|
I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:Ok, we've all seen plenty of articles documenting the collusion between the Federal Reserve and Financial institutions, but one of the most common reactions from people that I've seen is to call for the complete abolition of the Fed, with a rider that the US should return to hard currency. I know the Fed uses interest rate adjustments and cash-on-hand requirements to counteract cyclical slumps in economic activity, but what else can I say that would dissuade people from wanting to abolish the Fed entirely? Just look at what happened after Andrew Jacksons pulled his poo poo and you'll find your answer... Also, I'd like to get a working knowledge of Micro/Macro economics. Unfortunately, after watching inside job i'm wary that the field is essentially being coopted by business interests railing against regulation...is there any recommendations for independent books/online courses to check out? Bluff fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Dec 5, 2011 |
#
?
Dec 5, 2011 07:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 09:57 |
|
|
Bluff posted:Also, I'd like to get a working knowledge of Micro/Macro economics. Unfortunately, after watching inside job i'm wary that the field is essentially being coopted by business interests railing against regulation...is there any recommendations for independent books/online courses to check out? I'm no expert on economics, and I loved Inside Job, but I wouldn't form an opinion on a whole field of academic research based on one documentary film. That's where things like creationism come from.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2011 14:05
|
|
|
Bob Nudd posted:I'm no expert on economics, and I loved Inside Job, but I wouldn't form an opinion on a whole field of academic research based on one documentary film. That's where things like creationism come from. I haven't seen Inside Job, but I wasn't under the impression that the consensus opinion is that economics is in the midst of an age of strong civic commitment or even accountability to the public interest. Questioning mainstream economics therefore seems quite a bit different than questioning the motivations of climate change science.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2011 23:47
|
|
|
I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:Ok, we've all seen plenty of articles documenting the collusion between the Federal Reserve and Financial institutions, but one of the most common reactions from people that I've seen is to call for the complete abolition of the Fed, with a rider that the US should return to hard currency. I know the Fed uses interest rate adjustments and cash-on-hand requirements to counteract cyclical slumps in economic activity, but what else can I say that would dissuade people from wanting to abolish the Fed entirely? It's not possible. The fed, and the things it does, are extremely loving complex; someone who just wants to abolish the fed up with gold wants simple answers and you're not going to be able to give simple answers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2011 02:46
|
|
|
I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:Ok, we've all seen plenty of articles documenting the collusion between the Federal Reserve and Financial institutions, but one of the most common reactions from people that I've seen is to call for the complete abolition of the Fed, with a rider that the US should return to hard currency. I know the Fed uses interest rate adjustments and cash-on-hand requirements to counteract cyclical slumps in economic activity, but what else can I say that would dissuade people from wanting to abolish the Fed entirely? Citizens of other countries started to get worried. If you think the government is about to abandon the gold standard, then it's in your best financial interest to convert your money into gold before that happens (because the value of your paper money is going to decrease relative to gold after leaving the gold standard). And that's what people started to do. So there was an even bigger threat that central banks would run out of gold. Soon FDR decided to abandon the gold standard too. And although there wasn't immediate rejoicing in his decision (leaving the gold standard was completely contrary to the economics zeitgeist), most historians and economists now agree that abandoning the gold standard was one of the most defining factors in ending the Great Depression. The United States left the gold standard in 1933. Obviously, the Great Depression continued for some time after. But it was in 1933 that things in America stopped getting worse. This pattern repeated itself all over the developed world, as each country dropped the gold standard. (Except for Spain, which was never on the gold standard, in favor of fiat money. And wouldn't you know it, Spain did relatively well during the Great Depression.) I see no reason to think that similar problems magically wouldn't happen again if we went back to the gold standard.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2011 02:53
|
|
|
Mark Kidd posted:I haven't seen Inside Job, but I wasn't under the impression that the consensus opinion is that economics is in the midst of an age of strong civic commitment or even accountability to the public interest. Speak to any non-ideologue Economics teacher. "Don't take it at the undergrad level. Take it in grad school, or better yet, don't." There's also gems such as "...disruptions? We're in Florida. Tea partiers. I've made a new assignment where they have to research and explain what capitalism, socialism, etc is and isn't to put a stop to it." Literal state law means day one, she had to tell us Capitalism is the light. She pointed out she did because it was state law, amusingly enough. She's still working on her dissertation on women's and labor economics, which is cool. If you go to a school with an economics department that "leans your way," you might have a blast. Oddly enough a University in Utah does marxian analysis. She went to American University.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2011 07:49
|
|
|
Does anyone have some good capital punishment links other than the one in the OP?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2011 14:38
|
|
|
Does anyone have good sources on the relation between adoption and availability of abortion? Some poo poo head in my Speech class gave a pro-life speech and she kept using adoption and adopted people as an emotional prop and presented her opinion(that adopted people would all be dead if abortion was legal, and pro-choice people are all murderers for not supporting adoption) as the opinion of all adopted people, which as someone who was adopted and pro-choice and whose adoptive mother is adopted and pro-choice, I found offensive and demeaning as hell. I'd like to make a rebuttal and send it to her through a mutual friend.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2011 20:18
|
|
|
Has there been any concrete proof that Israel is sponsering people to post about downplaying Israeli offenses ala the JIDF?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2011 05:16
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Has there been any concrete proof that Israel is sponsering people to post about downplaying Israeli offenses ala the JIDF? quote:The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000) will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad. Apparently Ynet must've gotten hold of Pieter's application: quote:“Where do I submit a CV?” wrote one respondent. “I’m fluent in several languages and I’m able to spew forth bullshit for hours on end.” 
