Guardian: Will videogames create a two-tiered society?
Originally posted 7/20/07 on GGL.com
A blogger for Britain’s influential Guardian newspaper is asking, “Will playing [video]games create a two-tiered society?” Writer Bobbie Johnson, the Guardian’s technology correspondent, writes in response to a Discovery magazine article touting the benefits of video game playing.
Studies have indicated that young people who play video games have increased abilities in reasoning, puzzle solving, and “forward thinking” (although it has been pointed out that kids who already possess these abilities may be attracted to playing video games.)
Johnson asks:
Given the increasing interest in virtual worlds and near-game environments, it’s not hard to imagine that some people will adapt much more quickly to a futurenet based around 3D – the kind of thing imagined by William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash.
But given the research mentioned, will we end up with a divided society? Imagine a future internet where games players have a massive advantage over ordinary users. Will we see a divide between the visually literate and those who just don’t (or can’t) get it?
It’s an interesting question. It’s one thing to have economic and caste inequities – but a medieval lord was no more or less intelligent than the average peasant (and not always better educated). The science of anthropology, invented in the 19th century to prove that some races were inherently better than others, instead showed by the middle of the 20th century that “racial” differences were shallow, and that intelligence has no correlation to race or ethnicity. Is technology moving us towards a world where one set of people is demonstrably more intelligent than another?
Science fiction has dealt with this question many times; Huxley’s Brave New World and Wells’s The Time Machine are the most famous examples. Technological enhancement of the human mind is a common theme in cyberpunk fiction; and as in Gibson’s Neuromancer, not everyone can afford these enhancements.
Video games don’t directly enhance intelligence. But they train the brain, and not just in ways that help a player use a computer. (And I don’t think there will be a 3D “futurenet” as described by Gibson. Why direct an avatar through a maze of pretty 3D representations of web sites, when I can just click on a name on a list? See what I mean?)
A well-designed game teaches critical thinking (the single most important intellectual skill), reasoning, prediction and communication. It heightens visual skills and the reflexes. And the game content can be as mind-expanding as any book, film or music album.
I’m concerned about economic inequities that will lead to technological and intellectual castes. But that seems to be an issue for 50 years from now. Right now, we’re seeing a large segment of society choose to limit their own intellectual growth, both technologically and otherwise, for what they errantly see as moral reasons.
My mind is so advanced, I have chosen to present my argument as a chart.
| Intellectual Enhancement | Counter-intellectual Response | The “reason” for the response |
 Videogaming. |
 Banning games. |
 Games engender violence, crime, moral corruption and asocial behavior. |
 Internet use. |
 Internet censorship, tiered Internet, apathy. |
 The Internet is for porn, intellectual property theft, and plotting terrorism. It should be used only for business and profit. Also, it’s too hard to bother to learn how it works. |
 Math, science, logic, & computer programming education. |
 No Child Left behind. |
 Schools should prepare kids for vocations; let the smart ones get scholarships. |
 Arts, music and history education. |
 No funding; censorship of art, music, history texts. |
 Why am I going to need to know this? And teaching real history is unpatriotic. |
 Pharmacology. |
 Banning development of mind-enhancing drugs. |
 It’s okay to use drugs to treat mental illnesses and neuroses; but enhancing the healthy is unethical. |
 Photography, sound recording. |
 Banning photography and recording in public places, businesses. |
 Intellectual property protection, privacy. |
 Evolution. |
 Creationism. |
 The only way to be moral is to believe the Bible is inerrant. |
 Science. |
 Pseudo-science. |
 If a scientific discovery doesn’t not fit with my political (global warming) or religious (cloning, physicalism, evolution) proclivities, it must be wrong. |
 Atheism, religious criticism, religious pluralism. |
 Political correctness, censorship, threats against authors and cartoonists. |
 Criticizing religion is the same as oppressing the religious. |
It’s one thing to have intellectual inequity forced upon you. It’s quite another to chose to hobble your own ability to think and reason, especially in a democracy. If your political, religious or ethical philosophy is rigorous enough, you should not need protection from competing ideas. If your lifestyle is successful, it should not require protection from new technologies.
