conspiracy theories, self-fulfilling prophecies and a fat reality check
Given the slightly disturbing turn of discussion on my previous post, I’ve been thinking a lot about conspiracy theories. Like many humans, I’ve been a big fan of conspiracy theories at various points in my life. I love the idea that unseen and undetectable forces are manipulating world events for their own nefarious purposes. Things are happening, so it makes sense that someone with a plan is making them happen, right?
However, I’m also aware that humans, like most mammals, “presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent in situations that may or may not involve one” (Agent detection, Wikipedia). For those of you not familiar with this, John Zande has a marvellous post linking paranoia to the development of religions. I think this could easily be extended to the majority of conspiracy theories floating around.
When it comes to conspiracy theories about the Jewish people, we probably couldn’t find ourselves in more fertile territory. Unfortunately for the Jewish people, they had one too many excellent story tellers in ancient times. Their traditional stories have captured the imagination of large parts of the world in a way that any of the original bright minds spinning a yarn to pass the time could never have dreamt of. Piggy back spin off religions abound and have flourished in all sorts of odd directions.
Given that so many now influential belief systems stem from Judaism, and given that their holy writings proclaim them the chosen people of the creator god of this world, the spin off religions have an unusual and uncomfortable relationship with them, ranging from occasionally reverential, to jealous suspicion, to outright hatred. This has led to disturbing and ongoing periods of severe mistreatment of Jews throughout history.
A key feature of Jewish holy writings is prophecy. Vague words promising better times for Jewish people, that their god will send someone to save them and they will live in the land their god promised them. These prophecies undoubtedly gave the Jewish people hope in difficult times and bound them together as their god’s chosen people with prosperous times to come.
These prophecies, like any prophecies, through the course of many centuries are general enough to provide room for any of the millions of random events in history to fulfill them. They also provide achievable goals for anyone crazy enough to pursue them. So we find that Jewish people, following a period of particularly atrocious treatment, were given land to fulfill their long-desired prophecy by an international community trying to make good. A better example of a self-fulfilling prophecy couldn’t be found.
Which brings us to conspiracy theories. If you look for someone to be running the world, you’ll find plenty of ‘evidence’ to back up your belief:
Russian mob is running the internet
European Union is forerunner of last world government
If you don’t like any of these, perhaps you’d like to think that Mad Cow Disease, AIDS, SARS, bird flu, acid rain, ozone layer depletion or global warming will spell the end for the human race. There’s disaster round every corner, evil minds twitching behind every curtain, dark suited government officials trying to control every aspect of our lives, and gods of varying qualities overseeing our day to day happenings from other dimensions.
Or maybe we’re all just wandering aimlessly through our lives with a pinch of wonder, delight, curiosity, frustration and confusion. Oh, and huge doses of ignorance, self-importance and paranoia.
Ah, you poor deluded sap. You’ve been duped. It’s the mice, just like Douglas Adams said. Did you think he was joking?
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The Dolphins knew at least! ‘So long and thanks for all the fish’.
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Don’t be ridiculous, how could mice organise anything? Now, if you’d said ants, I might have had pause for thought.
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You have not read ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ and the three follow up books? A veritable fountain of wisdom.
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Mice
From this we find that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. But that raises the issue of what is the question.
One of the key influences on me in my formative years.
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No, I never liked Douglas Adams. Couldn’t avoid knowing about it here though, I was just trying to out-random Keith.
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Give it up. Anyway, the ants are too blatantly organized. It’s clear what they’re up to…
The problem with conspiracy theories is that they abandon any effort to distinguish correlation from causation early on. Once off the rails in that fashion, they are easily hijacked or subverted – so easily that one or the other is inevitable.
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Tell that to Higharka. LIke a brick wall.
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It’d be almost comforting to believe humans had the capacity to pull off a grand conspiracy. Unfortunately, the truth is we’re just not capable of it. No one can keep a secret, and this is doubly so if projected into a generational arena.
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Or, if any group is organised enough to pull off a grand conspiracy, they’ll probably be smart enough to keep it out of the realms of conspiracy forums.
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True. The most effective way to hide anything is to place that thing in plain sight.
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“ozone layer depletion or global warming will spell the end for the human race”
Ozone one was happening but we seemed to have mostly fixed it.
The global warming one is a scientific fact. The temperatures are rising and sea ice is melting.
For example NASA: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
And the latest warning put out by scientists: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/scientists-predict-huge-sea-level-rise-even-if-we-limit-climate-change
I love conspiracy theories though. They’re so damn entertaining.
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Oh, of course all these things happened and are serious. It’s the end-of-the-world freakout, religious or secular, that seems to go hand in hand with conspiracy theories. It all activates the same part of our brains.
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I am not so sure we have fixed it. There is still a trade in CFCs which are far better refrigerants, HFCs are ozone depleting though not as bad as CFCs, and the ozone hole continues, of an area the size of North America. http://www.theozonehole.com/2014ozonehole.htm
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You have spoilt it for me! I believe the Illuminati is controlling the world and I was about to join them then you wrote this post. Are you working for the Illuminati? Trying to confuse me into not joining?
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Well they might be. But only if they’re Russian Jewish aliens working for the Chinese mafia.
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Brilliant! I’ve never seen that before. I should really go back through the Mitchell and Webb archives …
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Choke. There’s a flat earth conspiracy theory??
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The chief cleric of Saudi professed the earth was flat (and the round claim was a CIA plot) only a couple of years ago.
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Holy mother of god.
As an atheist I have to be really shocked to say those words, but a flat-earth conspiracy surely qualifies. I stand astonished.
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It’s probably one of those too clever jokes. What’s is called – Poe’s Law. I can’t quite believe it either ….
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violet,
Is posting a new topic your way of shielding yourself from considering the questions I posed in the last topic? That’s so very sad. Well–majority rules. You guys enjoy feeling right together. If you ever want to talk, and I haven’t died yet, I’ll be happy to forgive you the insults and discuss Critical Theory or the early Bolshevist secret police.
In the meantime, watch the bodies of Palestinian children pile up, and remind yourself that Christians are evil and bigoted.
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Not at all, I do still plan to read about your conspiracy theory in more detail. It’s just if I have time to write, I like to write. I needs lots of time for reading …
Did you not find anything that made you blink in the post? You don’t feel you have anything in common with the people obsessing about aliens, Russians or the Chinese?
There are so many bodies piling up in so many atrocities around the world, it’s difficult to know what to do. If you’d read my post about Israel you’d know I don’t agree with their policies. But anyway, that has nothing to do with the whole of western culture and attitudes spinning on the whim of an imaginary scheming group of Jewish people.
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Violet,
It’s certainly possible that you don’t have the emotional resilience to address this topic, and if that’s the case, I’m sorry for disturbing you. If you can, though, try to look at these threads as an objective observer. See the way that a tiny, unpopular minority (me) cites inconvenient, verifiable facts (e.g., the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory), and how the majority responds with a unified condemnation of the minority’s motives, insults the minority’s character, and establishes a self-affirming climate of agreement that rests upon shared assumptions, while not actually addressing the topic.
This is the kind of behavior that you see when a minority approaches a congregation. It isn’t a debate; it isn’t scientific; it isn’t intellectual: rather, it’s a group confronting an outsider and mocking the outsider for failing to conform to group norms. As someone who’s approached large groups of Christians before, I’ve experienced exactly this sort of behavior when trying to discuss scripture, or history, with such a cohesive majority.
It’s always disappointing, of course. I’m glad that you have all found such a sense of community in your agreement to venerate certain points of view, but I think that you’d all be able to develop, both individually and as a group, by being able to study the circumstances underlying your beliefs.
We could have an interesting discussion of the composition of the early Bolshevik secret police, the nature of the Federal Reserve Bank, or many other important facets of recent history. We could review the academic studies of the 1950s and 60s, and see if those studies, and the social policies based upon them, affected history in any measurable way. There is so much we could do together if you wanted to study, investigate, and grow, rather than merely enjoy the feeling of being numerically superior and agreeing that I am an idiot.
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Higharka, in my opinion you have brought up some interresting views. That is propably a part of why Violetwisp has written this post. I must admit I have not read all the previous threads thoroughly through. Still, it seems to me, that people have engaged some of your ideas on a rather open and discussive manner. Some people may laugh at things they do not understand, but in my experience, most people here only laugh at the most proposterous claims, and they do that despite that some of those claims are the normative thinking as expected by the majority of the society around them. Sometimes us, the “majority” who discuss things here, laugh at each others wild claims. Do not take it too seriously. Join the choire and see the funny side of the world.
It is true, that often people dismiss new views only because they are outside the normative thinking of the group, but then there is also the possibility, that the minority is putting forward actually absurd ideas. Or that the minority does not want to engage the discussion, on a humoristic level, because the issue being discussed has become a part of their identity.
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The thing about conspiracy theories is, that conspiracies do happen in the real world. Therein lies their attraction.
I shall take a conspiracy as an explanation to any extraordinary event before accepting any supernatural explanation. I have written a post about the Jesus story and how his alledged resurrection was most likely a sort of a small scale conspiracy rather than an actual miracle, if it ever happened. I know, it is a myth by all sane standards, but we may consider myths as possible historical sources, it is only the mythological, super- and otherwise unnatural elements that we dissect or re-evaluate from them, when we evaluate the possible events behind the myth. We do know, that when superstitious people do not understand a chain of events they like to make up a supernatural explanation. That is why our history is riddled with all sorts of mythological elements, that are only taken at face value by the believers of the particular religious tradition, to wich these elements relate to.
The trouble with conspiracy theories is mostly not that conspiracies were not really likely, even in grand scale, but in how people have difficulty in recognizing actual and reliable information from total bogus. I put this on the lack of critical thinking skills and ignorance. The ignorant person does not know how ignorant they really are and there are an abundance of people who think they are critical thinkers, when they fail, because of a variety of reasons, to understand the most simple ways to evaluate reality.
In the modern world the most important job for the school should be teaching people from early on to evaluate information, rather than to try to pour a certain view of reality ready made to their heads. Because sooner or later they are going to run into all sorts of conspiracy theories, and if they have no methods to evaluate these, they are prone to become prey to such. In democracy this affects politics, society, and the interaction of people – that is morals – in a serious way.
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Do you realize that there are actually people in Africa who believe that the United States is engaged in a massive conspiracy to control the world’s oil reserves? What a laugh! The idea that millions of Americans could be completely blind to such a “plot,” or that so many thousands of politicians and news companies could work together to achieve that end, is utterly hilarious. Conspiracy theorists just don’t realize how nutty they sound to ordinary people!
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Higharka, was that even a conspiracy?
The US has troops all over the globe. Why? When W was the president, he was at the same time the son of a dynasty of oil and energy corporation, that had sources around the globe with very undemocratic governments. This was all public. When elected, he then had the public funds of an entire nation and the most expensive, if not the most effective military at his disposal. After his precidency he and his mates were richer than ever. His ministers made profits on all sorts of shady deals in the occupied Iraq. The US engaged in a war to overthrow a dictator in one of the major oil producing countries, at the same time it was not in the least bit interrested in dictators closer to home in countries that do not have oil reserves. Though, a coup against a democratically chosen government was being orchestrated in one of them (Venezuela, that just so happens to be an oil producing country), possibly by the US secret agencies. The invasion of Iraq was excused by obvious false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction, that the IAEA had been reporting to have been destroyed years before – as they were – and on an alledged link between the Iraqi dictator and a terrorist organization that had attacked the symbols of US corporative world domination. This link was based on single source of information recieved through torture. Who in the modern world believes it is possible to have reliable information through torture? Before those days the leader of this very same terrorist organization had been working for the CIA. Curious coincidence? Somewhere along the line the US had invaded Somalia alledgedly to alleviate a famine, that had been going on for ages, but only after promising gass field had been found there. The US abandoned that operation after it had suffered a humiliating, though not critical, military defeat and as per a coincidence the gass field had been deemed not to be of commercial interrest in oil producing sense. The famine and civil war goes on in Somalia. What the US operation managed to achieve was distributing so much free food, that the price of food dropped below the price of gass to have the irrigation pumps running on any local farms and to drive the weaker warbands out of towns and into the countryside to rob and murder farmers. What are the Africans even supposed to think about the US and oil?
