Thursday, October 22, 2009

Who the Hell is Dr. Silverstein and Why Should I Care?

My apologies for making yet another post for the ongoing troll roast.

When I thought I might get somewhere by asking for clarification on an analogy, Gabe brought up some glurge about an irrelevant professor named "Dr. Silverstein." I'm not particularly motivated to find out if he's a real, stupid person, someone intelligent whose had his views misrepresented, or some conveniently fictional straw man, but I'll press on with burning the straw man he was used for.

I'm against the Disneyfication of history in history classes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of "PC" hippie douches out there who don't want to say anything remotely bad about someone's ancestors, and far too many people who are too milquetoast to shoulder the "controversy" of telling the truth. Yes, there were some great figures in just about every culture, but there was also a lot of barbarism. Humans are all capable of great good and great evil.

The image of Dr. Silverstein, as described by Gabe, is a racist: He wants non-whites Disneyfied, but doesn't want to convey the same "privilege" to whites. I find that sort of thought disgusting, just like I find the Disneyfication of my white ancestors disgusting. Lots of humans did wonderful things, coming from many cultures and races. Those same cultures were brutal and superstitious. The people who were able to discover or invent new things deserve their kudos.

It's only recently, with the Enlightenment, that human brutality is waning (with no shortage of setbacks and obstacles). The ideas that our society is founded upon are not a product of racial genetics, just some people in the right social, economic, and scholastic circumstances getting inspired and successfully promoting those ideas. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the scientific method are not encoded into anyone's DNA. Someone raised in an environment where others share these ideas and pass them onto the next generation will be more likely to prosper.

I'm sure a lot of us as kids went through a phase of being angry over the crimes of someone's ancestors. I imagine some very rare hippie douches never did. It'd be nice if, for example, the European settlers got together with the Indians for a turkey dinner in November and puppy-hugging like in the saccharine Thanksgiving specials, but they didn't.

One of my history professors had a saying: "Nostalgia is the destruction of history." Yes, you can celebrate great figures of the past and their contributions to the world, but don't whine like a hippie douche when someone points out the darker parts. To me, it doesn't matter if you're Gabriel or this Dr. Silverstein. Disneyfying history is wrong, and even more so when you do it selectively.

207 comments:

1 – 200 of 207   Newer›   Newest»
Valhar2000 said...

I remember playing with little plastic figures of Indians and cowboys when I was a kid: I always made the Indians win.

After I realized that the Indians had come to America first and the settlers displaced them it seemed abundantly clear to me, regardless of what Hollywood might say, that the settlers were clearly in the wrong.

Then again, I guess I've always been a bit of a contrarian. I know that I have, for a long time, enjoyed popping the bubble and showing what's underneath. That's what made Skepticism, when I first became aware of it, so appealing to me.

Dark Jaguar said...

I assume the phrase "disneyfy" is based on things like Disney's Pocahontas and Davey Crocket.

While I'm all for "fantasy history", heck I play Joanne De Arc and like it, I kinda have this uncanny valley opinion toward it. For "fantasy history" to really work for me, it has to be so completely and obviously fantasy that no one could accidentally interpret it as a factual interpretation. Something kinda toying with made-up story elements still desprately clinging to "historical accuracy" fail on both counts, such as Braveheart.

Anyway, I certainly agree that "white washing" history is bad. What Gabe doesn't get is that's exactly what he's guilty of. He's basically inventing a history where white people could do no wrong and basically did everything good while everyone else just sat around being lazy idiots in mud huts.

I'm reminded of a documentary I saw about people digging up bones of native americans showing signs of cannabalism. To clarify, this was clearly a very limited case of one specific tribe and there's debate as to why they got to that point. However, the big problem is simply that certain native americans (and presumably, others who majored in "the humanities") considered this entire line of inquiry inherantly racist right from the start, as though they were actually stating ALL native americans are cannibals. Unfortunatly, I wish I could provide specific names or something to help you look this all up, but this was years ago, so that in mind take what I say with a grain of salt. The main point of this half remembered recollection is simply to make it very clear that I am far more interested in the truth than offending people, and found the objections of those specific native americans to be baseless. To clarify though, it is STILL idiotic, even if it turns out that tribe regularly practiced ritualized cannibalism, to conclude therefor that this is a reflection not only on all native americans at the time (it wouldn't be if there's no evidence of other tribes engaging in this) but a reflection on CURRENT native americans (how could it be? Modern natives live modern lives, aside from some who still practice left over rituals, but such is true of all cultures and this is simply a reflection of cultural data passed along, not genetic).

Dunc said...

DJ: I think you've probably referring to the Anasazi of Colorado. There is excellent evidence for some cannibalism amongst them, but the extent and the cultural context are still hotly debated AFAIK.

And just to pre-empt the moron: there's mountains of evidence for cannibalism, head-hunting and ritualistic human sacrifice in Bronze and Iron Age Europe too. Far more than there is for the Anasazi, actually... And of course the noble and civilised Romans butchered large numbers of people for entertainment.

As far as I can tell from Gabe's ramblings, Dr Silberstein is a straw-man politically-correct uber-liberal professor in some stupid parable on Stormfront.

Dunc said...

I can't imagine why I didn't notice before, but the name "Silverstein" obviously carries certain connotations... of TEH JOOS! I guess calling your strawman "Goldstein" would have been just a tad too blatant, even for Stormfront.

Dweller in Darkness said...

I'd noticed that earlier, Dunc. One of the parable's few attempts at subtlety. At least we were spared any implications that he was part of a Zionist conspiracy to overthrow and dominate the world.

Dark Jaguar said...

Wait, so now he's listing "parables" limited to one specific website like they are classic well known stories known by all?

Reminds me of the tale of a boy and his blob, I say while nodding knowingly.

Dweller in Darkness said...

I think he's assuming that people actual read the parable, and were as engrossed by it as he. Lop the prefix off that verb and it's a better description of my reaction to it. Really not worth reading unless you're a sucker for finding entertainment in the stupid, as I am.

Buford said...

There is a fundamental problem with attributing anything to a 'culture' or a 'society'. Cultures don't 'do' anything, people do. Anytime you are blaming a society for something, you should be attributing those acts to the people who performed them and, perhaps, other people who ordered, directed, hinted or forced the people to so them. Same thing goes for anything good that happens.

I think that valhar2000 knows that some Indians were bad and some white settlers or cowboys were good.

I have an on-going discussion with a good friend about 'pride' in 'America'. I maintain that while people in America's past did things that were admirable and created a government that was better than what had gone before, there is little in recent times to be proud of. The governtment we have today bears some of the outward signs of the one designed, but it operates internally by a completely different mechanism that the founders would abhor.

In a real sense, anytime you speak of a 'culture' or 'society' you are dangerously close to speaking of a strawman.

Valhar2000 said...

I think that valhar2000 knows that some Indians were bad and some white settlers or cowboys were good.

I do, yes.

As far as I can tell from Gabe's ramblings, Dr Silberstein is a straw-man politically-correct uber-liberal professor in some stupid parable on Stormfront.

Could he possibly be an Atheist Professor who is a Card Carrying Member of the ACLU? Now that would make him evil!

Chakat Firepaw said...

Could he possibly be an Atheist Professor who is a Card Carrying Member of the ACLU? Now that would make him evil!

Nah, remember that we're talking about a Nazi-run site here: The use of a Jewish name is almost certainly intended as a signal flag.

Anonymous said...

Well Bronze, I still want to know your actual thoughts, as you dismiss everything so easily, so I thought I would ask you straight out, I put it in this "troll roast" thread, as you call it, as I do not want to disturb your other ones, I respectfully ask members not to disturb and jump in screaming "asshole" and other similar things (as they shown they are very immature and childish) and let me speak with Bronze here, I do like COMMENTS of VALUE mindyou, but not the normal things your "kind" usually write (That means nothing from you JS).

Okay Bronze, I take it from It's A Wonderful Race and just ask you whats wrong with it, as you seem to dismiss it so easily:

The angel answered, "George, I'm Clarence the Angel. I was sent here to show you what the world would have been like if Europeans, or Whites, had never existed. You now live in a world where Europeans never existed."

And lets see how it is....

Upon arriving at the cave, a shivering George asked the angel for a lighter so that he could light a fire. "A lighter?" replied Clarence. "There are no lighters here, and no matches. Those are European gadgets and evil Europeans never existed remember? If you want to get warm, you need to do like the locals do and start rubbing twigs together."
"Oh come on man! You mean to tell me these people still rub sticks together for fire?"
"That's right George. The Indians live exactly as they did before the evil pilgrims arrived from Europe just a few centuries ago." said the angel sarcastically.


Would you have any issue with this point? Would you claim they would live much differently?

By morning time, Clarence and George had arrived at the temple of the Incans. A bloody human sacrifice was in progress. George turned to Clarence and cried, "They're going to butcher that poor soul! Somebody has got to stop this. What horrible murdering beasts! Can't anyone stop them?"
The angel replied "I'm afraid not. Ritual killings are common place here. "Those evil European racists like Columbus, Cortez and Pizzaro never existed so the Incans just continued their brutal ways. In fact, it was the oppressed peoples themselves who made up the bulk of the Spanish armed forces.


Any problem with this bit? You do know your history, right?

When they arrived in Africa, George saw thousands of half-naked African tribesmen being herded along a dirt path. They were guarded by other Africans with spears. "What are they doing to those poor men?" George asked Clarence.
"They are being enslaved by another tribe. Slavery was common in Africa long before the whites arrived." Clarence said."In fact, most of the slaves who were shipped to the Americas were sold to the slave traders by African tribal leaders."


And this¿ This must be a golden nugget for you Bronze, us Evil Whites enslaving Blacks... You do know Arican History here, right? Do you wish to comment?

Just to start with, whats your thoughts?

Dark Jaguar said...

In summary, it's fiction.

In detail, yes, humans have done some bad things to each other, but to say one african tribe doing something terrible to another is evidence of racial inferiority is no more valid than if I were to note one "innie" belly buttoned person doing something terrible to another "innie". In other words, that whole excerpt is completely irrelevent.

Your task is to prove whatever it is about race that you are attempting to claim, which seems to be that the "black race" is mentally inferior or lazy or some such thing. In order to do this, you need to control for other variables, other possible explanations. As you yourself should know, slavery happened all the time in europe and asia as well. It was a world-wide phenomenon. So, this is nothing exceptional.

How do you control for it? You select groups that share everything in common EXCEPT the atrribute you wish to prove has this effect. To select for that specific attribute, you have to DEFINE it in rigorous terms, not just "common sense" obviousness, but specific terms.

We've asked for this already, but you've evaded it.

Now then, the corrolary to you stating that you can tell that the lazy or ignorant people in the places you travel are so BECAUSE of their race is that you should be able to tell what race someone is BECAUSE of their behavior. I will ask again. Can you tell which of us is what race? If not, why not?

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe, the first problem with the story is that it presumes you can know what would happen in an alternate reality.

By its logic, if you made a world where Thomas Edison never existed, no one else would have ever gotten the idea to create the light bulb.

And yes, I have repeatedly acknowledged the savagery of many of those people in their history. Yes, Meso-American Indians practiced human sacrifice. Yes, African tribes performed their own form of slavery.

But you're going to pretend I never said anything.

And, of course, DJ points out pretty well what we've been asking for, and how you've been avoiding it.

Bronze Dog said...

To put it another way, Gabe, is it really that alien a concept that I could believe that all humans were varying degrees of savage?

Anonymous said...

gabe squeeked:
"I take it from It's A Wonderful Race and just ask you whats wrong with it, as you seem to dismiss it so easily"


It is easily dismissed because the whole thing is a wishful FANTASY for dewey eyed racists that, if they got into power would be reviving slavery and gassing jews.
Why does gabe want to keep things in the realm of FANTASY instead of dealing with the SCIENCE behind whatever messed up conceptions churn around in his turdlike brain?
Perhaps because he has nothing but FANTASIES to prop up his weak ego.
Oh and by the way gabe, you are in no position to give anyone orders here untermensch.

JS:)

Anonymous said...

gabe whined:

"I do like COMMENTS of VALUE mindyou,"

Try making some then.



"but not the normal things your "kind" usually write (That means nothing from you JS)."


Your "kind" can't even string together a coherent argument, so have to post dewey eyed Nazi wankfantasies, instead of dealing with pertinent questions.
Twelve million posts into this debacle and we've yet to read your definition of "white".
Nazi change the frikkin' script!