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2011 14:35
|
|
|
Zeitgueist posted:I think the way to attack Austrians is to attack the rational actor model. By the by, I've just created a new thread that I'm hoping will spur further discussion about economics from a more pragmatic perspective and perhaps be useful to those of us who feel the need to debate with the Austrians. Sorry about the forums necromancy.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2012 21:21
|
|
|
MY GIRLFRIEND is taking a class this semester taught by a tremendous supply-side douchebag. Here's an example of his terrible opinions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C8OxiakKrM&feature=related "People are obviously rational actors; also black people"  Also unironically lectured in favour of sweatshops in the first class today. If anyone's got an economics bomb or a bunch of great debunk links, that'd be awesome. She wants to arm herself with rhetoric and counterpoints, especially since he's already singled her out as "the class social conscience"
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2012 01:32
|
|
|
Record corporate profits last year. Still high unemployment. That should at least start an interesting conversation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2012 01:37
|
|
|
Books about how people are nothing close to rational are good starts. It's solid science you can't handwave away as political disagreement.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2012 02:33
|
|
|
crazy paleoconservative on FB posted:5000 syrian civilians gunned down by their own government..400 people alone killed in cold blood since january 1, 2012....and no one gives a poo poo. just amazing....where is everyone? when israel kills a TERRORIST about to kill innocent people, theres world outrage!!..oh yea, no one cares when arabs kill each other He always is out there on FB commenting poo poo like this and almost immediately gets an absurd amount of "Likes", I've argued with him extensively in the past and despite his obvious hypocrisy re: Israeli civilian casualties, I'd like to point him to circumstances where human rights observers/Western governments have criticized the Syrian government etc. Can anyone help me out?
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2012 04:58
|
|
|
dorkasaurus_rex posted:He always is out there on FB commenting poo poo like this and almost immediately gets an absurd amount of "Likes", I've argued with him extensively in the past and despite his obvious hypocrisy re: Israeli civilian casualties, I'd like to point him to circumstances where human rights observers/Western governments have criticized the Syrian government etc. Can anyone help me out? He's got a point. Israel gets attention because Israel is a symbol. Places like Syria and Sudan don't because they aren't. It's the same reason one kidnapped little blonde kid will get more media attention than every other crime that happens in a year combined.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2012 05:12
|
|
|
Okay I'm back to debating with a libertarian about Austrian economics. Unfortunately when it comes to econ I've never taken a single class and am an ignorant stupidhead. Most of what I've learned is cribbed from D&D, and I'm trying to make my way through the two Austrian Economics threads in my downtime. Three big questions for now: 1) The guy I'm debating with right now is claiming that Austrians predicted the housing bubble while Keynesians totally ignored it or didn't see it coming at all. Is this true? If not, howso? 2) What exactly IS stagflation and how does the stagflation of the 60s and 70s disprove Keynesianism? Or does it? 3) Buddy is claiming that Keynesians all think that debt and inflation are ultimately good for the economy. This sounds like a gross oversimplification to me... what exactly is going on in his head and what are the real facts?
