Being, white boys up near the top and black folks down near the bottom.)
Remember, Steven Jay Gould said that there are four factors that are necessary for this interpretation of intelligence: it must be reliably measurable. It must be a single linearly-rankable quality. It must be heritable (well, for the race-based portion of this trope). And it must be immutable. Drop any of those four (three for the sex-based portion) and the whole argument collapses.
All that his data shows is a correlation between sex (or, elsewhere, race) and what is measured by IQ tests. (Did You Know that the Alfred Binet, inventor of IQ tests, was strongly opposed to any interpretation of IQ as a real thing instead of just an average, or of its being considered immutable? Yeah, he's been doing a slow rotisserie in his grave since Yerkes and Goddard brought his work to America.)
Remember, folks, correlation ain't causation. Very basic stuff, here. And yet so persistent.
I think Moore's dialogue in some spots was definitely better. From the trailer, Portman's dialogue seems to be:
Evey: [bumping into Agent] I'm sorry. Finger Agent: Not yet, you're not.
The original dialogue from the comic (or at least what I have from memory) was
Evey: I'll do whatever you want, just don't kill me. Finger Agent: No, you don't get it. We're going to do whatever we want... and then we're going to kill you.
... complaining that real life sucks compared to MMORPGs? I notice that both of you (assuming you're not the same guy) pretend that real life consists of shallow bar life, in an attempt to make your choice to withdraw from "meatspace" an acceptable one.
Real life isn't just another game. Stop trying to pretend it is. If it was, gamers wouldn't suck at it so much.
... but it always seems to end up with people saying, "You can't supply all of our energy needs unto all eternity with it? Well, then what good is it, you fuckin' hippie?"
I wish folks wouldn't always figure out how many of whatever new tech we're talking about it would take to power the whole country. Future energy will come from a variety of sources, none of which will be able to power everything at once. Saying "to power the whole country, we'd have to cover a twentieth of Texas in these gizmos!" isn't particularly relevant or helpful.
And who the crap makes circular power plants? No, a square with area seven square miles is about 2.64 miles on a side, about 10.5 miles to walk around. Still, a two and a half by two and a half mile square seems awful small to get 500 MW out of. I wonder if we can get one of those out here. (I might as well wonder when the local hydro plants will start generating electricity again...)
And you're just trying to muddy the waters, make it so that a casual reader of this discussion will conclude that there are crazy zealots on both sides and, gee, maybe we shouldn't do anything because science is divided on the issue. Which it ain't.
I'm not going to even try to be diplomatic about it: basically your whole post, like most of the eco-scare propaganda, boils down to "everyone who disaggrees with my Holy Truth is an heretic, and furthermore _paid_ to attack our Holy Truth."
No, but it's a telling point when industry has to pay people to promulgate its dogma. See, his point is valid because scientists who disagree with his "holy truth", as you put it, are paid to attack it.
And just because you're (presumably) not on Exxon's payroll, that doesn't prove anything. You're not a scientist; you're not even a pretend scientist. You're just talking smack on Slashdot.
p.s. Why can the GP poke fun at conservatives, but no one is allowed to poke fun at liberals?
Gee, I must have forgotten to say hello to the liberal firing squad on my way in. Careful with that crimethink, citizen, or it's room 101 for you!
You can poke fun at liberals all you want. It's another issue entirely whether your criticisms are valid or not. Biased "research" is a real problem.
We're all here for a good, honest exchange of idea. (Well, not the trolls and crapflooders, but they don't count.) On the other hand, it's the right, nay, the responsibility of every poster here to tell you when you're wrong.
Those in turn existed because some people (e.g., Galileo) dared question the existing model...
As the OP said, GALLANT paints the scientific consensus as being entirely political in nature and enjoys comparing himself to Galileo.
They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. To compare fake science bought and paid for by folks with a huge monetary stake in the results to the work of Galileo or Einstein is an insult to every scientist who ever honestly questioned dogma.
