Thoughts On The President's Speech Last Night
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And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.
Some of us consider dropping out of high school the best decision we ever made, and the right to do so a basic American freedom.
Do you think he should tell people to drop out of high school?
Speeches don't target individuals, they target groups. Just because you may or may not be an exceptional case doesn't mean the line is scary.
And by the way, I did drop out of high school, at 15, and was threatened with things that were fairly similar in character to jail. So I don't think it's not credible that the penalties could very well be jail time. We live in an era which many people seem to see as post-historical -- that is, we've found all the answers and we know the right way for people to live their lives, so we no longer need to protect the rights of individuals to live weird lifestyles, since doing so just constitutes a denial of the manifestly correct path.
We have a president whose father wasn't even born in the US. I think that speaks for itself. The population of the US has doubled since 1943 or something (source: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1304/features/raven2.htm). I love diversity and am all for opening up our borders, but let's concentrate on giving the immigrants who are already here lawful employment with ethical compensation first.
I took this to mean we'd be stronger in the sense that we wouldn't be so vulnerable to economic disaster (because we won't be tempting fate by overextending ourselves). But still, that which does not kill me makes me stronger.
2) I read the speech in its entirety twice and did not find one mention of immigration... I think that's true but a lot of that ingenuity and tenacity came from first and second generation immigrants.
That we are all the children of immigrants is a given, isn't it? Or in many cases, immigrants ourselves. It's such a given that I don't think it warranted direct mention. Red herring.
4) Hardest working people on earth? C'mon Barack. Don't bullshit us. Go back and read number two.
What do you know about the European work ethic? They think we're slaves to ourselves. You could argue that many Asian countries are harder-working, but I'd argue that they are not as innovative. Hard work + innovation = America (at its best). (Also, remember: Barack is doing a certain amount of cheerleading here. That's part of his job.)
7) A new accountability for money spent saving banks. Barack said "I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assitance they receive". Good luck with that. Money is fungible.
Maybe, but cynicism never solved a problem. Better to try and fail somewhat than to take the previous administration's approach and let it be play money.
Watching Pelosi and Biden behind the President was distracting and a reminder that as well intenioned as Obama is, he's got an impossible job.
I'll say! What was with that? You're trying to pay attention to what Obama is saying, and Pelosi keeps playing with her hair. WTF, is this national-level speechmaking or what?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_hou_wor-labor-hours-wo...
That's from 2003, so it may have changed.
You could argue that many Asian countries are harder-working, but I'd argue that they are not as innovative. Hard work + innovation = America (at its best).
1) Current American immigration is saturated by the world's worst and dumbest. Low-IQ immigrants contribute marginally to GDP and are a huge drain on social resources. Look at the modern equivalent of white flight going on in California and what it's doing to state budgets. Insane family reunification policies exacerbate this. The fix: build a fence on our southern border, and we'll have a lot more capacity to import skilled labor.
2) Europe is unfortunately reproducing at low levels (just like WASPs in America, in case you didn't know). So our historical sources of quality immigrants are running low. However East Asians are even higher IQ (perhaps less creative), and there are plenty of them.
Oh, and if you are getting ready to call me a racist (I'm not), I'd like you to state your magic means for getting even 2nd and 3rd-generation Mexican immigrants to graduate high school. Because we might want to figure that out before importing many more.
There is no magic means. Simply lack of appreciation for children from other countries compound with a reversed process of quality.
In Taiwan the only school that you get into by default is primary school, which goes up to grade 6. After that is a standardized test that will place you into a corresponding middle school. At the end of grade 9 you will take another nationally standardized test that will place you into a high school. At the end of high school you will take yet another one to get into university.
At each level students are filtered by test score (and theoretically and consequently, talent). Classes are no longer held back by teachers' need to cater to the less capable, and it completely changes the peer pressure dynamic that is prevalent with all youth.
Instead of the few smart kids in the class feeling ostracized and rejected for their intelligence, they are celebrated, looked up to, and exist with a pool of peers who value academics in the same way they do. This does wonders for both motivation and competition.