So, you see, there could be a lot of facts, that point into a direction of a possible conspiracy, but for us to establish anything as an actual conspiracy from scattered facts is often jumping to conclusions. And sometimes what happens is not a conspiracy, but being done in open daylight and what makes it seem like a conspiracy, is just people simply not paying much attention, and drawing all the worng conclusions from it.
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Rautakyy: “Higharka, was that even a conspiracy?”
According to the dictionary, it was–it involved people working together to achieve something. And America didn’t come right out and say, “We’re killing Iraq for oil.” It said, “We’re being humanitarian.” To figure out their real motivations, we’d need to do the things you just did regarding George W. Bush: examine not just his official public statements, but his social connections, his ideologies, the ways he makes money, the deals he makes with people, etc.
All of those things that you said about Dubya were said to Americans in 2001, 2002, and 2003. And yet, many Americans thought it was a “ridiculous conspiracy theory” to say that Dubya was attacking Iraq for any reason other than to save lives out of the goodness of his heart. Those Americans were so thoroughly inculcated to the idea that Americans believed in “democracy” that they just couldn’t imagine their president acting that way.
Who was donating money to Bush while he did all of those things? Various Israeli lobbies. What did they get in return? Three billion dollars a year in military aid. And, America invading the Middle East and Africa to destroy any regime that might threaten Israel. Even now, America has been sanctioning Iran, threatening war with Syria, and invading and committing genocide in North Africa, in order to prevent Arab or African leaders from ever becoming powerful enough to resist Israeli attacks. Israeli lobbyists in America keep urging Obama to conduct a “pre-emptive strike” against Iran and Syria, and the racist Jewish community in the U.S. and Israel can’t wait for the U.S. to attack another Arab country and murder another million Arab human beings.
Like you said, this isn’t a conspiracy (in the make-believe, pejorative sense of that word). It’s all in plain sight. You can go read Zionist neoconservative policy papers on the internet right now talking about a New American Century of protecting Israel and killing and profiling Arabs everywhere in the world. You can look up the massive campaign bribes given to America’s legislative officers in exchange for voting to punish Iran with sanctions, send Israel more free jet fighters, and prevent the U.N. from intervening in Gaza to stop the starvation of Palestinian children.
Even inside Israel, Israelis bar Arab citizens from voting. Even non-Jewish military veterans who have served in the IDF fighting other Arabs are barred from entering restaurants or holding public office. Israel is the most openly racist country on the entire planet, and it has concentration camps and torture prisons running right now–right now, today, well into the 21st century, when all that stuff is supposed to be “archaic.”
And yet, media corporations have so many Americans and western Europeans convinced that Jews are all good, peaceful, humane people, and their actions should never be analyzed or discussed because Holocaust.
That is an impressively strong, impressively blind faith. It defies reason and inquiry as much as on any evangelical Christian I’ve ever talked to.
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Yes, Higharka, it is a sad thing how the Jews, as the people who have been the victims of some of the most vile crimes against humanity, now in their very own homecountry are themselves through their representative government policy using racial segregation, theft of property, collective punishment, military terrorism and even torture, while the Christian right in the west seems to deliberately and ardently remain blind to any of it. Why? Because they never really disaproved such methods, as it was them who used these very same when they openly waved the swasticas? Because to the conservative politician and his fearfull voter the ethics of the matter is not about what is done and why, but about who does to whom?
However, in these matters the Israeli state as run by it’s right wing conservative elements for decades is actually once again acting in broad daylight. They do not need to conspire as such, because the right wing Christian Zionists will support them blindly to serve their own unhealthy dreams of apocalypse, or fears of the Islamic world.
And I do emphasize, it is, not Jews in general, rather the Israeli state as run by it’s right wing conservatives whose politics feed upon the fear factor, so that they do not need to discuss real solution models to any social or economic problems within their society. This serves those within the society who enjoy priviledges as long as the status quo, or balance of fear remains. There are plenty of well educated and humane Jews in Israel and around the world who are openly acting against such wrongs. Perhaps one of the main problems for the state of Israel is that those less ignorant and subsequently less easily frightened Jews have not moved there as eagerly, because they fear not and rather face the reality in their own homecountries. And their right wing conservative government quite openly supports the segragartionist policies, by building “security walls” (as if walls had ever resolved such problems in human history) and supporting illegal colonies and settlements on Palestinian land. Where in, a new generation of squatters grows to fear and hate their Palestinian and other Arab neighbours.
But one tends to understand the Jews even in this low point of their history. Because people who have been ostracised, terrorised, oppressed and murdered just for being who they are, are far more sensitive about any possible renewals of such. It is only if the critical mass in a seemingly democratic state such as Israel, fear enough, that they are prone to lash out and try to use such violent ways to defend themselves, instead of trying to cope with their neighbours. It is of course, hard to cope with a family whose land your family has literally stolen. Who could ever repay the Jews for what they suffered in the hands of right wing conservative Christian nazies and fascists in Europe? Who could ever repay the Palestinians what they have suffered in the hands of right wing Jewish Zionists? For the future the solution can not be about repayment, but about the fact that the violence needs to stop and that people need to be recognized as valuable regardless of their religions, ethnic backrounds, cultural heritages, or even political affiliations…
Let’s be honest, it is the right wing conservatives around the world who are acting inhumanely and causing havoc. Their motives are elitism, gaining wealth and lashing out to their fears. Perhaps it is because of the authoritarian parenting in many cases, wich seems to produce fearfull people. Perhaps it is just ignorance, because people do fear the unknown. The ISIS is a right wing and as conservative as you can get organization. So are the neo-nazies in Europe and the US. As well as these new populist “immigration critics” parties around Europe from which surfaces all sorts of demagogues and Breivik-like terrorists. The KKK is a right wing conservative group no different from the Taliban, Al-qaida, Hizbollah and Hamas. In fact, North Korea is propably the most conservative country in the world. Extremism of any kind may be very dangerous, but if the values of a social movement are based on something being good just because it has been always done a certain way, it reveals ignorance and blind fear of the natural change and any attempt to make the world a better place. If those values also include any of the following, such as segragationism as in nationalism, racism as in nationalism, competitiveness as in capitalism, nazism as in fascism, racism as in nazism, zealotry as in religions, and so forth, the movement is treading on a ground to give different value to different people. That has a tendency to lead to violence… The world is not as black and white as I tend to picture it here, of course not, but I hope you understand what I mean.
As an atheist I have to add, that many religions bear within them the natural ideals of justice and charity, but they just as often bear the burden of tribal moralism, segregation to true believers and the other people of less value in the eyes of their deities. None of this requires any purposefull conspiracy, rather just an unhealthy social phenomenon that may survive and spread among populations through agressivity. But good people with healthy view on justice and ethics do not easily fall prey to such, even if they hold on to their own more or less religious cultural heritage.
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Regardless of what might have happened in the past. The development of Shale Oil in the U.S. now means that oil will not be a factor in U.S. global politics in future. The U.S. is now producing more oil domestically since the early 1970’s. The world oil price is likely to be low for years to come. The real geopolitical consequences are that countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria are likely to face major budgetary challenges for years to come.
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Indeed, Peter. I appriciate the present US government efforts to become energy indipendend. The reprecussions may not all be good though. If powerty increases in those allready rather authoritarian countries, that depend on exporting oil, the social segragation grows wich leads to fear and anger of the people, that in turn may be used by clever demagogues to spread hatred between populations, towards minorities and even lead to wars with their neighbours as war is the panultimate desception. This is a very good example of grand scale politics, that may seem as some sort of conspiracies to the ignorant or the person who has no real critical thinking skills.
But it is a good question – what do we count as an actual conspiracy? Conspiracy theories, as described in popular culture, or in everyday talk seem like wild conclusions about a minimal amount of facts, or stories taken at face value, because they seem to explain what we percieve as coincidences, even if they are not.
Yet there are open questions, to wich most often the honest person admits to be unaware of the truth behind, wether there is a conspiracy or not. Or at least only evaluates the conspiracies as possible answers among others. Only the sligthly disturbed individual sees conspiracies everywhere. But to believe in a grand scale conspiracy to me it seems most often like a reaction from ignorance. Because we all have a natural fear of the unknown. But it is much the same as in religious faith, in that people seem to take stories at face value with very little evidence, or with very poor evidence because they are unable to really evaluate information in any objective manner. And people do tie their identities to the storytelling. Do they not?
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In another guise I am something of an expert on urban myths, mass hysteria and conspiracy theories, and some of them are hilarious. There was a scare in Houston, Texas, years back about gangs of smurfs abducting kids. That’s right, the loveable little blue cartoon creatures. Not only were kids believing and spreading these stories, causing the shut down of some schools, some more gullible adults believed it too, with one family leaving the city altogether. It was eventually traced to a street gang who wore light blue jackets and called themselves The Smurfs.
Sadly, there is a another side to conspiracies which is not so funny. I’ve met many conspiracists and the vast majority of them have serious psychological problems.
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That sounds like a very fun guise to have. Urban myths, mass hysteria and conspiracy theories are all quite fascinating.
Thanks for pointing out the serious side, it’s easy to get carried away with honest incredulity or simply laughter. I guess the problem with some conspiracy theories is that they target specific groups of people, and if they gain momentum they can cause harm.
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The problem with theories on Christianity is that they abandon any effort to distinguish correlation from causation early on. Once off the rails in that fashion, they are easily hijacked or subverted – so easily that one or the other is inevitable.
Violetwisp, I’ll tell you what the problem is here. You are driving and feeding an agenda and leads to hate crimes.
White Aryans are generally more successful in worldly terms than black savages. I could speculate if you wish – a good financial head start in the middle ages when black savages hadn’t invented the wheel; a gene pool with rich creative and intelligence streaks; or simply the psychological boost of a culture that tells them they are the best, superior people of the gene pool. Whatever the case, they historically dominate in many fields.
However, this is a chance occurrence based on how humanity has developed. Their development of Africom and formulation of the white man’s burden is a conspiracy in what way?
Yes, people are cautious about criticising the actions of the Ku Klux Klan because of what happened in the Civil War, because of the overarching politics in the Deep South, and because Black Panthers are still going strong. Because of people like you spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories about whites trying to control the world by ‘bombing’ African blacks with depleted uranium and drone missiles. You’re pulling random threads from all over the place in a desperate manner.
You came here making the assumption that we’re all blinded to the ongoing inhumane action of the Ku Klux Klan. I’ve pointed out to you several times that besides the Ku Klux Klan there is no racism left in the world and you’ve ignored it because you want to believe your little conspiracy that noble white Aryan gods have oppressed black savages. You can’t even acknowledge this because it doesn’t fit with your model.
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You see what you’ve done there, Violet? You’ve concluded that Jews are racially and genetically superior, using criteria that you would not apply to other racial groups. You are a racist and a bigot. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Maybe you’re right, and social inequalities are based upon racial and genetic differences. Maybe Jews are a master race, and maybe whites are a “middle race” and black people are stunted homo erectus cavemen still lurching about the planet. Here are some people who would agree with you: Stuff Black People Don’t Like.
I disagree with you. I think your genetic bigotry is not only foul, but incorrect. I believe that all humans have the potential to achieve great things, and that your various “master races” dominate through feats of nepotism and trickery, rather than due to inherent genetic superiority.
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higharka, I am lost and would like a little clarification.
Are you saying Violet refers to me and others like myself as savages or that is your word?
I would also like to see how violet has advanced Jewish superiority.
Thanks already
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Higharka is replying to this comment on the previous post, where I made a basic speculative error (when dealing with a racist):
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Makagatu,
Violet described Jewish genes as superior to non-Jewish genes, because of the beneficial evolution Jews had undergone during the Middle Ages. Ideo sequitur that all non-Jewish genes–those which haven’t undergone the positive evolution that Jews’ have undergone–are inferior. She has stated, therefore, that Chinese, Caucasians, Arabs, Sub-Saharan Africans, and Pacific Islanders are all genetically inferior to Jews. She is, quite literally, a racial supremacist.
Violet infers the superiority of Jewish genes from the prominence of Jews in financial and political affairs. E.g., “Jews are much richer than whites, therefore Jews have evolved to be more intelligent than whites.” I suggested that there were other factors involved in the production of these statistics, but she countered me by explaining that the statistics were as they are because Jews possess genetic superiority. This same logic means that, if whites are wealthier than blacks, it is because blacks are genetically inferior.
