[gaogao]

> In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".

> While his hope was that everybody was equal, he added, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

Yeah, pretty racist

[LarsDu88]

In 2013, I sat in on one of his talks at the Salk Institute. This guy was one of the most openly racist and sexist people I've ever seen. He spent 5 minutes shitting on the former NIH head for not funding him because she was a "Hot blooded Irish woman"

This is the sort of turn-of-century Mr. Burns type racism that I don't think most Americans even remember.

[lordnacho]

I always wonder with that kind of racist explanation, how the line of reasoning goes.

Suppose for the sake of argument, there's a place where everyone has 10 IQ points less, on average, than the West.

The Flynn effect is about 14 points over a few decades.

How do you square those things? Did the West not have a society a few decades ago? Is there some reason you can't have civilization with slightly dumber people? There was a time when kids were malnourished in the west, and possibly dumber as a result. Also, not everyone in society makes decisions. It tends to be very few people, and nobody thinks politicians are intelligent either.

I've never heard an explanation of intelligence that had any actual real-world impact on a scale that matters to society.

The explanation would have to have quite a lot of depth to it, as you have to come up with some sort of theory connecting how people do on a test to whatever you think makes a good society.

[clueless]

In a clean game-theoretic terms, without making any moral or ideological claims about “who is smarter”, we’ll treat underlying advantage as any positional asset (intelligence, wealth, charisma, skill, social capital, etc.). The question is: If a subset of players has an advantage in a repeated, large-group game, how do they best play to maximize payoff and stability?

Here's the strategy chatgpt came up with (amongst many other):

What Not to Say (Avoid These)

Don’t describe intelligence or talent as intrinsic, innate, or permanent. This triggers resentment and identity defense.

Don’t use language that signals “I am ahead of you.”

Don’t use your advantage to win every interaction—save leverage for important conflicts.

People tolerate talent. They hate being made aware of being lower in the hierarchy.

_____

Is it possible the backlash to Watson could be viewed from this game theocratic perspective, and not that he was racist and wrong?

[peterfirefly]

> whereas all the testing says not really

This part is (still) true. Is that fact racist?