This isn't all it's cracked up to be, though. This system causes some severe social problems - screwing up early (grade 6, which is age 10) can screw you for life, and there is no real system for "rescuing" people at a lower-tier school and trying to move them up. People are hyper-competitive from a very young age and this stunts emotional development. Many of my (younger) relatives still living there have a large number of relationship issues that IMHO stem from the fact that they never had a real childhood.
I'm personally glad I came to Canada and was able to grow up being the smart kid in the class, though I do wish we valued academic achievement more in our culture.
Not everybody is born with the same abilities to learn. Sure, you can teach people, but the slowest kids will take longer to learn. If you teach by the lowest denominator, you slow down the smart kids, the ones that will make great impacts in the economy in the future.
I am south-east european. Back at home everybody starts at the same footing. Same books, same education. By 5th grade, while people are still taught the same curricular, the brightests kids are bunched together in classes. Assuming there are 200 kid in a grade, they are divided in classrooms of 30-35 (teachers come to class, and students stay in the same class with the same peers), usually named A,B,C,D ...etc, witch a main teacher responsible for each class. Example MySchool 5th A, gives a you the exact placement of a student.
Why it is unofficial (not writen in policy) by the 5th the best students are usually placed in the A, B, classes, the average ones in the C and D classes, and the ones that are there just for a formal education in the rest of the classes. There is some diversity introduced also, (for those'd kids that try hard, (and whose parents care) they are still placed in higher level classes.
It is the same curricula, same books, maybe same teachers, but the evnviroment is different. In the higher level classes students face more competition (as there are lots of smart people), are challenged more to learn etc.
The system is setup in a way that it is easier to get a 5 (the lowest passing grade), but it is really hard to get a 10 (the highest grade).
Therefore, while you teach everything you can, the smart people are not artificially left behind by being taught by the lowest common denominator.
Also, a huge difference is that all sciences are taught, By force. You can't choose between physics or biology or chemistry, you are forced to learn them all. (biology is introduced in 6th grade, and chemistry in 8). The thought is that you have to try everything and have a taste of all sciences (and know the basics), so you know what you like to do in the future (in college) The only thing you get to choose as optional is the SECOND foreign language you want to learn.
When I came in the States, i finished my last year of high-school on a average american high-school, and I could run circles around most american students. Even in AP classes!
Amazing on how even a poor country like mine (Albania) can do some much better in basic education. I remember between 92-93 I had to learn in a cold class with no glasses on the windows, during winter, and we had to put paper on them, and all try to bunch up as much as possible together, around the wooden stove.
Amazing, yet there were so many bright students produced by that school. 1. Teachers cared. 2. Parents cared a lot more (education = future in their yes). 3. Curricula was heavy on science, and taught as much as it could on students and not on the lowest common denominator.
TFA is not about a long-term commitment to teaching. It is a grass-roots program to expose the teacher to a novel experience and to mingle the students with someone who is not from their area.
TFA has one of the strongest alumni networks in the U.S. Some TFA alumni choose to continue in teaching; (sometimes in a grassroots, impactful way) there are over 60 charter schools that have been started by TFA alumni.
You mention Europe as our historical sources of quality immigrants, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Mexican's mostly of Spanish descent, just like Americans are mostly of English/Irish/German/Italian descent? And the last time I checked Spain is in Europe.
I don't have any magic means for getting 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants out of poverty, but I do know that America has a unique underclass problem in the industrialized world.
And I don't think immigration has much to do with it, there are not a lot of immigrants in Appalachia.
Compare the social services in the US vs the rest of the industrialized world. Outside the US, you tend to see things like cradle to grave, and those are not magic. They are expensive, but they are not magic.
A valid debate would be the cost vs benefits of European or Canadian style social services vs what the US has.
Lastly, I don't think low reproductive levels are responsible for the lack of European immigrants.
Ireland still have quite the high birth rate, and they aren't falling over to come the the US, like they did during the famine. Their present standard of living might have something to do with that.
You don't attract masses of immigrants from places that have a standard of living just as high as yours.
