The myth of the myth of IQ

 A new book debunks 35 commonly-held myths about intelligence, IQ, and heritability:

In the spirit of correcting misapprehensions quickly, here are some snap answers to the first 6 questions:

  1. In fact, when the same people are given very different intelligence tests, including tests constructed in the belief that there is no general factor, the general factors extracted from the disparate tests correlate at above the .9 level.
  2. Mental tasks correlate with each other, and it is easy to extract a general factor (and also some group factors) so it is not unwarranted to summarize people’s general level of ability with one number.
  3. Brain size is weakly related .2 to .4 with intelligence, frontal lobes probably in the higher part of that range. Brighter people have more neurons in their brains, and those neurons are more densely packed together and, perhaps counter-intuitively, have fewer connections branching off each neurone. So, intelligence does have a relation to brain function, but research is at an early stage.
  4. If intelligence really varies in character between different cultures, then it should be very difficult to extract the “Western” general factor, yet in 31 countries, and using a wide variety of tests, 94 of the 97 (96.9{5c1a0fb425e4d1363f644252322efd648e1c42835b2836cd8f67071ddd0ad0e3}) samples produced g either immediately or after a second factor analysis. Moreover, the g factor is about as strong in the non-Western samples as it is in typical Western samples. Most countries find “Western” intelligence tests very useful, once they have been translated and some language and specific knowledge items altered or removed. To cap it all, dogs, rats, mice, donkey and primates show g factors. It looks like an evolutionary adaptation.
  5. Everyone seems to want multiple intelligences, particularly educationalists. However, even when researchers attempt to measure these multiple intelligences, the result is a series of correlated variables that produce a general factor, which is exactly what should never occur, according to the theory. Moreover, the proposer of the theory did not think it necessary to make it testable.
  6. If practical intelligence could be measured, American Football teams would find it extremely useful. Instead, they use the Wonderlic intelligence test, because it correlates with some of the more complicated playing abilities. The proposer of the theory does not specify what results will prove that practical intelligence differs from general intelligence.

It’s true that IQ is an imperfect proxy for whatever multiplicity of genes happens to produce the observable differences in what we generally call intelligence. But even given the limited current state of scientage on the subject, what would have to be denied in order to completely reject intelligence and IQ, as well as their heritability, would also require the abandonment of virtually everything we believe we know on a statistical basis, as well as a considerable portion of the entire scientific knowledge base.

This is why I don’t pay much attention to IQ critics, even when they happen to be legitimately brilliant men who are otherwise well worth listening to. While their criticisms of this or that particular may be relevant, they don’t even begin to shake the foundations of what has been reliably observed to be true as well as solidly supported by scientody.

Labels mean nothing

In the post-ideological age, a nominal affiliation with ideas does not serve as an accurate indication of genuine loyalties. Republican elder Bob Dole reveals that the debate commission is 100 percent anti-Trump despite half of them being Republicans:

The Commission on Presidential Debates is supposedly bipartisan w/ an equal number of Rs and Ds. I know all of the Republicans and most are friends of mine.  I am concerned that none of them support @realDonaldTrump. A biased Debate Commission is unfair.

You are living in a post-ideological age. Understand this. Accept this. It is time to stop thinking in terms of Left and Right, of Liberal and Conservative, of Democrat and Republican, and think in terms of identity instead.

“In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” 

—Lee Kuan Yew 

Cutting out the corporate cancer

Coinbase is successfully excising its SJW employees:

More than 60 Coinbase employees have taken an exit package after CEO Brian Armstrong said in a controversial blog post last month that the company would not participate in social activism. 60 employees or 5{5c1a0fb425e4d1363f644252322efd648e1c42835b2836cd8f67071ddd0ad0e3} of Coinbase’s workforce, have taken the deal, Armstrong said Thursday, and a number of conversations are still ongoing, meaning the final number could be higher. The discussion around Coinbase’s politics started internally this summer when the company didn’t release a statement supporting Black Lives Matter, causing a virtual walkout among employees, Wired reported.

Allowing the inmates to run the asylum, as Google and the NBA do, is a certain path to corporate extinction. Don’t be surprised to see other companies not only following Coinbase’s example, but getting considerably more proactive about not permitting them to infest the organization in the first place. 

It’s not going to take long before there is a copious amount of conclusive evidence incontrovertibly proving that diversity, equality, and inclusion are objectively bad for business. And it won’t take much longer than that before agitating for those Satanic virtues becomes a firing offense.

These costs are difficult to quantify precisely, as fewer than five percent of the companies with diversity programs even attempt to calculate any sort of return on investment for them, and those that do use soft metrics that have nothing to do with profitability. Even attempting to determine what these costs are is frowned upon by scientists in the heavily converged fields of social science. Nevertheless, researchers have consistently found that there are statistical differences in both productivity and job attendance between various identity groups, and that a diverse workforce is a less efficient, less productive one….

