posted on September 16, 2020 08:03 PM by
u/haankso
58
u/TheCabbageGod31 pointsat 1600290153.000000
His article is so bad faith. He says “math this complex can’t
possibly be right, you’re trying to trick me!” It also seems from the
comments that he chose a paragraph to quote that is impossible to
understand out of context. Then he makes arguments about the Bell Curve
which he admits he has not read.
There's been approximately a million debunkings, many of them published right after the Bell Curve's publication, but if you want a modern take, check out Nathan Robinson's takedown
To ignore a bunch of more fundamental research failures and focus specifically on the math:
If you're going to determine how important being smart is to succeeding in life, you need to try to figure out how important other things like getting into a good school or getting a big cash loan from your parents are. If you feed the exact same numbers the bell curve used into a different formula, one that simply attaches a different multiplier to going to a good school versus a bad one, you get an IQ contribution that is 61 percent smaller than the one output by the bell curve.
So how did the bell curve authors use math to decide what the multipliers should be? Badly, say mathematicians.
Yes - all about non-factual assertions - like how Ethiopians are supposed to be champions at running marathons, Tibetans are supposed to be adapted to low-oxygen environments, etc.
definitely not imo, the whole framing for his quote is "people use complex math to shout down truths", and he goes into how he thinks it might be politically motivated, etc.
>My reaction to the Glymour paper was to try to figure out what it was trying to prove with all its statistics. My conclusion was that it was trying to prove that doing correlations adjusted for confounders didn’t always remove all the confounders.
>I don’t have the mathematical ability to know whether Glymour’s argument is correct, but luckily I [already don’t believe](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/26/stop-confounding-yourself-stop-confounding-yourself/) adjusting for confounders does a good job of removing confounders
Basically he doesnt understand the argument but agrees with the conclusion.
then a quotation, then:
>So I tried to route my argument around Glymour’s objection. I said that even assuming Glymour had discovered something terrible and shameful about the way correlations and regressions were done in the social sciences, this doesn’t come close to debunking all research on IQ. My particular argument was:
so he agrees with glymour on the trivial point that completely accounting for all cofounders to prove causation is hard, but still disagrees with the actual point (his reading of) glymour was trying to build to with that trivial point. like a sort of "even if we accept your premises" kinda thing. that's my reading anyway
"science is about observation. if we observe something that contradicts our theories, the scientist will ruthlessly throw out the theories"
(observes the 20th century revolution in music, visual art, poetry, politics, law, and governance achieved by black Americans despite having the boot of white supremacy on their neck the whole time)
"ah, well, er, nevertheless..."
That's where certain followers of his dust off the good ole Adolph for the explanation who achieved it. Then it actually matches perfectly with this idiot's musings on race and intelligence.
Hence the popularity with the nazis. He thinks that if nazis think he (and a certain quasi-ethnic group) are clever, that means they're good pals, because clever = praise = good. Of course they can not be antisemitic if they like his writings about race and IQ.
Let me explain why IQ is real. We know this, because lead poisoning
causes bad life outcomes.
For example, one study showed that after leaded gasoline is banned,
crime goes down. Therefore anything anyone has ever said about IQ is
true, like how blacks are inferior to whites.
Only a dumb second-rate mathematician would think otherwise.
Now, let me explain why there should be no unnatural state regulations against the free market's rational determination of appropriate lead risk, and why only an idiot who supports gommunism which killed 100 Trillion people last year would think otherwise.
I feel like I am a lot better at the sorts of things Diderot was good
at – philosophy, history, social science, et cetera – than at math.
From a sometime philosopher and historian of social science: think
again.
——-
I also like this line:
With apologies to Rutherford, all science is statistics or
stamp-collecting
Because not only is it flat out the opposite of the truth, he’s
showing his arse on philosophy, history, social science, maths,
statistics, and stamp-collecting with the oh-so-obvious pop-science
airport book reference
——-
It helps that the same line is directly contradicted shortly after,
in a perfect demonstration of the fact (ok fine, I’m a Feyerabend fan:
“claim that I poptart endorse”) that all science is not either
statistics or stamp-collecting:
intriguingly, [Fisher, the stats whizz] was taking money from the
tobacco industry to serve as their “consultant” while he was doing
it.
