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October 16, 2007
Confused Americans for Truth - News Story Shows Scientists are Less Intelligent than Conservatives
Every so often, a story like this surfaces. The pattern is always the same: based on experimental data, someone concludes that intelligence is a hereditary trait, and that certain groups of people have less of it. In this latest instance, Nobel prize-winner James Watson made an absolutely incredible statement.
Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
Watson is wrong twice. First, our social policies are based on the idea that Africans can't manage without our help, and it fails because giving money to dictators is not a very efficient way to help the oppressed masses. Second, people are people, and they are not limited by what they do on tests. Humans have the ability to learn new things and adapt to different environments. They have been doing it for thousands of years. What humans haven't figured out is how to drag themselves out of poverty when there's a corrupt dictatorship running things.
I mean, let's look at this logically, folks: if you can get millions of dollars in foreign aid every time your population begins to starve, you're not going to put an end to the starvation process any time soon. It's not like the people can vote you out of office if they're tired of not eating.
Conservatives know this already, which is why we don't care what the tests say, and why we don't need to reinvent racism in order to explain why we failed to make poverty history. Really, it amazes me that so many Nobel prize winners have trouble figuring this stuff out.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Tue 8:37 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: conservative economics intelligent James Watson Nobel prize philosophy racism
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Could it be because the committee that's awarding the prizes has trouble choosing people that are truly worthy of the prizes?
As for testing... and intelligence... intelligence tests are supposed to measure a person's mental abilities relative to other people in the same population, having had similar experiences. They don't do a very good job of eliminating cultural biases.
Further, even very high levels of intelligence are useless without common sense. And common sense is a very uncommon trait.
Posted by: Perri Nelson at October 17, 2007 1:59 AM
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