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2012 20:11
|
|
|
Directorman posted:MY GIRLFRIEND is taking a class this semester taught by a tremendous supply-side douchebag. Honestly I'm not sure that you should waste very much time debating that guy. In that interview he tries to blame the passage of the minimum wage law many decades ago for high unemployment amongst black teenagers today (in other words he completely ignores the fact we're in the midst of the worst recession in more than fifty years). He also completely ignores both offshoring and skills-biased technical change, both of which are commonly cited by economists (especially sbtc) as important factors in the decline of wages. Unsurprisingly he also doesn't mention the decline of unions. This is something you'll see economists do quite often when they speak with the media. Unless this guy is a complete and total hack then I guarantee you that when he is having a conversation with another PhD economist he definitely talks as though he's aware of how technological change and globalization have had a far greater impact on wages than minimum wage laws. He's being intentionally condescending and misleading in that interview. The one point he makes which most economists wouldn't have trouble agreeing with is the idea that raising labour costs encourages businesses to invest in new labour saving machinery. Even here, however, he's being extremely misleading to the point of dishonesty. Any competent economist will acknowledge that a marginal change in labour costs (say, raising minimum wages by 20%) is only one of literally thousands of factors weighing on a business person's mind (and another typically much more important is how much demand there is for products, something which a minimum wage can help increase by raising purchasing power for workers). He wants to pretend that a marginal change in labour costs could somehow be responsible for a system wide change in the economy. As for the broader issue of how to argue with a guy like that, the book "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely is a fairly short and accessible read with numerous examples of how cultural and sociological factors shape our decisions far more extensively than neoclassical economics allows for. It has some neat experiments showing how the amount we're willing to pay for something is extremely easy to manipulate and how common economic models of decision making turn out to be inadequate. I'd also have to recommend Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, which is arguably one of the best books written on economics in the last decade. Reinert does an extensive and convincing take down of neoclassical economics with a focus on what he calls the "equality assumption". People very often go after economists for assuming people are too rational, but I think that in many ways Reinert's criticism is both deeper and more pervasive. He directly attacks economics for fairly to distinguish between qualitative, as opposed to merely quantitative, questions about economic activity. Like I said though, if the arguments that guy presented in the interview are any indication, he isn't going to debate honestly. He's trying to use his academic position to sell a particular vision of the world. I'm sure deep down that he thinks its for the greater good and that he's only telling a simplified version of the truth (as opposed to a lie) but the effect is the same. ShadowCatboy posted:Okay I'm back to debating with a libertarian about Austrian economics. Unfortunately when it comes to econ I've never taken a single class and am an ignorant stupidhead. Most of what I've learned is cribbed from D&D, and I'm trying to make my way through the two Austrian Economics threads in my downtime. Here's Peter Schiff, a prominent Austrian economist, predicting the collapse of the housing bubble during a debate with Reagan adviser Art Laffer. Pretty impressive, right? He even recognizes that this won't just be a minor slowdown, but rather a major economic disruption. One gets the impression from Schiff's comments that he is overemphasing the role that insurance rates played in popping the bubble. He seems to be assuming that rational actors in the market are going to start charging higher interest rates, and that higher interest rates will then lead to a recession. This is actually a much sunnier version of the story than what actually occurred. In actuality the market chugged along until a bunch of big financial institutions suddenly couldn't roll over their debt anymore, which triggered what was in all but name a run on the banks (except instead of formally being banks, these were institutions like AIG that had taken on banking functions but which weren't regulated as such). So Schiff was correct in predicting a housing bubble but somewhat off on the particulars. He has also repeatedly been predicted that the Obama administrations policies and the Fed's Quantitative Easing would lead to Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation. So far that prediction has turned out to be blatantly false. Also note someone else who predicted the bubble several years earlier than Schiff and who is absolutely not an Austrian, Dean Baker. Here's a paper pointing out the housing bubble that was released in August 2002. This is, so far as I know, long before Schiff or any other prominent Austrian raised any warnings. Here's an article by Baker in the August 16 2004 edition of the Nation, again predicting the bubble. Here Baker writes: quote:The crash of the housing market will not be pretty. It is virtually certain to lead to a second dip to the recession. Even worse, millions of families will see the bulk of their savings disappear as homes in some of the bubble areas lose 30 percent, or more, of their value. Foreclosures, which are already at near record highs, will almost certainly soar to new peaks. This has happened before in regional markets that had severe housing bubbles, most notably in Colorado and Texas after the collapse of oil prices in the early eighties. However, this time the bubble markets are more the rule than the exception, infecting most of real estate markets on both coasts, as well as many local markets in the center of the country. Baker is very big on Keynesian economics, and yet his predictions are made earlier and are much more specific and accurate than the predictions made by Schiff and other Austrians that I'm aware of. Furthermore, Baker has repeatedly suggested that rather than being admired for recognizing the bubble, he thinks we ought to condemn all the economists who missed it. Baker notes that the bubble was easy to predict if one simply compared rental prices to the prices people were paying for homes, and that the dire effects of the bubble were easy to predict using arithmetic if one employed fairly standard economic assumptions about how much demand would decrease once houses were revalued. What this suggests to me is that whether or not you predicted the bubble had very little to do with how smart you are. Instead the economists who predicted the bubble tend to have been those who for one reason or another are on the outside or the periphery of the mainstream intellectual establishment. Economists of both the left and right who crave respectability or who have financial incentives to downplay the bubble are going to do so, whereas economists who are invested into the Halls of Power have strong incentives not to identify such a bubble, or to downplay its significance. In other words, Austrians were safely irrelevant enough that, like many socialists, they were comfortable predicting the housing collapse. You know who else predicted this recession? Lyndon LaRouche. So merely predicting the collapse shouldn't be seen as too impressive. quote:2) What exactly IS stagflation and how does the stagflation of the 60s and 70s disprove Keynesianism? Or does it? First of all its important to note that Keynesianism as a doctrine is distinct from the writings of Lord Keynes the economist. Keynes changed his mind on various issues, was sometimes unclear in his meaning, and from time to time contradicted himself in his various writings and public statements. His views also changed over time. He also died