If doing others' homework were really that profitable, I'd have been rolling in bling in high school. Or at least I'd have been getting my ass kicked for a reason.
I suppose parents doing kids' homework could lead to the kind of grade inflation you describe.
Right... and how may other pharmacies were within driving distance of that asshole? C'mon, man... One asshole does not a trend make...
Frickin' sweet! Now that medical personnel can deny care "because they feel like it", I can't wait to see... "sorry, kiddo, I know you've just been in an auto accident and a transfusion would save your life, but as a devout Jehovah's Witness, I can't countenance blood transfusions. Better luck in the next world!" Or how about "sorry, toots, but as a devout Scientologist I can't in good conscience give you your antipsychotic meds. See, Scientology teaches us that psychology is really Xenu babble E-meter El Ron blah blah. Would you like to take this free personality test?"
Or, a little more relevantly, "What do you mean, you were just viciously raped, you don't have a car or any other means of transportation, the next pharmacy is six towns over because we're in the middle of Gawd Country, and you'd like a 'morning-after pill'? You slut! You're lucky I don't set you on fire, Pakistan-style!"
But, hey, I guess since things are a lot better than they were, we can't complain. I mean, shutting up and not engaging in activism have worked in the past, hasn't it?
Where? I'm in the US, and I've been looking at porn on the internet for quite some time. Could you point to some of those attempts to censor porn you're referring to?
DC's business model involved spying on users. The hackers you mentioned don't generally like to be spied on. The business model was based on being evil. They deserved to be run out of business---their only possible source of profit was their crapulent, buzzword-laden spyware.
I think I'll get a:Cat from eBay to catalog my books, but good fucking riddance to DigitalConvergence.
The problem with the ICE is that it's way, way easier to replace a few enormous powerplants than to replace millions of tiny ones in cars. What makes you so sure that the plant generating that energy isn't hydroelectic or solar?
On the other hand, a gasoline car burns gasoline. End of story, full stop.
Where's that MS apologist who was telling me that no, really, Longhorn is going to be more than a few new wizards and a bubblier-shinier UI? Damn, if only I could remember his handle. He assured me that hey, Monad was still in.
For what it counts, man am I ever sorry about that. (That article gets a lot of vandalism---I wonder why.)
Hopefully a web of trust-type solution would allow the casual browser to view only versions above a certain trust threshold. Thus, you wouldn't get the "butt" variant of the Moon article. Editors would get the actual "live" copy, and I suppose would have some way of giving their approval (as "not vandalized") to the articles.
But even if they are, care to explain what the "oh, I get it; people really aren't that ignorant" explanation is for the NSF results? Or that a third of Americans don't know that light travels faster than sound? Or that more than half think that lasers work by focusing sound?
Historically, political polling tends to be accurate to within a few points. How, then, are you accusing the NSF survey of massive incompetence? Aside from "man, those answers are scare", that is.
Slashdot Mirror
From the summary:
This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world.
No, it doesn't. That's not what begging the question means. Perhaps it raises that question. Begging the question is assuming the wanted conclusion.
So, for instance, if the professor said, "IQ tests measure immutable intelligence. Women do less well on IQ tests. Therefore, women are less intelligent," when it's not precisely known if there is a single thing measurable as intelligence (as opposed to a number of factors which tend to correlate, but don't lend themselves to organizing humans on a Great Chain of Being, white boys up near the top and black folks down near the bottom.)
Remember, Steven Jay Gould said that there are four factors that are necessary for this interpretation of intelligence: it must be reliably measurable. It must be a single linearly-rankable quality. It must be heritable (well, for the race-based portion of this trope). And it must be immutable. Drop any of those four (three for the sex-based portion) and the whole argument collapses.