And I'm not sure what you mean by East Asians having a higher but less creative IQ?
I suspect your prejudices are formed by the fact that East Asians can't walk into the states, and that means they are less likely to be common laborers and more likely to have a formal schooling background.
If the US bordered India, and Mexico was across the ocean, things would be reversed.
See, when racists use "average IQ" as a weapon against blacks and mexicans, they have to somehow justify their 2nd place to the Asians or else they will not feel comfortable using these "studies" as proof. They just say "oh, well they're less creative, so you know, white people are really still at the top", and everything is right again in the world.
Did you see what they did there? They took valid objective metrics - statistics - and disqualified the positive outcome for a selected class of people with something totally subjective - creativity. This is classic racism. It's a nonsense argument posited by younger people who really haven't had much life experience, and have not met many people who aren't of their same race.
Personally I don't believe in average anything when it comes to race, it's a totally meaningless metric that will get you absolutely nowhere when you deal with actual people and in some cases will handicap you with preconceived notions. I've conducted enough business with enough people in this economy to know that. Younger or less experienced people may have not.
> but aren't Mexican's mostly of Spanish descent
Racists never blame white Europeans for anything, especially not fundamentally flawed colonial systems like the Spaniards' that were devised by greedy people who were bent on raping native people and lands for as much wealth as possible in as little time as possible - actually, why should they blame them, it worked flawlessly, didn't it?
Agree with everything you said except for this. Most of the most racist people I know are 40+. Sadly, I don't think life experience tempers prejudice...often it just reinforces it.
I agree that you can't use race to judge individual people, but it's ridiculous to not "believe in average anything when it comes to race". Again, individuals must be judged on their own merits. But if only 20% of Hispanic students graduate college, versus 40% of white ones, you can't just automatically assume institutional racism. All human sub-populations are not equal. Check out this new book - http://the10000yearexplosion.com/
That depends on how big your sub-population is.
If your population is 1, then the difference between two populations, unless they happen to be maternal twins, will be HUGE. Statistically speaking.
But as your population size grows the difference between populations begin to shrink. Statistics again.
The reason for that is simple, humans are among a few species that happen to have very little genetic diversity.
Approximately 80 thousands years ago, something (bad) happened and the totality of humans on earth was reduced to a terrifyingly small number.
We don't know exactly how small but it could have been as little as a few hundred individuals.
And of those only 4 or 5 (I forget) matrilineal lines survive today.
Besides humans, cheetahs are one of the other species that is similarity genetically pure.
Not that genetic purity is a good thing, quite the opposite, it makes us susceptible to extinction by disease.
We could be wiped out by something like a more easily transmissible HIV.
Even a single tribe of chimps has more genetic diversity then all of humanity.
And that's why looking at the genetic difference of human populations is not very insightful.
Take one of the most famous reproductively isolated human sub-populations - the Ashkenazi.
DNA suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women.
As is common in cases of the founder effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect
A few genes that are very rare in a population, can be common in the population resulting from the few founders, if even just one of the founders had the rare genes.
And the Ashkenazi appear to have a much higher incidence of genes responsible for neural diseases but perhaps also increased intelligence.
So what happens if you pull a "Trading Places" trick, but with two babies instead of Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd?
Nothing, remember humans sadly have a very shallow gene pool, so even an Inuit and an Ashkenazi could have more in common genetically with each other then the Ashkenazi with most other Ashkenazi.
And that's why talking about DNA in human populations, is like talking about the gold plating in Monster audio cables.
The people who do, aren't very smart about the subject they're ranting about.
The "Two individuals from one race are more different than two random people" myth is a pernicious one that needs to die. The short answer is that you need to look at correlations in DNA, especially of regions under selection. Imagine a single human's DNA as a point in 4-billion dimensional space (where each dimension can take on the value A,C,G, or T). If you do a principal component analysis on the DNA of large numbers of people, you will see clusters, and these clusters correspond to geographic ancestry.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v16/n12/abs/ejhg2008210a....
"A major East–West gradient from Russian (Moscow) samples to Spanish samples was identified as the first principal component (PC) of the genetic diversity. The second PC identified a North–South gradient from Norway and Sweden to Romania and Spain."