JS:)

Jim Roberts said...

This is Dweller in Darkness under my other Google account.

The Native American section is, as I've said before, the dumbest portion of the entire thing. Natives didn't just light fire by "rubbing sticks together." Some tribes used flint-and-tinder systems as complex as those used by the early settlers, others used spark-ignition systems using marsh gas and rotting vegetation.

And the Chinese came up with the match in the 13th century. Pretty fair bet that, given time, they would've reached North America. In any reasonable alternative future, portions of the Native American population would have been as advanced as the Chinese which is to say, very advanced indeed.

On the Incas, harsh climates create harsh societies. We've talked about this before - your job isn't to prove that non-whites can be savage, your job is to prove that the savagery is rooted in non-whiteness and isn't societal.

On the African thing, I'm going to paraphrase Greg Proops speaking to Drew Carey: "Africa's a continent, Gabriel."

Yes, many of the African cultures practiced slavery and were certainly behind their surrounding cultures when it comes to technology. Of course, many of those "superior" surrounding cultures were non-white.

This entire alernative universe thing assumes total stasis and that's just not how the universe spins. Isolated groups with subsistence technology and limited resources, like most Native Americans (the native populations had really barely arrived in the American Southeast and had scarcely settles the Southwest - hard to tell what they could've done with a century or two more of learning about their available resources), Incans and many African tribes can end up in a cycle that can only be broken by outside influence, but positing that the only outside influence that could create innovation where "white folk" isn't just short-sighted, it's ignorant.

Anonymous said...

Incans and many African tribes can end up in a cycle that can only be broken by outside influence

And there you said it, admitted it, but why only for the Incas and 'many African tribes'? Why not, logically, hold the same for the Native Americas whom where equally backwards?

You admitted it, OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, the only influence left would be, White Man, yay us, eh?


I am just curious, Is it not strange that this 'good' Meme thats amongst White Man came up only in White Society? Is it a mere Coincidence? We introduced this 'good' meme to Africans and they cant deal with it, why?

Think about it, try being OPEN MINDED and objective rather then your prejudiced view, Is it not STRANGE that this 'good' Meme that we have (Bronze Dog agreed that White Mans Meme is good) ONLY appear amongst WHITE MAN....Strange.

Dark Jaguar said...

What "good meme" are you talking about? What is your evidence that it only appears in "white man" and "doesn't work in non-whites"? Be specific.

Secondly, he's stating that a society can get stuck in a loop, but it isn't limited JUST to "incans". Plenty of tribes in Europe got into similar loops only broken by outside influence, like say being conquered by Ghengis. It STILL has nothing to do with race! And why do you suppose that only "the whites" can break it? Where's your evidence for that exactly? Two european societies can also have a great influence on each other.

Stop grasping desperatly at straws and try to actually answer our questions.

Anonymous said...

What "good meme" are you talking about? What is your evidence that it only appears in "white man" and "doesn't work in non-whites"? Be specific.

You need to come up to speed youngman.

This 'good meme' is the meme White Man has, plain and simple. Bronze Dog claimed that White Mans MEME is the one responsible for the good we made, not the fact we are White, so I refer to this meme as 'good' Meme, to avoid any 'bad meme' I guess.

Ask Bronze Dog for details, he was very into Memes after he ignored my points about it, and then started to talk about it himself pretending I did not know anything about it, I guess thats the 'skeptic' way of dealing with people, ignore them.


Anyway, Yes, wer got Historic facts. You do know South Africa? And how nice it was when White Man controlled it? And what happened when White man did not control it? The innocent Whites murdered and Raped? The farms that did good for centuries destoryed in a couple of years after negroids killed and 'took over' them? No, you wouldn't, that would be 'bad knowledge' you do not want.

It is funny how your kind, the 'skeptics' seem to ignore facts. And if facts are shown by 'evil people' like me (people wth truth and hard facts are always evil and bad for some reason) its a cnspiracy, its MADE UP by the Evil White man to make the negroids or spics or jews to look bad.. WEIRD IS IT NOT.

Simple put, the 'good' meme is White mans memes, I quoted 'good' to seperate it from any bad ones, to avoid any cunfusion, and here we are, your confused because you do not know what your master Bronze spoke about earlier, yet your beiheind him.. Or is he behind you? What do you prefer? (I know alot of skeptics are faggots).

I haven't even begun to put up the statistics of before and after we let the negriods become 'equal' to Whites in America, you wouldn't know about it as you are young, but the world was better let me tell you when Blacks knew their place. FACTS support it, but you wouldn't want that would you.

Anonymous said...

And why do you suppose that only "the whites" can break it? Where's your evidence for that exactly? Two european societies can also have a great influence on each other.

This is a 10 pointer. Atleast.

First you make up that I somehow claimed that 'white can only break it' (I said nothing about it), and then you want ME to prove a negative, and better yet, something I NEVER claimed..

Dude, this is the way you do it.. Nice, Should I just call you Kent Hovind?

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe:

I am just curious, Is it not strange that this 'good' Meme thats amongst White Man came up only in White Society? Is it a mere Coincidence?

The good "white" memes responsible for things like the Enlightenment aren't the result of race. They're a result of forces like geography (Unless Gabe wants to argue that white genes influence geological events that happened before humans showed up) and stuff like war and trade, which also often have geographical influences.

(Bronze Dog agreed that White Mans Meme is good)

SOME "white" memes were good. There is no single white meme. Bad white memes include Christian fundamentalism, Social Darwinism (which has nothing to do with evolution), etcetera.

We introduced this 'good' meme to Africans and they cant deal with it, why?

Because their social and economic status won't allow the good memes to flourish. You can't teach new generations in schools if they're too poor to attend, for example. We've been over this many, many times.

Of course, Gabe, I'd like to see you explain how these good memes you're talking about came about in "white" societies. You have no mechanism of action. Without something like that, your argument is crippled.

Anonymous said...

Except of course you see this meme in ALL white societies, it is clearly natural for us.

If you had, say, half of Whites NOT having this meme, living like savages like the Africans, you would have a point, now, You got nothing but wont admit it.

Anonymous said...

I am downloading The Demon-Haunted World now, 14 hours of listening magic, nice. Strange that a book about being logical would be recommended by people whom are not... Irony perhaps?

But its damn slow, thats what you get being in a spic nation, of course, you claim they have equal speed as we have in America, as they are equal to us..... But for some reason I do not see you live here, wonder why.... When its so equal.. And same.. Oh well..

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: Except of course you see this meme in ALL white societies, it is clearly natural for us.

If you had, say, half of Whites NOT having this meme, living like savages like the Africans, you would have a point, now, You got nothing but wont admit it.


Wow. Defense by intentional vagueness. I suppose next you're going to say we got this affinity for the meme because aliens changed white DNA to end the Dark Age.

Oh, yeah, one thing I've been meaning to mention: The "white" meme of Christian fundamentalism is quite strong among many Africans, since they're into witch hunts these days. Christian fundamentalism is an example of an inhibitory meme. The fact that many missionaries were more interested in building churches than building schools didn't help matters.

Dark Jaguar said...

You said "what influence" and then said "the only influence left would be white man". What else am I supposed to take from that? You need to speak clearly. Also that's not a negative, that's a positive claim on race being a factor.

However, this is important. Are you now claiming that a tribe can be altered by non-white interference too? Congratulations! You undermined your own argument.

It's not that you are saying anything "inconvenient", it's that you are saying stuff that is totally irrelevant.

How old are you exactly that you claim that I am "too young"? Last I checked you weren't alive before abolition either, unless you happen to be over 140 years old or so. Are you honestly claiming that things were "better" before slavery was abolished? Maybe for the slave owners, but not so much for the slaves right? Further, do you really believe society was "better" when black people coudln't vote, when their votes counted for less, when they were "seperate but equal"? You better have something to back that up. Niel Degrasse at least would not be doing nearly as well in a society that would tell him he can't be a scientist because he's just a stupid black guy. However in a society treating him as an equal, he's a succesful astronomer.

Does a society fall apart if it's supporting structure up and leaves? Of course, though considering your ignorant portrayal of "the time before equality", I doubt you've got all the facts right about African tribes controlled by white people. Stalin made the trains run on time after all.

You also completely misunderstand what a "meme" is. It's a unit of CULTERAL TRANSMISSION! It could be anything, from language to the pet rock fad. It's not just one thing, and it's never isolated along genetic boundries. There is no reason to believe that the race of whatever person first comes up with a meme is required to innovate that meme. There's ample evidence otherwise in fact.

Also, not a one of us claim "evil white people" are setting up any conspiracies. You're the one who claims a conspiracy, after all, you are completely alone in your position. A lone nut on the street against the entire wealth of available scientific knowledge.

Apparently you have assumed us "skeptics" are all gay for some reason. Another unsupported claim you just kinda "know". Also, pointless. That you consider it an insult is also pretty telling.

Can you tell which one of us is what race, and if not, why not?

Oh, and you haven't begun to list ANY statistics, not "just" the ones post-abolishment. Start actually posting some evidence here. Be sure they are "clean", that is, be sure you can rule out other possible explanations aside from race.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: Strange that a book about being logical would be recommended by people whom are not... Irony perhaps?

The irony is that a PoMo like you, who openly rejects logic whenever we bring up your logical fallacies, is calling us illogical.

Anonymous said...

You cant teach a dog to fly a kite. Or rather, you cant make a chimpanzee build a car, but you can teach it not to destroy it.

Same logic here, we needed to control them, we did our best, it did not work because of their limitations, are you giving THEIR limitations (savagery, backwardness etc) as an excuse and attack us? Weird.

Maybe you never been down at the Ghettos, maybe you should visit Africa and see the advanced civilizations there, I mean, with all the White technology they got now, they should be identical to us, I recommend you to go to Central Congo, WONDERFUL place,m you just love it Bronzie.

Dark Jaguar said...

Wait, so spanish people aren't from europe now? They are their own race? You have to start defining what you mean man, this is getting crazy...er.

Not a single one of us ever claimed that Mexico was a 1st world country equal to the US. It has a long way to go. It's the same as we've been saying. You see that A: a country lacks the progress of some first world nations, and B: that country has a predominate population of a race other than your favored one and suddenly conclude that A is CAUSED by B. That is a fallacy. You need to prove that A and B are related.

Here's a way to illustrate why it's a fallacy. I go into a nearby forest and note that A: there are no bears around, and B: the forest has lots of rocks lying about and conclude that rocks ward off bears.

Oh, and "all white societies" were NOT in fact innovators of all those ideas seperately and simultaneously. How COULD they be? What point is there in inventing the light bulb twice?

Dark Jaguar said...

Who is this "we" business? We aren't on your side! Stop grouping us up with you based on something so silly as race.

Secondly, there ARE in fact some very nice places in Africa. There are also some hell holes. There are nations where there is a very clear divide between the well educated and the superstitious poor. Guess what? There is no clear racial split in that divide. Your task is to establish whether race had anything to do with it.

By the way, now you are claiming that a black person is completely incapable of learning to build a car? Are you serious? There is NO evidence to support that claim, and the very existance of black engineers currently not just building but DESIGNING cars establishes that pretty well.

Also, no, those slave traders didn't "need" to control them. They COULD have just left them alone, waiting for them to catch up to europe. That would have been the best thing to do. Your view of history is fataly skewed.

Anonymous said...

unless you happen to be over 140 years old or so

No you moron, I grew up in the 30´s and let me tell you it was better, when I was in my teens, just at the end of the second world war it was good, everything was looking up and going better, and then does fucking niggers started to whine, every year it went worse and worse and now what we got, now they have voting rights, EQUAL RIGHTS to white man AIDS going up, faggots and crime raising, STATISTICS show the negriods and spics being the main perpetrator... But of course, thats a conspiracy from "white man", right, the numbers lie.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: You cant teach a dog to fly a kite. Or rather, you cant make a chimpanzee build a car, but you can teach it not to destroy it.

Except you have yet to describe why we can't find any significant neurological difference between "whites" and "blacks." Whenever we ask you for some basis, you do nothing but stall and change subjects.

Same logic here, we needed to control them, we did our best, it did not work because of their limitations, are you giving THEIR limitations (savagery, backwardness etc) as an excuse and attack us? Weird.

Just what the hell do you mean? We give them a chance over here in the US, and they've been steadily climbing in capability, IQ, and so forth since then. The difference disappears as circumstances get more and more equal. Therefore it's reasonable to conclude that there probably is no racial effect on intelligence.

