It’s not possible for a leader to stay in power by making one subset of the population happy, while oppressing others? This especially might work if the subset you’re keeping happy are the ones with money and/or weapons.
Could you please define the term ‘consent’ as you are using it. If you use believe that aknowledgement given to avoid death is consent, then your statement would be logical, but pointless. But if you believe people deserve the government they have because they choose to stay alive, you need to define the term ‘deserve’ also.
Do you have the government you want and deserve?
Susanann, I’m not sure how to respond as I still am not sure if you’re being serious, and also this whole discussion has only a small relevance to the OP.
So I’ll just give brief responses
That’s one conclusion: another would be people did not show up to get rid of Castro because they didn’t want to die.
Returning to Africa, are you saying that Mugabe really has the support of the people of Zimbabwe? Considering they voted him out at the ballot box, and have been subject to a great deal of violence and intimidation before, during and since the elections?
But the army is a subset of the people, and it may have a different objective to the people as a whole. You’re saying the people’s will always carries; I’m saying the army can repress the people.
Also the army is designed to convert people into machines. All kinds of psychological tricks are used to ensure soldiers do not feel as though they have any discretion.
The first thing a soldier is taught is to follow orders, no matter how unpleasant, because when orders aren’t followed people can die. Soldiers also get used to having incomplete information (so they may be used to firing at targets without knowing for sure what the target it and why it must be destroyed). Finally they are told that if they don’t follow orders the punishment is severe, possibly fatal.
(I’m not being anti-army btw…this is necessarily how an army needs to work.)
Naw, coups and rebellions don’t make a nation poor because they always bring in the same kind of regime.
They may a country poor because they make a country unstable.
Often a coup is swiftly followed by more coups and civil wars, and many times; a failed state. This tends to go on until one guy is brutal enough (note: not “supported by his people enough”) to hold power for a while.
Wait, for 50+ years my people wanted the government we had? And then, in '94, we just up and changed our minds? Man, not even the Pit would do for the names I want to call you…
So the people who do not test well do not get to positions that require a high level of testing and then we lump together misfeasance and malfeasance under a general heading of “not bright enough.”
(And given the way that we tend to prosecute and criminalize blacks at a higher rate than whites for the same crimes, a vague trend that blacks get hammered on disciplinary actions is suggestive, but not persuasive. That was why I mentioned torts although those might suffer some of the same problems.)
So you are now saying that blacks did not achieve the levels they did because of Affirmative Action? So rather than considering that blacks were merely successful because they were given a helping hand and their kids are still testing poorly, it would be more appropriate to note that many blacks do well in spite of test results. You are not making a case to persuade me that testing corrsponds to intelligence or much of anything other than an ability to test well. (And no, I do not think that one would find any brilliant testers who were dumb as rocks. I am sure that doing well on tests tends to take a certain amount of raw intelligence; I simply have not seen anything to persuade me that the tests truly measure intelligence or that doing poorly reflects an actual level of intelligence.)
What country are you from?
USA
Union of South Africa
There is a reasonable discussion here of what tests show.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/Immigrant%20IQ
And neuroscientists are uncovering the neurobiological basis of this.
www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf -
The one that has the Mother City in it…
I see the words “high cognition” are still being bandied about in this thread as though they had a different meaning to the way they generally get used in the literature, as part of discussions on dementia and retardation, not population intelligence.
So you disagree with the findings of Fagan and Holland, then? Because they found the exact opposite, in both their 2002 and 2007 papers:cite(pdf)
Note that Fagan and Holland did actual experimental studies of their own, not like thebadly flawed meta-studies like Lynn and Vanhaenan employ
Their study is flawed because all 4 of their experiments were variations of analyzing words and phrases. None were based on spatial reasoning, logic, or mathematics. Fagan & Holland purport to recreate the type questions on good IQ tests but they failed.
Many IQ tests are designed to not depend on language proficiency to avoid this bias.
Are you claiming their actual findings are flawed, or their major conclusions are not consistent with their experimental data? Because the central result (showing the cultural bias in IQ testing) is stand-alone, regardless of whether it is only a portion of the spectrum of possible tests. Any bias at all damns the entire system.
Firstly, you’re mistaken in that the experiments weren’t about language proficiency per se, but rather cultural/educational knowledge - like the Boston example used in the sample question.
Anyway, the SATS and MCATs wouldn’t be in that set of “many”, as both have significant language components.
And I’ve never taken a standardized test that wasn’t dependent on language proficency, myself. Even tests of “spatial reasoning, logic and mathematics” involve a language component and ingroup cultural knowledge, usually word problems and the like. I’m sure there are tests that don’t, but really, I’d like a cite for purposeful design to avoid bias in “many IQ tests”, and then I’d like you to explain how “many” has any bearing on the mainstream use of supposed intelligence testing, where cultural knowledge is definitely a factor, as shown in the linked paper.
Their findings are flawed because the construction of their experiments was flawed.
Their conclusions certainly are consistent with their experimental data, but this happens as a convenient side-effect of using bogus “IQ” questions. The authors appear clueless as to how to properly construct language-free IQ questions.
I took an IQ test in the 5th grade and it didn’t depend on language proficiency. Most of it was visual reasoning and finding patterns in numbers. You really can’t expect 10-year olds to have much vocabulary in their heads. Therefore, you can’t design logic reasoning puzzles based on words to test children that young.