very shortly after WWII which limited his ability to directly influence postwar economics. However his ideas were seized upon with great excitment, especially thanks to authors like Hicks and Samuelson who mathematized Keynes insights and made them more model driven and closer in appearance to the old microeconomic models employed by the marginalist school in the 1870s-1930s. Keynesianism as an academic doctrine and government ideology developed numerous ideas we still use today. The very concept of measuring GDP, for instance, comes from measurements Keynes made of the British economy's capacity during the War. Another important idea that emerged from Keynesianism-as-academic-doctrine was the idea of the Philips Curve. The Philips Curve suggested that there was an inverse link between inflation and unemployment. When inflation increased it triggered an automatic decrease in unemployment as people found it easier to get jobs. Conversely, if fewer people were able to find work then the demand for goods would decrease and thus inflation would go down. This is a simplified picture of reality that was immensely attractive to government policy makers because it seemed to offer a very simple and workable way of managing a capitalist economy. When you're worried about inflation you raise interest rates, when you're worried about unemployment you reduce interest rates again. I'm obviously presenting an extremely simplified version of events here but that's the essence of it, and this system worked pretty well for a while. Then the 1970s happened. Just what lead to stagflation depends on who you ask. Some people blame price controls introduced by Nixon, others blame the sudden and sharp rise in oil prices thanks to the OPEC embargo (this is the explanation I think makes the most sense), some think it was technological and social factors. Either way something about the old Keynsian model seemed to break down, because suddenly society was experiencing rising unemployment and rising interest rates. The traditional government solutions no longer worked. Whether or not Keynesian policies contributed to the economic factors that lead to stagflation (and there may be some basis for these arguments) its undeniable that Keynesianism as an intellectual toolkit was caught flat footed. Since then Keynesianism have made substantial alterations to the theory, though not always for the better. I have to run out now so I hope that helps answer your question somewhat. If you have more specific questions I might be able to direct you to helpful secondary or primary sources. You should also google "Philips Curve" and do your own reading on the subject. quote:3) Buddy is claiming that Keynesians all think that debt and inflation are ultimately good for the economy. This sounds like a gross oversimplification to me... what exactly is going on in his head and what are the real facts? Keynesians advocate for government deficit financed counter-cyclical spending. What that means is that when the economy enters a downturn Keynesians advocate taking on public debt through increased expenditures and/or lower tax rates so that they can enact government measures that will raise aggregate demand. Then when the economy is booming again they advocate (at least in theory) cutting back government spending and raising taxes to prevent the economy from becoming "overheated". Many Keynesians also have a favourable view of moderate inflation under the right circumstances because it encourages people to spend money and because under Keynesian theory inflation is associated with economic growth. So basically your friend is drastically oversimplifying things, but its completely true that under some circumstances Keynesian economists think that both public debt and inflation can be worthwhile policies to pursue. Trying to say that they think these things are "ultimately good for the economy" is actually a pretty telling example of the difference in how the two groups think. Austrians seem to be of the view that we should have a single economic policy for all situations and that any deviation from these policies is both tyrannical and assured to result in disaster. Keynesians, by contrast, tend to think that different economic conditions or circumstances call for different policy responses. The idea that a Keynesian would ever say that inflation is "ultimately good for the economy" is silly, because the whole point of Keynsianism is that we can and should readjust our economic policies to fit present circumstances rather than only thinking about what the "ultimate" direction of society it is. This is exactly what lead to Keynes' famous quote that while it may be true, as Austrians in his day asserted, that in the long run the recession would solve itself, that this didn't matter much because "in the long run we are all dead."
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 00:23
|
|
|
That was a really great effort post and way way way better than what I would have written which is, "Austrian economists literally reject empirical evidence when forming their models and are nothing more than a bunch of guys bullshitting from their armchairs. They are the economic equivalent of pothead philosophizers."
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 00:38
|
|
|
rscott posted:Austrian economists literally reject empirical evidence when forming their models and are nothing more than a bunch of guys bullshitting from their armchairs. Hey, not having a go at you, I don't even know what your economic opinions are, but this is an interesting little post. It seems that it's trendy thing to attack economics because it's perceived as having questionable assumptions at its core. Here's a few things to bear in mind when throwing out allegations like that: * What alternative economic system proceeds from a rigorous, empiric understanding of human behavior? Socialists love sneering at mainstream economics because rational actor theory is naive. What is the firm theory of human action that underpins socialism? What behavioral psychology experiments did Marx perform before taking to his armchair to expound his theories? * Perhaps economics appears overly simplistic to the layman, because, well, it's made overly simplistic for the layman's benefit. My secondary school physics book neglected air resistance in its treatment of ballistics. Does that mean that professors of physics believe in an ideal world free from drag and friction? Of course not - professional economists are often keenly aware of the shortcomings of the models they construct. * I'd be careful about hand-waving away whole fields of academic study. I'm sure creationists have lots of little soundbites that show how all of modern biology is a nonsense. There's a fine line between having healthy skepticism and indulging in glib anti-intellectualism. Having said all that, you're talking about Austrian economics, which is quite heterodox so I see where you're coming from. My points are more aimed at those who'd dismiss all of modern economics with one or two easy cliches. Also, great post there Helsing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 01:55
|
|
|
Bob Nudd posted:Hey, not having a go at you, I don't even know what your economic opinions are, but this is an interesting little post. It seems that it's trendy thing to attack economics because it's perceived as having questionable assumptions at its core. Here's a few things to bear in mind when throwing out allegations like that: No, he means Austrian economics literally rejects empirical evidence and makes no predictions about the real world using defined models. Other economic theories are used in the real world and can make predictions that are quite accurate, for example how many jobs would be created for a given amount of government stimulus.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 02:40
|
|
|
Helsing posted:amazing Hoooly poo poo thanks so much, Helsing! Can you give me any concrete examples as to how more mainstream economic theories have more robust predictive power with appeal to empirical evidence? Do you know what any more contemporary Austrian Economic arguments about the real estate bubble and why they're unsatisfactory (given the whole lack of empiricism thing).