In picture form, from that paper in case you don't have access to Nature: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/11/another-genetic-map-of-euro...
Now, please tell me again with a straight face that I don't know what I'm "ranting" about, and that DNA in humans is irrelevant.
Except that PCA is the least I do, PCA is what you learn in a bioinformatics 101 class, there are MUCH better tools then PCA.
If two things are noticeably different you don't need PCA, it's redundant.
You use PCA, when you're plumbing a huge data set, where things are mostly indistinguishable and you're desperate for ways to separate things out.
That's why PCA analysis is so convenient for human DNA, because we're so similar.
Look at this image: http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/genmapeuropeGermany.jpg
Are you telling me that the Germans from the blue part of Dresden bordering Munich and the Germans from the green part of Munich bordering Dresden are super duper different?
That picture sure makes it looks like Hans living in the exurbs of Munich and Frans from the exurbs of Dresden are two different species.
It looks that way if you don't have a fucking clue about what PCA is and how it works and what DNA is and how it works.
And two individuals from the same race are more different then two large groups of people from the opposite end of the earth, is not a myth.
It is a fact.
It is a statistical fact, the math doesn't care what you think and your grasp of stats and genomics is not nearly as tight as you imagine it to be.
No one imagines DNA as 4-billion dimension space, you're full shit.
And if you start looking at what ever regions you're fantasizing about, and apply a bunch more conditions, you can prove anything you want. That's not science it's charlatanry.
In conclusion, you do not know what you're ranting about, so stop embarrassing yourself in front of biotech engineers on the internet.
So you're telling me that if I do PCA on the covariance matrix for many loci, I'm not going to be able to correlate DNA with geographic ancestry?
How do you explain this: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5602/2381
I will grant you one point - "Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95% of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%." However, if you read the paper you'll find that they were able to identify clustering along geographic lines, and could place individuals with a discrepancy rate of 0.14%.
But in-population differences of individuals are bigger then inter-population group differences because all the populations are so similar.
And because the differences between the populations are so small you'll only be able to measure them, when you measure very, very, very narrow things. Like PCA does.
For example you could measure skin color. The amount of melanin deposited in your skin is controlled by one gene. So that's about as narrow a measure as you can have.
But can you draw conclusions about broader characteristics in phenotype?
Nope. That's why the whole race concept has fallen out of favor, not because it's a lefty conspiracy to avoid hurting people's feeling. It's not that, it's science.
The same goes for IQ and societal success.
Can you correlate education levels with a phenotype or genotype?
If you could, scientists would have already done it, and they would be famous. Parents would be screening their embryos. You could do it and be famous.
Again, it's not some lefty conspiracy, it's just not possible.
Oh we do have genes that seem to result in more scientists and engineers, the Ashkenazi have them, but they correlate with neural disease. And the Ashkenazi don't have a higher incidence of CEOs and politicians and musicians.
And who's on top of the societal ladder in western society? Politicians and CEOs or us geeks?
And who has a higher reproductive success, musicians or engineers?
That's why people talking about poverty, race and IQ, are like people talking about Monster audio cables.
Your assertions about IQ and Mexicans are not evident from the real world genomic data. But if you're prejudiced you can try and twist the facts to match your prejudices.
Anyway, let's leave the race question off the table. Why is it that when large-scale IQ tests are conducted on people from Mexico, and on people whose parents are from Mexico, the average score is around 87?
If they couldn't read their IQ score would be 0.
Obviously the IQ test questions strive to be about general problem solving, not culturally specific factual knowledge, etc.
But it should be just as obvious that strive is all they can do. They just can not be divorced from a while lot of stuff that's learned.
Which is why IQ test are very highly correlated with education, they are also correlated with some natural ability, but it's impossible to tell which contributes how much.
East Asian along with us East Europeans, come from very rigorous public schools. I've attended public schools in Eastern Europe and Western Europe and the US. And I have Japanese friends, I met when we were both exchange students in a top notch US high school.