Nope. The more you write about this topic, the more it seems like you really don’t know what IQ tests actually are or how they are designed.
Yes, it is possible to construct a logic puzzle based on analysis of words.
However, it’s also possible to construct a logic puzzle based on analysis of shapes or counting. Competent test authors know how to avoid using words as the basis for measuring cognitive capacity.
Their test made cultural knowledge a factor because they put cultural knowledge into the test. It’s self-referencing.
It’s interesting how this discussion has got bogged down around IQ.
Yeah I know I got involved in this too, but at least I acknowledged that there’s an explanatory gap between lower average IQ and the economic performance of a developing nation.
This is versus all the other, simpler explanations for why africa is lagging behind that actually have relevant supporting data.
In a word: Yes. I disagree.
The problem with this sort of “study” is that its carefully contorted laboratory setup disagrees with the real world. Your authors contend, I think, that equal opportunity to information results in equal ability to process “problems” related to that information (I think their actual study design looks at the meaning of words and sayings, along with facial recognition?).
But, regardless of their contention in their study, that’s not what we actually observe. What we actually observe is that, if we take Blacks and Eurasians and give them identical opportunity–the same courses; same instructors; same colleges…–then, as a group average, Blacks will always underperform Eurasians by a very wide margin. This is is the case (to the best of my knowledge) in every academic system in every nation of the world. It is certainly the case in the US, where Black MCAT scores (and Black scores on post-medical school licensing exams) are markedly inferior to those of Eurasians, similar exposure to educational opportunity notwithstanding.
That’s the gap that no system, anywhere has been able to erase; that’s the pattern that is so universally consistent.
As I looked through your cite, the various contortions used to come up with an alternate proof seemed rather like trying to persuade me the earth is young when I can just look at the Hawaiian chain of islands and see obvious proof it is not.
Since transplanted populations descended from sub-saharan African populations have underperformed other populations socioeconomically within a consistent pattern, and since other populations have outperformed native sub-saharan populations within Africa, a contention that there is a fundamental difference in ability is difficult to rank underneath other, “simpler” explanations.
What explanation is simpler than a difference in average ability to change the world around you?
In what way? “Because they don’t test the full spectrum of skills” is not an answer, because duplicating existing IQ tests wasn’t what they set out to do.
They never tried to. And I’d be *very *hesitant to call Fagan clueless when it comes to language-free intelligence testing. It is, after all, sort of his speciality.
Wait, you’ve taken one IQ test, and that’s your basis for comparison?
I never said I took standardized tests that young. Why are you suddenly focusing on kids? Fagan’s testing was on average age of 21 yo. He has a totally separate testing system for infants (where, again, no race bias is shown)
I do, and I do. But we’re not just discussing *your *idea of a language-free IQ test, we’re discussing the entire spectrum of tests referred to in this thread. And in addition to the SATs and MCATs, standard tests are more than just FRT and symbol searches, I’m afraid
Really? So sentences like “which figure completes the grid?” and “which figure completes the statement [diagram] is to [diagram] as [diagram] is to [blank]” aren’t part of common figure reasoning tests?
No, they put cultural knowledge in because it was the thing they were seeking to control for. You know, to “normalize” the testing? To contrast results between culture-free and culture-rich questions. But you knew that, having read the paper.
Quelle surprise
Ooh, scare quotes:rolleyes:. And no, it explains the real word situation quite well, it doesn’t disagree with it.
Read the paper and find out
That’s not equal opportunity. Same childhood nutrition, same cultural norms, same parental encouragement, same role models, same libraries, same extra-curriculars, same social expectations of success: that’s equal opportunity.
I can only explain the myriad factors influencing African development so many times in these threads. I get very tired of saying “A combination of slavery, colonialism, Cold War, current exploitation, sexism, ethnicism, brain drain, climate and really shitty geography”. Maybe I should make it my sig?
Wrong.
Not only are the authors’ research flawed, but your interpretation of their results is also flawed.
They did not “control” for culture if because all 4 of their experiments were culturally loaded. To properly account for culture bias, they would have needed to create a 5th experiment that was language-and-culture-free. They didn’t do that. How convenient for them to omit pure spatial and mathematical reasoning which fits neatly into their so-called theory of intelligence based on culture.
In the US, as an example, if we take children from black parents of high education (post-grad degrees) and high incomes (around $100,000/yr) and compare their scores with children from white parents with low education (not finishing high school, and low income (under $10,000/yr) and compare their SAT scores, we find the black children still underscore the white children.
This constant repetition of the notion that black students underperform because they are poorly nourished, have lousy parents or rotten culture or crummier schooling or libraries is all nonsense.
Because income correlates with ability and luck (circumstances into which you were born), of course a greater percent of black children have less opportunity.
But that’s not the segment being compared when you normalize for opportunity. When you normalize for opportunity, and choose a segment of the black population which does have wealthy and educated parents, and did go to the same schools, you still have a disparate outcome.
The gap is equally apparent for other skillsets, such as those underlying sprinting, basketball or football. In those examples, the gap became apparent as soon as opportunity was equalized.
And nowhere am I able to find a system that has been able to eliminate that gap. That’s why the perception persists that the gap is a function of innate ability and not opportunity.