A summary of the estimated effects of these four convergence-imposed costs on the corporation, based on anecdotal evidence as well as reviewing a number of published, peer-reviewed papers is as follows:

  • 0.5 percent: time spent not working
  • 12 to 30 percent: nonproductive employees
  • 20 percent: reduced effectiveness of productive employees
  • 5 percent: friction

It’s important to remember that these costs are stackable, so the net effect of corporate convergence is to reduce the company’s productivity by as much as 55 percent.

– from Corporate Cancer by Vox Day

A portrait in missing the point

John Scalzi thinks he doesn’t miss America:

I don’t miss the America I grew up in — the America I grew up in, aside from being saddled with the strong possibility of nuclear war, had leaded gasoline and smog, it had stagflation and an oil crisis, it was a place where people smoked everywhere, including on airplanes, and people were still comfortable tossing out racial epithets in casual public conversation. It was a place where gay and lesbians and trans people couldn’t get married but could get arrested for existing in public. In my lifetime banks were not obliged to give women credit cards or loans without a male cosigner, women didn’t have the right to control their own bodies, and in the America I grew up in sexual harassment was an expected part of the cultural landscape.

So, yeah, the America I grew up was kinda terrible! And the parts of today that aren’t great are a direct result of what was terrible back then — you may have noticed we haven’t quite gotten rid of racial, sexual or gender issues, and if the GOP gets its way we’ll be saddled with them longer, because that’s how white supremacy do, and the GOP is now a white supremacist party, from the top on down. We also have the largest income and social mobility disparity in over a century, and again, that’s a direct result of policies that got their start in the era in which I grew up.

Part of the reason people have nostalgia is because they yearn for a simpler time — which for most people means a time when they were young, and didn’t know or didn’t care about the rest of the world. This presumes, of course, that one’s youth was simple, which is another reason I don’t have nostalgia; my childhood was not. It had long stretches of poverty and domestic uncertainty and I spent a lot of my time not knowing what was going to happen next — and even if I did know, I had no control over it. To be clear I also had good times and good friends and people who loved and cared for me; I’m not gunning for a “worst childhood” award here. But neither am I nostalgic for my childhood, nor for the era in which it existed.

I don’t miss the America I grew up in. I want to make the America I live in now better, so that everyone has a chance to have the moments of joy that I have been privileged to have.

This is a prime example of the problem with all the clueless Boomers and GenXers who live in safe white enclaves and believe that diversity is nothing more than a nice dash of spice and color in their comfortable lives. They don’t realize that they no longer live in America… or how desperately they will miss it once they realize what has taken its place.

It’s not the “Left” that hates Tolkien

It’s the anti-Christian Prometheans at Amazon who are attempting to degrade Middle Earth and turn it into Westeros with elves. Sexy, naked, gay elves:

It is obvious the left has it in for Tolkien and his work. This could not stop a major company like Amazon from wanting to profit off Tolkien’s hugely popular Legendarium.  

While Amazon is looking for a cash cow series, it appears pop culture is trying to defile Tolkien’s work from within, and what better way to undermine Tolkien’s message than to reimagine his stories in secular terms? From their point of view, it makes perfect sense to recreate the Second Age into a sexual paganist series to succeed “Game of Thrones.” 

The left is already cheering on the beginnings of the presumed assassination of Tolkien’s legacy. The leftist “NY Magazine” ran a story this week headlined, “Give Us the Horny Lord of the Rings Show We Deserve.” “Are we sure that an overwhelmingly erotic Middle Earth experience is such a bad thing,” read the article. “Make the elves get a little freaky. Allow the hobbits their fun. Give a new meaning to the inscription on the West-door of the Mines of Moria: Speak, friend, and enter.”

Ideology politics are dead. Idea wars are reserved for homogeneous societies, not multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, war zones.  The culture wars are intrinsically interidentity, and anyone who is still babbling about Left and Right, or Liberal and Conservative, is simply demonstrating the extent to which they fail to understand their own reality.

Social Justice is Satan’s Justice.

The Demoralization Season

We’re rapidly approaching the week when the media will most heavily exaggerate the polls before having to dial them back on the final stretch into the election. Consider the polls from the week of October 19-24 and the reported lead for Hillary Clinton:

  • 10 CNBC
  • 12 Greenberg
  • 13 Associated Press
  • 10 USA Today
  • 12 ABC News
They appear to have started early this year in light of Creepy Joe’s feeble campaign. The more things change…

President Trump’s debate performance followed by his coronavirus diagnosis appear to be digging an even deeper hole for him this week. Democrat Joe Biden now has a 12-point lead over the president in Rasmussen Reports’ weekly White House Watch survey. The latest national telephone and online survey finds Biden leading President Trump 52{5c1a0fb425e4d1363f644252322efd648e1c42835b2836cd8f67071ddd0ad0e3} to 40{5c1a0fb425e4d1363f644252322efd648e1c42835b2836cd8f67071ddd0ad0e3} among Likely U.S. Voters.

