I just get tired of people drinking and smoking all the time, buying $1000 dollar cameras, ATVs, etc., and then going to the food bank and sending their kids to school with no lunch.

but I guess Poulanc actually believes it.

I won't even let broccoli in my car. I just hate the smell of that particular vegetable worse than almost anything.

I won't even let broccoli in my car. I just hate the smell of that particular vegetable worse than almost anything.

What I believe is that 'rich' people are not inherently more intelligent than 'poor' people. One person making more money than another has little to nothing to do with how intelligent they are. But whatever. It's been hashed out before.

I don't have any of these opinions. I just get tired of people drinking and smoking all the time, buying $1000 dollar cameras, ATVs, etc., and then going to the food bank and sending their kids to school with no lunch..

What I believe is that 'rich' people are not inherently more intelligent than 'poor' people. One person making more money than another has little to nothing to do with how intelligent they are. But whatever. It's been hashed out before.

Maybe Poulanc's problem is that he only associates with rich people, and therefore has no exposure to poor people or their relative intelligence level in general.

I mean, I'm trying to figure this one out.

Ray, you actually think poor people are dumber than rich people?

Haven't heard Welfare Queen in awhile.

but even Paris Hilton is smart enough to milk what God gave her.

Ray, I'll try to put this as blunt as possible.

I am pretty sure you make more money than nearly anyone I know.

I am also pretty sure that several of my friends are more intelligent than you are.

I think it depends on how we define intelligence.

I think equating wealth with intelligence is pointless. But if it makes you feel better, knock yourself out.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pointed out at an afternoon news conference that even after the employment and inflation targets are triggered, that won't lead to an automatic raising of rates.

... Unemployment in 2013 is expected to be in the range of 6.9 percent to 7.8 percent, while economic growth will be modest, with gross domestic product rising 2.0 percent to 3.2 percent. Both were lower than September estimates, indicating the economy is likely to have little to show for all of the easing outside of not getting any worse.

"The conditions now prevailing in the job market represent an enormous waste of human and economic potential," Bernanke said. "A return to broad-based prosperity will require steady improvement in the job market, which in turn requires stronger economic growth."

... With inflation excluding energy and food costs considered tame, the Fed has felt free to continue its easing programs while economic growth remains mired and agreement on fiscal policy elusive in Washington.

There is overwhelming evidence that smarter people make more money than not-so-smart people. There is no evidence that indicates otherwise.

Ray, you actually think poor people are dumber than rich people?

I think equating wealth with intelligence is pointless.

Evidence is that IQ helps but is far from being the main factor in predicting wealth or even net wealth gained.

Correlation does not mean causation. I've been watching a lot of Shark Tank and Dragon Den (The Canadian version of the show that shares a couple of the cast between the two, even though the Canadian version started first). And there's stories and stories of people who were successful in another field and just being complete dumb asses in their business venture. We're talking about hundred of thousands of dollars to even millions of dollars wasted getting their product off the ground and it not working.

Yes, anecdotes gleaned from reality TV are a great way to refute massive amounts of statistical data!

I do so enjoy watching folk who carry on about "reality has a liberal bias" stamping their little feet in rage when reality pisses in their cornflakes.

See? Told ya.

Okay. Go ahead and think you're smarter than a person who grew up in a less financially secure household. I'm not going to stop you.

Is unemployment in the US structural?

I fear that some element of it is, increasingly so. Not all 7.7%, of course, but some non-trivial element of it is.

I'm sad I missed out on the segue towards "Men's Rights" that took place a few pages ago because that's a particularly amusing topic for me.

A person is not stuck in the working poor segment. We don't need a person to stay unemployed or be one of the many working poor. A person can be unemployed, then working poor, then move up from there. That should be the goal and I believe that is reality for a lot of people.

The first part is all I've essentially claimed, or, more specifically, that rich people in general are more intelligent than poor people.

The first part is all I've essentially claimed, or, more specifically, that rich people in general are more intelligent than poor people.