If videogames were actually harmful, I would be the first to quit my job and come out against them. But I know from my own personal experience they are not; and as a writer I have carefully examined the arguments and studies for and against. The only way to believe videogaming itself hurts children is to be intentionally ignorant.
I call people who choose anti-intellectualism the “Stupid-American Community.” It’s a community that’s growing. And that’s the “two-tiered society” that worries me.
Benjamin Franklin…
Learn all about Benjamin Franklin….
I am, in fact, familiar with the Benjamin Franklin of whom you speak.
What are you trying to say? That Franklin said something to support my thesis? To refute it? Hello, is this thing on?
I read the link you provided. It’s a middle school biography of Franklin that does not seem to touch upon the issue. “Fires were a problem at that time?” As opposed to that era in history in which fires were not a problem?
(Pardon my spelling/grammar, im lazy tonight)
This is a truely scary, and phrophetic to boot.
The most worrysome aspect of this, is that there is so much evidence of this happening in today’s society.
I am stunned everytime i decide to watch the news/opposed to getting my information on the series of tubes that so popular.
The talking heads act as if ignorance is an achievement, and there is some special prize to be crowned the king of self-inflicted mental retardation. Every week someone else is proving that they can be stupider than everyone else.
People that show intellect are publicly flagellated, and called unpatriotic, scaring others into not speaking out for fear that the government will come take them away and lock them up for 3 years without ever so much as seeing a lawyer.
This topic go so far beyond gaming/not gaming its scary.
However, using the whole gaming/not gaming issue as a litmus test, you can more readily identify those who would start screaming at you and pointing jsut for stating that the earth is round.
Medieval lords were 30-60 IQ points above their charges, but this guy’s ancestors were peasants so he can’t force himself to admit that, even though it’s historical truth. What quality people we breed these days.
His point is well taken however: society is dividing between the wealthy technogeek and the impoverished grey underclass. It won’t be productive for either: the technogeeks will get increasingly weak, until they are dependent on and absorbed by the grey underclass, after which our society has an exclusively third world future.
(From CORRUPT forums thread “Caste Systems.”)
http://www.corrupt.org/transcendence/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1185941385
intelligence has no correlation to race or ethnicity.
What? Even if you assume non-racial reasons for the correlation, such as poverty or other environmental factors being correlated with race, you would still be wrong. There are IQ correlations based on race/ethnicity. Pretending there isn’t won’t make the gap go away and could delay needed measures like iodine enrichment that rich countries successfully implemented long ago and many third world countries are beginning to consider. You might be interested in a debate on the IQ gap between Charles Murray (representing the pessimist genes emphasizing side) and James Flynn (representing the still-rather-pessimistic environmentalist side) that can be found here, as well as this which uses simple math to show that one cannot believe in a purely genetic explanation for both the gap within america and between america and africa. A table of IQs for many different countries can be found here.
The rest of your post was rather poor, but that point was glaringly enough at odds with mainstream psychometrics that it had to be pointed out specifically.
These ideas are decades behind. The whole cyberpunk thing is not going to happen. Not even SF writers believe in this future anymore.
Gamers might be smart in their hermetic environments, but they are not some kind of ubermensch. Then there’s the assumption that being “smarter”, whatever that means nowadays, really matters. It doesn’t. Dullards are making millions while geniuses work as bouncers at night clubs.
It’s a huge mistake to connect video game playing with intelligence. It’s also concerning that we now confuse preoccupation with inane technological gadgets, of which many are completely unnecessary, with intelligence. These gadgets are idiot proof, designed with the idiot in mind. Being able to use them is not a sign of intelligence.
I have to laugh at these positivist reactionaries who believe in biological determinism and dogmatic adherence to what passes for science today, as well as the outdated notion of “the future” and “progress”, cry out against what they see as an unintelligent mob who is trying to put down the proud, few keepers of the flame of truth and reality©. It’s even more amusing to see this elitism stem from advocates of the video-game dominated future.
I wonder what would happen, should this proto-transhumanist utopia take form, if it all came down after a huge solar flare or other catastrophe. Maybe we’d learn, much to late, that we shouldn’t build houses of glass just because the entertainment industry and popular culture thinks they are a good idea.