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 06:01
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:Books about how people are nothing close to rational are good starts. It's solid science you can't handwave away as political disagreement. Pretty much any psychology text written in the last century. Though that said, I still see the austrians try and hand-waving it away by continuously re-defining "rational" until it has almost no descriptive power at all. Either way, their spergy concept fails.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2012 18:31
|
|
|
Helsing posted:Here's Peter Schiff, a prominent Austrian economist, predicting the collapse of the housing bubble during a debate with Reagan adviser Art Laffer. Pretty impressive, right? He even recognizes that this won't just be a minor slowdown, but rather a major economic disruption. Just going to seize in on this very briefly since it came up in a rather one sided debate with my Austrian 'friend'. Generally speaking, if you look at a bunch of the prominent Austrian Economists who predicted the housing bubble, you will find one major thing in common, they're doomsayers Schiff and Gerald Celente are the worst of the offenders, but people hilariously love to bring up Schiff whenever they want to point out how right Austrians were about the housing bubble. Several times a year the man takes a look at the worst case scenario in the current economy, and starts yelling about how it is going to happen and you should buy foreign assets. The simple fact is that people like Schiff are broken clocks. They are right two times a day by virtue of throwing out so many negative predictions that they have to be right eventually, and due to confirmation bias no one ever remembers the dozens of other times they were wrong. Here is Peter Schiff saying that the dow jones was going to go down to 2-4000 within a year. This was in may of 2002: Wrong Here he is talking about how inflation is going to cause the value of the dollar to drop like a rock. To be clear, this video is from 2010, but I could pick a year at random and I can just about assure you that schiff will have told a major press outlet that the US was going to go into Hyper-Inflation within 1-2 years: Wrong again Schiffy boy! Here he is telling us we almost certainly won't make it until 2012. Unless the government totally intervenes and keeps things from falling apart... in which case he is totally not wrong: Oi... I'll just leave this last one here, but this is a listing of some of Schiff's public guesses. A lot more false than true there, and the ones that are true usually trend towards things like 'buy gold' =/ I really do not like this guy. Yeah, sorry for the rant post but I just get enraged when people pull that 'austrians predicted the bubble' bs. I predicted the damned bubble when I went looking for a house in 2006, I just didn't understand it cuz I knew gently caress all about economics at the time! "Hrm... you know, these houses are priced at 300,000 for a lovely 600 square foot hole. And they're increasing every year. Its bad when that stops right?" 
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2012 08:17
|
|
|
Okay. As much as I hate to basically ask D&D to help me do my homework, I'm in desperate need of ammunition to combat what I'm seeing as a proliferation of 'scientific racism'. It started with this lovely piece from Psychology Today (has since been removed) by noted shitheel Satoshi Kanazawa, 'Why are black women rated less physically attractive than other women'. In some of the most egregiously willful distortions I've ever seen, he concluded that he had found that African American women were "objectively" less attractive than European American, Asian American, and Native American women. This piece is pretty easy to debunk on its own (the data he used didn't support his conclusions at all, beauty isn't 'objective', etc.) But that's just one example that led to more discussions about the so-called 'Hereditarian Hypothesis', which basically suggests that heredity (genetics) plays a significant or even predominant role in determining such features as intelligence. On its face, I can't see much wrong with this theory, but it's being used to explain statistical variations in intelligence measured between blacks and whites, leading inevitably to the conclusion that blacks are genetically intellectually inferior to whites. Here's some of the highlights that were brought up in an argument I was having a scientific racism acolyte, in a discussion about Islam in Europe that predictably devolved into "beautiful, white Europa being invaded by brown hordes and inevitably becoming the 'Eurabian Caliphate". The crux of his argument is that 1) IQ tests are the best measure of intelligence, 2) blacks have poorer performance relative to whites on IQ tests, 3) once accounting for all exogenous factors, this variance can only be explained by genetic differences: some guy posted:IQ tests are directly associated with mental capacity. Also the tests are based entirely on logic and you can't study for them. http://livearchive.org/2011/pdf/2004socialconsequences-groy/ some guy continues on IQ posted:Results indicate expert consensus that g is an important, non-trivial determinant (or at least predictor) of important real world outcomes for which there is no substitute, and that tests of g are valid and generally free from racial bias. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608000305 some guy continues on IQ posted:Genetic influences on brain morphology and IQ are well studied. A variety of sophisticated brain-mapping approaches relating genetic influences on brain structure and intelligence establishes a regional distribution for this relationship that is consistent with behavioral studies. Other factors, such as the environment, obviously play a role, but the predominant determinant appears to genetic. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15651931 I can't get the full version of this article, but I'd love to see it and to see if the authors speak at all to the relationship between race and intelligence. He continues... Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability posted:The culture-only (0% genetic–100% environmental) and the hereditarian (50% genetic–50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black–White differences in cognitive ability are compared and contrasted across 10 categories of evidence: the worldwide distribution of test scores, g factor of mental ability, heritability, brain size and cognitive ability, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression, related life-history traits, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. Citing an infamous law journal article by Jensen and Rushton, whose main purpose was to drive this legal conclusion to shift the burden of proof in racial discrimination suits: Jensen posted:“a demonstration of differential racial performance (good or bad) could not, by itself, be offered as proof of racial discrimination because, as the evidence review in this article demonstrates, genetic factors play a role in producing these differences. Rather, the burden would be on the plaintiffs to prove that the defendants had discriminated on the basis of race and not educational or vocational performance associated with race. I've seen Jensen and Rushton pop up a lot in these discussions, and this article in particular. The rebuttal that's most frequently offered, when and if it is, comes from Richard Nesbitt here, among others floating around out there. Another convincing rebuttal I stumbled upon came from a Robert Farley, who said: Farley posted:(1) IQ is not necessarily an accurate measure of intelligence; (2) the legal and social scientific category of “race” is totally different from “populations,” which is genetic science’s only valid unit of social analysis; (3) since Africans, Asians, and Europeans lived in very similar economic and agricultural conditions up to about 200 years ago, it is unlikely that their respective environments would have selected for different levels of intelligence in that short period of time; and (4) if indeed inherited intelligence can change that quickly, it suggests that genetic differences in race are extraordinarily historically transient, and therefore the notion that there are stable, fixed, or inherent racial traits is nonsensical. Cited from here, can't find an original study or article. Now, while I can bring up the Nesbitt rebuttal and its attack the methodological flaws Jensen/Rushton piece specifically, I have trouble with the broader question of the relationship between race, intelligence, and heredity. Intuitively, I strongly suspect that people like Rushton and Jensen are distorting science to serve racist agendas, I don't really know enough about this area of psychology and biology, and the apparent war being waged between hereditarians and the traditional social science model, to articulate more specific rebuttals to the actual science involved. While I can't discount the potential role genetics plays in transmitting intelligence, I don't know how much of a role should be ascribed to genetics as opposed to environmental factors, nor do I have the best understanding of the racial foundation for genetics, if any. Anything to help me get a better understanding of these issues would be greatly appreciated.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2012 21:15
|
|
|
A Fistful of Dicks posted:1) IQ tests are the best measure of intelligence, 2) blacks have poorer performance relative to whites on IQ tests, 3) once accounting for all exogenous factors, this variance can only be explained by genetic differences. OK this is a bit of a driveby response but this sort of argument shits me to tears because it makes all psychologists look dumb, so here is a canned response: 1) IQ is in fact a very poor measure of intelligence - for instance, Flynn's landmark study suggests that IQ is better characterised as a correlate of intelligence with a weak causal link. I do not know a single working developmental psychologist who uses IQ as anything more than a battery of tests to assess normal neural functioning (it is pretty good for assessing things like concrete operations etc). This, of course, leaves aside the entire question of what actually constitutes intelligence, which is a murky and unresolved question in it's own right, fraught with cultural and social factors that are resistant to quantification. 2) This sort of segues from point 1 - the general consensus is that intelligence is when people think you're smart, and we know that priming a person's social class or a negative social category before a test is undertaken has a negative impact on performance (e.g. tell a girl that all girls are bad at maths then getting her to take a maths test - this is known as stereotype threat) so if, courtesy of the specious racism of people like your mate, black people are relentlessly told they are stupid, they will perform worse regardless of the measure employed. This is a fine example of why point 3: 3) Is completely impossible. You cannot control for all external social factors in this scenario. Especially when your subject group is an entire race of people who range the gamut of social categories etc. The idea is frankly moronic. Where is your control? Are there some black people out there who have never been exposed to racial stereotyping? Or maybe we could just paint some white kids black and raise them in a black family and then see how they do, that'd do the trick! Ethics? What do you mean ethics? Biological essentialists aren't concerned with ethics, mon frere! Basically, that Farley quote is spot on the money and probably gives more insight into the genetics/biology side of the equation than I can, beyond the following: Suggesting that genetics are a predominant factor in the constuct of "intelligence" is phenomenally overstating the case in the context of modern neuroscience. Neuro isn't really my field but from my undergrad years, the current consensus is that genetic factors in neural structure are largely overwhelmed inside of the first few years of life by the neuroplastic adaptation of the brain to external stimuli (i.e. social factors). So, while smart parents seem to tend to raise smart kids, this is actually more likely to do with the package of behaviours that tend to characterise "smart" in our society and the effect of those behaviours on the child's development, NOT the fact that ma & pa produce smarty zygotes. Can't source that one for you though because i remember the content well but not the reference  Anyway, that's a quick look at the question at hand, I don't really get into the whole hereditarian/socialised dialectic because I think the whole question rather misses the point in the first place - even if genetics plays a large part in development or whatever, the only aspect of the equation of "causal" factors we can influence (without getting into eugenics or human genetic manipulation or one of those other utilitarian shitheaps of ethical dilemma) is the SOCIAL aspect so why not concentrate on what is important? Yes yes scientific endeavour, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, etc but considering how routinely that sort of knowledge is used to justify bigotry and filth, I just don't give a gently caress~