Actually, THAT claim is inaccurate, and wrong. I guarantee you if you take your rich and line them up over there, that I can find 2 guys who are smarter than each of your rich guys and do it without breaking a sweat. I can probably find 10.

You do realize that predicting I'd participate in a thread I was already participating in isn't really that impressive, right?

I'm more concerned with my own entertainment, honestly.

But, to be clear, I was right on.

The first part is all I've essentially claimed, or, more specifically, that rich people in general are more intelligent than poor people.

I also think there should be limits as to how much aid you get regardless of how many kids you pump out. Personally I'd limit aid to one child per parent.

"In general" does not mean that there can't be two poor people who are smarter than every rich person on the planet, so I don't know what the point of your fake exercise is.

Well, it showed you don't know how to phrase a simple statement, and in fact you don't even know, as your reply demonstrated, what 'in general' means. You meant 'on average', but in trying to broaden your claim, you overreached and misstated it. That you can't grasp that, or grasp that my example was a second point, isn't anything I'm going to help you with.

Correlations explain g, not the other way around.

If I take any group of variables which are positively correlated, there will, as a matter of algebraic necessity, be a single dominant general factor, which describes more of the variance than any other, and all of them will be "positively loaded" on this factor, i.e., positively correlated with it. Similarly, if you do hierarchical factor analysis, you will always be able to find a single higher-order factor which loads positively onto the lower-order factors and, through them, the actual observables. What psychologists sometimes call the "positive manifold" condition is enough, in and of itself, to guarantee that there will appear to be a general factor. Since intelligence tests are made to correlate with each other, it follows trivially that there must appear to be a general factor of intelligence. This is true whether or not there really is a single variable which explains test scores or not.

It is not an automatic consequence of the algebra that the apparent general factor describes a lot of the variance in the scores. Nonetheless, while less trivial, it is still trivial. Recall that factor analysis works only with the correlations among the measured variables. If I take an arbitrary set of positive correlations, provided there are not too many variables and the individual correlations are not too weak, then the apparent general factor will, typically, seem to describe a large chunk of the variance in the individual scores.

Building factors from correlations is fine as data reduction, but deeply unsuited to finding causal structures. The mythical aspect of g isn't that it can be defined, or, having been defined, that it describes a lot of the correlations on intelligence tests; the myth is that this tells us anything more than that those tests are positively correlated. It has been known for almost as long as factor analysis has been around that positive correlations can arise in many ways which involve nothing remotely like a general factor of intelligence. Thomson's ability-sampling model, with its myriad independent causes rather than a single general cause, is the oldest and most extreme counter-example, but it is far from the only one. It is still conceivable that those positive correlations are all caused by a general factor of intelligence, but we ought to be long since past the point where supporters of that view were advancing arguments on the basis of evidence other than those correlations. So far as I can tell, however, nobody has presented a case for g apart from thoroughly invalid arguments from factor analysis; that is, the myth.

In primitive societies, or so Malinowski taught, myths serve as the legitimating charters of practices and institutions. Just so here: the myth of g legitimates a vast enterprise of intelligence testing and theorizing. There should be no dispute that, when we lack specialized and valid instruments, general IQ tests can be better than nothing. Claims that they are anything more than such stop-gaps — that they are triumphs of psychological science, illuminating the workings of the mind; keys to the fates of individuals and peoples; sources of harsh truths which only a courageous few have the strength to bear; etc., etc., — such claims are at present entirely unjustified, though not, perhaps, unmotivated. They are supported only by the myth, and acceptance of the myth itself rests on what I can only call an astonishing methodological backwardness.

The bottom line is: The sooner we stop paying attention to g, the sooner we can devote our energies to understanding the mind.

I'll leave it to someone with more money than me to resolve this terminology dispute.

In high school, one of my friends' fathers who was a black belt...

I'm not gloating over being smarter than the vast majority of poor people. That's just genetics, mostly.

As Matt Clement points out - that's far from settled. I mean - if you took a random sample of reasonably well nourished 4 year olds from all over the world do you think their intelligence metrics would correlate with their parents' class or income level?