Take a look at all this inane use of technology. We work more hours, make less money, and somehow derive self-esteem from this big waste of time. I am no luddite or religious fanatic, but these predictions are often ridiculous, like this one. If this is the best technology can do, I think someone ought to be quite embarrassed. I don’t advocate ignorance, like some might think, but responsible technology. To use it to gain freedom, instead of making it mandatory. We should be using technology to distance ourselves from it, not have this goal of living inside a computer.
There’s a wonderful 3-d, perfectly rendered world right in front of us. But hey, why bother fixing the real world when we can just change social mores to value some false reality instead? It’s much less work and way more profitable.
Sorry, but the world is not nearly as easily divisible into two categories as the author thinks. There are plenty of people who squarely fit in on the left with most issues, but still want to censor everything (see Tipper Gore and half of the anti-Eminem crowd). There are plenty of people who believe in creationism, but want to keep the Internet open (see half of every Fark religious flamewar).
Further complicating the author’s simplistic, and dare I say, ignorant worldview are people such as myself who don’t always take definite sides with every issue. For example, I believe that God created the most life on Earth (probably not in seven literal days), but that evolution has played a great role in changing everything ever sense. Does this make me a knuckle-dragging idiot who wants to ban video games, ruin the Internet and ban photography in public places? No. My stance on evolution has nothing to do with my stance on Internet use. Not everyone is a braindead partisan.
If anything, the country is becoming less divided. With sliding support for Bush and the war in Iraq, we are becoming oddly more united in our disapproval. Idiotic articles like this one are only telling people that they have to choose sides, not decide what individual options are best for everyone.
I could really go on here about how the people who wanted to ban the Muhammad cartoons are certainly not the same people who hate evolution, and how there is almost no one in the country who supports restructuring the internet, but I think I’ve made my point.
“Medieval lords were 30-60 IQ points above their charges, but this guy’s ancestors were peasants so he can’t force himself to admit that, even though it’s historical truth. What quality people we breed these days.”
When Pepin of Landen took the Stanford-Binet test in in 634 AD and scored a 143, it was later proven that the test was in fact filled out by Arnulf of Metz.
If you have any other “facts” you want to pull out of your ass, let me know.
“It’s also concerning that we now confuse preoccupation with inane technological gadgets, of which many are completely unnecessary, with intelligence. These gadgets are idiot proof, designed with the idiot in mind. Being able to use them is not a sign of intelligence.”
Ideally, this would be true. It’s not. Show me one of these “idiot-proof” gadgets. I have to deal with people who can’t operate the Mac OS or figure out how to advance a slide in PowerPoint.
One day, it may be true. But not today.
“There’s a wonderful 3-d, perfectly rendered world right in front of us. But hey, why bother fixing the real world when we can just change social mores to value some false reality instead? It’s much less work and way more profitable.”
Thanks, Ted. But your Wachowskian oversimplification of transhumanism is as dull-witted as your inane glorification of Ned Ludd. Here’s a tip for thinkers everywhere — if your philosophical view was absurd 100 years ago, it’s absurd today.
“For example, I believe that God created the most life on Earth (probably not in seven literal days), but that evolution has played a great role in changing everything ever sense. Does this make me a knuckle-dragging idiot who wants to ban video games, ruin the Internet and ban photography in public places?”
Politics and philosophy NEVER fall into a two-sided continuum. But yes — if you’re still looking for loopholes in a materialist universe in which to cram your immature supernaturalism, then YES, you are on the side of the knuckle-draggers. If this bothers you, then perhaps you should reconsider your worldview.
“I could really go on here about how the people who wanted to ban the Muhammad cartoons are certainly not the same people who hate evolution, and how there is almost no one in the country who supports restructuring the internet, but I think I’ve made my point.”
The Internet thing first — ARE YOU INSANE? Please, please Google “Internet Neutrality.” Come back when you’re done.