Now, I know that Violet won’t like the sound of that. She wants to have her cake, and to eat it, too–she wants to believe that Jews are the most proportionately powerful human subgroup because of genetic merit, but that every other human subgroup is not socially positioned based upon their genetic merit. A belief in Jewish racial superiority is, of course, hypocritical for someone who otherwise claims that the human races are equal. Yet, massive amounts of propaganda directed at Violet since her childhood have convinced her that Jews are the genum exceptum, the One Master Race, and that all other lesser races suffer economic and political differences due to discrimination rather than genetics.
That contradiction greatly troubles her. That’s why she doesn’t want to read about the composition of the early Bolsheviks; about the genocide of the Cossacks, the slaughter of dozens of millions of Russian Christians by Jewish secret police that occurred before World War II; or, about the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, American neoconservativism, and other Jewish-dominated movements: it would force her to reconsider whether Jewish power flowed from sources other than genetic superiority.
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Higharka, as you well know, this is simply your interpretation and fantasy account of what I wrote. If any group of people could even have a genetically creative streak, it wouldn’t make them a master race in anyone’s eyes. It just means they are people who tell good stories or paint nice pictures. Apart from anything else, I stated before my list that it was wild speculation.
The only thing troubling me right now is that your conspiracy theory is so deeply rooted in your brain that anything I write is interpreted as supporting it. Have you read my Israel post yet?
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(Yes, this one has looked at your Israel post. Do you want me to resurrect it by posting responses there? We have so much to talk about here that’s interesting!)
All right then, Violet. Will you withdraw everything you said about Jews evolving during the Middle Ages due to Christian restrictions against usury? Because, if genetics aren’t involved, those factors can’t possibly influence today’s Jews.
Please also withdraw everything you said about the Holocaust making Jews have more natural “empathy.” The Holocaust was 70 years ago and getting more distant every day. If it didn’t make Jewish genes more empathetic, then it’s now equally relevant to everyone, since everyone can assess the historical facts themselves.
Without those genetic factors, how do you respond to the earlier points? By your own admission now, you can no longer use historical effects upon Jewish genetics to explain Jewish overrepresentation in the control of wealth and political and media power in the modern age. So, what makes them so superior, if not their genes?
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Higharka, Violet (the other one) once called me the higharka whisperer, as if I could understand you. I’m afraid I’ll have to give up on you. You’re intent on fabricating your own argument around anything anyone says and you seem to have endless hours of time at your disposal to do so. Perhaps Raut will be kind enough to continue to discuss this with you, but based on your responses to him with the same levels of fabricated nonsense, I doubt he’ll put up with much more.
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Isn’t it just SO difficult arguing with people who haven’t already accepted the love and salvation of __________ ? Honestly, I have very little patience with such people!
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Higharka. There is only one actual human race. While the differences in the appearance of humans around the world relate to their genetics, their cultures do not. From outside look you could not tell wether a person is a Swede, a Finn or a Russian, but these three still represent totally different heritages, cultures and cultural temperaments. A Finn whose genetic parents are for example Ugandan, but who has been brought up for his entire life in Finland does not in behaviour, thinking, or anything else substantial in any way differ from all the other Finns. It is childish to try to evaluate people according to their perplexion.
You can not just make up stuff and claim that is what Violet thinks. That is rude and uncalled for. But it was propably a misunderstanding, that you are big enough to apologize for, now that she has explained to you she really does not subscribe to any racial nonsense? You do understand she would never agree with any of this racist supremacy nonsense of any group of people. So, stop putting words to her mouth and get back in the conversation with at least minimum decency.
I guess it is possible, that you did not get it, so here it is as plainly as I can possibly put it: If sane people like Violetwisp refer to the Jews, we are not talking about any imaginary race, but the culture of a nation held together by a particular heritage.
Who are you referring to when you talk about the “white Aryans” anyway? To the Gypsies? To the ancestors of Pakistanis and Afghans? Because those are the people, that the word Aryans originally refers to. Some of the black African rulers of Egypt had ridden in their chariots of war thousands of years before any of the contemporary European nations had even heard of a wheel and were still using stone implements. But that does in no way make any of these people superior or inferior to each other. Does it?
Historical perspective eases up the need to see wide scale conspiracies where there are none. As well as accurate information about the facts.
How do you measure success? Is the person, or group of people who subjucates others really succesfull, or actually the lowest and most pitifull scum the world can produce? Who is the savage? What makes a man into something worth calling him a savage? An attempt to subjucate others, perhaps?
Jewish secret police in Russia??? What utter bollocks! The fact that the socialist revolutionists in Russia were not racists and subsequently took some Jews to their ranks like Leon Trotsky (whom Stalin later got murdered), does by no means confirm the ridiculous reports made by the Ohrana about some world wide Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the Tzar. Who has lied to you in this despicable way?
If you are interrested in conspiracies, perhaps you should research history on how actual and confirmed conspiracies have born. The story about Jewish conspiracy as manufactured by the Ohrana is a perfect example. Secret government security agencies are an endless source for conspiracy theories, because they need to reveal conspiracies just to keep up their funding and Ohrana was no different. But empires do have these secret security agencies… Why?
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I’m sorry, Rautakyy; earlier at this site, I’d had an extensive argument with Violetwisp and her other followers about evolution, so I’d assumed you would be a “pro evolution” poster simply because you were here. I’m glad to have found a fellow doubter who feels that the biological sciences’ current theory of evolution by natural selection isn’t a proper assessment of the way the world works!
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Well, Higharka, I am a fellow doubter of a great many things, that much is true I hope. Just not of what you seem to conclude rather hastily. I have not read your previous conversation and I am sorry too, if you have to explain some of your views again to me. However, you are very much mistaken, when you assume me to “feel” that the current current theory of evolution by natural selection isn’t a proper assesment of the way the world works. I think it represents our biology rather well, and I am in good company, as that is the current scientific understanding of the matter. Scientific method, after all, is the best if not the only way we have to access any even remotely objective information. Correct?
There is nothing I have said here that contradicts the modern theory of evolution. If you think so, it very much looks like, that you have a rather large misconception about the current theory of evolution, or about what I have said. Now to work on this issue, we should first find out what it is. Perhaps, if you would explain what in my comments made you jump to the conclusion, that I somehow do not accept the current theory of evolution?
You are aware, that the current theory of evolution does NOT support any racial supremacy nonsense? Are you? And I can only hope, that you knew, that the racists, eugenists, fascists and natzies had not grasped their contemporary theory of evolution, but were merely projecting their unhealthy competitive fantasies on it. You did know about this, did you not? Pretty much like many of the ultra religious anti-evolutionists of today. Have you noticed this phenomenon? I have.
I am assuming you read my previous comment to you, though you did not answer any of my questions. That is perfectly OK by me, as long as you thought about them. They were not for my benefit, but for yours. But you have not apologized to Violetwisp as far as I can see. Is it because, you did not understand why you should, or were you just about to?
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Oh…that’s a bit strange. Well, then, if you do believe in evolution, can you explain to me the following things:
(1) What makes homo sapiens sapiens so spiritually different from other species that, after over 100,000 years of genetic separation and highly competitive breeding in vastly different environments, no groups of these species have evolved to be different from any other groups?
I thought it was only Creationists who felt that man was a magical being, unaffected by the struggle to survive. I’ll be interested to hear why you feel that, if European and Asian populations left Sub-Saharan Africa over 100,000 years ago, they failed to evolve since then by developing any different traits than the Sub-Saharan Africans who remained behind.
(2) It is clearly possible for drastic differences in skeletal structure, muscle type and density, vulnerability to different types of disease, mating preferences, and the development of a diverse array of cultures to have occurred as a result of the evolutionary changes that (maybe?) occurred during the 100,000 years that European and Asian populations were separated from Sub-Saharan African populations. Why, then, is it impossible for any of the evolution that occurred to have affected mental changes as well as physical?
Perhaps you feel that it takes, say, only 10,000 years for Masai to develop a greater proportion of “fast twitch muscle fibers” than Okinawans. How long, then, does it take for different groups to evolve mental differences? 1,000,000 years?
Or is it impossible for humans, because of their unique immortal soul that separates them from mere animals, to undergo evolution of the mind at all?
(3) Presume that some kind of evolution did occur, causing Europeans, Asians, and Sub-Saharan Africans to have different kinds of genetics. What are some of the ways that, as scientists open to the idea of evolution, we could test out whether there were any differences?
For example, what if we had a bunch of randomly-selected Chinese, German, and Congolese people engage in two competitions: a one-hundred-meter dash, and a twenty question spatial reasoning test (based only on simple shapes, with no languages or cultural references used). What kinds of differences in results would help us to test–as scientists trying to study the results objectively, without letting our prejudices influence our conclusions–if there were any evolved differences between these groups of organisms?
In answering these questions, I think that you’ll find yourself defending the most popular, widespread religious faith in the western world–universalism. I’m concerned that you’ll cite the tenets of your faith, refer to the most prominent priests of your order, or perhaps insult me, rather than answering the questions. But I am ever hopeful. So I’ll leave you with those, and reply separately to answer the questions you said I skipped in your last post.
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I am trying to understand your line of reasoning but I met with difficulties. Earlier on in this conversation I asked whether it was Violet who called us savages but having gone through the two comment threads, I think it was you who used that word. Do you hold it that Africans are savages?
Much more relevant to this comment is what in your opinion are the problems of evolution theory by natural selection?
1. I wouldn’t know how to answer your question. I have no understanding as to what spirit is and as such would not imply one person was more spiritual than the next one.
2. I don’t understand your question.Do you mean to say humans are immortal? What are you saying about the mental environment?
3. Help me understand what you are asking
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No, Violet didn’t use the term “savage.” She said that Jews were genetically superior to other peoples. So she merely called you, and every other goy, “inferior.”
If you’re having trouble seeing how this relates, imagine that you went to a meeting of the Golden Dawn, and the party spokespeople declared that “Caucasians are a superior people to other peoples because of their long history of art and culture.” Can you see how such a statement necessarily implies that non-Caucasians are inferior to Caucasians?
That kind of bigoted logic is how racist ideologies develop.
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Rautakyy: Scientific method, after all, is the best if not the only way we have to access any even remotely objective information. Correct?
High Arka: That’s more of an imperative statement than a question. But you’re right, that’s a wonderful way of investigating things. I hope you will put that principle into practice when we investigate Jewish domination of western politics and finance. If you do so, you might discover that the world isn’t actually run based on some Ayn Randian notion of fair play and meritocracy, but rather, on an extended kinship network of highly ethnocentric bigots whose first, and still ongoing, contribution to the world was a plagiarized story about a racist desert god who advocates murdering and subjugating all non-followers, racially-based intermarriage, and the brutal stoning of homosexuals.
Again, it’s (sadly) hilarious to see all of you “atheists” bowing down to the Old Testament–the nastiest, foulest, most ripped-off religion in human history. The Old Testament is based on propertizing and abusing women, sacrificing children, murdering and stealing from every other ethnic group, and lying to every other ethnic group when it is necessary to obtain money and power.
Rautakyy: You are aware, that the current theory of evolution does NOT support any racial supremacy nonsense? Are you?
High Arka: You are aware, that the current theory of creation does NOT support any round earth nonsense? Are you?
Which is to say, yes, I’m aware that that’s what the majority of salaried, degreed employees in the science industry are willing to say in public. When one of them was retiring, recently–James Watson, was it? The DNA-discovery guy?–he said differently.
A prominent Jewish scientist did so, too. Richard J. Herrnstein co-authored The Bell Curve, which makes an extensive scientific case for African American genetic inferiority. Naturally, as a child of the Torah, one would expect him to feel that he was genetically superior.
Now, what, to you, defines “science”? Is it, “a majority vote of all the people who have jobs and degrees from universities funded by powerful families and/or governments”? I hope not. The idea of science–the thing that makes it different from faith–is that anyone can duplicate its results. In the case of the Jew I cited above, Dr. Herrnstein, you can duplicate his research on your own. IQ tests, and all sorts of similar, non-culturally-, non-language-dependent reasoning tests, all show decades of correlation between genetic background and abstract/critical thinking ability. Any scientist who says otherwise is fired by their employer.
Does that mean the results prove anything about genetics? Maybe not. I’ve often disagreed with the efficacy of such tests myself. But do the science for yourself–go find me some test results from a broad random sample of differently-gened populations, and tell me what those results show about varying intelligence between different groups.