All that his data shows is a correlation between sex (or, elsewhere, race) and what is measured by IQ tests. (Did You Know that the Alfred Binet, inventor of IQ tests, was strongly opposed to any interpretation of IQ as a real thing instead of just an average, or of its being considered immutable? Yeah, he's been doing a slow rotisserie in his grave since Yerkes and Goddard brought his work to America.)
Remember, folks, correlation ain't causation. Very basic stuff, here. And yet so persistent.
--grendel drago
I think Moore's dialogue in some spots was definitely better. From the trailer, Portman's dialogue seems to be:
Evey: [bumping into Agent] I'm sorry.
Finger Agent: Not yet, you're not.
The original dialogue from the comic (or at least what I have from memory) was
Evey: I'll do whatever you want, just don't kill me.
Finger Agent: No, you don't get it. We're going to do whatever we want... and then we're going to kill you.
Definitely spookier.
--grendel drago
Err... that's some really impressive recall. That, or you were just reading the book.
--grendel drago
... complaining that real life sucks compared to MMORPGs? I notice that both of you (assuming you're not the same guy) pretend that real life consists of shallow bar life, in an attempt to make your choice to withdraw from "meatspace" an acceptable one.
Real life isn't just another game. Stop trying to pretend it is. If it was, gamers wouldn't suck at it so much.
--grendel drago
... but it always seems to end up with people saying, "You can't supply all of our energy needs unto all eternity with it? Well, then what good is it, you fuckin' hippie?"
--grendel drago
I wish folks wouldn't always figure out how many of whatever new tech we're talking about it would take to power the whole country. Future energy will come from a variety of sources, none of which will be able to power everything at once. Saying "to power the whole country, we'd have to cover a twentieth of Texas in these gizmos!" isn't particularly relevant or helpful.
--grendel drago
Oh man, I wish we had daily Featured Comments. This'd definitely make it.
--grendel drago
And who the crap makes circular power plants? No, a square with area seven square miles is about 2.64 miles on a side, about 10.5 miles to walk around. Still, a two and a half by two and a half mile square seems awful small to get 500 MW out of. I wonder if we can get one of those out here. (I might as well wonder when the local hydro plants will start generating electricity again...)
--grendel drago
Oh, come on. The whole point is that the most vocal critics of climate change are paid off by companies with a huge stake in it. You can manufacture fantasies of power-mad ivory-tower cranks in white coats trying to destroy capitalism (If you don't imediately stop believing all else and do as we say, we're all doomed!), but the fact remains that reputable scientists don't have to be paid off by lobbyists to come to a conclusion. Those are not real scientists.
And you're just trying to muddy the waters, make it so that a casual reader of this discussion will conclude that there are crazy zealots on both sides and, gee, maybe we shouldn't do anything because science is divided on the issue. Which it ain't.
--grendel drago
I'm not going to even try to be diplomatic about it: basically your whole post, like most of the eco-scare propaganda, boils down to "everyone who disaggrees with my Holy Truth is an heretic, and furthermore _paid_ to attack our Holy Truth."
No, but it's a telling point when industry has to pay people to promulgate its dogma. See, his point is valid because scientists who disagree with his "holy truth", as you put it, are paid to attack it.
And just because you're (presumably) not on Exxon's payroll, that doesn't prove anything. You're not a scientist; you're not even a pretend scientist. You're just talking smack on Slashdot.
--grendel drago
p.s. Why can the GP poke fun at conservatives, but no one is allowed to poke fun at liberals?
Gee, I must have forgotten to say hello to the liberal firing squad on my way in. Careful with that crimethink, citizen, or it's room 101 for you!
You can poke fun at liberals all you want. It's another issue entirely whether your criticisms are valid or not. Biased "research" is a real problem.
We're all here for a good, honest exchange of idea. (Well, not the trolls and crapflooders, but they don't count.) On the other hand, it's the right, nay, the responsibility of every poster here to tell you when you're wrong.
--grendel drago
Those in turn existed because some people (e.g., Galileo) dared question the existing model...