For the first point: read very carefully, and I’ll use small words: no liberal or progressive EVER called for censorship of anything. If they did, they ceased in that moment to be a liberal or progressive. “Political Correctness” is a conservative invention. No prominent progressive called for censorship of those cartoons — and prominent progressive Christopher Hitchens is the most vocal critic of the censorship. Lots of Democrats called for censorship — but if you think most Dems are progressive, then there’s no having an intelligent conversation with you.
TO THE AUTHOR:
Most intelligent people will agree that videogames themselves are not harmful. What most people have a problem with is the threat created by videogamers to an older, more beloved and accesible world: reality.
In the army, managing Soldiers who play video games versus non video gamers usually leads the manager to notice that while the video gamers are better at cognitive abilities and finding the correct answers to problems as you state in the article, non video gamers are far better at solution implementation, execution of that correct answer (they are faster at acting) and the actual resolution of logistical dilemas.
Games like Medal of Honor offer great training opportunities for Soldiers, but only if they realize that for every thirty seconds of combat, there were usually weeks of planning and hard labor involved in making that moment possible. (Equipment has weight and mass in real life, and certain resources and their amounts may not even be attainable) This mentality that actual combat is as easy as playing a video game has directly contributed to the awful situation real Soldiers find themselves in today.
While a concession of the positive aspects of video game life may be in order, it is inarguable that video games can indirectly have devastating effects upon people. Particularly marriages.
I believe the division is more prominent now than it will be in 50 years. Technology has advanced so rapidly that we have people that were born in an age where electricity and plumbing were optional to the opposite younger generation where there never has been a time without video games, internet, instant gratification.
In another 2-3 generations, most people will recognize and understand the necessity and convenience of technology and won’t be as afraid of change as our grandparents since they grew up in, or were born into, a fast advancing technological culture.
There are still the booga booga click click tribes of (insert jungle, barren savannah or mountainside here) and the religious fanatics that will probably never see the light.
Lol, I thought this article was awesome. I’m not sure the people who felt it was oversimplifying things really got it. Oh well, I’m still giggling.
xx
Will we end up with a “divided society” on the Internet?
What a self-absorbed, trivial question! Kids, the real world is much bigger than the WoW. Get out more, and get over yourselves.
Oh wow, your cognitive bias didn’t come through at all in this article.
That must mean that your reasoning isn’t affected by any cognitive bias, and you are immune to the political and religious biases that everyone on the OTHER side has to deal with.
Well written argument, a shame the author had to come across like a pretentious twat in the comments though.
The world is already full of carneys and rubes. Always has been, always will be. Being tech-savvy does not make you a carney, and being non-tech-savvy does not make you a rube. Technology is just one small aspect of society. There is no one aspect of life that makes you a carney or a rube.
the part anthropology is incorrect there were and are definite correlations between race, ethnicity and intelligence… but the differences were shallow. however progrems like welfare that encourage the elast successful members to reproduce the most frequently are widening those differences in successive generations.
There is a decided liberal bent to this article
within reason i make the assumption that throughout history, a large portion of humanity has lived in fear of this ever changing world.
got to get over that one if you want to face reality. life is short, live, love and let others do the same.
i do find that most of the naive people i meet are either home schooled, religious extremists, or smoking crack…..and some of the crackheads are at the top of the scale.
it would be fun to skip forward in time, to see what actually happens; maybe that is one of the qualities of gamers, readers, thinkers and critics……the want to know, instead of the want to suppress and stall.
Hey Kunochan, glad to see you’re still a pompous faggot.
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To the poster who said he believed that God life on earth I would pose the question: which god? If you think that question makes no sense then how about your unproven belief in some sort of superior being?
I second Grit… Though I was not previously aware of Kunochan, nor that he is in fact a pompous faggot.
Seriously though, smug fucking athiests are divisive assholes.
[...] on August 1st, 2007. I was reading this article today (http://kunochan.com/?p=148) and I have to say I couldn’t agree [...]
kunochan, you rock my world.
And I don’t think you’re smug or pompous. Not that my opinion matters.
(btw, your ‘Leave a Reply’ thing doesn’t work in firefox.)
Very inciteful Mr. Even. Great chart, but you should make it all on picture so us intellectual property stealers can more easily lift it from your site!