Rautakyy: And I can only hope, that you knew, that the racists, eugenists, fascists and natzies had not grasped their contemporary theory of evolution, but were merely projecting their unhealthy competitive fantasies on it.
High Arka: John Zande, where are you? Rautakyy, I made nearly this exact argument to John a few years ago, and he told me I was stupid and didn’t understand evidence. But something tells me that you have a peculiar view of evolution: you probably think that evolution occurred based on natural selection of the fittest genes, up until about 100,000 years ago, when it promptly stopped doing that for humans (but continued working that way for every other form of life on the entire planet). You think that natural selection operates to make Jews smarter, humbler, and better organized than goy scum, but that it has had absolutely zero effect on any and all other peoples.
Therefore, every religion is stupid except for Judaism, and blacks do poorly on tests because it is white people’s fault because of racism, but Jews do better than whites on tests because whites are just inferior and Jews are smarter and have better reasoning and organizing skills, in spite of white racism which caused Jews to become smarter, even though similar white racism caused blacks to develop lower test scores while still being equally intelligent.
That doesn’t sound very scientific to me. It sounds more like you’ve selectively adapted portions of a religious faith that conform to your current worldview. Face it: you guys are just as faithful as your garden variety American evangelical. You believe little pieces of things that are true, but you make exceptions for special situations where you desperately need to reconcile a glaring contradiction.
Unlike you and the Jew Dr. Herrnstein, I’ve written about how African-derived peoples are genetically superior to other human types. I think this is empirically provable using the scientific method. But you don’t. You’re trapped inside your illusions of partial-evolution, partial atheist universalism, partial neoliberal economics, and partial African-hating Zionism. I don’t mean to be unduly harsh, but if you consider how many children in Africa are being murdered and starved right now by the colonialist philosophies you support, I think it’s not untoward to risk offending you if it has a better chance of making you think.
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High Arka, I am not here to insult you. I am far too busy to. But to direct questions I may try to give direct answers. If you please, bear in mind that I am a Finn and it is in our cultural heritage to be blunt. By the way, what does your nick mean? In Finnish “arka” means shy, or scared, wich you do not seem like at all.
(1) Spiritually different from other species means absolutely nothing. Spirituality is an imaginary concept.
In evolutionary terms for large apes like us humans it is not a very long period. Yes we have diversified into several different perplexions during that time span and there are other differences, like the sinotype teeth, for example, but our brains are not really different in the same measure. You see, evolution affects some traits faster than others. The perplexion is a trait in human kind under far more environmental pressure, than the brain.
(2) I actually answered to this already in (1), but to make sure, the mental differences could be there, if there was sufficient pressure to cause any, but since we can not observe any such differences between groups of humans even from afar and in isolated areas (wich in itself is rather rare), there is no reason to assume any. Why would you?
(3) Why should I presume any such? No reliable study has been presented, that could show such differences. And belive you me, if these differences could have been verified by testing they surely would have been. There have been far too many people pressuming such racial supremacy theories, but when they have proclaimed to have evidence, their testing methods have been as silly as their presumptions.
No, I have no “faith”. I can be persuaded to believe otherwise, but first it would need to be an established scientific theory. It is not.
I am only beginning to see what is wrong here. I mean, in our discourse. You assume, that I expect the world to have something to do with some Ayn Randian worldview and fair play and what ever. I do not know how you got there. I am no fan of Ayn Rand, nor have I ever expressed anything as such. Why on earth would you even presume such? Is it the same way you expected me to presume (3)? Then you assume me (and the other atheistis here) to bow down to the Old Testament? On what grounds? I have never bowed down to that book in my life, nor as far as I can see any other atheist has done so here? This is starting to look delusional on your part, but I expect there is perfectly valid misunderstanding on your behalf for saying so. What is it?
“Current theory of creation”??? What is that? I have never heard of any such. The word theory as in reference to science, means an established scientific theory, wich is as close to grand scale objective information we can get, while “creation” is a mere myth.
The scientific method includes peer review. That is a very important part of validating the scientific discoveries. That practice guarantees us a lot higher reliability and objectivity expectation for any scientific research even though it sometimes slows down the new discoveries. Without it any fool with a phd. could say anything and it would just turn into a nother contradictionary, but hardly very reliable information. Referring to any single scientist who happens to agree with you (or possibly not according to how difficult it is for you to understand even me) on some matter does not validate your views much. The current theory of evolution, however has been and is under constant peer reviewing pressure, and if it is ever found wanting, it will be changed. Before that we are not really warranted in contradictionary beliefs with it, that is, if we want to be objective.
As to intelligence tests, it is virtually impossible to set up tests that were not in some way culturally relative. But naturally I am interrested, if there might be some new information. What sort of tests are you actually referring to? I however, suspect that even if we could set up relatively neutral tests, that those would prove any significant differences between genetically otherwise different populations since, when grand populations are tested the people with different genetic heritage but the same cultural heritage do not stand out from the more or less culturally relative tests. They do just as well as the next person from the same culture and with totally different genetic heritage. So, how could there be a genetic link to doing good, or bad in tests?
John Zande? I am sorry, but having read quite a bit what John has to say about things, I find it highly unlikely that he would disagree with my statement. Now, as to him calling you stupid, I do believe. But he rarely does that to anyone who is not willingly ignorant. I hope you are not…
It seems you do have a tendency to jump to conclusions. Has anyone else ever pointed this out to you?
In one of your previous comments you even admit it, that you jumped to a conclusion me viewing the world in a certain way simply for commenting here and then again you jumped to a totally opposite view of me and once again wrong. Why does this happen to you all the time?
Again, you wrote: “you probably think that evolution occurred based on natural selection of the fittest genes, up until about 100,000 years ago, when it promptly stopped doing that for humans…” Do you see how you try to jump to the conclusion, that I have some peculiar idea of evolution you just made up yourself. Why? I said nothing of the kind. Then you jump to a new and as utterly outlandish conclusion, by saying: “You think that natural selection operates to make Jews smarter, humbler, and better organized than goy scum, but that it has had absolutely zero effect on any and all other peoples.” You do realize, that if I believed both of what you claim me to believe, I would be believing in two completely nonsensical and mutually contradictionary ideas. But those ideas came from your head, not mine. I do not see either of them representing any sort of reality. You just made them up. Why?
The reasons why people do better or worse in any particular tests, is almost always cultural. If Jews in general do better in tests, than others it is mostly because the tested Jews had better education. There are several cultural reason for how that could come about. For example, in Europe from as early as the middle ages were several laws that prohibited the professions that the Jews were allowed to practice. Such bans continued even after the medieval times and since science and art were not among those prohibitions in many countries, subsequently many Jews ended up on those lines of living and as was the case for all the others such professions often were inherited from one person to a nother. Banking was a nother profession, that the Jews were allowed to do, when the church policy had been that the proper Christian should not take interrest from a nother. But we are talking about events from just few hundred years ago, not 100 000 years. Nothing to really influence evolution and the Jews, though in ideology were a segragated group of people, not so in reality. Evolution has not had it’s chanses on any such young group of people as the Jews. Similarly if African Americans do worse in the very same tests in general it is because of their socioeconomic status and history that led to it, not anything to do with their genetics. Neil de Grass Tyson is an African American. His genes have not impeded him intellectually, have they? But his success does not mean he represents some super race either. Does it?
And finally you once more jump to the most wildest conclusions like this: “You’re trapped inside your illusions of partial-evolution, partial atheist universalism, partial neoliberal economics, and partial African-hating Zionism.” What made you think I support any of those ideas? I never said anything at all to even hint let alone confirm I would be a “partial atheist”, or support “neoliberal economics” nor that I was a Zionist, not to mention I that I hated Africans. You just made all that up about me. And frankly, I resent you doing so as much as I still resent you not apologizing to Violetwisp the made up stuff about her, you wrote here before.
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(My nickname’s just a place name.)
Rautakky: “[O]ur brains are not really different in the same measure. You see, evolution affects some traits faster than others…we can not observe any such differences between groups of humans even from afar and in isolated areas (wich in itself is rather rare), there is no reason to assume any. Why would you? …Why should I presume any such? No reliable study has been presented, that could show such differences. And belive you me, if these differences could have been verified by testing they surely would have been.”
High Arka: Have you even read The Bell Curve? I thought that by now, all English-speaking peoples had read it. It’s no matter; there are a jillion other sets of statistics out there about race and IQ. Here are some links:
A thorough overview of recent racial evolution, with a lot of pictures and graphs to make it easier to process the data.
A basic racialist perspective on black/white IQ distribution.
A really simple universalist apologetic for the 15 point mean difference.
A chart showing IQ distributions across many different kinds of European immigrants to America–notice how high Jewish scores are relative to others.
It is currently politically and socially unpopular to be aware of racial differences in brain function, but when it comes to objective science, the data continues to suggest that there are big differences. Are you more of a scientist, or more of a faith-based neoliberal universalist?
Rautakky: “No, I have no ‘faith’.”
High Arka: Oh, good! You answered that one after all.
In that case, you should be looking at the evidence of differences in brain function, rather than formulating your personal viewpoints based on what is currently popular.
It’s clear that you weren’t aware of the vast reams of information on racial differences in intelligence, so let me help bring you up to speed a little bit: a hundred and fifty years ago in America, when slavery was ended, neoliberal universalists proclaimed that there were no racial differences, and that people of Sub Saharan African (“SSA”) descent would prove just as intelligent as people of Chinese or European descent. After a hundred years, when the differences remained, neoliberal universalists were not dissuaded. Filled with faith in their omnipresent, unprovable Messiah, they proclaimed that “discrimination” was causing SSAs to perform worse on intelligence tests–worse than Arabs; worse than Jews; worse than Chinese; worse than Koreans; worse than Britons; worse than Canadians; worse than Germans; worse than Amerindians; worse than everyone except pygmies (Australia). So they held a Civil Rights movement and promised that now, everything would be equal.
Now, fifty years later, the evidence still does not offer any proof that the neoliberal universalist religion is correct. The American government alone has spent trillions of dollars on faith-based initiatives to force SSAs to score higher on intelligence tests–and failed again and again.
The only refuge left for your religion is to claim that intelligence tests are unfair because of racism–even when those tests are administered by SSA teachers to SSA pupils from high-income families, and even when the tests are based solely on geometric patterns, with no language or cultural knowledge component.
Rautakky: “I am no fan of Ayn Rand, nor have I ever expressed anything as such. Why on earth would you even presume such?”
High Arka: Well, maybe I’ve assumed you’ve read a lot of Ayn Rand, as I assumed you had a lot of familiarity with intelligence tests result spectra. Have you read much Ayn Rand? If you don’t know much about her philosophy (Objectivism), that could explain why you think it doesn’t apply to you.
Rautakky: “Then you assume me (and the other atheistis here) to bow down to the Old Testament? On what grounds? I have never bowed down to that book in my life, nor as far as I can see any other atheist has done so here?”
High Arka: Again, this might be another conflict based upon me assuming you’ve read things that you haven’t. Have you read the Torah? The Talmud? The Torah is a story about God’s Chosen people–a racially superior text which exalts Jews, and treats other peoples as subhuman scum. So, when Violetwisp speaks of Jews as being inherently superior to the Earth’s other races, she is supporting the essential argument made in the Torah.
Rautakky: “As to intelligence tests, it is virtually impossible to set up tests that were not in some way culturally relative. But naturally I am interrested, if there might be some new information. What sort of tests are you actually referring to?”
High Arka: Have you ever taken a proctored IQ test? You can get an idea of the experience by googling “take IQ test online.” You’ll notice, if you take them (and there are many, many other kinds of intelligence tests, but just start with IQ if you like), that they aren’t “culturally relevant.” They deal a lot with sequences of shapes and numbers, or with very basic verbal reasoning tests that can be translated into hundreds of languages without losing any of their meaning.
Rautakky: “Banking was a nother profession, that the Jews were allowed to do, when the church policy had been that the proper Christian should not take interrest from a nother. But we are talking about events from just few hundred years ago, not 100 000 years. Nothing to really influence evolution and the Jews, though in ideology were a segragated group of people, not so in reality.”
High Arka: Violetwisp, I hope you’re reading this. Rautakky just explained why it was impossible for medieval financial practices to have made Jews richer in 2015. Do you have a response to that?