We were seniors and my Japanese friends and I were amazed how US seniors barely had a 6th grade level of science knowledge in 12th grade.
Now do you think my Japanese fiend and I had all that knowledge because of the systems of public education we came from, or because we were both genetically superior to the US kids?
So it's possible that fist and second generation Mexican immigrants score lower on IQ tests, because of genetics.
But it's much, much, much more likely it is because of a different educational background.
Even if the second generation attended the same schools, that doesn't make up for the educational deficit in their home.
And importing highly educated immigrants is a great way to reap the benefits of an education you didn't pay for.
And important any kind of humans, even illiterate ones, is a good way to grow the economy. Even the lowest of the low buy stuff, and because humanity is so closely related, they are not bringing down the national IQ in the long term.
Or rather they shouldn't be, because if your country is a well functioning state it should be able to educated people and reap the economic benefits from that in the long term.
If it can't do that, immigration is not your problem, your problem is you're barely able to come out even, and unskilled immigration is just making that problem worse.
You look down on hispanics, do you think Asian Americans look down on you because your racial "subpopulation" is behind theirs in college degrees, graduate degrees, and median income?
Yeah, so you know it's bullshit logic.
1) We should allow & encourage more immigration of high-IQ, educated people. Said IQ would be determined by using IQ tests on individuals, not by racial/country of origin quotas. Exceptions would be made for people with outstanding achievement in some field - we shouldn't exclude a world-class dancer because he has an average IQ, for example, or a great programmer because he doesn't have a college degree.
2) We should discourage immigration by low-IQ people, regardless of how hard they are willing to work. Everyone would be assumed to be in the "low-IQ, uneducated" group until he has proven otherwise.
Do you disagree with either of these points?
2) America's underclass starts looking much like Europe's once you account for race. Look at NAEP scores for North Dakota some time. Awful smart for a state with the same per-capita education spending as New Mexico. Guess what North Dakota has more of (and what it has less of) than any other state in the union.
3) The best measure of East Asian creativity is probably through patent studies. It is a hard thing to get a hold of. But there seems to be less of it -- and it's entirely possible that it's all due to living in highly socially conformist societies. But I'd be surprised.
4) Again, wrong. East Asians tend to do well even in places where they are imported as common laborers. All those Chinese tin miners in Malaysia, what do you think they're doing now? Certain groups become market-dominant minorities wherever they go, and certain groups become the opposite wherever they go. IQ is by far the most parsimonious explanation (as is backed up by a vast amount of evidence).
You're kidding right?
I am at a huge corporation now which has literally hundreds of patents, previously I worked for a startup with no patents. Would like you to guess which has the BY FAR smarter and more creative employees?
Patents are a profoundly stupid way to measure creativity.
IQ is by far the most parsimonious explanation
I think you are kidding, or at least trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity#Measuring_creativity
This links to a couple different creativity measures, although I have no idea if they've been used to make weird racial comparisons.
Less creative? How exactly do you measure this? Or is this your totally non-racist white hunch on how to classify a third of the population of planet Earth?
> Oh, and if you are getting ready to call me a racist (I'm not)
This seems to happen often enough that you have a prepared response. You might want to just go with the flow and reclassify yourself as a racist, that way you don't spend half your energy defending yourself against false accusations and can spend time attacking people who aren't white in a more efficient manner.
All my statements above are about population averages. Some ignorant people (I certainly don't mean you) don't understand that population averages apply to populations, and not to individuals. For example, women are shorter than men, on average, but there are millions of women that are taller than me. Native Americans tend to have a lot of trouble with alcohol (for very simple genetic reasons). On the other hand, many don't. Africans have invested a lot of evolutionary effort into malaria resistence. Sometimes they get it anyway. Europeans have invested in lactose tolerance. My dad can't drink milk. Unsuprisingly brain genes (check out Lahn's papers on ASPM and microcephalin in Mol. Gen.) differ between population groups as well. That doesn't say much about any given individual. It does say a lot about groups.
Why are you repeating everything I just said?
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Ah yes. I was repeating what you said. I see that now. Goodbye.