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 01:29
|
|
|
Implants posted:OK this is a bit of a driveby response but this sort of argument shits me to tears because it makes all psychologists look dumb, so here is a canned response: Thanks a whole hell of a lot for this! I suspected that there wasn't some final verdict on IQ tests being the end all/be all measure of intelligence, and I'd vaguely recalled hearing about stereotype threat but had forgotten all about it. I think I'm going to compile a 'Rebutting 'Scientific Racism' Primer' to be added to the OP, because like I said, I'm seeing way more of this lately.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 09:02
|
|
|
Implants posted:Suggesting that genetics are a predominant factor in the constuct of "intelligence" is phenomenally overstating the case in the context of modern neuroscience. Neuro isn't really my field but from my undergrad years, the current consensus is that genetic factors in neural structure are largely overwhelmed inside of the first few years of life by the neuroplastic adaptation of the brain to external stimuli (i.e. social factors). So, while smart parents seem to tend to raise smart kids, this is actually more likely to do with the package of behaviours that tend to characterise "smart" in our society and the effect of those behaviours on the child's development, NOT the fact that ma & pa produce smarty zygotes. The weakness of racial conceptions of intelligence is in the conception of race and perhaps in the difficulty of establishing a good control - it is manifestly not in the idea that intelligence has a strong genetic component, and you will look like a fool to anyone halfway informed on the subject if you argue in that direction.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 19:55
|
|
|
Strudel Man posted:The heritability of IQ[/url], at least, has been robustly shown in study after study to be quite high, between .5 and .9; moreover, it actually increases as one ages. That is to say, social factors are more relevant in children than they are in adults.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 20:35
|
|
|
So long story short I am arguing with a facebook mom about This article Does anyone have know about what is specifically in vaccinations, and why it is bad(or good)? Because most of what I am finding is vaccines=autism websites. E: well I declared myself winner because they both devolved into insults, but regardless I would still like to have some info on how to fight against this poo poo. Quabzor fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Jan 20, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 20:43
|
|
|
Quabzor posted:So long story short I am arguing with a facebook mom about This article http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/category/vaccines/
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2012 21:02
|
|
|
Quabzor posted:So long story short I am arguing with a facebook mom about This article Start with the fact that the original (And only) study that conclusively linked vaccines to Autism was done by Andrew Wakefield. That study was later (way too later) retracted by the publisher (The lancet). Further investigation has shown that the study was an elaborate fraud, that in addition to selecting his subjects from his child's birthday party rather than any clinical selection, he fudged the numbers. Andrew Wakefield has since been stripped of his medical license. He also received upwards of 500,000 British pounds from a law firm that was intending to sue vaccination companies. So yeah... anti-vaccination people are crazy assholes and you are right to want to tell her what is what.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2012 17:03
|
|
|
baw posted:I have a few more things typed up for the really common rightwing dipshittery and I'll share some advice I've learned over the years of doing this stuff: I think this is some sound advice; one thing that I also find is important is to try and make a distinction between attacking an idea and attacking the person. People become very impassioned about ideas they hold and view critiques of views they hold as critiques on them personally very often. It's important to distinguish between the two when discussing a subject as the more someone feels you are going after them personally the less receptive they will be to contradictory facts and information. With regards to the bolded portion, I find this to be a decent reference:  Ideally you want the top section, but figuring out what the central point is and refuting it often takes wading through the counterargument and refutation portions of the pyramid. Avoid the bottom four where possible: the bottom three aren't helpful and the fourth (contradiction) doesn't represent your argument well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2012 19:31
|
|
|
I really don't know if IQ tests mean that much. I do really well in IQ tests , but honestly, I'm dumb as a bag of rocks sometimes, and seemingly more so the older I get e: annecdote wheeee. With all that said, how does one tease out environmental from genetic factors in IQ with this whole heritability jibba jabba. Surely having smart parents just means you grow up in a household that values and encourages intelligence. How is that variable teased apart from genetics?