World War P continues

 Even the French aren’t running from the pedos anymore:

French police have arrested 61 people allegedly involved in a vast child pornography network. Some of the suspects are believed to have filmed their sexual assault of minors, investigators said.

The major sting was announced by Eric Berot, head of one of the divisions within France’s sub-directorate for battling organized crime, on Thursday. The arrests were made this week during a large operation that spanned 30 of France’s regions.

So far, 61 suspects have been detained. Several suspects had been working in positions that facilitated access to children – they include teachers, religious leaders and even city hall officials.

Do you think this massive series of arrests will continue if Biden is elected? Do you think children will continue to be rescued all over the world from the claws of GloboPedo Inc. without the God-Emperor driving the campaign?

Fortunately, there is no chance Biden will win. #Trumpslide2020

UPDATE: Still doubt that The Swamp is a pedocracy? Remember George Bush’s buddies at Haliburton?

The CEO of Haliburton International Foods in Ontario has been charged with engaging in prostitution with two teenage girls. Ian Charles Schenkel, 59, of Newport Beach, was charged Tuesday with six felony counts of unlawful sex with a minor and two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution of a minor involving two girls, ages 15 and 16. 

A moment of surreality

 As Darkstream viewers know, I think rather highly of the marketing book In Search of Stupidity. I’ve read the 2nd edition twice – I borrowed the paperback from Farley at his recommendation – and after discovering that an updated 3rd edition had been released, I went and picked up a copy. I’m about halfway through it, and you can probably understand I was a little startled by the following passage from the chapter on Amazon and its war with the Big Five publishers.

Another problem with Karnivorous is that it seems he has a distinct political bias. In March 2018, members of the Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance (CLFA) began reporting that many of their book reviews were disappearing from Amazon; in some cases, all reviews were pulled down. As always, Amazon refused to say why. Progressive and liberal authors writing on topics similar to the conservatives and libertarians did not have their reviews purged. The CFLA begin to push back publicly, and some authors such as sci-fi author Jon Del Arroz had their reviews restored. Arroz had his own theory on what had happened: 

“I believe the CLFA was targeted by an extreme alt-left troll mob running an email harassment campaign to Amazon who were enabled by a rogue Amazon employee.”

This was not paranoia on Arroz’s part. In 2017, an Amazon employee had temporarily succeeded in having a book released by conservative publisher Castalia House kicked off Kindle until their behavior was uncovered.

As readers here will recall, the SJWs in the KDP department behaved even more egregoiusly in 2019. While their customer service first told a bunch of lies, the KDP department’s actions were subsequently determined to have been based on “incorrect” information and Castalia’s account was quickly reinstated. While we did manage to get everything sorted out in only 18 hours, the incident served to confirm the importance of the strategic shift we had already begun. Now we’re moving off of Audible in favor of the Arkhaven store and it may not be long before we abandon KDP as well.

Bye, Gamma

Now, I understand that in this age of direct communications, it is sometimes easier to go directly to someone you know happens to have the information than proceed through the conventional channels, which can be slow and inefficient. That’s suboptimal, but it’s more or less fine. And I understand that not everyone reads every email, or post, or SocialGalactic update; despite our best efforts to keep everyone informed, someone is always going to fall through the cracks. 

But I am neither sales support nor technical support. If you send an email to my personal address, then you are going to get a personal response. You will not receive a professional or a corporate one. It may be helpful and informative, or it may not be. 

Translation: if you’re expecting some sort of “the customer is always right” posture from me, you’re in for a serious surprise. You’re not my customer and I’m not whatever the Hell you appear to think I am. If you suspect you’re inclined to flounce away in a snit because you think my failure to sufficiently kowtow to the Blessed and Thrice-Sanctified Customer is some sort of insult, just save us all the trouble and go away now. And if you have a problem with that, I suggest sending an email to Bill Gates about your problem printing from OpenOffice Writer in Windows 10, or to Scott Shannon at Penguin Random House about your inability to open your newly purchased ebook, for the sake of comparison.

Forget Pareto, one thing I’ve learned over 30+ years in the workforce is that one percent of the customers cause 95 percent of the trouble. Let this be henceforth known as the Day Principle of Customer Service. Logic dictates that an operation should seek to get rid of that one percent as expeditiously as possible in order to focus on making the products and services better for the 99 percent who just want quality goods and functional services.

What is particularly annoying about this to me is that this sort of idiot customer invariably expects a much higher standard of sales and technical support from startups with few hands on deck and limited resources than they do from giant corporations with tens of thousands of employees and near-infinite financial resources. Would they actually prefer it if we imitated the tech giants, hid our emails, and directed all communications to a call center staffed with third-worlders who have no information and no hope of being able to resolve any problem?