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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.