You should read up on homeopathy: The "effect" of homeopathy shrinks as the experimental controls get better and better, hence it's reasonable to conclude there probably is no homeopathy effect.

Maybe you never been down at the Ghettos, maybe you should visit Africa and see the advanced civilizations there, I mean, with all the White technology they got now, they should be identical to us, I recommend you to go to Central Congo, WONDERFUL place,m you just love it Bronzie.

Because deliberately biasing your study to include selection effects is such a wonderful means of conducting statistics!

Oh, and what good is technology if you don't have a supportive infrastructure? Gabe thinks life is a big videogame like Civilization.

Jim Roberts said...

Wow. Gabe, have you considered working in the fruit farms down in the Southwest? You've got an immigrant's talent for cherry-picking.

The Chinese, specifically the Han Chinese. The Arabic nations, long, long after any potential influence by the theoretical Aryans. The Egyptians. Heck, the Incans had maths as advanced as their conquerors and the agricultural tricks they pulled off just to have a subsistence culture are part of what enabled Europe to flourish. Just to name a few historical non-white civilizations that've had a global impact on the present day. Not on their own, of course, because that's not how it works, now or ever.

All white societies are successful? Like the Vikings, the Goths, the Angles, the Saxons, the Geats, and all the other white societies that tore each other to pieces and fought over the remains? Those successful societies?

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: STATISTICS show the negriods and spics being the main perpetrator

Sounds like a rather extraordinary claim to me. Of course, since the burden of proof is on the person making a positive claim, we'll need a citation.

Of course, I don't expect you to understand statistical mathematics. After all, you likely believe my perception of burden of proof is caused by me solving real world problems involving cows on diets, clinical trials, and tire factories in my Statistical Analysis I and II classes, because we all know that word problems that never mention race are tools of the Zionist conspiracy.

Bronze Dog said...

Something funny I just remembered, though I wish I could remember the source: Illegal Mexican immigrants tended to be less prone to violent crime. Why? Because most tended to be smart enough not to attract any attention to themselves.

Bronze Dog said...

But, I digress, since Gabe still needs to do something very fundamental before any alleged correlation can be used as evidence: We need a causal mechanism, Gabe. HOW does race cause anything?

And since you're inevitably going to use our focus on causation as an alleged excuse for "avoiding" talking about the statistics you won't bother to cite, I'll point out a little something: Gabe, you're what we in the skeptical blogosphere call "fractally wrong": You're wrong at any level of resolution. I'd rather get to the fundamentals of your rejection of basic logic before we get to handling the data.

You know, like how many of us like to point out that an argument from ignorance fallacy spouted by a Creationist is fundamentally flawed before we bother to explain how X evolved, or how "magic man done it" is a lack of an explanation.

Put simply Gabe, you've dropped the ball so badly on causal mechanisms that "race" is a lack of an explanation. You can't even explicitly tell us it's genetic. That's probably why you jump threads whenever we ask.

Bronze Dog said...

Comment on infrastructure and more on how Gabe thinks life is like a Civilization videogame: America trades "The Automobile" technology to the Zulus for 20 turns worth of Banana and Gems resources. Because the Zulus now have "The Automobile" all of their dirt roads transform into car-friendly paved roads in the same turn, just like in the game, even if they don't have schools that provide auto shop classes to pass the knowledge to big enough chunks of future generations.

That's kind of what Gabe seems to expect in terms of education: That technology-related knowledge is something you can just give to a few people in a nation and overnight it'll just spread magically. No need to add it to the school curriculum or build an infrastructure that makes that knowledge practical. There's no need for any of that because that would make life more complicated than it is on my PS3, and we all know life is as simple as it is in a videogame.

*rolleyes*

Anonymous said...

You'd think that our resident troll would easily refute our pseudosceptical rubbish with some scientifically tested evidence, that shows that he is magically superior to those "kind" with black or tan skin. But what we get is whining and racist rants like this:

"No you moron, I grew up in the 30´s and let me tell you it was better, when I was in my teens, just at the end of the second world war it was good, everything was looking up and going better, and then does fucking niggers started to whine, every year it went worse and worse and now what we got, now they have voting rights, EQUAL RIGHTS to white man AIDS going up, faggots and crime raising, STATISTICS show the negriods and spics being the main perpetrator... But of course, thats a conspiracy from "white man", right, the numbers lie."


By the way gabe its THOSE not does. It seems you untermensch don't have a very good command of white mans' english. How does it feel to be the uneducated untermensch on this website gabe?

JS:)

Anonymous said...

That's kind of what Gabe seems to expect in terms of education: That technology-related knowledge is something you can just give to a few people in a nation and overnight it'll just spread magically.

Weird, that was just what you claimed, you forgot? Aliens giving us technology, we become equal, just overnight...

But you forgot that, didn't you? It is fun to see you destroy your own argument, but alas, you wont learn anything, you just ignore it.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: Weird, that was just what you claimed, you forgot? Aliens giving us technology, we become equal, just overnight...

Liar. I never said overnight. It required infrastructural changes, but you conveniently ignored that. That's what I told you the last time you lied about that. With help like that infrastructural update, changes can be much faster than regular discovery, but I never said overnight.

But you forgot that, didn't you? It is fun to see you destroy your own argument, but alas, you wont learn anything, you just ignore it.

Pathological lying doesn't help your case, Gabe. Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.

Bronze Dog said...

About the absolute worst you could accuse me of is exaggeration followed by correction. But you won't let that bit of truth get in your way.

Oh, and I feel obligated to point out you've been stalling since about September on whether or not race is genetic.

Bronze Dog said...

I went back and found this snippet:

Gabe: Knowling less, less understanding, less, less Quality, les Performance, ie Inferior. That is, Aliens are by default Superior (in this scenario). That The humans would EVENTUALLY become equal is irrelevant, as well as the Alien themselves would continue their knowledge and expand on it, ad infinitum.

Me: Exactly. It's just a matter of resources, infrastructure, and education. That's exactly what we're saying. What baffles me is where race and genetic superiority come into play. [Emphasis added]

Looks like you've been caught red-handed, Gabe.

Anonymous said...

The sayings of Chairman gabe:


"So you prefer our great nation to be run by a NEGRO ape rather then a WHITE war hero? Thats just glorious, see what our nation turns into now, more violence and crime and 'special treatment' for his fellow BLACKIES no doubt.
we did use NEGROS as labourer, as that is what they where good for, but they did not 'create' our nation, we USED them, just as we use other animals, sheep, horses dogs etc."

"...wonder why WHITE Americans and Canadians are so good off and then, suddenly, at the Mexican border it goes down, with the SKIN COLOR.."


Then our pathological fantasist writes:

"...did not mention 'skin color' but culture and locations, you seem pretty racial yourself here, i think projection is a possilibity.."

Projecting a bit yourself, eh untermensch? Also:

"...have no idea why you speak of skin color or Africa and so forth, you seem to have some personal racial issues you need to solve. I think 'strawman' is the word here..."

And I think 'pathological liar' and 'projecting parrot' are the words to use for you untermensch.

And just to pin your squirming ass down to the words you used earlier:

"Africans are, by definition, more 'closely' related to our ancestors, our ancestors are, in our own human perception, inferior to us, and therefore wouldn't africans by nature be inferior to 'less' african people? If you understand what I mean here?"


So here you seem to be advocating genetic inferiority, based on the idea that you think that Africans are not modern humans.
But then you go and change your tune, to save yourself from humiliation, and agree with Bronze Dog that it is memes that are why you think that some African cultures are inferior.

Bronze Dog wrote:
"Wow. Defense by intentional vagueness."

Our untermensch twists and turns, squirms and worms, in an effort to save himself from humiliating views that he got from comic books.

You see gabe, we have memories considerably longer than racially pure ubermensch like you!



JS:)

Anonymous said...

No little Bronze Boy, YOU are making assertions (built as strawmen) over and over again and then trying to torch it, I dont play that game.

I asked you on numerous occasions Why White Societies are Superior to Blacks. I asked you over and over again why Blacks thats been welcomed into White Societies are going back to their savage like behaviour. The only excuse you have given is that 'they have different memes, therefore'... This is a weird excuse.

Especially since we can TEACH THEM good memes like ours, and yet, why dont we? Well Bronze, you see, We Do, but they do not get it, they can not, in the whole, understand it.

I even made exampled myself of niggers who DID manage to become something, one in tens of millions DO become something, manage to use that brain, Perhaps they are an anomaly, a positive one giving them the same advantage as the White man? Maybe there is no genetic difference between negros and Whites, it is just that White man simple have the mental construct to understand and use their intellect and niggers simple can not (excluding the minimal deviants).

YOU have not explained this FACT about the world, this is why yo ushould travel, you should SEE the world rather then watch 'COPS' on TV, so you would, you know, understand that the world is big, and some things are better seen in real life. The FACTS of our world shows the niggers in their true state, You can see it to, just go to any Ghetto and there you go, same savage behaviour as in Africa.

You do not explain. Nothing, just give excuses, the Skeptic way perhaps?

Anonymous said...

Looks like you've been caught red-handed, Gabe.

Erh, what are you talking about? You where wrong and you decided not to admit it?

You claimed the Aliens became EQUAL, I asked you about it, you said yes, If Aliens give us their technology, we become Equal, overnight as it where, then after tht you realized you screwed up and started to give infrastructure and time its token.

Well, if TIME is what it takes, what is going on with the others? How can you become superior to something that is itself moving upwards? You see the point?

And now you go on and say I STATED something YOU previously admitted, WEIRD AS HELL this is indeed. So WHY AREN'T niggers equal? You been on this Bronzie Boy, well? They are EQUAL, remember? We GIVEN THEM the technology and YET THEY ARE SAVAGES.... Your Excuse MEME=BAD, okay, so you then admit they are NOT equal, else that bad meme would go away, wouldn't it?

Anonymous said...

Our untermensch changes his tune from his past post where its genetic. Quick gabe, hop skip and jump!

"Maybe there is no genetic difference between NEGROS and Whites, it is just that WHITE man simple have the mental construct to understand and use their intellect and NIGGERS simple can not (excluding the minimal deviants)."

Don't tell me gabe, you weren't the one mentioning skin colour, we're projecting.


"YOU have not explained this FACT about the world..."

You haven't explained why you're in any way superior to any black person. You seem to want ALL white folks to be superior bcause that lumps you in with Einstein, (a jew by the way) and other far more gifted folk like Richard Dawkins (whom you singularly fail to understand).

".. this is why you should travel, you should SEE the world rather then watch 'COPS' on TV, so you would, you know, understand that the world is big, and some things are better seen in real life."

In other words: "My biased racist perceptions trump the scientific method."


"The FACTS of our world shows the NIGGERS in their true state, You can see it to, just go to any Ghetto and there you go, same savage behaviour as in Africa."


And who pushed those black people into those ghettos eh? I suppose you'll just dismiss my question with accusations of "hating the white race", while ignoring known history.

"You do not explain. Nothing, just give excuses, the Skeptic way perhaps?"

More projecting from a sad little Nazi loser. You just jump from one idea to the next, ignoring the rising tide of evidence against your Nazi wankfantasy. The pathological liar gabe way perhaps?

JS:)

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: No little Bronze Boy, YOU are making assertions (built as strawmen) over and over again and then trying to torch it, I dont play that game.

You don't get to be taken seriously if you spend all your time stalling when you could be answering fundamental questions about what you're trying to argue.

I asked you on numerous occasions Why White Societies are Superior to Blacks. I asked you over and over again why Blacks thats been welcomed into White Societies are going back to their savage like behaviour. The only excuse you have given is that 'they have different memes, therefore'... This is a weird excuse.

1. Shifting the burden of proof fallacy. I don't even need to answer it.

2. It's not just different memes. It's also different resources and different infrastructures. But you're going to conveniently forget that even after I explicitly pointed it out while calling you on a lie a few comments ago.

3. The question is designed to cover up your inability to explain it. You can't explain why "white" societies are more prosperous. That's a core point of our arguments you conveniently ignore. You've been ignoring it for months, now.

Especially since we can TEACH THEM good memes like ours, and yet, why dont we? Well Bronze, you see, We Do, but they do not get it, they can not, in the whole, understand it.

It's because good memes can't thrive without a good supporting infrastructure, but you never let that explanation get in the way of your lie by omission.