Rautakky: “What made you think I support any of those ideas?”
High Arka: Answer me this: is Jewish culture superior to:
(1) European Protestant culture;
(2) African American Baptist culture;
(3) Indian Hindu culture?
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Deary me, your head is a mystery, and it’s very unpleasant how you churn out such twisted nonsense. What about you accept that humans are all one species with constantly changing and flowing characteristics that aren’t limited to man-made geographical boundaries or ever-changing cultures and societies? Just as no individual is superior (even if they happen to ‘win’ at anything), no group or people are superior to any other.
And don’t bother coming back at me with some ridiculous mashed up version of what I wrote, reconstituted to suit your vile outlook on the world.
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Violet,
That’s an interesting proposition. If humans are all one species with constantly changing and flowing characteristics that aren’t limited to man-made geographical boundaries or ever-changing cultures and societies, then what is a “Christian”?
Apparently, you have developed the ability to distinguish between two groups of humans: humans who aren’t “Christian” (Group 1), and humans who are “Christian” (Group 2).
What gives you, or anyone else, the ability to distinguish between these two groups in such an ever-changing society as ours?
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@Higharka, the Bell Curve is not new information. It is a single over twenty years old book, that has been debunked and basicly ripped apart in peer review. What of it? Blog posts by “racialists”, or what ever they call themselves, are not much of a challenge to the current scientific understanding about human evolution.
There is no research, that has passed the scientific rigour of peer review in this field to my knowledge, that would in any way suggest human brain functions were somehow linked to their perplexion, or teethtypes, or where their ancestors happened to reside around the globe. It is not about fashion, nor is it about political correctness. It is about the actual science involved.
As I did allready explained to you, the peer review is a critical part of the scientific method to establish reliable data, that can then be called scientific fact. It would do you good, to read more about this, and perhaps it could help you single out nonsensical information, that just happens to fit your presumptions (like the one you asked me to assume), before you accept it as reliable. It is not some popular vote as you would seem to imagine.
You are once again making wild assumptions, that the options for me would be either scientist or a neoliberal universalist on this issue. It shows poor judgement and a constant guessing game not much different to your previous comments where you, as you admitted already, jumped to quite a lot of conclusions. Do you see how jumping to conclusions might be a major problem in aquiring objective information about the reality?
I say this once more: Since the people with different genes do not stick out from tests when they share the cultural heritage of the population being tested, there can not be any “racial” explanation to varying differences in human intelligence.
I can see where such misunderstanding about the “race” having some sort of influence on these issues might derive from. The US for example is an example of racially divided multicultural country, where indeed some groups of humans with shared understanding of their ethnicity have all sorts of prejudices and subsequently economic division between groups of people with different heritage. This also explains some of the poor “science” put into books like the Bell Curve even as late as in the last decade of the previous millenium. But it was just bad science, though it sold out very well. I wonder why? Was the selling of the book some sort of “popular vote”, do you think?
You wrote: “a hundred and fifty years ago in America, when slavery was ended, neoliberal universalists proclaimed that there were no racial differences…” That is an utterly nonsensical claim as neoliberalism only emerged just prior to the WWII. But sadly it shows the level of your understanding of history. Is it indicative of your understanding of the reality in general, or just an indicator, that you have been mislead by being offered some very poor quality info, or down right disinformation?
Yes, the Torah and obviously the OT have ancient and tribal moralistic claims, in the sense that they make the wild claims of one nation to be the “chosen people” of a particular god to excuse tribal moralism. Tribal moralism is most often the reason for all sorts of racist thinking. What of it? What has that to do whith you claiming, that I or any other “atheists” are bowing down to the Old Testament? Your claim is as nonsensical as it was before. Is it not?
Free hint: Do not go assuming anything of any other people in the internet or infact anybody anywhere. You do not seem like very agile or able at it.
Now that you have admitted, that you did jumped to conclusions on several occasion, it might be a good moment for you to reflect upon that. Wether if it is so about other things as well? Do you jump to conclusions as easily only on me, or other people as well? And does this apply to other things as well? Like for example race and conspiracies? Could that be why you have been ridiculed here?
I have taken a number of varying IQ tests, in the army and just for fun. That is why I can say with rather high reliance, that I do not see them as very reliable method to measure the intelligence of even any individuals, and especially between people of different cultural heritages, because they are all culturally relative one way or a nother. That is the sole reason why educated persons like myself do very well in them. What possible reason would you have to ask that? I have known plenty of educated idiots who did well in IQ tests. Have you taken any? I hope you have not built an identity of feeling very smart upon having done well in some tests, because that would be imbecillic. Now would it not?
Did you really not understand a bleeding word about me explaining how culture affects the individuals and groups of humans – like the Jews – while their alledged race does not. Or did you just decide to ignore it? Of course medieval economics as part of our shared cultural heritage affects the present day Jews. There is a direct line of cultural continuance from those days to today.
You refuse to answer any of my questions directly, but instead you put out these nonsensical questions of your own. Why?
High Arka: “Answer me this: is Jewish culture superior to:
(1) European Protestant culture;
(2) African American Baptist culture;
(3) Indian Hindu culture?”
Superior in what way? Producing superior art? Superior military equipment? Superior ethics? Superior porn? Your question is nonsensical. Can you see why?
What are you aming at by posing such a total and utter idiocy? And why should my answer to these sad and absurd questions affect in any way why you previously, before I had answered and before you had even posted them, led you to assume all sorts of rubbish about me? Is this the most stupid attempt at putting out a red herring, or what?
What are you even advocating here?
I must confess, am a bit annoyed by you writing my name wrong over and over again. Once might be just a typo, or a stupid mistake, but repeating it, seems like either an attempt to annoy, or childisly distract me from the actual subject, or merely utter stupidity. Wich is it? Or is there a better reason why you did it?
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Hey buddy, sorry for misspelling your name earlier. Just a typo.
The Bell Curve was critiqued for being racist, but the underlying data which it presents was not critiqued. The data was pretty black and white–e.g., black people consistently scored lower than white people on intelligence tests of many varieties. If you graph that, it looks like a bell curve. All of the criticisms were ad hominems against the author(s), and complaints that intelligence tests were biased.
Even if intelligence tests are biased, the conclusions drawn were still accurate: e.g., black people consistently score lower than white people on (biased) intelligence tests. Similarly, engineering and science are biased. People of SSA descent obtain fewer patents and perform fewer successful heart surgeries.
As scientists, it is our duty to approach these results objectively. This means that we do not act like starry-eyed children, who are convinced that all organisms are equal because the Welfare State School told us so. Instead, we evaluate the evidence independently, free of prejudice, and conclude, “People with genetic variations SSA score lower on IQ tests than people with genetic variations EUR.”
Bell Curve aside, though, those same patterns of intelligence-tracking have remained true in the decades since that work. You neglected to address any of the current information I provided in the links. You’re welcome to go back over it again, of course.
Separate subject: how did peer review work out for Galileo? If you want to approach things scientifically, you’re going to have to stop believing that scientific progress can’t happen until it’s popular for it to happen. Throughout history, snobby majorities have refused to accept evidence that didn’t conform with their preferred worldview. When you refuse to believe that decades of objectively, double-blind, machine-graded test results mean anything, you’re no different than a Pope refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope.
Rautakyy: “I say this once more: Since the people with different genes do not stick out from tests when they share the cultural heritage of the population being tested, there can not be any “racial” explanation to varying differences in human intelligence.”
You can say that as many times as you like, but it’s not true. In America, Hispanic immigrants from rural Mexico who traveled to the U.S. twenty years ago produce children who learn English as a second language and then test higher for IQ than African American children whose families have lived in the U.S. for more than a century. In Britain, the children of second-generation Somali immigrants test lower than the children of first-generation Chinese immigrants.
I know that you don’t want to believe that genes and evolution matter. You want to believe that human beings are magical animals made of fairy dust who are not affected by evolution. Science, though, keeps giving us evidence that genetics has a preeminent link to intelligence-test results.
Rautakyy: “Tribal moralism is most often the reason for all sorts of racist thinking. What of it?”
It was on this very WordPress.com site that Violetwisp told me that Jews were a superior race because they had learned how to be superior during the Middle Ages due to usury laws. That was a racist statement, and when I called it into question, everyone jumped on me.
If you’re aware that the Torah is a racist text, and if you’re aware that Jewish culture is based upon the Torah, you must engage in quite the mental gymnastics in order to believe that Jewish culture is not racist.
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“Violetwisp told me that Jews were a superior race because they had learned how to be superior during the Middle Ages due to usury laws.”
Let’s review that slur. Violetwisp stated that IF any of your accusations had any basis in fact, it would be wiser to look to historical events to explain any trends. Violetwisp SPECULATED that perhaps some Jewish families may have had a financial head start in the Middle Ages because of usury laws. Where does ‘superior’ even enter that discussion? In fact, where does ‘race’ enter that discussion?
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Higharka, apology accepted, for mispelling my name over and over again.
The Bell Curve was mainly critiqued in the peer review about faulty methodology. It was widely also critiqued about getting racist results, wich was because some of the premises, that were absurd and resulted in racially indicative results.
This is exactly why the peer review is so important for the reliability of science. So, that no scientist alone or a group of scientists making a research has to bear the burden alone. And perhaps even more importantly, when they use faulty methods, those are noticed before any research is proclaimed to be a scientific fact. (And later used to confirm the foulest tribally moralistic prejudices people have about each other, not to mention spouting out racist nonsense propaganda.)
You would call yourself a scientist? What sort of “scientist” you exactly percieve yourself as, when you do not even understand the basics of peer review, or that Galileo Galilei was after all windicated through peer review and if he had been wrong we would not even remember his name? Fool the otherone…
Now, I’ve explained how the tests should be made in order to achieve anything even remotely “objective” once again and as simply as I possibly can to you and all you can reply with is: “it’s not true.” And by spouting out claims of arbitrary tests, that tell us that people from different cultural backrounds did on average differently in these tests you claim to have been made, wich apparently can be only found from some “racialist” blogposts, but not from respected scientific releases. Let me try once more:
Objective approach to wether a certain genegroup of people is genetically intellectually superior, or inferior to a nother requires, that the test is made in a culturally free method, even to achieve any even remotely reliable data to indicate this. Since all human made is actually cultural, this is virtually impossible, hence the only way to measure such, is to negate the effect of cultural difference to the person with a certain genetics. This can only be achieved if the persons with the particular genegroup share the culture of the testgroup of different genes to theirs. Living in the same country does not necessarily constitute as much. Does it? Hence, even if there were such tests, that you vaguely refer to, would show some immigrant groups, or alternatively some assumed racial groups with distinct culture and economic, and educational status, showed difference in testing, it would tell us absolutely nothing of their physiological capabilities for intelligence. If you actually were a scientist as you proclaim to be, you should be able to understand as much.
You still have hardly answered any of my questions, but I can only hope you at least tried to answer them to yourself. I doubt that you did.
You should apologize to Violetwisp for making up stuff, that you claimed she said, whe she did no such thing. Or you should explain – to yourself especially – how was it, that you came to so totally misunderstand our statements that you made up stuff that you seem to have believed about us. Correct?
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Rautakyy,
Before we go on–and I’m delighted to go on–we should hash out some basics regarding science. In addressing my Galileo example, you seem to be misunderstanding the function of peer review. Peer review does not prove something correct or incorrect. At one point, Galileo’s theory was viewed as incorrect after peer review. At a later point, his theory was viewed as correct after peer review.
Do you see, then, how what made Galileo’s theory correct was not the process of peer review itself? It was the falsifiable, repeatable nature of Galileo’s claims that made them scientific–not the fact that other learned men discussed them, whether to approve or disprove.
Similarly, it is possible, even in such a magical and advanced year as 2015, for “peer review” to be incorrect.
What makes science “science” is that it does not rely on the authority of church or state. Even if the state organizes universities! What makes science “science” is that it can be duplicated and re-observed by other people. The consensus of this time period’s current “wise men” does not make something correct. For thousands of years of human history, wise men have been in complete agreement about a great many incorrect things. Even though you now have a smartphone, you shouldn’t be so arrogant as to believe that the wise men of your earthly time period are correct whenever they come to a consensus.