“The rest of your post was rather poor, but that point was glaringly enough at odds with mainstream psychometrics that it had to be pointed out specifically.”
That’s pretty funny. You’d probably better start actually reading MAINSTREAM psychometricians, rather than Charles Murray, who disgraced himself with “The Bell Curve.” For a low-level reader like yourself, try “The Mismeasure of Man.”
My characterization of anthropology and modern scientific ideas about race is perfectly accurate. Maybe you shouldn’t get your science from the American Enterprise Institute.
The American Enterprise Institute was the host of the debate, they did not themselves provide the science. Charles Murray is affiliated with the institute, Flynn is not. Flynn is not a right-winger or a racist (though even Charles Murray used to be in the Peace Corps and is in a mixed-race marriage with biracial children), and even takes offense at being called a “liberal”, replying instead that he is a socialist. You should listen to what Flynn has to say. Like all those in the mainstream, Flynn does not ignore differences in average group scores on IQ tests and he does not deny that these are significant (IQ is one of the most powerful predictors of outcomes in life, and in fact overpredicts academic success for African-Americans indicating additional non-IQ factors acting in the same direction). He thinks they are the product of adverse circumstances. Adverse circumstances are correlated with race/ethnicity, so one can deny ANY GENETIC BASIS WHATSOEVER for IQ and still believe that it is correlated with race/ethnicity.
Before the Bell Curve Stephen Jay Gould (along with Lewontin and Science For the People) had already disgraced himself with his shameful behavior toward Edward O. Wilson after the publication of Sociobiology. Wilson’s political beliefs were standard liberalism found within the academy and his broader involvement in politics is mostly limited to conservation. He was denounced as a “fascist” for a book that merely extended his research on eusocial insects to people and had water dumped on his head when he tried to speak publicly. While respected by laymen, evolutionary biologists (including giants of the field like John Maynard Smith) held a very low opinion of Gould due to his misrepresentation of the science. His “Mismeasure of Man” is not mainstream psychometrics but an attack on the entire field focusing on the historical. Arthur Jensen, an actual psychometrician who through personal interaction raised IQ scores when he initially found them incredulously low, replies in The Debunking of Scientific Fossils and Straw Persons. For the opinion of others in the field you can read Mainstream Science on Intelligence, which contains a list of signatures for a prepared statement as well as information about those who declined to give such signatures. If you have other sources giving very divergent accounts of what the mainstream scientific opinion is, please give a citation. Even if you merely have evidence of large-scale IQ tests that do not find group differences to be around one standard deviation, give a citation. I happen to know of such a test that does show that result, and it is discussed in the debate I linked to, which is why I thought you would be interested in it. Feel free to view the debate, attack Murray for his egregious errors and applaud Flynn. Flynn has made invaluable contributions to the field (despite being, like Murray, a political scientist rather than coming from a psych background) and I will not denounce for doing so. What I will criticize is what you have done, which is to deny the existence of this well documented correllation rather moving on to examing the causal factors and implications of it.
You stated I was a low-level reader. Nowhere did I state what materials I read regularly. This was a blatant assumption on your part based merely on the fact that I disagreed with you. It speaks very ill of your willingness to engage in fruitful discussion rather than engaging in ad hominem.
There is a typo above I just noticed. Scores themselves cannot be incredulous, but they can be incredible (in the sense that they are not credible not that they are amazing). Jensen would be the person who was incredulous as he thought the scores of african american children were not reflecting the brightness he sensed in them, and it turned out he was accurate.
I still stand on my original observations.
Additionally I would like to add that observations are intangible, therefore are impossible to interact with on the physical plane, and cannot be stood upon.
Either way you slice and dice it, the religious majority is what has been holding back the technological advancement of the human race for the previous 100 years and will forever stunt human growth as a whole due to their uncompromising zealotry in all its forms to bring enlightenment and morality to the unwashed masses.
Greetings From Idiot America
“Adverse circumstances are correlated with race/ethnicity, so one can deny ANY GENETIC BASIS WHATSOEVER for IQ and still believe that it is correlated with race/ethnicity.”
