# Where is Watson getting his theories from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 17, 2007, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039 "2007-10-17T14:18:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/21 "2007-10-18T05:37:39Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam] Sometimes you get these otherwise-brilliant guys who go all the way out into left field in one or two other areas. [/QUOTE] I would go so far as to say that brilliant guys _always_ go way out into left field by the time they hit ~60. Einstein and his rejection of QM, Newton and his alchemy/theology, Bryant and his anti-Darwinism crusade. The history books seem to suggest it’s obligatory for any brilliant person to become a total kook in old age. Watson seems to be following the same pattern. ---
**Author:** ![Slypork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@Slypork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slypork)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/22 "2007-10-18T12:41:27Z")
**Shagnasty** mentions tests “designed by white people for white people.” Surely there are tests designed by black people for black people? (insert the obligatory, “And don’t call me Shirley,” joke here) Couldn’t Strathmore University in Kenya or some other institute of higher learning in Africa create an intelligence test that was designed for Africans? Wouldn’t that eliminate the need to “normalize” or “standardize” these tests? And, seriously, why should the tests have to be normalized within the US? If you give a test in Chicago or Houstone all of the kids would have been exposed to similar cultural and educational standards. I think it is an unfair and slightly racist judgment to say that black kids would perceive things differently from white kids based on their race. The differences would be more evident in Hispanic neighborhoods or areas with a higher population of immigrants because they would have different cultural and language exposure. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/23 "2007-10-18T12:53:57Z")
[QUOTE=Blake] Einstein and his rejection of QM [/QUOTE] Did he reject QM? I know he resisted the notion that there is true randomness, and he criticized “spooky action at a distance”, but that doesn’t sound like rejecting QM. I thought he hoped to reconcile QM with determinism, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/24 "2007-10-18T13:09:36Z")
[QUOTE=erie774] **Shagnasty** mentions tests “designed by white people for white people.” Surely there are tests designed by black people for black people? [/quote] Sure there are. I took one of them in an Educational Psychology test back in college. The blacks in my class scored lower, on average, than the whites. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > And Shodan – those cites aren’t academic stdies. And the last one is by — Murray and Flynn! Imagine that! [there are many more.](http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2001/0401IQ.aspx) [http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:axWhb1rSKsAJ:www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/racegen.pdf+black+vs.white+IQ&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us](http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:axWhb1rSKsAJ:www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/racegen.pdf+black+vs.white+IQ&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us) [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?\_ob=ArticleURL&\_udi=B6V97-4DTKKG1-2&\_user=10&\_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2005&\_rdoc=1&\_fmt=&\_orig=search&\_sort=d&view=c&\_acct=C000050221&\_version=1&\_urlVersion=0&\_userid=10&md5=d05d5967a01a22dd93716f2844639b63](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V97-4DTKKG1-2&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d05d5967a01a22dd93716f2844639b63) Etc. etc. ISTM that we would all be better served if this were not an unmentionable topic. Of course, among my many faults is a tendency to underestimate the power of denial in affecting human thought. Especially on the SDMB Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/25 "2007-10-18T13:11:13Z")
Here’s what [Stephen Jay Gould](http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html) had to say about _The Bell Curve_: > [@](#): > > In brief, a person’s performance on various mental tests tends to be positively correlated—that is, if you do well on one kind of test, you tend to do well on the other kinds. This is scarcely surprising, and is subject to interpretation that is either purely genetic (that an innate thing in the head boosts all performances); the positive correlations in themselves say nothing about causes. The results of these tests can be plotted on a multidimensional graph with an axis for each test. Spearman used factor analysis to find a single dimension—which he called g—that best identifies the common factor behind positive correlations among the tests. But Thurstone later showed that g could be made to disappear by simply rotating the dimensions to different positions. In one rotation Thurstone placed the dimensions near the most widely separated attributes among the tests, thus giving rise to the theory of multiple intelligences (verbal, mathematical, spatial, etc., with no overarching g). This theory (which I support) has been advocated by many prominent psychometricians, including J. P. Guilford, in the 1950s, and Howard Gardner today. In this perspective g cannot have inherent reality, for it emerges in one form of mathematical representation for correlations among tests and disappears (or greatly attenuates) in other forms, which are entirely equivalent in amount of information explained. In any case, you can’t grasp the issue at all without a clear exposition of factor analysis—and The Bell Curve cops out on this central concept. > [@](#): > > However, if Herrnstein and Murray are wrong, and IQ represents not an immutable thing in the head, grading human beings on a single scale of general capacity with large numbers of custodial incompetents at the bottom, then the model that generates their gloomy vision collapses, and the wonderful variousness of human abilities, properly nurtured, reemerges. We must fight the doctrine of The Bell Curve both because it is wrong and because it will, if activated, cut off all possibility of proper nurturance for everyone’s intelligence. Of course, we cannot all be rocket scientists or brain surgeons, but those who can’t might be rock musicians or professional athletes (and gain far more social prestige and salary thereby), while others will indeed serve by standing and waiting. > > I closed my chapter in The Mismeasure of Man on the unreality of g and the fallacy of regarding intelligence as a single–scaled, innate thing in the head with a marvelous quotation from John Stuart Mill, well worth repeating: > > ``` > The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own, and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something particularly abstruse and mysterious. > > ``` > > How strange that we would let a single and false number divide us, when evolution has united all people in the recency of our common ancestry—thus undergirding with a shared humanity that infinite variety which custom can never stale. E pluribus unum. ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2007, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039/26 "2007-10-18T13:14:36Z")
[QUOTE=erie774] **Shagnasty** mentions tests “designed by white people for white people.” Surely there are tests designed by black people for black people? [/QUOTE] The cultural bias question, though a genuine issue, is a red herring and a straw man. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that tests do tell us that black people (however defined) are, on average, in some sense less intelligent than white people. Does it follow that this difference is due to genetic differences? Of course not. What reason do we have to believe that it is? In the early days of the US, you could see huge disparities in intellectual function between blacks and whites. Most people believed that these differences were inherent (i.e., what we would call genetic today). Benjamin Franklin realized that lack of education, being raised to be a slave, etc., just might have something to do with it. I’m surprised to see that things like this need to be posted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-watson-getting-his-theories-from/423039.md?page=1)