I'm continually shocked by the outright evil of the libertarians here. Any time somebody says they're "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" I think of what ############# you guys are, even without regressive social views.

I do so enjoy watching folk who carry on about "reality has a liberal bias" stamping their little feet in rage when reality pisses in their cornflakes.

I'm continually shocked by the outright evil of the libertarians here. Any time somebody says they're "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" I think of what ############# you guys are, even without regressive social views.

This is probably out of left field but I was catching up on page 23 and just disgusted.

Scalia’s real problem isn’t that he’s biased—as the exchange with Berndt revealed, it’s that he’s increasingly out of touch with the basic moral sentiments of the society over which he passes his increasingly cranky moral judgments. It’s obvious from polls (not to mention voting trends) that in another generation or so laws against same-sex marriage will be considered, by the vast majority of Americans, to be as bizarre and unjust as laws against, say, interracial marriage are considered today.

... Consider that in 1958, when the Gallup Poll first asked the question, 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Last year 86 percent did. Similarly, over the past 15 years the percentage of Americans who approve of same-sex marriage has nearly doubled, from 27 percent to 53 percent. Far more ominous for the foes of marriage equality, among adults under 30, its support stands at 73 percent.

Now, of course, Scalia would claim that for the Supreme Court to pay attention to public opinion polls is a crime against jurisprudential nature. This may well be—but like many other so-called crimes against nature, it is an exceedingly common one. For many decades the American right wing has made a veritable fetish out of the idea that the court is in the hands of a decadent cultural elite imposing its taste for various perversities on the public at large.

This fantasy bears little relation to the banal reality, which is that the court both reflects and is shaped by public opinion, although in a somewhat chaotic and highly inefficient way. For example, it’s hardly a coincidence that the court began to take an interest in same-sex marriage only after that concept was well on its way to being institutionalized by the broader political process—not to mention publicly endorsed by the president of the United States.

are there no prisons? are there no workhouses?

Anyway, once we draw conclusion on that one way or another I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean in terms of policy.

Given that smart people tend to marry smart people, and dumb people tend to marry dumb people,

and that smart people tend to have smart children, and dumb people tend to have dumb children,

and that smart people tend to make more money than dumb people, there would be a loose correlation between a child's intelligence and her parents' income.

2378. Steve Treder Posted: December 12, 2012 at 11:09 PM (#4323543)
Scalia is a piece of work.

Gotham Dave, I cordially invite you to go #### yourself. You can use your imagination as to what I invite you to suck.

and that smart people tend to have smart children, and dumb people tend to have dumb children,

Well that's just assuming the conclusion. It is a near certainty that parts of innate intelligence are inherited. But I don't think anyone knows how much or how they interrelate. It's obviously not a mendelian trait

Scalia’s real problem isn’t that he’s biased—as the exchange with Berndt revealed,..

Great novel, and the definitive film version with Alistair Sim was even greater.

Mohammad Safi, a graduate of a medical school in Afghanistan, began working as a psychiatrist at a California mental hospital in 2006, making $90,682 in his first six months. Last year, he took home $822,302, all of it paid by taxpayers.

Safi benefited from what amounted to a bidding war after a federal court forced the state to improve inmate care. The prisons raised pay to lure psychiatrists, the mental health department followed suit to keep employees, and costs soared. Last year, 16 California psychiatrists, including Safi, made more than $400,000, while only one did in the other 11 most populous states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ...

Since given how all of us here will have noticed that childrens' intelligence compared to their parents' is completely random, and that among our friends and acquaintances children with IQs (substitute your measure of choice) of 130 are born just as often to parents with IQs of 70, and vice versa... Oh, no, that's patently not the case.

Yet another example of the high-quality liberal governance in California:

I'm continually shocked by the outright evil of the libertarians here. Any time somebody says they're "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" I think of what ############# you guys are, even without regressive social views..

And, of course, some manner of careful defintion of WTF "intelligence" is.

Reading this, it's incredibly easy to tell who's been poor and who hasn't.