As the OP said, GALLANT paints the scientific consensus as being entirely political in nature and enjoys comparing himself to Galileo.
They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. To compare fake science bought and paid for by folks with a huge monetary stake in the results to the work of Galileo or Einstein is an insult to every scientist who ever honestly questioned dogma.
--grendel drago
If doing others' homework were really that profitable, I'd have been rolling in bling in high school. Or at least I'd have been getting my ass kicked for a reason.
I suppose parents doing kids' homework could lead to the kind of grade inflation you describe.
--grendel drago
I gotta drop a comment here, if only to make a weak attempt at balancing all the twelve year olds telling you to get back in the kitchen.
Then again, I'm a tech and I can still poach a decent chicken dish, so that doesn't really say much, now does it?
--grendel drago
Right... and how may other pharmacies were within driving distance of that asshole? C'mon, man... One asshole does not a trend make...
Frickin' sweet! Now that medical personnel can deny care "because they feel like it", I can't wait to see... "sorry, kiddo, I know you've just been in an auto accident and a transfusion would save your life, but as a devout Jehovah's Witness, I can't countenance blood transfusions. Better luck in the next world!" Or how about "sorry, toots, but as a devout Scientologist I can't in good conscience give you your antipsychotic meds. See, Scientology teaches us that psychology is really Xenu babble E-meter El Ron blah blah. Would you like to take this free personality test?"
Or, a little more relevantly, "What do you mean, you were just viciously raped, you don't have a car or any other means of transportation, the next pharmacy is six towns over because we're in the middle of Gawd Country, and you'd like a 'morning-after pill'? You slut! You're lucky I don't set you on fire, Pakistan-style!"
But, hey, I guess since things are a lot better than they were, we can't complain. I mean, shutting up and not engaging in activism have worked in the past, hasn't it?
--grendel drago
look at US attempts to censor porn
Where? I'm in the US, and I've been looking at porn on the internet for quite some time. Could you point to some of those attempts to censor porn you're referring to?
--grendel drago
Damn, I'd buy a frickin' five thousand dollar house. That'd be sweet.
--grendel drago
LNUX vs MSFT: now the debate can finally be resolved!
--grendel drago
DC's business model involved spying on users. The hackers you mentioned don't generally like to be spied on. The business model was based on being evil. They deserved to be run out of business---their only possible source of profit was their crapulent, buzzword-laden spyware.
:Cat from eBay to catalog my books, but good fucking riddance to DigitalConvergence.
I think I'll get a
--grendel drago
Link me?
The problem with the ICE is that it's way, way easier to replace a few enormous powerplants than to replace millions of tiny ones in cars. What makes you so sure that the plant generating that energy isn't hydroelectic or solar?
On the other hand, a gasoline car burns gasoline. End of story, full stop.
--grendel drago
Ah, Reuters, today you've really cheesed me off. I was fuckin' worried.
--grendel drago
Where's that MS apologist who was telling me that no, really, Longhorn is going to be more than a few new wizards and a bubblier-shinier UI? Damn, if only I could remember his handle. He assured me that hey, Monad was still in.
Heh. It's fun to be right once in a while.
--grendel drago
For what it counts, man am I ever sorry about that. (That article gets a lot of vandalism---I wonder why.)
Hopefully a web of trust-type solution would allow the casual browser to view only versions above a certain trust threshold. Thus, you wouldn't get the "butt" variant of the Moon article. Editors would get the actual "live" copy, and I suppose would have some way of giving their approval (as "not vandalized") to the articles.
--grendel drago
But even if they are, care to explain what the "oh, I get it; people really aren't that ignorant" explanation is for the NSF results? Or that a third of Americans don't know that light travels faster than sound? Or that more than half think that lasers work by focusing sound?
Historically, political polling tends to be accurate to within a few points. How, then, are you accusing the NSF survey of massive incompetence? Aside from "man, those answers are scare", that is.
--grendel drago