So, be a scientist. Be an independent observer of the evidence. Look over some statistics that break down intelligence-test scores by race, and explain to me why the results are reliable/unreliable, and suggest a conclusion to explain the racial gap. If you don’t want to read through the links I already provided you, you can even use Google to search for other sets of results–there must be at least some large sample studies (thousands of people, not just a classroom or two) out there in which Sub Saharan Africans score higher than Jews, Japanese, Chinese, or Britons, right? Google “IQ scores by race” and look for the raw data that can back up your claim.
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(Or, if you don’t want to look up your own studies, you can use the ones I linked, or critique the ones in The Bell Curve. Have you actually read that book, by the way? Or did you simply take the word of a bunch of newspaper and television reporters that its research was shoddy? I’ve read the book, and the research isn’t shoddy–it’s based on standardized tests given to students. I do feel that the authors were pushing a racialist agenda with which I disagree, but nonetheless, the basic essence of the conclusions they drew about the tests they covered was sound. Namely, SSAs did score lower than Euros. The tests clearly showed that genetic factors were the most significant variable–not income, not region, not weather, not family culture, not parental education…just genetics. The other influences had a much lesser effect than genetics.
If you disagree, then please read the book! I’d love to talk about what parts of the studies you found to be flawed.)
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Oh, Higharka, I am sorry for not replying to you sooner, I was out sailing for a few days.
There was no actual contemporary “peer review” for Galileo, now was there? There were not many “peers” to him, and he was mainly reviewed by “wise men” of the church with very strongly established biases, but not recognizing the scientific method on any level. But Galileo’s science was windicated later in the “peer reveiw” pretty much like you describe about the testability of his findings, when people started to understand and agree on the basics of the scientific method. Science has since moved forward quite a bit, and by the late 20th century when the Bell Curve came out it was already advanced enough to debunk the book rather early. The only reason we are now even discussing it here is because some racially inclined people found it usefull to support their preassumed biases and presuppositions about the racial differences giving different value to different groups of people. Right? But it was a single book and it was faulty. Not because newspapers and TV condemned it, but because of faulty methodology and premises. Several scientists made it rather clear soon after it was published, how it came to the wrong conclusions by making faulty premises. I do believe you can find the critique directed at it in the peer review. Look up for example what Stephen J. Gould wrote about it.
Referring to Galileo, you seem like one of those silly creationists who try to fight against the scientific world view by saying, that the scientists have been wrong before, so they can be wrong today too and that is why they think they are justified in thinking the Bible is absolutely true. But it is a false dichtomy, as the myth in the Bible is not established as truth by some scientists being wrong any more than the Bell Curve is established as the truth, by some “wise men” being wrong about the findings of Galileo. However, by using this similarly childish analogy, you have revealed, you do not fully understand how science works and how do we establish some information as a scientific fact, or even at least somewhat objective in scientific terms. This is once again a typical example of jumping to the wildest conclusions on minimal evidence, if any.
Now, it is a highly recommendable attitude, that you wish to think like a scientist, but then that demands, that if you ever end up doing so, you accept the critique too, not just a single book wich happens to confirms your biases, or convinces you to have any, exactly like some religious person would do.
Ask yourself why do you find this one book so important? Did it dramatically change your worlview, or did it mindblowingly confirm your pre-existing biases? Why is it that you keep referring to any critique towards it only as something the media put out? Is it because you did not even know, that it was debunked by actual peer review? If so, why was that? Simply because you are scientifically illiterate, or because you loved what the book had to say so much that you deliberately chose to be in denial about the acutual critique it has recieved? Sometimes it is less embarrasing to be a bit illiterate about something, than to be willingly ignorant, is it not?
I have already explained to you in so many different ways and words, why such tests, as to wich you keep referring to, do not reveal any genetical difference in our physiological capabilities of thinking between groups of people from around the globe. Hence, I shall not bother to do so here. Read again my previous comments. Only cultural differences can be traced through any such testing and most often the tests only reveal the education level of these groups in terms of the knowledge and culture of the people who made the test. You see, for example, an Inuit individual or a Bushman individual may not do higly in an IQ test in second or third language, but with their own cultural education they may survive and thrive in the most harsh environmental conditions on the planet. Correct? Does that make these individuals intelligent or not?
There are some army tests, that I have taken (and similar to wich the Bell Curve mistakenly referred to as intelligence tests), that are not so much based on cultural skills such as languages, but such tests are rarely even meant to measure the physiological capabilities to intelligence dependant on genetics, or the cultural intelligence of the person dependant on education, rather their abilities to function under pressure, to follow orders (blindly is often preferred in military) and just plain old consistency of their nature. Do you see, why it is extremely hard to make such tests to measure intelligence, or even other more definable mental capabilities?
There are a lot of bogus about these issues in the internet, because more or less only racially biased people are even interrested in establishing any difference between the presumed races between humans, while the rest of us can clearly observe, that the tone of skin is not in any way alligned with intellectual ability. I ask again, is Neil de Grass Tyson in your opinion impeded in his intelligence any way by his genetics? What about Barack Obama? And you know I could go on a rampage of names here… Does cultural success, bank account, social adaptability, mathematical talent, musical talent, literal talent, skills in abstact thinking, or any of these actually establish what we call intelligence? Would an intelligent person ever even reveal they think there are racial differences in intelligence, even if any intelligent person was ever to think so? Would making such comments out loud not reveal the utmost stupidity in terms of social intelligence? 😉
Intelligence is such a difficult thing to measure. Clearly, to set apart from intelligent people, there are idiots who believe in their own biased world views no matter the evidence, and clearly among them are idiots who wish to find “scientific” sounding excuses to their biases. Is there an observable division between the skin tones of such idiots? Perhaps, this kind of behaviour reveals an underlying idiocy in some particular assumed racial groups? Such people seem always able to find some “research” to back up even their wildest claims. Even barking mad creationists have their own little group of “scientists”, but in the meanwhile the real science moves on. Us laymen, because that is what we are, if we are not educated as scientists and experts of the certain field of study, should always move with the main current. It may not get it right in every research, like in the case of Galileo (you brought up), but do not worry – the methodology and cofirming mechanisms like peer review has greatly advanced since his days. And these days faulty methodology, as in the case about the Bell Curve, will usually be revealed in a short while.
I am truly sorry, if you found the Bell Curve convincing. I do not bother much time on any books, that are so strongly debunked in peer review, from outside of my field of expertise. Besides, I do not find your assesment of anything convincing, because you have here demonstrated such a lack of understanding of science and even more so a chronic habit to jump to the wildest conclusions – some of wich you allready admitted. And on admitting even as much I respect your character.
I would appriciate your character even more, if you could admit to yourself and explain your misunderstanding and subsequent misrepresentation of what Violetwisp said here.
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Rautakyy: There was no actual contemporary “peer review” for Galileo, now was there? There were not many “peers” to him, and he was mainly reviewed by “wise men” of the church with very strongly established biases, but not recognizing the scientific method on any level.
High Arka: At the time, the men who reviewed his work and banned it were considered wise, learned, and logical. They gained that authority by association with a wealthy, powerful firm that sanctioned their actions and opinions. It was “peer review,” even if it was “bad peer review.”
Today, the people who approve of the widespread publication of scientific papers are, too, peers who gain their authority by association with wealthy, powerful firms that sanction their actions and opinions. It’s still peer review; it’s just a peer review based on money, politics, and normative assumptions about the nature of reality–along with subjects so sacred that even discussing them is prohibited by law in some countries.
Rautakyy: But Galileo’s science was windicated later in the “peer reveiw” pretty much like you describe about the testability of his findings, when people started to understand and agree on the basics of the scientific method.
High Arka: People don’t still agree about those things. When you mean “people,” you mean, “Degreed researchers employed by powerful corporations or universities.” That isn’t what science is about–science is about anyone being able to test a theory and falsify it. You should be relying on your own interpretation of the data, rather than on what modern “experts” tell you to think about that data. Use your own mind! Don’t let Father Gould tell you what to think–read the data for yourself!
If you read Gould’s Curveball, you’d find that his criticisms of Murray’s and Herrnstein were not criticisms of the IQ/race test results. Rather, Gould focused primarily on how there were “other” kinds of intelligence (and there are–I’ve written about this myself), and how socioeconomic factors, rather than genetic ones, were responsible
More detailed recent research–which I’ve cited to you in the course of this very discussion–shows that Black/White/Chinese/Jewish scores differ by about the same proportions as Murray/Herrnstein discovered even when variables such as family income, social status, nutrition needs, country of socialization/citizenship, neighborhood home values, and age were accounted for. You’ve chosen to ignore that, and instead focus on your interpretation of someone else’s criticism of 20-year-old data, which data has been again vindicated, over and over, in the years between.
Check out this link on SAT score differences in students from the same country, same age, same educational institutions, accounting for parental income and parental educational achievement. You will notice that, as family income goes up, SAT scores rise for all groups–but still maintain about the same genetic differences between populations of different racial backgrounds. Students of East Asian background, for example, come in at the top end at every point. The same effect occurs when scores are considered against the variable of parental education levels.
(If you can’t read the entire post, scrolling down will show you some simple graphs of the data.)
I know that this is difficult for you to accept, because your faith commands you to believe that there are no genetic differences in human intelligence. But I hope that you can approach the data with a scientific mindset, rather than a faith-based one.
Now, there are genetic differences between different human populations. Some types of people score higher on IQ-type tests. Does this mean they’re less worthy, or less human? Not at all. Perhaps they possess greater emotional intelligence, or greater levels of intuition. Perhaps they possess enhanced types of intelligence which we don’t yet recognize and which we are not able to track. As scientists, though, we must evaluate the data, and say that, at least, there are genetic differences in the expression of this one particular kind of intelligence based around IQ-type tests. Peoples who score higher on IQ tests might, for example, make better engineers, while people who score higher on different types of tests might make better guidance counselors, therapists, artists, etc.
Violetwisp feels there are such differences–she’s suggested that Jews are more financially astute because they evolved to be that way during the Middle Ages in Europe. Is that true? Maybe so! Maybe the fact that Christians would not engage in usury, but Jews would, caused Jews to selectively breed for skill at usury, while causing Christians to breed against skill at usury. An unanticipated by-product of this type of breeding could be that Jews are not just more intelligent with regards financial matters, but more intelligent overall.
(I don’t agree with that argument, but it is the one Violetwisp presented in support of her hypothesis of Jewish genetic superiority. It’s certainly a hypothesis that we could study more, if we wanted to, even though I think she would be proven wrong.)
You may have noticed that I am unswayed by your appeals to the bandwagon. For me, it is not whether a “majority” of “respectable scientists” votes on something that makes it true. Rather, it depends only on the evidence. I know that, to you, today’s “learned men” seem very proper and righteous, just as the majority of learned men in Galileo’s day appeared very proper and righteous. However, I hope you can some day see that, even if a majority of scientists believes something to be true–or even if all other scientists do–then that does not make it so! We must use our own rationality to study these data, instead of simply trusting that the current consensus is accurate.
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Higharka, why am I not surprized that you did not answer any of my questions? Did you even try and fail, or did you just ignore them?
For you to claim the priests who reviewed Galileos work from their religiously biased viewpoints were some sort of scientific peer review, shows your utter and total lack of understanding of science as does your entire comment, including silly notions that the scientific community is just a tool of the corporate world. That is just a nother unrealistic conspiracy theory. Yes, there is funding from corporations in the scientific community, but you can not simply assume all the brilliant minds have sold their integrity. That is no different from the mad ravings of the ultimate conspiracy theorists, the climate change denialists. What next? Does it have to do something with the chem trails, or tin foil hats perhaps???
The scientific peer review critique hit a great number of problems with the Bell Curve, including precisely the problem of how socioeconomic factors, rather than genetic ones, were responsible for differences in any even remotely reliable tests, but you would claim that it did not? Or what exactly?
Gould claimed that the Bell Curve made four basic assumptions about intelligence:
Intelligence must be reducible to a single number.
Intelligence must be capable of rank ordering people in a linear order.
Intelligence must be primarily genetically based.
Intelligence must be essentially immutable.
According to Gould, if any of these premises were false, then the entire argument would disintegrate. Now, these are all pretty definate and extreme premises, one might even say they are extraordinary claims. Are they not? Are they even likely to be all true? Such premises seem to rather direct the results of any study wich assumed any of them, than to be in any way reasonable starting points.