I even made exampled myself of niggers who DID manage to become something, one in tens of millions DO become something, manage to use that brain, Perhaps they are an anomaly, a positive one giving them the same advantage as the White man?

Someone doesn't pay close attention to what's going on in America.

Maybe there is no genetic difference between negros and Whites, it is just that White man simple have the mental construct to understand and use their intellect and niggers simple can not (excluding the minimal deviants).

Which is essentially conceding the whole argument.

YOU have not explained this FACT about the world...

Translation: Because I allegedly don't know, that means Gabriel, Ultimate Arbiter of Epistemology is right, because he knows all possibilities of all universes, and works by process of elimination. That's why he doesn't need good evidence. Evidence is nothing but a narrative construct by The Man.

this is why yo ushould travel, you should SEE the world rather then watch 'COPS' on TV, so you would, you know, understand that the world is big, and some things are better seen in real life. The FACTS of our world shows the niggers in their true state, You can see it to, just go to any Ghetto and there you go, same savage behaviour as in Africa.

Translation: Statistics are lies because neither me nor Gabriel, Ultimate Arbiter of Epistemology did not personally collect them. Personal experience recorded on squishy human brains is infinitely superior to objective recording instruments. How PoMo can you get? What's next, Gabe, solipsism?

You do not explain. Nothing, just give excuses, the Skeptic way perhaps?

Translation: Using logic to refute a position is illogical! Or at least it is, when trying to refute me, Gabriel, Ultimate Arbiter of Epistemology! Logic is fine for other topics, but my position is so weak, it deserves special exceptions!

Bronze Dog said...

You claimed the Aliens became EQUAL, I asked you about it, you said yes, If Aliens give us their technology, we become Equal, overnight as it where, then after tht you realized you screwed up and started to give infrastructure and time its token.

Everyone can see you're lying, especially since I've been very consistent on infrastructure. But a pathological lying PoMo who can't even commit to anything just won't let that truth get in the way of declaring reality to be a matter for literary critics to deconstruct, rather than a job for science.

Well, if TIME is what it takes, what is going on with the others? How can you become superior to something that is itself moving upwards? You see the point?

It's not time alone, it's infrastructure and resources as well. It seems you conveniently forgot what my position was over the course of that paragraph break.

And now you go on and say I STATED something YOU previously admitted, WEIRD AS HELL this is indeed. So WHY AREN'T niggers equal? You been on this Bronzie Boy, well? They are EQUAL, remember? We GIVEN THEM the technology and YET THEY ARE SAVAGES.... Your Excuse MEME=BAD, okay, so you then admit they are NOT equal, else that bad meme would go away, wouldn't it?

Infrastructure. Resources. Educational facilities. My brother had pet fish with longer memories than you.

Of course, you have no explanation, so all you can do is keep forgetting what I've said. Oh, and, of course, going into PoMo rants about how logic and science are fundamentally wrong whenever I simply point out the poverty of your explanation.

Bronze Dog said...

To summarize Gabe's rants: "Don't trust those white scientists on how to do things! Trust the homeopaths and witch doctors! Woos who wasted their lives trying to drag us down into the Dark Ages know more about epistemology and logic than all those scientists with their fancy technologies and objective measurements!"

Anonymous said...

Our troll ranted:

"Well, if TIME is what it takes, what is going on with the others? How can you become superior to something that is itself moving upwards? You see the point?"


So because the ancient Egyptians had the technology to build the pyramids. They are superior to us now and forever. Great thinking there gabe.
You just shot yourself in the foot.

JS:)

Anonymous said...

The question is designed to cover up your inability to explain it. You can't explain why "white" societies are more prosperous. That's a core point of our arguments you conveniently ignore. You've been ignoring it for months, now

Erh, Because We are White?

Let me rephrase your question: Why are Slugs so much better at being slugs then me?

Or

Why are Fish to much better at living in the sea then Elephants?

Etc.....


The reason WHY we are so good is BECAUSE of our understanding of logic, our comprehension of the world, our Intellect. THATS why are are so superior. YOU have been claiming from the start that niggers are equal, funny that THEY do NOT have this intellect.

We are better because the White Race is superior in dealing with the world, plain and simple, You dont want to admit all the things White man has done, so what more can I say to someone denying the real world?

Bronze Dog said...

Observation: If resources, infrastructure, and educational facilities don't explain a region's prosperity, why does the US waste money on power lines, farms, oil, roads, schools, colleges, water reservoirs, cell phone towers, the internet, and so forth? They're useless, right?

Bronze Dog said...

Another observation: Blacks tend to be more prosperous in first world nations. If Gabe attributes this to some unknown genetic anomaly, how does he explain that genetic happenstance occurring predominantly in first world nations?

Anonymous said...

You know, I have been aching to invite you down here, I would love to have a real life discussion with you, it is just that I suspect you would decline, I would offer free room and board, but I suspect you wouldn't dare, you would be to afraid for a real life confrontation (I love debates whatever I agree or not with the person).

I leave the door open, you are welcome to come down here to Peru Bronze, I would gladly open my door, what would stop you? You could really show me how wrong I am, and you get to go abroad, eh?

But I know the answer, it is telling I think.

MWchase said...

"So because the ancient Egyptians had the technology to build the pyramids. They are superior to us now and forever."

I thought his argument was that the Egyptians were somehow never capable of building the pyramids because of the shape Egypt is in today.

Yep. He ignored the falls of kingdoms and empires. That really makes me trust his grasp of history, you know?

Anonymous said...

Our Nazi arselicker ranted:

"The reason WHY we are so good is BECAUSE of our understanding of logic, our comprehension of the world, our Intellect. THATS why are are so superior. YOU have been claiming from the start that niggers are equal, funny that THEY do NOT have this intellect."

We can safely add American Indians and Australian Aborigines into your "niggers" classification can we, untermensch?


"We are better because the White Race is superior in dealing with the world, plain and simple.."


Those white folks clever enough to adopt the survival methods of Australian Aborigines and American Indians lasted longer in the harsh environments of the wilds and deserts. This destroys your "whites are the only clever folks on the planet" fantasy.


"... You dont want to admit all the things White man has done, so what more can I say to someone denying the real world?"


Yeah, because no white man ever died in the Australian outback due to not following Aboriginal survival techniques did they?
Now who is denying the real world?


JS:)

Bronze Dog said...

Yes, white people did some awesome things. White people also did some terrible things. Non-whites did some awesome things, too. They also did terrible things. The same can be said of red heads, people without dangling earlobes, people who can curl their tongues, people who can do the vulcan salute easily, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

About the only thing I can see being said is that "white" people did a larger proportion of the most recent awesome things. But without a causal mechanism like some gene that codes for a hypothetical unique neurotransmitter or some other way that whiteness could be directly attributed to causing those awesome things, it's mere correlation.

And despite what all the psychics, witch doctors, and racists like to say, correlation does not equal causation. And none of those people get the special exceptions to epistemology Gabe is repeatedly asking for between the lines. I won't give it to people I wish were right, so how can Gabe expect me to just blindly give that exception to him.

Anonymous said...

Our troll tries a creepy evasion:

"You know, I have been aching to invite you down here, I would love to have a real life discussion with you.."

Here we go:


"... it is just that I suspect you would decline, I would offer free room and board, but I suspect you wouldn't dare, you would be to afraid for a real life confrontation.."

In other words: Bronze Dog is a coward because he might not go all the way to and see gabe.

How about you answer Bronze's questions on his blog, or are you too afraid to tell us what your definition of "white" is?

I know what your "answers" will be, they are telling, I think.


JS;)

Bronze Dog said...

Something I should tell you Gabe, since you haven't seemed to pick it up:

If you can tell me about some mechanism (a unique gene relating to neurological development, for example) by which "whiteness" could cause a nation's prosperity, I would be much more sympathetic to your argument.

So far, however, without that, all I can do is point out your logical fallacies and call you a PoMo when you whine about my use of logic to defeat your argument.

Heck, I'm even tempted to try some form of comment moderation to get you to talk about only that by deleting all your repetitions tired old irrelevancies and logical fallacies.

Anonymous said...

Bronze Dog wrote:

"Heck, I'm even tempted to try some form of comment moderation to get you to talk about only that by deleting all your repetitions tired old irrelevancies and logical fallacies."


I'd wet my pants laughing if you did this Bronze. Our troll would scream blue murder about censorship, and probably try to claim victory and the moral high ground by default. While avoiding answering all the relevant questions.

JS;)

Bronze Dog said...

Oh yeah: Inviting me to go to a crappy place when I expect it to be crappy isn't going to convince me of anything, Gabe: In science, you usually have to show your adversary something he DIDN'T expect.

Asking me to travel there is essentially saying, "Look, this part of the world is exactly as bad as your worldview expects it to be, therefore your worldview is wrong!"

Bronze Dog said...

Yeah. That's what WoMI did, after all, when he only repeated his lies over and over again when I asked him for something new.

Of course, Gabe whined like a schoolboy for my lack of censoring. "Waaaaah! Bronze Dog, Jacqueline is picking on me! Instead of taking it like a man and advancing my argument, I'm going to pout and post about this subject change!"

Bronze Dog said...

But again, I regress: Gabe, do you have a causal mechanism for "white" prosperity or not?

Without that little thing, race can't explain anything.

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe, we're all still waiting for you to get around to defining who you mean what you say white. Is that really so hard for you to do?

MWchase said...

What I suggest may be a really bad idea, but I can't really judge: Gabe keeps on going off topic. Why not, then, take this to a forum? Like, say, the Fiery Depths at the GDL... (Why, yes, I am desperate to get some kind of something going on at the GDL.) Then, the topics can be split or whatever as needed.

Dark Jaguar said...

Gabe, there is no point in any of us visiting you in real life. Anything you need to say, any evidence you'd like to provide, you can do here.

There is only one reason you'd want to invite him, and that's so that when he continues to disagree with you, you would feel "justified" in physically assaulting him. Perhaps you'd say "I give you room and board and this is how you repay me?" *punch*.

Dark Jaguar said...

Gabe your statement are becoming stronger and stronger. You're now very clearly stating that black people lack intelligence or reason. Wrong.

Explain why we have succesful black scientists. Are you going to say that white people hired a black guy to act while they did all the work and gave him the credit? No, I'm sure you'd see that THAT is a completely stupid thing to do.

Anonymous said...

Our resident Nazi worshipper ranted:

"No you moron, I grew up in the 30´s and let me tell you it was better, when I was in my teens, just at the end of the second world war.."

Our troll's old age explains a lot(if he isn't telling lies again). Some of the warning signs of Alzheimer’s are:

Memory loss
Difficulty performing familiar tasks
Problems with language
Disorientation to time and place
Poor or decreased judgment
Problems with abstract thinking

Our resident troll has displayed all of these symptoms.


JS:)

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah: Inviting me to go to a crappy place when I expect it to be crappy isn't going to convince me of anything, Gabe: In science, you usually have to show your adversary something he DIDN'T expect.

That was a very racist thing to say Bronze, and sad indeed.

First, you never been to Peru so you do not know how it is to be here, second, most of the knowledge you would get would probably come from Wikipedia, and I doubt they would write anything Negative.

You said NO to knowledge, you just said "No thanks, I do not want to learn, I rather sit infront of my computer playing World of Warcraft".

Screaming murder? No Bronze, you said NO to LEARNING. No diffeence from your father saying "I do not want you to go to school. Stay in your room and play World of Warcraft, School is no place to go, it sucks".....

Wow Bronze, I am a bit ashamed of being classified as Human next to you, You deny knowledge, and look, a SKEPTICAL Blog, lets check what most Posts are about... Yes, it claims knowledge, how to gain knowledge, scientific understanding and promotion of, yes, Knowledge....

And Here you are just saying, openly, NO to Learning and just after claiming it to be "crappy", without any basis for this. Well, Go to your Father, tell him that you are not interestedi n learning and rather play games, see what huis reaction is, then we see if you get this bad behaviour from him, or he would as any normal person, show disgust and disdain for such an insulting view, We got to the Moon because we wanted ot Learn, you hold the view they have in Africa, "Why do anything"....

I will have my offer open, if you dare, as I realize lotso f it is because of fear, fear of being wrong, if you manup, You are welcome with open arms, as I always have to enter my mail I Assume you got my mail there, just send me a line.. Dont be ashamed, I wont make fun of you or poke you in the ribs for being afraid or such, I would rather be proud of you, for finally doing what you should, Go after knowledge and experience, Science you we call it.