If that’s what your saying, then I agree. I assumed you meant that genetic factors arose from ethnicity. If I assumed incorrectly, I apologize.
But the Bell Curve DID make this connection — a supposed racial link with intelligence, based on pseudoscientific racial categories. That’s why its authors were disgraced. “Racial” categories — that is to say, definable biological divisions within the human species — do not exist. Our common ancestor is too recent for any but cosmetic differences to have microevolved.
Psychometrics itself is still controversial. Mainstream authorities cannot agree on what I.Q. tests actually prove.
Gould did not “disgrace” himself by attacking Wilson. Sociobiology (the science and the book) is highly controversial in the scientific community. Wilson and his colleagues make gross oversimplifications about human behavior, and the predictability of human behavior; and they ignore 100 years of research in the social sciences. Many biologists are fans of Wilson, but many others are harshly critical.
If I misjudged you and was unduly rude, then I apologize. But I’m not certain that’s the case. You make hay about who is a “liberal” or a “socialist.” Perhaps at one time, the politics of the speaker did not mean anything in a scientific debate. That is patently no longer the case.
If someone comes to me quoting the AEI or “The Bell Curve,” I am going to ridicule that person. Because that person is ridiculous. This started because I said there was “no correlation between race/ethnicity and intelligence.” You pointed out that factors related to ethnicity can affect performance on IQ tests, which is true. But then you threw in as “supporting” material a bunch of right-wing bullshit.
I grew tired of debating conservatives a while ago. As I said — ridiculous ideas deserve to be ridiculed, not debated. “The Bell Curve” is based on 150 year old science, and sociobiology isn’t much better.
“…will forever stunt human growth as a whole due to their uncompromising zealotry in all its forms to bring enlightenment and morality to the unwashed masses.”
Might I point out, in support of what you said, that what religion is selling is neither “enlightened” nor “moral?”
If that’s what your saying, then I agree.
That’s not what I was saying. I was saying that one can be an anti-hereditarian like James Flynn (who I disagree with but greatly respect) but still believe that IQ is real and the tests reflect intelligence (both within and between populations) as it is commonly understood. You and I can disagree on many things (from the heritability of IQ to whether videogames peaked with text-adventures) but still agree on the reality of IQ, just as Flynn and Murray can have so much agreement from very different viewpoints.
“Racial” categories — that is to say, definable biological divisions within the human species — do not exist.
Ernst Mayr, who came up with the definition of “species” current in biology, says race is just as real.
Our common ancestor is too recent for any but cosmetic differences to have microevolved.
What is so special about the outside of a person to think that it must evolve faster than the inside? We know that lactose tolerance evolved relatively recently. Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending give a good argument that the Ashkenazi jews evolved their unmatched IQ during medieval europe, and also a good rebutting to Charles Murray’s theory that jews (there was no Ashkenazi/Sephardic/Mizrahi distinction before the Romans caused the diaspora) have long been more intelligent than average due to the demands of literacy imposed on adherents of Judaism.
Psychometrics itself is still controversial. Mainstream authorities cannot agree on what I.Q. tests actually prove.
Do you agree that IQ tests have a very great deal of predictive power?
Sociobiology (the science and the book) is highly controversial in the scientific community. Wilson and his colleagues make gross oversimplifications about human behavior, and the predictability of human behavior; and they ignore 100 years of research in the social sciences. Many biologists are fans of Wilson, but many others are harshly critical.
Wilson is greatly respected by the scientific community and the attacks on him are now thought of as just a weird phase that passed through campuses. The amount of citations for “spandrel” show that the scientific community does not take that idea too seriously, but they are still eager to hear what Wilson has to say even well past his prime. I will concede that Lewontin was a great scientist, even if his ideology got the better of him there.
You make hay about who is a “liberal” or a “socialist.” Perhaps at one time, the politics of the speaker did not mean anything in a scientific debate. That is patently no longer the case.