Naturally genetics influence intelligence and it is natural to assume they may affect the intelligence of an individual as a member of a larger group such as a family, or even some bigger unit. But it is a total misunderstanding on how human genetics work, if one is to assume that an individual is destined to be impeded by their family genetics on just about anything exept to some extent their perplexion and sometimes hair type. There are differences inherent to groups from around the globe, but then those are mostly known to be such outer differences, that have been under harder evolutionary pressure, like for example the perplexion. But sometimes evolutions simply changes the species faster than in others. The intelligence of a species as far as it can be measured or compared
The writer of the blog post you linked to obviosly had swallowed the study by Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2005) without really understanding the critique towards it. I wonder why? Was it that the writer of that post, somehow felt rewarded in their own previous intuition and biases about this issue, when the study seemed to back such up? But the writer of that post had the decency to also post the reviews they had recieved, that pretty much debunked their hypothesis. Did you read those?
Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. even make a note about brain size, wich is a ridiculous method to measure intelligence if there ever was any. The raven has a lot smaller brain than a lot of mammals, but it shows by human standards far more intelligence, than say a mountain sheep. What are these dudes trying to pull? I thought the times of skull measuring eugenists were long since gone…
But we are not really getting anywhere here are we? What then, if we were to assume that there is indeed a connection between our skin tones and genetic ability for intelligence? What would be the moral solution to such a problem? To give the genetically impaired racial groups some form of social support through positive discrimination, perhaps? That they should have better education to repair their worse initial situation? That they should enter higher levels of education and social positions with lesser demands? What about the individuals among them who were not impaired by their genes? Or are you suggesting they are all and that you can recognize stupid people according to their skin tones? And to achieve a full emancipation then logically would be for the representatives of such groups to recieve incentives to interbreed with other groups as to even up any gaps between cultural groups of people? Or what? What would the social implications of such information be, if in this world with so many racistically inclined people in it and what should they be ethically?
No, I have no “faith” in anything. You are once again jumping to wild conclusions about me, and this time it is after I have already explained this to you several times over and over again. This is getting a bit annoying. Are you not a total nincompoop to even suggest such?
You wrote: “Now, there are genetic differences between different human populations.” No that is not at all established by the source material in the silly blog post you linked in your comment. Infact, the blog post seems to be written by a total imbecil (who not surprizingly seems eager to jump to particular conclusions, wich is most often also the shortest route to false conclusions), but it has a link to a paper by a pair of researchers who claim there may be a greater influenfe by genetics than previously assumed, and a number of researchers who point out it is unlikely, and that there are a number of reasons why the foundings of Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. are quite lacking in methodology. Do you see the difference and why you can not jump to such conclusions as you yourself just did? Once again, if I may add…
Then you wrote: “Some types of people score higher on IQ-type tests. Does this mean they’re less worthy, or less human? Not at all. Perhaps they possess greater emotional intelligence, or greater levels of intuition. Perhaps they possess enhanced types of intelligence which we don’t yet recognize and which we are not able to track.” Indeed, there I can agree with you. But you see the trouble with intelligence is indeed, that only stupid people think it can be efficiently measured. Especially if we try to do so without accepting the cultural influence. We simply have no tools for such. That also leads to the trouble of not being able to provide reliable data about the genetic connection to intelligence.
There is a nother major problem than how to negate the influence of culture with assuming genetics influence the average intelligence of some particular ethnic groups of people than that it can not really be measured. That is, that the options are not at all like presented by Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. as 0% genetic /100% or 50% genetic/50%, simply because that is impossible to measure and as such just a nother false dichtomy. Rather the question is, wether if there is a significant amount of genetic influence on the intelligence of people of some assumed and specified racial groups. For us to examine anything as such we would have to be able to evaluate what social implications connected to such would be significant enough to even worth mentioning? What are we to do with such information?
This entire question is on the level of trying to evaluate wether if redheads, or lefthanders are more, or less intelligent according to one rather relative and arbitrary method to measure such, like the IQ tests. What on earth would we do with the info that the lefthanded people are on average more intelligent than those who primarly use right hand or have red hair? Should we try to assign left handed then to a career more likely suited to them, than the redheads on average?
Some test differences in students from the same country, same age, same educational institutions, accounting for parental income and parental educational achievement are not yet even close to negating the cultural effects of different cultural identities. Now are they? People still bear the burdens and benefits of their ancestors, family traditions and cultural connontations. It is quite revealing to assume such would not affect the test and then come to the conclusion, that the explanation must be racial genetics. That is just about as faulty as using the bell curve as a measuring stick for any social phenomenon – wich is why the mathematichal method has been removed from such usage in all civilized countries as far as I know. It is stupid because it is self fulfilling.
Where exactly did Violetwisp make such a ridiculous argument, that in the time span from the medieval period (or even the entire written history of the Jewish people) their environment (changing all the time under cultural evolution) could have had time to actually affect their genes to set them racially apart from other people they were in contact with, as you would claim? Could you be so kind as to show me where was that seemingly mad claim made, because I find it hard to believe, not least because she has allready plainly enough expressed not to have claimed anything such? And if you can not point out such a wild claim, why would you yourself demand that she did claim it?
Jews are infact quite a good example of succesfull mixing of genes and culture with the grand population. That is, untill some racialists decided to get rid of them once and for good. And based it on these racist biases learned from religious cultural heritage and excused through a fantasy the racist rightwingers liked to call “science”, wich functioned by them choosing the most degenerate studies from their contemporary scientific eugenical hypothesis, that convinently seemed to support their own very cheap self image as some sort of super humans. All this just by the fiat of being born as members of some arbitrarily defined fantasy of a race, that they did called the Aryans. You are familiar with this part of history at least, are you not?
The graphs on the “Liberal Biorealism” -site (what ever, that name is supposed to stand for) are actually evidence for the reasons of IQ tests to be mainly affected by cultural influence, rather than some genetic one, if they even are for real. Let me explain this to you. First, they all show a clear growth by increased social status. That is explained by several different factors, like mainly education, but also nutrition and social emphasis on striving for better and such. The fact that in those graphs the groups, that start from lower postions than others grow at the same rate as the others only reveals a nother cultural effect, not some genetic effect at all. It is only natural that the growth is not radically steeper in any of these groups, because basicly such groups based around ethnicity are artificial, yet the groups are formed of humans and humans are very similar regardless of percieved culture or imaginary and artificial concepts like race.
Here in Finland similar graphs have shown us for decades, that the Swedish speaking minority does better than the Finnish speaking majority in a bundle of fields starting from general feelings of happiness and ending in cardiovascular diseases. As the wealth in the society grows, so does the success of both of these groups and indeed it grows in the same measure, not at all so that the group that started from a lower position would show more rapid growth, even though the society in general is turning into a more egalitarian direction. But the Swedish speaking Finns have almost universally the very same genes as the Finnish speaking majority. Hence, the reason for any difference simply can not be genetic. Why then should we expect that any similar phenomenon between different genetic groups, that also happen to have different cultural traits, was mainly, or even to the extent worth mentioning caused by genetics, rather than the culture?
You wrote: ” For me, it is not whether a “majority” of “respectable scientists” votes on something that makes it true.” Well now, I can appriciate someone using their own brains, rather than to follow some consensus and for following the evidence where it leads. But I am affraid this comment by you also demonstrates almost to the full extent how you do not understand much about science yet. I also rather follow the evidence, than rely on the science of others – but that applies mainly on my own fields of study, where I am the expert. Or rather where I am one of the many experts. That is exactly why the peer review processes are so vital for the reliability of science. So that we can make the science made better.
However, in recognizing my own education and expertise, I also am forced to recognize the expertise of others in their fields. I for sure know why I am an expert in my field of study, and do not expect most amateurs even to understand much of what other experts in my field of study have achieved. Not at least the sort of amateurs who go cherry picking between disagreeing research points according to their childish biases, or who do not recognize the scientific method as far as to understand why peer review is essential for us to rely on the study made. Right?
If I had to choose between extraordinary claims made by a study or two on a field of wich I am not an expert of – the research of these couple of studies largely critiqued and basicly chastisized and debunked by the peers and scientific community because of faulty methodology – and the general view the scientific community by and largely accepts, then I would be a nutter to assume the debunked study was more likely to be true. Now, was I not? And my choise was well warranted when I made it, even if then later I had to change my mind when opposite evidence was brought forth for the experts in the field to recognize and windicate the previously suspected studies. Correct?
There are a plenty of problems in how science works, but at very least you should admit, that we have come long way since the days of Galileo, and that the scientific method, the peer review and the general understanding of the world in scientific terms are far more advanced today. Should you not? In my opinion you should also recognize that the Galileo example was childish on your part, but if you do not see why that was childish, then I must recognize my own limitations in explainin why something is childish…
You see, the evidence is not just some study, that happens to agree with our preassumed expectations, or biases – yours or mine. In science there are always going to be different views on a plenty of subjects, but do not worry, science is a self repairing mechanism. The studies about different intelligence between groups of people with lets say different perplexion may once be found as some sort of scientific facts, but that day is not today. Today we have several varying views on the issue, and it seems very much that the idea that genetical connection between percieved race is a nonsensical idea let loose by people either with racial bias, or with faulty methodology. At very least it is not established with good enough evidence yet, that we should have very firm beliefs in any of it.
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(1) Numbering issues. I’m going to try numbering issues that we discuss in order to help us both address them. You have a lot of talking points to repeat, and you’ve clearly reviewed the Wikipedia entry on Dr. Gould’s work, but if you’re not up to reading entire books or evaluating data sets yourself yet, it would help us out if we could use numbers to be more specific about each issue that we address.
(2) Your questions. Can you help me figure out which questions of yours that I’m not answering by numbering your questions? For future reference, if you write a lengthy paragraph describing the way you feel, and then conclude that paragraph, “You do realize I’m right, don’t you?” that is not a question so much as a demand.
(3) Nomenclature. You have a great temporal bias toward the wise men of your Age. You think that the magical words “science” and “scientists” are completely different than the magical words “priest” or “divinity.” It only seems apparent to you, though, because you are alive now. In five hundred years, the term for wise men may be something entirely different than “scientist.”
So, in 2015, you are very impressed that a majority of “scientists” believe something. In 1215, though, people like you were very impressed that a majority of “priests” believed something. That consensus is irrelevant.
Even during your Age, that has been the case. During the age of the religion of Scientism, in which you live, scientists have held these majority beliefs based on peer review:
A) Flour-water (“pap”) is a healthy food for newborn human infants;
B) Cow’s milk is a healthy food for newborn human infants;
C) Cutting or burning away flesh from the genitals of infant boys and/or girls is a safe, hygienic practice that protects people from developing unnatural sexual lusts later in life;
D) Smoking unfiltered tobacco cigarettes is good for the body;
E) Cocaine use is good for the body;
F) Homosexuality is a dangerous mental illness that should be cured with electric shock therapy.
The scientists who advocated for all of these positions were “peer reviewed” and had “majority acceptance of the scientific community” in their day. So you will understand why I am completely, totally, 100% unimpressed when you try to use the bandwagon argument to convince me that something you say is accurate.
I am not impressed. Galileo was not impressed. History will not be impressed. Truth does not depend upon a majority vote of influential people. I am talking to you, and I want you to review the data and discuss it–I don’t want you to just repeat back to me what a bunch of famous, powerful, salaried academics have to say. Mix your own mind with the evidence!
Since this number (3) went on at length, let me try to condense it down into a sentence for purposes of simplicity: the names, titles, social standing, and numerical majority of people who agree with something does not make it true, so stop arguing the point by appealing to a majority.
(4) Assigning people social roles based on intelligence. I completely agree with you that we should not be assigning people social roles based on their perceived genetic intelligence. That’s why I disagree with Violet that we should give so much money and leeway to Israel to murder Palestinian children just because Jews are “genetically more intelligent and more empathetic.” I think we completely agree on this point.
(5) Violetwisp’s genetic superiority arguments. In the thread posted immediately prior to this one:
Here’s one quote: “People of Jewish origin are generally more successful in worldly terms than many of the rest of us…[because of] a good financial head start in the middle ages when usury was illegal in the Christian world; a gene pool with rich creative and intelligence streaks; or simply the psychological boost of a religion that tells them they are the best, chosen people of the only creator god. Whatever the case, they do well in quite specific fields…However, this is a chance occurrence based on how humanity has developed.”