> all science is statistics or stamp-collecting
Dispatches from the "we don't have a method for objectively quantifying priors so let's go with what feels right vis-a-vis justifying the conclusion I'd already settled on by other means" School of Bayes.
The whole post reads as a massive self own and endorsement of
academia over blogging. The world is more complex than my shallow
knowledge can handle? Must be due to obfuscation. Here is one example
(that didn’t even happen) to prove my point. It’s no coincidence that
all of these losers see themselves as underachievers.
“nonmathematical ideas, like the existence of God, or lead
causing increases in crime” what the fuck? How is the latter not a
mathematical idea??? If you at all want to be precise about what that
latter statement means, you define quantities that are either the same
or different depending on the relationship between the random variables
“environmental lead levels” and “crime” (as in e.g. the Rubin causal
model). This is pure idiocy and innumeracy, transparently motivated by
still wanting to have strong opinions on statistical evidence while not
having done your fucking homework.
Why doesnt he just ask somebody with a degree in math to help him
out? Like if you really worry about getting eulered. We do the same with
lawsuits. I guess that doesnt work because you an outsider then cant
determine The Truth and just need to trust the person holding the
position you already held.
His article is so bad faith. He says “math this complex can’t possibly be right, you’re trying to trick me!” It also seems from the comments that he chose a paragraph to quote that is impossible to understand out of context. Then he makes arguments about the Bell Curve which he admits he has not read.
Looking back it’s incredible how many of his blogposts are just ammunition for HBDers to use in online arguments
I love science! Wait, science may show that black people are not inferior? Let us remember to be skeptical of science and those fiddly numbers.
Let me explain why IQ is real. We know this, because lead poisoning causes bad life outcomes.
For example, one study showed that after leaded gasoline is banned, crime goes down. Therefore anything anyone has ever said about IQ is true, like how blacks are inferior to whites.
Only a dumb second-rate mathematician would think otherwise.
Something apocryphal happened and by the way Catherine the Great was a horse fucker which I completely didn’t need to talk about as much as I did.
Also Bayesian something?
Anyhow I’m completely too clever for mathematicians to fool me guys, signed the dean from Ferris Euler’s Day Off.
Edit: Autocorrect hates me.
From a sometime philosopher and historian of social science: think again.
——-
I also like this line:
Because not only is it flat out the opposite of the truth, he’s showing his arse on philosophy, history, social science, maths, statistics, and stamp-collecting with the oh-so-obvious pop-science airport book reference
——-
It helps that the same line is directly contradicted shortly after, in a perfect demonstration of the fact (ok fine, I’m a Feyerabend fan: “claim that I poptart endorse”) that all science is not either statistics or stamp-collecting:
The whole post reads as a massive self own and endorsement of academia over blogging. The world is more complex than my shallow knowledge can handle? Must be due to obfuscation. Here is one example (that didn’t even happen) to prove my point. It’s no coincidence that all of these losers see themselves as underachievers.
“nonmathematical ideas, like the existence of God, or lead causing increases in crime” what the fuck? How is the latter not a mathematical idea??? If you at all want to be precise about what that latter statement means, you define quantities that are either the same or different depending on the relationship between the random variables “environmental lead levels” and “crime” (as in e.g. the Rubin causal model). This is pure idiocy and innumeracy, transparently motivated by still wanting to have strong opinions on statistical evidence while not having done your fucking homework.
Why doesnt he just ask somebody with a degree in math to help him out? Like if you really worry about getting eulered. We do the same with lawsuits. I guess that doesnt work because you an outsider then cant determine The Truth and just need to trust the person holding the position you already held.
I like that the whole thing is supposed to be an Aesop fable about a story he acknowledges is likely completely apocryphal?
When you tell a rationalist it’s not just the humanities they’re bad at
Help! I’m all Euler’d up and covered in thinly veiled racism!