I really hope you change your mind, and what a racist view you got of Peru, never been here, knowing nothing about it. Cheezes, how sad, and here I can tell you lots about it, and maybe you could tell me things to?

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe, I now have two questions for you. Somehow I expect that you will hide from both of them like a coward.

First, the basic question that you have been ducking: Who do you mean when you say white?

Now I will add: Do you understand the difference between saying that an effect does not exist and saying that an effect does not have a particular cause?

MWchase said...

Here's a question: are there any sources besides your own experience that you trust? I was thinking specifically of the CIA World Factbook. It only gives a certain level of detail, but I figure information that's sufficiently high-quality for the CIA's purposes is sufficient for ours, if it's at the right level of detail.

If you trust that, or any other publicly available source that you're willing to say, the next thing I want to know is, is there any way of quantifying a country's 'superiority'? I don't mean "Well, look at how fucking amazing it is, gum drops and lollipops and ice cream and intense fluoridation to deal with the high levels of candy consumption". What I mean is, I want, more or less, a function that will take data about a country, munge it together in whatever fashion you indicate, so long as it's consistent, and then gives back a number that can be used to 'rate' countries on their level of advancement. If you go through with this, I'm willing to use any function you want, as long as you explain how race affects each of the parameters. (Or, if the function is particularly strange in how it operates on parameters in some range, why you chose that function.)

I'm willing to do the legwork in putting together tables of results, once things settle down for me academically (this could take a few months), and I don't care who you ask for help, if you agree to this.

Just to check, does everyone else think this is reasonable? Anyone with an internet connection can look at the data. Anyone with an internet connection can process the data. If this vindicates Gabe, then lots of science gets overturned. Otherwise... eh, he can ignore that bridge if/when he comes to it.

MWchase said...

Addendum: it should also make sense that the final result is linked to prosperity or whatever. I'm going to be more than a little leery of something positively correlated with infant mortality (to pick a random example), you know?

Dark Jaguar said...

Gabe, you don't get it. Actually visiting the country won't "teach" him anything. Why? He'd only be visiting one small section of it, such a ridiculously small percentage of the whole that any conclusions that he COULD draw would be hopelessly skewed. Further, it would be impossible from direct experience for him to judge whether whatever poor or destitute people of your enemy "race" he witnessed were that way because of race, or were that way for other reasons.

Race just seems like such an obvious explanation to you that you haven't even considered for one second the causation fallacy you are committing.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe apparently continues to ignore the logical fallacies I've pointed out. More PoMo attitude: Subjective, selection biased personal experiences are real! Numbers aren't! The part is more real and meaningful than the whole! Logic is a Zionist conspiracy!

That was a very racist thing to say Bronze, and sad indeed.

How exactly is it racist? Race has nothing to do with my evaluation.

I suspect the Humpty-Dumpty fallacy: "Words only mean what I want them to mean."

First, you never been to Peru so you do not know how it is to be here, second, most of the knowledge you would get would probably come from Wikipedia, and I doubt they would write anything Negative.

Wow, you're really desperate, aren't you, Gabe? Everyone here already knows that's a blatant lie: I don't blindly trust Wikipedia. I don't even use it that often. How many times do I have to say it, you lying liar? Quit being so cowardly and childish.

Of course, I shouldn't have such high expectations for someone who thinks statistical mathematics and science in general are a mass indoctrination conspiracy.

You said NO to knowledge, you just said "No thanks, I do not want to learn, I rather sit infront of my computer playing World of Warcraft".

More compulsive lying from Mr. "Life is exactly like a videogame". LOGIC says no to your desperate effort to claim selection biases are the fundamental unit of truth. I trust cold hard numbers, not my warm squishy brain's personal experiences.

But, of course, science is nothing but a mass conspiracy to lie to future generations about how word problems are done. "Logical fallacies, *deep inhale on some marijuana* that's nothing but a bunch of silly LOGIC excuses and logic is a tool of The Man."

Screaming murder? No Bronze, you said NO to LEARNING. No diffeence from your father saying "I do not want you to go to school. Stay in your room and play World of Warcraft, School is no place to go, it sucks".....

Gabe, saying yes to selection biases would be saying yes to EVERY SUPERSTITION IN THE WORLD. Get off the acid, man! You're telling me with every breath that everything I've learned about statistical mathematics is a lie. That all scientists are liars. That the universe is some solipsist's subjectivist paradise where logic has no hold.

And Here you are just saying, openly, NO to Learning and just after claiming it to be "crappy", without any basis for this. Well, Go to your Father, tell him that you are not interestedi n learning and rather play games, see what huis reaction is, then we see if you get this bad behaviour from him, or he would as any normal person, show disgust and disdain for such an insulting view, We got to the Moon because we wanted ot Learn, you hold the view they have in Africa, "Why do anything"....

According to you, scientists got to the moon by dumb luck. After all, if the scientific method as I use it is a lie that doesn't work, how could they possibly have gotten the math right?

Bronze Dog said...

Continued...

Gabe: I will have my offer open, if you dare, as I realize lotso f it is because of fear, fear of being wrong, if you manup, You are welcome with open arms, as I always have to enter my mail I Assume you got my mail there, just send me a line.. Dont be ashamed, I wont make fun of you or poke you in the ribs for being afraid or such, I would rather be proud of you, for finally doing what you should, Go after knowledge and experience, Science you we call it.

I've done nothing but paint bullseyes on my worldview, and everything you've done is stall to avoid taking such simple shots. All you can do is go on these stoner arguments that have been used to support every superstition mankind has ever come up with. Lay off the acid, hippie!

I really hope you change your mind, and what a racist view you got of Peru, never been here, knowing nothing about it. Cheezes, how sad, and here I can tell you lots about it, and maybe you could tell me things to?

What, it's racist to make a judgment based on a nation's per capita income or similar statistics? Even though race has nothing to do with it? Am I going to have to endure yet another pinko hippie speech about how economics, sociology, and mathematics are inherently racist?

Bronze Dog said...

Since I feel like laying out all of Gabe's problems:

Gabe thinks making an assessment about a nation's situation based off of numbers gained through means designed to eliminate bias and strive for objectivity is racist, even if race is ignored by the process. In other words, he thinks math itself is racist.

Gabe thinks that putting myself into a situation that maximizes personal bias is the way to truth.

Gabe thinks that personal experience with the squishy human five senses is superior to genetic analysis for making assessments about someone's genetic background.

Gabe, who thinks life is like a videogame, believes that pointing out logical fallacies is cowardly and illogical. Because logic and demands for evidence are used by cowardly skeptics while people who bravely declare themselves the ultimate arbiters of epistemology in the face of fundamental logic are the true heroes.

Brave Sir Gabe, who has been stalling and shifting the burden of proof ever since he came here, thinks that running away is a brave act, and that purposely avoiding unproductive expenses on inherently flawed experiments that can't even prove anything in principle is cowardice.

Dark Jaguar said...

Oh Gabe, do you really think there's parents out there saying "Play video games instead of going to school"? Seriously? What a warped vision you have of how things work.

Also, could you actually provide evidence, and some sort of metric, for how things were "better back in my day" or whatever nonsense you're spouting. Also, better for who? That'd be nice to know.

Bronze Dog said...

Of course, school plays a part in my knowing exactly how Gabe's whines are logically flawed. For me to accept his selection biased travel offer would essentially be walking up to every math and science teacher I ever had and saying that they're all liars, and all the successes mankind has ever had using their methods is nothing but dumb luck and coincidence.

That is pretty well how Gabe seems to favor explaining things: It's only coincidence that first world nations have good infrastructures because there's no possible way infrastructure could enable or influence success. Or that the lack of infrastructure could cause failure.

MWchase said...

Better for whom? Yes... Even if things really were "better" back then for some segment of society, saying that replicating past conditions precisely will help make things "better" is some serious Powered By A Forsaken Child Syndrome, right there. Except that the Forsaken Child in question is, what, nearly half of the population of the United States? (Given modern demographics)

Gabe, are you seriously Vulcan enough to accept every other person being painted as untrustworthy, incompetent, or just plain twistedly evil, for the benefit of other one out of two?

(Crunching some numbers gives a broad estimate of 55% of the population of the United States being Upstanding Whites™. The Hispanic factor could be a bit wonky, but, on the other hand, I haven't accounted for Russians or Jews at all in my calculations, which should drive the number down even more if properly accounted for. Also note that I'm using old numbers for the proportion of atheists; current percentages are up. In addition, the figure I used for homosexuality was probably also low, which knocks a couple more percentage points off of 55.)

In summary, 55% is being downright generous.

MWchase said...

(Not certain, but I think factoring in Judaism knocks it down to 49%.)

That's not factoring in the existence of religions besides Christianity and Judaism, and Christian sects that you don't like. Every single aspect of which drives the numbers down further.

Bronze Dog said...

Something I'd like to know about Gabe on his Wikipedia rants: Where does the Automatic Wrongness of Wikipedia happen? Let's take an article about Peru, since Gabe brought that up:

Its 2008 per capita was US$8,594;[3] 36.2% of its total population is poor, including 12.6% that is extremely poor.[59]

Those numbers in brackets, of course, are footnotes that lead to citations. The one on per captia income, for example came from the International Money Fund.

So, Gabe, where does the inaccuracy start? If what the Wikipedia editor says agrees with what the IMF says, does that mean the IMF is therefore Automatically Wrong because it happens to agree with Wikipedia?

Or, like any rational human being, would you say that the Wikipedia's accuracy on per capita income of Peru is dependent on the accuracy of the International Money Fund because Wikipedia is citing the IMF as a source?

You know, this leaves me to wonder if Gabe's going to argue that because he's been doing missionary work or whatever for the 12.6% "extremely poor" category, that he'll argue that those above the poverty line are a figment of economists' imaginations, and a part of a mass conspiracy.

After all, his arguments in favor of deliberately including selection biases seem to suggest that the parts he chooses are more real than the whole, which includes things he hasn't personally seen.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Herr Feigheit whined:

"That was a very racist thing to say Bronze, and sad indeed."

More evidence that gabe lets his special issue Nazi tinted SS spectacles colour his perceptions till they are at a complete tangent to reality.

JS:)

Thats better. Needed some coffee.

Anonymous said...

Rick said...
"Gabe, I now have two questions for you. Somehow I expect that you will hide from both of them like a coward.
First, the basic question that you have been ducking: Who do you mean when you say white?"


Herr feigheit may be too cowardly to answer your question Rick. But it is as plain as day if you read his posts that he believes that white folks are a genetically seperate race (homo whiteicus?) and black folks aren't fully human.

Take a look at his words:
"..we used them, just as we use other ANIMALS, sheep, horses dogs etc."

"So you prefer our great nation to be run by a NEGRO APE rather then (sic) a WHITE war hero?"


"White man simple(sic)have the mental construct to understand and use their intellect and NIGGERS simple(sic)can not (excluding the minimal deviants).

"Africans are, by definition, more 'closely' related to our ancestors, our ancestors are, in our own human perception, inferior to us, and therefore wouldn't africans by nature be inferior to 'less' african people? If you understand what I mean here?"


Despite paying some lip service to memes our troll still believes that black people are subhuman. Therefore we should come to the conclusion that white means, genetically speaking, 100% modern human. While niggers, negriods, spics, jews, yids and gays means, genetically, an animal, subhuman, root race, throwback, person gabe has a problem with.

Our troll still subscribes to a comicbook version of evolution, despite trying to hide behind lies and vagueness.
We're not going to get a less simplistic explanation of whiteness from gabe other than
"Erh, Because We are White?",
because it isn't in his interest to give us ammo to demolish his flimsy assertions.

JS:)

Anonymous said...

Just to rub it in a bit more for our untermensch:


"You would imagine a cross between a WHITE and APE would yield a 50/50 result, but this is rarely the case. The intellect of the hybrid is most often inferior, or much much lower then the 50% we would assume because of the WHITE heritage, it seems that the NEGRO/APE GENES hold back the intellect quite a deal.

A Hybrid is of course much more intelligent then a PURE NEGRO but a farcry from HUMAN FUNCTIONALITIES..."


You get the picture, but if you need more of gabe's racist wankfantasy, here it is:

"Another reason is bestiality. The same people promoting the mullato hybrid are usually promoting homosexuality and pedophelia as well as bestiality. We could debate whatever we should consider negro human or not as they are much closer to ape then man (by Darwins own theory) but it is safe to say that a Hybrid is a violation of human nature and the bestiality commited by a white male or white female if with a man or woman because even more disgusting if it produces offspring."