Violetwisp explicitly bases her argument for Jewish superiority on the “creative” and “intelligence” streaks of the Jewish gene pool, as a result of how humanity developed. This is an explicitly racial argument.
I am here arguing against racism, and have been since the beginning. That makes me a pariah on this race-based blog, but I don’t mind. I’d rather be on the side of truth and justice, even if you all outnumber me and make fun of me.
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Higharka, you wrote: “I am here arguing against racism, and have been since the beginning.” Exellent. That means we are on the same side and that you have actually chosen the ethical view. Why is it then, that it seems you try to jump to the same absurd conclusions as the racists? As you are against racism, you should try to think people as individuals and not some representatives of a race – other than the human race.
Now that we have established, that we have the same ethical goal, I would wish you would stop using argumentation, that is racist in the sense, that it emphezises on assumed, but not verified differences between humans based on their genetic heritage.
(1) The numbering is a good idea.
Yes, I often remind myself of stuff from Wikipedia, that I have years ago first learned elswhere. Especially if someone brings up a research that was debunked already over twenty years ago. What of it? It is not like I depended on Wikipedia.
(2) For starters, you could answer me this: What sort of scientist do you view yourself as? What is your field of study and expertise? Let me guess, it is not human genetics, or sociology?
I am originally a blacksmith, but I have also education in archaeology and religion studies in the university. This is how I have learned about the philosophy of science and how the scientific method works. (That is where I jumped to the band wagon! 😉 )
What were your pre-existing expectations based on the “race” of different human individuals, before you read the Bell Curve?
(3) Since you have declared to be against racism, I am assuming, that we are both after the truth, in spite of our biases. And we are both against racism because so far we have not learned anything about the reality, that would justify racism. Did I get this right? But in order to achieve truth about anything we need to understand how to go about to learn about the most objective view on the truth value of issues. We both make appeals to science, our difference of opinion and view is just that it seems to me, you have had hard time in understanding how science works. That is, as you would cut out the peer review from the scientific method and process altoghether and go picking and choosing the researches, that impressed you as if that was enough to verify them as truth.
What you would call a “temporal bias” is perfectly justified. Yes, I expect we are going to have better information on a number of issues in the future. However, I do not go guessing as to what that might be. The best and most objective awailable information is today what the scientific community can offer. But if we compare the quality of information the contemporary universities had in the time of Galileo and today, the big difference is, that they had not yet developed the scientific method as the one we have today – they did not even have a proper peer review process. 😉 Part of the scientific method is peer revew, that verifies, or debunks individual researches. As it has verified most of what Galileo said and debunked most of the Bell Curve…
Science is not a religion in wich you go cherry picking from among the studies what happens to please you, or confirms your pre-existing biases and then have faith in it. It is actually a long term process part of wich the peer review is. All scientists in the world recognize the importance of the peer reveiw, even when it does not yield to their own views. And no, even the peer review does not get every mistake in individual studies immidiately, but science as a process gets better all the time as the peer reviews are based on a vider variety of research on the same field and on interconnected fields. So, as I said before, the Galileo example was childish. I would like you to acknowledge it was, because if you are incapable of even getting as much, from our conversation, then this seems like a wasted effort on my part – as then obviously I am inadequate to explain to you how the scientific processes factually work.
Your examples from A through to F are infact examples of how important the peer reveiw is. You listed these as examples of how scientists have been wrong, but how do you know they were infact wrong? Because you read all these studies and they did not impress you? Or because these were all individual researches, that could have been taken at face value, as you did with the Bell Curve. But they were debunked first by peer review and some time later by better research.
The peer review is not some “band wagon”, but an essential part of why the scientific process is a reliable method to achieve even remotely reliable data. Sometimes it works faster, sometimes it takes years for a research to be peer reviewed. But the process is becoming faster and faster. Without it, any research could be taken at face value by anybody, and you would have no reason not to believe for example, that: “F) Homosexuality is a dangerous mental illness that should be cured with electric shock therapy.”
(4) I am glad that we are in agreement about that. However, you are infact also in agreement on that issue with Violetwisp. Who has said nothing in contrast to our shared opinion of it. I do not know how you could have gotten her so very wrong in this issue. Nowhere have I seen her to have expressed anything the like as you would have her. Or did I just miss it somehow? Where was that exactly? The actual question here is, how did youg get her sooo wrong?
(5) Do you have a reading disability? I do not ask that as to mock you, I do not think any less of you, if you do. But I need to ask you, because that seems like the only sane explanation, for how you got Violetwisp this wrong (again) on this issue. Or is there a nother reason?
Violetwisp specifically said: ” I could speculate if you wish…” That means, there could be an ample variation of reasons for why a social group of people, such as the Jews differ from some other populations. The “gene pool” is an existing thing as you have insisted yourself before, but hardly a likely reason for anything why the Jews differ from some other social groups. The term was obviously put there with a tongue in cheek, but for some reason you grabbed onto it. Why? Is it because you yourself are inclined to think racially? When she referred to “how humanity has developed” it was not about race, or any such imaginary things, but about a different social group. She was obviously referring to human cultural development. Only a total moron would refer to the development of Jews as something as ridiculous as a race in the miniscully short span of time from the middle ages to today – and Violetwisp is no moron.
This is not a “race-based blog” at all. And that comment by you is sadly telling of your ability to understand the written word and reason with it. It makes your comments seem as if you are fighting some demons of your own (and just so that you get it, I do not believe in demons, it is a symbolic expression) that are infact not on this blog site. Perhaps, it is just a reading disablity, but if it is not, then what?
Sometimes the windmills are windmills and not giants. But I believe you have potential, and that you will learn to face those demons, especially if you learn more about science, because understanding reality may help you in your efforts.
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(Rautakyy, I’d be delighted to continue our discussion, but Violetwisp is now censoring me, so in the event she lets this reply of mine go through, you’ll have to look me up on my blog and comment there.)
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Higharka, you’re right. I’m not used to the foul minefields around when conversing with racist conspiracy theorists. Odd that you replied to my comment on the wrong post, kind of confuses things – if you try and hit ‘reply’ where you want to reply, it helps aid the exchange of straw men.
So, I’ll remember in future when conversing with racist conspiracy theorists that when speculating as to why one group of people earns more money than others, I should just stick to environmental influences, which I did incidentally in two out of the three of my random speculative guesses.
However, I’m afraid I can’t follow any of the mirror logic you’ve used in your comment above. Does that really seem parallel to you?
Indeed all humans have the potential to achieve great things. But there is no such thing as a master race. Most people in positions of power and influence get there through a combination of environmental factors – maybe access to good education, chance encounters and opportunities, perhaps family connections and trickery on occasion, and a million other little details.
Once again, you are ignoring everything I say except for the occasional part you feel you can twist to pull into your conspiracy theory. This could really get tiring …
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Hey Violet,
Unfortunately, Tildeb wasn’t able to answer any of the questions raised in my response to your last post, which occurred on: August 5, 2015 at 3:48 am.
I may have discouraged him from googling for the answers, but perhaps you or another of your readers would be willing to explore that line of inquiry? You did suggest that eventually you’d do some of the reading, and I’m not sure if you’ve been too busy responding to do so. By all means, I’d love to hear your answers to those questions, if Tildeb is not going to be able to provide them!
Until then, please consider the following scenario. You’re an 18th century abolitionist in the State of Virginia in North America. You sit down to tea with the proud gentleman owner of a plantation and 200 slaves. You try to explain to him that it is wrong for him to own slaves, and he counters with the following:
“Most people in positions of power and influence get there through a combination of environmental factors – maybe access to good education, chance encounters and opportunities, perhaps family connections and trickery on occasion, and a million other little details.”
What would you say to this person to convince him that he was wrong? Presume that he is convinced that it was his ancestor’s hard work, luck, and occasional clever maneuvering that made him the master, rather than the slave?
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Higharka, that scenario may make sense to you, but it means nothing to me. It’s completely illogical.
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That’s sad. This one has heard that many other Terrans are able to imagine scenarios that haven’t happened. For example, “If Picasso were still alive today, and could comment on the artistic value of Transformers 6: Birth of Optimus, what do you think he’d say?”
You should consider googling “thought experiment.” It’s an established tool in philosophy.
Most likely you actually can engage in some acts of imagination. For example, “If Hitler were resurrected and started a new Nazi Party and built new concentration camps, would you vote for him?” Surely you would be able to answer “no” to that question, right? So it may be the case that you are avoiding High Arka’s questions in order to shield your psyche from the cognitive dissonance that would occur if you were forced to reconcile your views on ethnic superiority with your views that there is no such thing as ethnic superiority. Keep trying!
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Here’s a wee thought experiment for you. If someone told you that ants were running the world because they see them constantly picking up and moving small pieces of anything into dark and secret holes – and there are literally trillions of them at work, swarming the whole planet – what would you say to them? How would you convince them that in spite of the fact that they are doing something useful, you are actually superior to them?
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I didn’t say I was superior to ants. What I did say was that people who self-identify as Jewish, or who are descended from individuals who self-identified as Jewish, have significantly greater per-capita household wealth than those who do not meet such criteria.
Do you think of me as a human being, however flawed? I’m here talking to you, right now. I’m interested in what you have to say. This is a great opportunity for you to help me understand the ways in which I’m incorrect and you are correct. Instead of preaching to the choir, as you normally do, I am someone who disagrees with you and is willing to talk to you. Take advantage of that opportunity! It doesn’t come often, in life. Most people who disagree with you would rather go somewhere else, and talk about how stupid you are in the company of other people who disagree with you.
Since Tildeb was too tentative to answer any of my earlier questions, we could start with just a couple: can you name ten prominent early psychoanalysts, and can you summarize the criticisms that psychoanalysis made of parent/child relationships in goy families?
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“Take advantage of that opportunity! It doesn’t come often, in life.”
Yes it does. Most of my posts are about Christianity and religion, and I usually have ample opportunity to discuss things with Christians here and on their sites. I’m sure it doesn’t happen often for you, because you don’t know how to have a reasonable discussion AND because your views are utterly foul. It’s a bad combination.
For example, I know nothing about psychoanalysis, but I’m quite sure however I answer your question, you’ll say I’m a racist and that I think one race is superior, and then you’ll descend from there into an anti-semitic paranoid rant. That’s been the pattern so far.
Tell me about yourself. Where does your hatred stem from? Did you have a bad childhood experience with your mother?
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You should consider learning about the history of psychoanalysis. If you’ll look into ten prominent early psychoanalysts, and then study the criticisms that psychoanalysis makes of goys, it might prove illuminating.
If you learned about psychoanalysis, you might notice a prominent irony in your last response. The way that you accused me of having a bad childhood as an explanation for my current behavior is a cultural trope established by psychoanalysis leveled at goy culture. It’s ironic that, despite claiming not to know anything about psychoanalysis, you have subconsciously adopted the cultural mores and judgmental assumptions that psychoanalysis wants to be leveled at genetically inferior populations.
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(Violet, my last post included a link, so it got marked as spam. Please restore it, if you would.)
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There’s nothing in my spam.
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http://www.photius.com/rankings/national_iq_scores_country_ranks.html
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Here’s another link for you, Violet. The women in this picture were raped and had burning coals shoved up their vaginas by the Jewish secret police. Then the Jews put the men and women together, covered them in gasoline, and burned them alive:
At least 100,000 people were murdered in less than a year. Since you’re from Britain, you probably don’t care about these people, anymore than you care about the human beings you call “Arabs.” If any of your readers are interested in humanitarian issues, though, they might do some research on Yakov Sverdlov, the Jewish commander who led his people in that particular attack on the unarmed civilians of Russia.
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Higharka, unfortunately in this world there are millions of atrocities that have been carried out by millions of people at various points in our history. No group of people at any point in history has managed to avoid suffering.
That said, I am now realising that I don’t have the time or the energy to field your foul comments and for the first time in my blogging life I’m putting you in permanent moderation, which I’m unlikely to check. It would be one thing if I was able to spend the time that Raut has attempted to do pointing out the idiocy and harm in your world view, but as it is, I’m embarrassed to provide a home for your discriminatory and foul outlook on life.
I wish you luck in finding a way to overcome this hateful obsession, and hope that until that day you don’t get the opportunity to feed any fires of hatred and abuse in any other unfortunate and ignorant souls.
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