Let R represent the condition that someone is a right winger, L that they are a left-winger, I that they believe IQ is real and accurately reflected in tests and I~ that they do not. It is generally the case for whatever reason (not necessarily good ones, sometimes it just turns out that way) that P(I | R) > P(I | L). Regardless of how that initially came to be, when you adopt some beliefs of a group of people you will often feel pressured to adopt other beliefs common among them. If you find a case R&I you will not find that at all surprising and need not take it as evidence that I is true, you can simply say “He wasn’t convinced by the evidence, he’s just a right-winger and thinks the way other right-wingers think”. When you find James Flynn who knows quite a lot about IQ and is a socialist, which would make you expect him not to believe I, it is a surprise and serves as better evidence that I is actually true and that is why he believes it.
f someone comes to me quoting the AEI or “The Bell Curve,”
I did not quote either. I referenced a debate that was HOSTED BY the institute but not from them. Charles Murray was one of the authors of the Bell Curve, but to say I quoted the Bell Curve when I mentioned that would be like saying if I referenced a Vidal/Buckley debate I was then quoting Rocking the Boat or God and Man at Yale.
But then you threw in as “supporting” material a bunch of right-wing bullshit.
Charles Murray can be considered right-wing, James Flynn cannot. I do not know the political ideologies held by others I cited, but I don’t know how you can dismiss it all as “right wing” without presenting evidence for what their political positions are. Furthermore, you ought to present evidence that the material I cited is “bullshit”.
I grew tired of debating conservatives a while ago.
I am not a conservative and am not arguing for a political position but a scientific one.
As I said — ridiculous ideas deserve to be ridiculed, not debated.
This is just my opinion, but I think both should be done. An unwillingness to debate does not reflect well on anybody. I can understand that it is not worth your time to debate every yahoo that pops up, but categorically ruling something as outside the realm of debate is not conducive to the advancement of knowledge (even in the case of ridiculous ideas by convincing their adherents that they are wrong).
“The Bell Curve” is based on 150 year old science, and sociobiology isn’t much better.
Quite ironic considering Jensen’s response regarding “fossils”. I do not recall any attack on Sociobiology referring to “150 year old science”. Sociobiology was quite a new thing and there is still a lot of research being done in the field, even if it doesn’t go by the name “sociobiology.”
Gadget…
Great article, Go Gadget go…
Thnx very interesting.
The Mismeasure of Man is one of Gould’s worst books. It’s filled with straw-man arguments, ignores the existing evidence, and picks & chooses who he will argue against. For example, Gould omits any mention of the eugenicists of the left, such as Margaret Sanger.
I would recommend Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate instead.
While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the scientific journals were almost all highly critical (Davis, Bernard D. (1983). Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press. The Public Interest, 74, 41-59). http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/art_davis.html
- Gould also makes some misleading comments about the early performance of Jewish migrants on psychometric tests. Goddard never found that Jews as a group did poorly, and there is no evidence the tests were used in passing the 1924 Immigration Act (see, Franz Samelson (1975, 1982), Snyderman & Herrnstein 1983).
- Gould overlooks identical twin studies.
- Gould’s factor analysis is incorrect (also see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 (1995), (also, Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has writtena textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” where Gould goes wrong in this area.
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/carroll-gould.html
-Gould states that Morton “doctored” his collection of results on cranial size, but J. S. Michael (1988) remeasured a random sample of the Morton collection he found that very few errors had been made, and that these were not in the direction that Gould had asserted.
- The Army actually still uses IQ tests, and more generally, the tests have been shown to strongly predict academic performance.
- Gould largely attacks old tests. Jensen responded to a large amount of Gould’s criticism in Contemporary Education Review
Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) I don’t think Gould ever replied. http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html
-He attacks Cyril Burt for fabricating his twin studies, but books since Gould’s first edition came out have vindicated Burt (Joynson (1988) and the other by Ronald Fletcher (1991). Further, twin studies since show average heritability from these studies of 75%, almost the same as Burts supposedly ‘faked’ heritability of 77%.
The best information on the numerous fallacies used against IQ testing I’ve seen by Professor Linda Gottfredson (her faculty page has a number of papers on health & education issues. Also see Dr Ian Drury’s papers on health & IQ). http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/iq-academic-achievement.php
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2008logical-fallacies.pdf
Creationism – good!
Politics and philosophy NEVER fall into a two-sided continuum.