So gabe's skewed idea of evolution is shown here. Blacks are subhuman animals and whites are modern humans. gabe clearly thinks it is genetic, despite all his evasions and lies.


JS:)

Bronze Dog said...

Thanks for returning us to that bit of Gabe's crazy stuff. It's pretty ironic when he accuses us of being WoW escapists when his understanding of evolution comes straight from sci-fi B-movies, comics, and videogames.

The Uncanny X-Men is not science, Gabe. At least we recognize all that stuff as escapist fantasy and thus don't take it seriously.

Oh, and on the "bestiality" comment: Apparently increasing genetic diversity (which doesn't "dilute" anything, despite what Hitler apparently learned from the comic books) is supposed to be a bad thing. Yeah, having a shallow gene pool that makes us more vulnerable to things like fibromyalgia (?) is so wonderful.

Ever heard of 'mongrel vitality', Gabe? Purebred dogs are much more likely to have health problems than mongrels because they've got founder effects making disadvantageous genes more common among their breed. The best cure for that is increasing genetic diversity.

Anonymous said...

Bronze Dog, imagine a Room with two
people. Lets call them X and Y.

X does not do anything, he does not
know anything and in the society they
call the Room, he has contributed
nothing.

Y on the other hand knows a lot, he
has educated himself and learnt things
about the world, he tries to make the
society they call Room a good one, he
built a Sofa and a TV, and just the
other day manage to finish a functional
fridge which he stores the food that
he has arranged, both by killing animals
and picking fruits.

X eat the food Y has supplied, X also
uses the Sofa Y has made and watch the
Television that Y made, X himself does
nothing.


Definition of words:

Superior;

1. Of high or superior quality or performance
2. Of or characteristic of high rank or importance
3. One of greater rank or station or quality

Inferior;

1. Of or characteristic of low rank or importance
2. Of low or inferior quality
3. One of lesser rank or station or quality



As there are many definitions of these two words,
using various dictionaries, I just want to make it
clear how I use the words, and how normal people
refer to the words, so there is no confusion here
as I know Bronze Dog seem to have his own unique way
of using words.

When speaking of Superior I refer mainly to
option (1), and regarding inferior option (2).

In above example, my question to you is: is
X Superior or Inferior to Y?


My response to this is, using logic and commonsense;
X is Inferior to Y. X does not do anything, he
does not contribute to society (The Room) and he is,
as we say, leeching like a parasite on Y. Y is not
only doing everything, but he also is making the Society
a better one, he contributes and makes their world a
better one, and with this logic he is Superior to X.



When you given me a response, which yo umay feel free
to explain as good as possible especially if it is
against logic and commonsense, I have another question for you, I just needed this one so I know you understand the usage and function of the words I am going to use.


Added: Well Bronze, if you can not see the benefits, I guess I straight out tell you; Yes Negros are less likely to get a disease, we on the other hand hae the benefit of a more functional brain making so that we can produce space ships and medicine, this is the drawbacks, you get that in Evolution, you should read Dawkins book, he explains that very well, weaker bones versus more speed and so on. We just paid the price of being more intelligent with weaker immune system, whiles negros lack the brain capacity with stronger immune system.

Dark Jaguar said...

My simple question is, do you think X and Y reflect the real world in any way?

In china, things such as fireworks were invented long before the west discovered it. In Japan, the sword was perfected in the form of the katana, far stronger and sharper than western versions.

In the modern day, there are numerous black people, asian people, and whatever other races you accuse of being "inferior" that contribute to society, that learn, that invent, and numerous white people who "do nothing".

Your analogy is flawed. If X and Y are intended to represent entire races, they fail at it because an entire race does NOT behave the same across the board.

Bronze Dog said...

I would agree with the "superior" and "inferior" as used in your analogy, though I point out that's overall picture, rather than dividing it into categories.

I'll indulge you long enough to tell me how this relates to race and DNA. What are the genetic differences between X and Y?

...we on the other hand hae the benefit of a more functional brain making so that we can produce space ships and medicine...

That's a rather extraordinary claim. Do you have the genetic data to back it up?

this is the drawbacks, you get that in Evolution, you should read Dawkins book, he explains that very well, weaker bones versus more speed and so on. We just paid the price of being more intelligent with weaker immune system, whiles negros lack the brain capacity with stronger immune system.

1. How does improving the immune system weaken neurological development?

2. What genetic evidence can you cite for this?

3. There is a genetic predisposition for Fibromyalgia. I can't seem to find anything about it that relates to the immune system. The germ theory of disease is a wonderful idea, but it's not the whole picture: Some diseases are caused by non-germ factors that the immune system can't prevent.

4. Just because videogames often have balancing mechanisms (I.E. Orcs being good fighters but poor wizards... Though I wouldn't know if that's true in WoW, since I've never played.) does not mean that in real life there are balancing mechanisms.

About the only compromises I know of made for human neural development are reduction of sensory processing for everything except vision and raw reflexes in order to make room for cognition.

Bronze Dog said...

DJ: In Japan, the sword was perfected in the form of the katana, far stronger and sharper than western versions.

Now, I think katanas are cool and all, but it's not quite like that: Katanas tended to be inferior because Japan didn't have a souce of good quality steel. But that did encourage them to develop some really good sword-making abilities to compensate for the substandard ingredients. Apply those techniques to today's high quality steels and you do get a superior sword in many respects than if you applied medieval European techniques.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bronze Dog said...

In that scenario, yes, Y is superior to X. Obviously.

Knowing what I know about the nature of science, technology, culture, infrastructure, government, and education, I would be much more prone to placing the blame on at least one of those factors, if not a combination of all of them.

Race doesn't enter my mind as a causal agent because I know of no reasonable way it could cause any of X's problems or any of Y's successes. No one has presented such a mechanism.

Anonymous said...

I would agree with the "superior" and "inferior" as used in your analogy, though I point out that's overall picture, rather than dividing it into categories.

I'll indulge you long enough to tell me how this relates to race and DNA. What are the genetic differences between X and Y?


You made a logical conclusion which any reasonable person would do. So lets go from there. I have made no other claim, nothing about genetics, nada, so please lets go from here, a clean slate if you may, I think that is fair.


Now lets zoom out and take in a bigger picture.

Now we have an entire population, represented by Y. This is mainly a white populace. They produced a wondeful society. The technology is amazing and food is abundant.

We also have another population, represented by X. This is mainly a black populace. They produce nothing other then a small quantity of food which barely last. Most live in small villages and they survive on fishing and killing wild boars and scavenge.

Previous definition still in use, do you consider X superior to Y, or is X inferior to Y (Y being Superior in this selection)? Remember, it is pretty much identical to previous example.

This will lead somewhere, so I would respect your response, no previous claims made here, just this simple example and going, so please do not make anything that I will say or do, it will be worth it.


Edited: Removed and pasted back to correct spelling to avoid confusion.

Anonymous said...

In that scenario, yes, Y is superior to X. Obviously.

This is excellent, fine, you agree with me here then.

Knowing what I know about the nature of science, technology, culture, infrastructure, government, and education, I would be much more prone to placing the blame on at least one of those factors, if not a combination of all of them.

Yes, And I agree as well, but couldn't there be something else (added) as well? That the world looks like it does, that Whites, always whites, do this, is it a mere coincidence?

Sure, it could be, that we happen to be the 'lucky' race, but why? Why us? And isn't it limitating to completely kill that side of the story? Ignore it if you may?

Race doesn't enter my mind as a causal agent because I know of no reasonable way it could cause any of X's problems or any of Y's successes. No one has presented such a mechanism.

Yes, but is it not such a strange coincidence? The further away you get from Africa, Metaphorically, (the home of our Evolutionary past) the more we create, the better societies we do?

America, Canada, Europe, and see what WE did to Asia?

We gave the Japanese wonderful technology, we tought them everything they know, and you do not want to give some credit to the Whites who did this?


Lets pretend it is nothing els,e just pure coincidence making the White race more intelligent, why us? Why is our memes so superior? How did they evolve amongst the White race and not others? Why did we need to Introduce them to others before they could reach our level of success?

These are questions you should aks yourself Bronze.

Bronze Dog said...

Yes, And I agree as well, but couldn't there be something else (added) as well? That the world looks like it does, that Whites, always whites, do this, is it a mere coincidence?

Sure, it could be, that we happen to be the 'lucky' race, but why? Why us? And isn't it limitating to completely kill that side of the story? Ignore it if you may?


And here's where you go coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.

1. Logical fallacy: Non-sequitur, subtype: Argument from ignorance. You can't put an "I don't know" into an evidence locker. Just because I don't know which of those factors caused the inequality does not mean that you can make a positive conclusion from a lack of an explanation.

2. Do you think it's "limiting" to kill "magic" or "psychic powers" as an explanation?

Yes, but is it not such a strange coincidence? The further away you get from Africa, Metaphorically, (the home of our Evolutionary past) the more we create, the better societies we do?

Logical fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc, subtype: Correlation implies causation fallacy.

It's hardly strange. Geological and climatological forces happened to distribute key resources in places that would encourage the development of lighter skin.

America, Canada, Europe, and see what WE did to Asia?

We gave the Japanese wonderful technology, we tought them everything they know, and you do not want to give some credit to the Whites who did this?


Logical fallacy: Straw man.

Yay. We taught them some good stuff and helped them build up their infrastructure, government, and culture so that they could join us as economic superpowers.

Logical fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, subtype correlation implies causation fallacy.

Being white is only a coincidence of climatology and geology.

Lets pretend it is nothing els,e just pure coincidence making the White race more intelligent, why us? Why is our memes so superior? How did they evolve amongst the White race and not others? Why did we need to Introduce them to others before they could reach our level of success?

Logical fallacies: Shifting the burden of proof, Argument from ignorance.

Just because I might not know precisely how those memes came about does not constitute evidence for a genetic hypothesis. You cannot put an "I don't know" into an evidence locker for a positive hypothesis.

These are questions you should aks yourself Bronze.

Asked and answered, even though they are not necessary or even on topic.

You cannot form a conclusion on these steps you are now using as your argument:

1. Just some guy on the internet called Bronze Dog does not know.
2. Therefore, by process of elimination, because we know all the possibilities, race explains it.

MWchase said...

Responding to a few posts back: Maybe melanoma makes people smarter and rickets makes them stupider?

In all seriousness, let's go to a less charged analogy: population A is mostly homosexual, and population B is mostly heterosexual. To make things less complicated, we'll just talk about the women. Now, comparing the length of the ring and index finger of the right hand in population A, they're nearly the same. The same comparison in population B reveals, in general, much longer hands.

Assume that populations A and B are comingled, to reduce any possible confounding factors. This, incidentally, is why Bronze hasn't cared about the comparisons between third-world countries and the US. There are so many differences between them that it's nearly impossible to control for all of them, and certainly impossible without intense effort.

That said, back to populations A and B. Given the differences I listed, do you think there is any kind of direct causal link between finger length and lesbianism? (The difference I gave is real. Developmental biologists have themselves some crazy ideas to try out.)

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe, you have yet to identify who you mean when you say white. So, just who do you mean when you say white?


Now: If you want an alternative theory to race in explaining why some cultures are ahead of others, here is one.

Developmental feedback, the more advanced a culture is, the faster it advances. This fits with having larger groups stay in the lead for long periods of time. It also explains how the tendency has been for cases where one leading culture is supplanted by a new leader to have the new leader tending to be a neighbour, (Egypt falls to Assyria which falls to the Greeks which falls to Rome which falls to successor states which fall to the Franks and Turks which fall...).

Dark Jaguar said...

So you admit they came up with an amazing innovation that other countries did not, and yet you STILL say they are inferior mentally? You undermine your own argument.

And here's yet another flaw in your analogy. Others are already pointing it out, but I'll make it much clearer.

When you "expand" it to much larger "groups", which you haven't yet clearly defined, you also put each group in a different room entirely, each "room" having different resources and challenges in it.

It is as though you would look at X in one room with a full library, easy access to food, a vast junkyard of materials to make tools out of, and in the second room, Y is stuck with having very little food that must be daily hunted, no library, almost no resources to make anything with, and so on.

Here's a better idea, take your two populations and put them in the SAME room, just like your hypothetical SINGLE X and SINGLE Y in ONE room. Try any "melting pot" country and create your population from a mix of that. Even it out to balance the numbers if you so wish. Now then, what do you expect will happen?