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 05:10
|
|
|
I recall that a lot of the IQ difference between races in Oakland, which had myriad racial theories swirling around it, disappeared when the Black Panthers started their free breakfast program. (Can't find a source. Read that long ago.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 05:20
|
|
|
Phyzzle posted:I recall that a lot of the IQ difference between races in Oakland, which had myriad racial theories swirling around it, disappeared when the Black Panthers started their free breakfast program. If this is true, I'd *love* to see news story or study behind it. duck monster posted:I really don't know if IQ tests mean that much. I do really well in IQ tests , but honestly, I'm dumb as a bag of rocks sometimes, and seemingly more so the older I get Heh duck monster posted:With all that said, how does one tease out environmental from genetic factors in IQ with this whole heritability jibba jabba. Surely having smart parents just means you grow up in a household that values and encourages intelligence. How is that variable teased apart from genetics? Whether or not we really have the ability to tease it out as such was my main critique, because I can't see how that's truly possible. But even allowing for specific statistical methods that do control for environment, I think the more important point is that even if such studies *do* show genetically-based variation in intelligence, race is a different and ill-defined kettle of fish altogether. Speaking of which, that's why I mentioned "haplotypes" and the like. In another argument I had with someone over race and intelligence poo poo, it devolved into his dismissing my claims that race was a poorly-defined construct by pulling up the results from a lot of genetic testing, and at the time I had no idea how to respond. I'm strongly suspicious of any claims of demonstrable, irrefutable genetic distinction between African-Americans and European Americans, seeing as how pretty much all African-Americans have at least 15-25% European ancestry. But I'm not exactly a biologist or geneticist, so what do I know?
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 05:58
|
|
|
ShadowCatboy posted:Hoooly poo poo thanks so much, Helsing! "Mainstream" economic theories, assuming you mean the stuff that has dominated the neoclassical tradition since the 1970s, performed pretty disastrously during the build up to the crisis. A lot of prominent economists claimed we'd essentially tamed the boom-and-bust cycle of capitalism and a lot of people who knew better failed to spot what was coming. Even a Liberal hero like Paul Krugman, who is one of the better neoclassicals out there today, basically failed to anticipate the crisis. He made some warnings right before it hit but if you read his "Conscience of a Liberal", which he wrote in 2006, there's no indication whatsoever that he thinks a crash is coming. The Austrians were correct in calling the bubble, but as as been noted, they thought it would be caused by higher interest rates (basically the market belatedly pricing the assets correctly and suddenly doing its job again) instead of being brought on by a de facto run on banks (an outcome that makes the market look far less rational). Since the crisis, however, Austrians have started making all sorts of bad predictions about how interest rates in America are going to skyrocket any day now and inflation is going to go berserk. On the other hand, plenty of neoclassical economists like Eugene Fama have made similarly fallacious claims about government spending crowding out investment (even though private firms are sitting on their money rather than spending it!). Austrian economics also has some weird ideas about the role of savings vs. demand in driving the economy. I haven't really discussed these issues in depth for over a year now so I'd want to re-familiarize myself with the debate before weighing in on that topic. Anyway, I hope this is all helpful. I'll try to see if I can think of anything more specific.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 06:13
|
|
|
Oh, and here's a fascinating Malcom Gladwell article about IQ:quote:What I.Q. doesn't tell you about race. Its a short article and by the time you hit the end you'll have plenty of devastating counter arguments under your belt.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 06:17
|
|
|
Mo_Steel posted:Avoid the bottom four where possible: the bottom three aren't helpful and the fourth (contradiction) doesn't represent your argument well. This happens constantly; it's one of the reasons you should probably be MORE suspicious of arguments made by people in authority, instead of less. (It also makes watching talking heads on the news quite a bit more entertaining.) Nomenklatura fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jan 22, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 09:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 09:57 |
|
|
duck monster posted:With all that said, how does one tease out environmental from genetic factors in IQ with this whole heritability jibba jabba. Surely having smart parents just means you grow up in a household that values and encourages intelligence. How is that variable teased apart from genetics? Re: the Flynn effect - it's definitely valuable information, but it would be unwise to take away from it a kind of "oh, well, IQ's just meaningless then." Rather, the conclusion generally drawn (and the one that Flynn himself suggested in the original study) is that cultural differences have significant influence on tested IQ, even in 'culture-reduced' tests that are based entirely on abstract reasoning without any outright reference to cultural artifacts. Within a specified culture, IQ differences correlate well to performance in a fairly wide variety of metrics. Across cultures, however, this relationship breaks down, whether the cultural distance comes from evolution over time (as in Flynn's observations) or from, well, just being from somewhere else. This is another criticism that can be solidly made against scientific racism; insofar as the groups under discussion are members of different cultures, IQ differences are unreliable as a signifier of actual intellectual differences. This can be and is the case without denying the predictive power that IQ has been seen to possess. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Jan 22, 2012 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2012 10:15
|
|