Then, what actually DOES happen? There are numerous criminals, both black and white, around the US. There are numerous very succesful people, both black and white, around the US. There is a statistically significant difference between them, but as there ARE successful and intelligent scientists that are black, it's hard to credit it to a lack of intelligence. You need to explain the cases of intelligent black people for that to work. Rather, there's another fully capable explanation that need not invoke new genetics, and that's the lack of a good start for black families. Escaping from slavery into a life that still has strong prejudice can sure reduce one's chances for success, and ghettos are pretty much a promise. Some still manage to overcome in spite of that, proving their worth. This explanation works just fine.

Now then, your own analogy doesn't work with your own "extension", and when we convert it into a valid version, it doesn't really work for your argument, does it?

Anonymous said...

Herr Feigheit lied:

"I have made no other claim, nothing about genetics, nada.."

But you have. Or does being a "subhuman animal" have nothing to do with genetics?

"..so please lets go from here, a clean slate if you may, I think that is fair."


Why should you get a special exemption that enables you to get away with making claims and then having them ignored? You may think it is fair because it stops your flimsy assertions from being criticised, but if you had any real evidence it wouldn't need such special treatment.


JS:)

Bronze Dog said...

I'm humoring him since it'll make a good record of where the disagreement is and show that it's not where he liked to lie about where it was.

Anonymous said...

At the end of this, we'll have a long example that will show pretty much everyone who isn't a racist exactly what they sound like in their own poorly reasoned arguments.

At the end of Gabe, he will have influenced no one. The world will go on towards progress. Black and white people will continue to cooperate in spite of his insane drivel, and humanity in general will continue on. His outdated ideas will fade into nothing, and he will die in obscurity.

Anonymous said...

Anonny posted:

"His outdated ideas will fade into nothing, and he will die in obscurity."


DAMMIT! I was kinda hoping that our resident racist troll would publically get raped by an AIDS infected president Obama live on Fox news. Then gabe would slowly die in agony, after selling his life story to the Huffington Post.


JS;)

Anonymous said...

Here's a better idea, take your two populations and put them in the SAME room, just like your hypothetical SINGLE X and SINGLE Y in ONE room. Try any "melting pot" country and create your population from a mix of that. Even it out to balance the numbers if you so wish. Now then, what do you expect will happen?

Erh, we have? America is just that. A nation where white man has built amazing technologies, good schools and so on.

Spics and Negros hold the percentage of crime (in comparison to numbers). Dude you know how to shoot yourself in the foot.

You want to count White creation versus Negro? Something like 99x1k versus... 1? Tiger Woods? Does he count? Hhahaha. You know how to lose an argument, but this I pointedo ut months ago, AND YOU REFUSED TO ACCEPT IT, now Bronze DID accept it when I put it in a analogy, maybe he will retract it? Wouldn't surprise me.

djfav said...

Sure, Gabe. You win. Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night.

Demented fuckwit.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: You want to count White creation versus Negro? Something like 99x1k versus... 1? Tiger Woods? Does he count? Hhahaha. You know how to lose an argument, but this I pointedo ut months ago, AND YOU REFUSED TO ACCEPT IT, now Bronze DID accept it when I put it in a analogy, maybe he will retract it? Wouldn't surprise me.

1. Nitpick: Tiger Woods is pretty much a little bit of everything, last time I checked. As "race" goes, Tiger Woods is probably one of the biggest mongrels. And remember, in evolution, being a mongrel is usually a good thing, because it's the opposite of being inbred.

2. One of the key points I want to stress is that without a causal mechanism to link "race" to creative output, labeling creations as "black" or "white" is only an after-the-fact semantics or coincidence game. You could just as easily label things by the hair color of the innovators.

So far my opinion it's just an accident of history and geography that environments that fostered the early progress of civilizations also happened to have an environmental factor that drove natural selection for light skin. In other words, it is a trivial, explainable coincidence, and coincidences do happen all the time in real life, even if they don't happen in popular fiction.

From that point on, it was just positive feedback (pretty much the opposite of a vicious circle) that allowed the prosperous to become even more prosperous.

Dark Jaguar said...

You kinda ignored the rest of my post where I addressed that didn't you Gabe?

Dark Jaguar said...

I thought I'd address it further. America is a BETTER room, but as I said, there is still a strong asymmetry to overcome, and that's the large difference in starting points. Let's see how well you could prosper if you were enslaved and were actively prevented from getting an education, and though eventually freed, had no resources and an entire society of upper class that rejected you on your face due to your skin color.

Further more, what the hell does Tiger Woods have to do with anything? Do you honestly think that he is the LONE example of a black person succeeding? Really? Where do you get your statistics? There are plenty of successful black people today. Further, there are plenty of white criminals. The ratio isn't even between them even after accounting for population differences, but as I said, there is a perfectly good explanation for that, different starting points.

Let me ask you this. Are the irish or the italians white or not? You've never given a clear definition so I don't know. Well, when they first immigrated here, THEY made up a large percentage of criminal activity as well, and many of them were poor. It didn't help that during both immigration "waves", society in general hated them and didn't even want to hire them. However, things have slowly improved for them. They do have one big advantage, they can overcome discrimination by lying pretty effectively. Indeed there are numerous families that changed their last names from things like O'Brian to simply Brian to distance themselves from their roots. Black people are a little harder pressed to pull that off.

It's really rather pathetic that you can't even address the succesful people of the races you can't stand. No, not Tiger Woods, I mean Neil DeGrasse and all the other successful black scientists and engineers. How does your theory of race explain their success at all? Don't bother saying they just "stole" their success from white people. That really doesn't make any sense.

Oh and BD brings up a point I've been saying. There is no reason at all we should be needing to bring up "white" inventions or "black" inventions. The data is too noisy in just looking at society at large, for reasons I just explained. Heck, why did you pick on only skin color as your genetic trait of choice? Why wasn't it hair color?

Dweller in Darkness said...

And if the superior race is the one that gets to call firsties and be superior, wouldn't that make Africa, the birthplace of agriculture, the wheel, control of fire and animal domestication, the most superior civilization of all?

By the way, Gabe, forgot to thank you. I've had a copy of The Cybernetic of Kenyan Running lying around that I hadn't bothered reading under you showed up. Just finishing it up now, but it has something interesting things to say about your theory. Not kind ones, but interesting.

Bronze Dog said...

To put it another way: "Whites" got lucky because of geographical (external) influences early on. The reason your average African isn't doing well is because they've been subject to external handicaps that got worse whenever an outside civilization came along and set them back, whether by conquest, colonialism, or superstitious missionaries who essentially lived to reinforce the notion that superstition brings success.

The real world doesn't have game balance to give everyone a fighting chance. Where scientific progress is involved, the best way to advance faster is to be in the lead. Whichever civilization is in the lead is more likely to stay in the lead: Scientific progress begets more scientific progress. Why do you think our technological development got even faster when the scientific method got more codified and whenever communications and trade increased?

Anonymous said...

Oh man, this is gold. I just been reading a test page from a School close by. In this test they asked alot of questions about America (thats why I read it), now one of the questions where; Why was it possible for the 13 American Colonies to become autonomic (when they rebelled against England)?

Holy mother of all that is holy, You will love this, THIS is the answers ladies and gentleman:esta autonomia fue posible porque los colonos eran gente culta, (no como ocurrio con las colonias en america)...

Or translated, This autonomy was possible because settlers were educated people, not as
occurred with colonies in (south) america
..

You got to love them. Well, I know I know, its to easy, I already smacked yo down so many times, so why do it again? Well, I wont, I read the ENTIRE paper and there was ALOT of weird stuff, alot of lies and alot of confused things, the paper was taken by 15 yearold students... Cheapshot, I know, but I thought you would enoy it :P

Bronze Dog said...

So... I traced down exactly where you went to using poor logic (again) and you're the one allegedly issuing a smack down, especially considering that the previous times I did that, you went all hippie PoMo "logic is illogical" rant.

If you'd like to find exactly where that is, Ctrl+F or whatever your browser uses and search for "Cocoa Puffs"

What exactly does a children's test answer in some textbook prove? What does that have to do with our conversation?

Smells like more subject changing.

Dark Jaguar said...

So let me say this. If we were to point out that being educated enough to survive is indeed a method of surviving in a new (to them) land, would you claim that's evidence of racial superiority? If we were to instead point out it took a lot more than that to accomplish what they did, would you take that as evidence of the test maker's racial inferiority? (Even lacking your knowledge of who actually wrote it.)

What I'm saying is, do you understand that taking propositions, no matter whether true or false, as BOTH proving your point, then it shows a lack of reasoning skills.

Also, you claim you have somehow put some "smack down" on us. Well, that's one heck of a feat when you fail to address or even acknowledge our criticisms. Try actually debating.

Oh, and the word racist doesn't mean what you think it means.

Anonymous said...

Dark Jaguar wrote:

"What I'm saying is, do you understand that taking propositions, no matter whether true or false, as BOTH proving your point, then it shows a lack of reasoning skills."


Poor or decreased judgment
Problems with abstract thinking

And you thought I was joking, didn't you?

JS;)

Anonymous said...

Bronze Dog said...

"If you'd like to find exactly where that is, Ctrl+F or whatever your browser uses and search for "Cocoa Puffs""


Untermunter gabe is "Coocoo for the Master Race!"

JS:)

Anonymous said...

Captain Dementia chuntered:

"Africans are, by definition, more 'closely' related to our ancestors, our ancestors are, in our own human perception, INFERIOR to us, and therefore wouldn't africans by nature be INFERIOR to 'less' african people? If you understand what I mean here?"


Yes we do.
Here is a quote from from one of your first posts on this blog:


"Also, when speaking of INFERIOR or SUPERIOR I refer to human perception of this and our own BIASED view, as Human Beings, not universally as there is no such thing."

So you freely admit that you are biased. That your perception is faulty.
Run along now gabe, and get that foot seen to. Gunshot wounds can fester if left unattended.

JS;)

Anonymous said...

No no Bronze, this was a TEST in a NORMAL rather "okay" school. I just wanted your opinion about it...

To put it simpley for you, the test stated that Americans where more intelligent then Peruvians/South Americans...

How do you relate to that? I was thinking about going to the teacher responsible for it, and as him/her myself, Whats YOUR opinion? I am really interested?

A better transltion, then "edicated", as I ASKED THE LOCALS, where INTELLIGENT, I do not know if that is a cultural translation or more correct translation, that is how most of them translated it, not "clutlural", but rather "intelligent", ie, "We (americans) where more intelligent"... Opinion Bronze? What do you think?

Bronze Dog said...

Educated and intelligent are two different things.

A person can be intelligent but uneducated, and a person can be educated and stupid.

Oh, and just so you know, some forms of stupid require poor use of intelligence or education.

Anonymous said...

Educated and intelligent are two different things.

Erh. Yeah¿ I know?

Tell that to the Locals? THEY gave me TWO, INTELLIGENT and CULTURAL... And they are NATIVE SPEAKERS OF SPANISH.. Are you Questioning THERE translation? Wow...

I get CULTURAL using a DICTIONARY, THEY tell me INTELLIGENT may be a more suitable TRanslation.. You "they", as in Native Speakers of Spanish....

Anyway, Whats your OPINION about it? Considering the vast majority of Whites coming over to america where poor and uneducated... Just curkious Here Bronze.. They say the opposite... Bronze... Whats your opinion?

Bronze Dog said...

And I digress from that bit of editorial. In my blogging history, I've had to deal with a lot of intelligent, educated people making bone-headed logical fallacies due to some ideological blindspot.

But back to the point: "Educated" and "Intelligent" are two very different things that can exist independently of each other.

Anyway, what does a textbook prove?

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: Anyway, Whats your OPINION about it? Considering the vast majority of Whites coming over to america where poor and uneducated... Just curkious Here Bronze.. They say the opposite... Bronze... Whats your opinion?

Yeah, we had a lot of poor and unskilled workers. We also had some good, educated and/or intelligent leaders who helped shape up the following generations by founding schools, forming a representative government, establishing Enlightenment principles as rights (free speech, freedom of/from religion, rule of law) and many other good things.

Because of all that good infrastructural groundwork set by them, we can now live in a country where pretty much anyone can earn a degree because everyone has access to basic education instead of being forced to work just to survive.

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe: Either answer the question or admit that you are either too scared or too stupid to do so:

Who do you mean when you say white?

Anonymous said...

"Anyway, Whats your OPINION about it? Considering the vast majority of Whites coming over to america where poor and uneducated... Just curkious Here Bronze.. They say the opposite... Bronze... Whats your opinion?"

Not Bronze, but still going to weigh in - I'd be of the opinion that your friends are wrong. Dead wrong. The Puritan Fathers placed a high premium on literacy and education. Chiefly so people could read the Bible, but education was a cornerstone of Puritan life. Hell, Harvard was founded in 1636, commonly considered one of the first true universities in history.

And my Guatemalan friends always assured me that we were "culta," more refined and educated, than the common people of Guatemala, a notion I have no difficulty agreeing with. I sense your leading questions asked of people who don't know English very well might've led you to believing it somehow relates to native intelligence, particularly when the language has a buttload of words that'd work better.

djfav said...

Sounds to me like colonialist propaganda is built into the educational system. What's your point, Gabe?

djfav said...

"I already smacked yo down so many times..."

Gabe, you really are fucking delusional.

Bronze Dog said...

Part of me wonders if this is an attempt at an argument from authority, as if he expects us to believe school textbooks are Automatically Right.

If that's what you're trying to say, you should know, Gabe, djfav and I are Texans. We try to stay familiar with a lot of crap that goes on with school textbooks, because the textbooks that are accepted in Texas are likely to wind up being sold across a large part of the nation for economic reasons, rather than academic ones. It doesn't help that textbook contents are often determined by political wheeling and bureaucratic apathy (mostly the latter) than they are by science or history.

Dweller in Darkness said...

I don't know that it's even worth pursuing. His "friends" are interpreting "culta" in a way that I've never heard in thirteen years of communication with a similar culture. The whole argument's specious.

Anonymous said...

And my Guatemalan friends always assured me that we were "culta," more refined and educated, than the common people of Guatemala, a notion I have no difficulty agreeing with.

Well, if Bronze would "accept" your view, you made my point.


Oh, And Dweller, as no one here other then me has been anywhere nor seen anything, your "opinion" is rather pointless as most likely you are lying, you decided that now you going to make up you travelled, just like Gabe, as you realize that he knows just a tiny bit more then you.


Anyway, I just wanted to point it out, not making anything here, I ran into it yesterday, thought it was FUNNY as you always claim the opposite, and funny it was. Haha.


So Bronze, where were we? Im going to Ecuador in about 4 hours but bne back tomorrow night, I hope.

Bronze Dog said...

I was waiting for a response to the logical fallacies I pointed out: Correlation and causation, argument from ignorance (using the negative "I don't know" as evidence for a positive conclusion), and shifting the burden of proof to lead to said argument from ignorance.

And of course, I'm still waiting for a causal mechanism: How does race do anything? Without that, it's like saying "A Wizard Did It" and not telling me how the wizard did it.

Dweller in Darkness said...

I've mentioned my experience in Guatemale before. If it's a matter of checking bona, fides, the organization is ABWE (www.abwe.org) and the specific facility I've worked with is SETECA (http://seteca.edu/).

And how does it change things to admit that, yes, the Puritans had considerably more education than the people who colonized South America? That's pretty much what history teaches, without dispute here or elsewhere. Education, not intelligence.

djfav said...

"...most likely you are lying..."

It's more likely that you're full of shit.

Gabe, all you're doing is rationalizing your predjudices. It's getting old.

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe: Where you are is in hiding from the very basic question of "who do you mean when you say white?"

Anonymous said...

Sad Nazi wannabe whined:

"..as no one here other then (sic) me has been anywhere nor seen anything, your "opinion" is rather pointless as most likely you are lying..."


Why oh why oh why are you still even communicating with such an egocentric pathological liar, Bronze?


JS;)

Bronze Dog said...

Meh, he's moving and morphing about enough in entertaining ways to keep my attention.

Anonymous said...

Dweller, the Puritans where a small section of people, you would accept them as a "whole" of UYnited states of America (or would become)? That is indeed surprising.... Or?

Sorta like accepting that Americans believe that the world is 6000 years old because a extreme minority of whackaloons in the U.S believes this.... Oh Well.

OK, need to run, I try checking your posts by phone, try make it worthwhile because it is REALLY expensive using GPRS here let me tell you. Im going to sit on a bus for 10 hours now so give me something good to read, only got my phone :(

This wonderful technology, thanx for the White man, eh? No problem ignoring the fact that the technology you are using is made by the white man. Because of us... Yeah, lets ignore that and call us equal to niggers...

Bronze Dog said...

Another question that Gabe's avoided answering for a while: So, how does this technology become "white"? Without a good definition of what race even is (if it's not genetic), how does the "whiteness" of the inventor get involved?

So far, all I'm seeing is essentially labeling it after the fact: There's no causal connection, therefore it's just a semantics game.

MWchase said...

Here's another good question...

Gabe, do you think there are no differences between white people, in terms of "superior"?

Why is it strange that the white people that we credit with America's progress differ from the aggregate profile of white American settlers?

Tom Foss said...

As usual, Gabe ignores the fact that there are an awful lot of Japanese and Korean names on the patents that make his "checking the Internet from his cell phone" possible. And since he hasn't defined "white," I'm not sure what he'd think of all the Jews whose theories and inventions make that process a reality.

Jim Roberts said...

They really weren't an especially small group, and their influence certainly has not been. Anyone who came in through New England came into a country that had a ready-made educational infrastructure.

There's that word again . . .

Chakat Firepaw said...

Actually, the Puritans weren't a major influence on early American development. They were just a single settlement out of many and the large colonies did not look to them in any way.

The 'Puritan origins' thing is all later mythologizing, similar to the Nazi belief that they were the descendants of Atlantis, (at least the Puritans actually existed).

Anonymous said...

Bronze Dog said...
"Another question that Gabe's avoided answering for a while: So, how does this technology become "white"? Without a good definition of what race even is (if it's not genetic), how does the "whiteness" of the inventor get involved?"

It appears to be too much just for gabe to answer one pertinent question, without evasion, lies and whining. Why do you think he'll answer a question that will lead to his wankfantasy collapsing like a deck of cards?

Tom Foss said...
"As usual, Gabe ignores the fact that there are an awful lot of Japanese and Korean names on the patents that make his "checking the Internet from his cell phone" possible. And since he hasn't defined "white," I'm not sure what he'd think of all the Jews whose theories and inventions make that process a reality."

Our untermensch has already written about how he is biased in his perceptions. He must blinker himself to the contributions of "non whites" because his wankfantasy falls apart, if he considers reality in any detail. This is why he wants "non whites" to have stolen ALL their technology from the gods, er sorry white men.

That he blatantly lies about what he has said and done (he didn't copy and paste a dewey eyed racist tract from the Stormfront site, and he never said anything about genetics,except for ranting about hybrids...)and imagines that he is an educated intellectual. Which shows that he is living in a mental projection. A holodeck of his warped mind.
It seems so powerful a mental construct that I doubt that Gabe will ever breach the confines of his little mind bubble to face the contradictions in his wankfantasy. Perhaps he really is suffering from dementia?


JS:)

DwellerinDarkness said...

Actually, the Puritans weren't a major influence on early American development. They were just a single settlement out of many and the large colonies did not look to them in any way.

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as a lover of Miles Standish or anything - very early on in what would eventually be America, the settlers were already doing what Americans do best: taking bits of everything around them and weaving them together into a society, ignoring the social history of the bits.

Part of that was the adoption of a style of education that was very similar to the Puritanical model, only with less religious creepiness, like Harvard College. I don't think you can convincingly argue that the first and cornerstone of the American university system had little influence over early America.

djfav said...

Have a safe trip, Gabe. And by that I mean die in a fire.

Chakat Firepaw said...

Part of that was the adoption of a style of education that was very similar to the Puritanical model, only with less religious creepiness, like Harvard College.

Well, that's more adopting a model that predates the very existence of the 16-17th century Puritans. The Puritans did use it, but so did much of England.

Dweller in Darkness said...

Very true.

I don't want to overstate the Puritan's influence on the colonies - there were larger forces at work, certainly - but their efforts form a line straight to Harvard, so as an example to repudiate the notion that early colonists were uneducated hicks, they're very useful.

Anonymous said...

My bus got canceled due to strike it seems, new one in a couple of hours..

Your hatred strikes me rather... Hard. Especially since you constantly repeat that I am a hater.. And yet HELP people,. regardless of race, and you do nothing.

It is amazing, does ths fantasy world assist you in your daily lifes? Hate people, call someone who loves his race a hater and then ignore the facvt that YOU hate, by definition, through screaming hate? And the fact you ignore the LOVE I give, helping people, whatever they are a nigger or White?

Yeah, selectivity Is a good way to live life I guess...

I´ll be back soon enough, just need to fix this stuff with the visas and all.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe:

Your hatred strikes me rather... Hard. Especially since you constantly repeat that I am a hater.. And yet HELP people,. regardless of race, and you do nothing.

You do realize we have our own lives. Besides, I blog against superstition, I've donated to good causes, and other stuff.

Oh, and nice subject change. This isn't about us, this is about science. I rarely talk about the good I do on this blog because it's off-topic.

It is amazing, does ths fantasy world assist you in your daily lifes? Hate people, call someone who loves his race a hater and then ignore the facvt that YOU hate, by definition, through screaming hate? And the fact you ignore the LOVE I give, helping people, whatever they are a nigger or White?

What fantasy world? The "fantasy" of scientific argument? The "fantasy" that Post-Modernism can't be applied to real life?

Oh, and "nigger" is a hateful, hurtful term. Nice display of hypocrisy.

Yeah, selectivity Is a good way to live life I guess...

Oh, yes, how evil of us to point out the logical fallacies involved in selection biases.

I´ll be back soon enough, just need to fix this stuff with the visas and all.

If you've got limited time, don't waste it with deliberately meaningless posts like this comment. You've been avoiding answering basic questions.

Anonymous said...

Bronze's Nazi jester wrote:

"Yeah, selectivity Is a good way to live life I guess..."


Thats your motto isn't it untermensch. Since you are highly selective about what you let pass through your Nazi tinted perceptive filters.

Bronze Dog wrote:

"If you've got limited time, don't waste it with deliberately meaningless posts like this comment. You've been avoiding answering basic questions."


Yeah Gabe, answer the questions put to you weeks ago. You still haven't defined the term "white" in detail. Are you man enough to grace us with your definition, or will you run away as per usual?
Show us that you aren't suffering from dementia.

djfav said...

What are you doing here, Gabe? I thought I told you to die in a fire.

Anonymous said...

djfav said...
"What are you doing here, Gabe? I thought I told you to die in a fire."


Our troll wouldn't get burned in a fire. He's too wet from dewey eyed fantasizing. Besides a quick death is too good for him.
We want the death of a thousand humiliations upon our untermensch.
And in this effort Gabe is already helping us.

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe, what we hate is your constant cowardly avoidance of questions.

So answer the question:

Who do you mean when you say white?

Anonymous said...

That was amazingly easy, very nice solution to my visa. Can stay down here for a long time without bothering about visa anymore, yay me!..

A visa is a sort of paper in your passport (stamp in this case) that shows that I am authorized to be here... Erh, I realize you probably do not know what a passport is.. Never mind, I got "magic" and now everything is fine....

But back to the point: "Educated" and "Intelligent" are two very different things that can exist independently of each other.

I just got the feeling you contradicted yourself, I dont know, have you not said that Intelligence and Education is relevant, and then also said that Intelligence and Education is not linked? Maybe it was someone else who said that and I read it as yours, you would never contradict yourself, I mean, we got limits and you already filled your quota...

So can you be intelligent without a education/knowledge, or is it related to eachother, as you stated earlier? I wont hold the contradiction against you, its cool, im tired to, sitting here next to a bunch of spics in the middle of nowhere..

djfav said...

I just got the feeling you contradicted yourself, I dont know...Maybe it was someone else who said that and I read it as yours..."

You seem confused, Gabe. If you can't keep up, maybe you should consider giving up.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: I just got the feeling you contradicted yourself, I dont know, have you not said that Intelligence and Education is relevant, and then also said that Intelligence and Education is not linked? Maybe it was someone else who said that and I read it as yours, you would never contradict yourself, I mean, we got limits and you already filled your quota...

Let's spell it out:

1. The most intelligent person does not automatically win an argument.

2. The most educated person does not automatically win an argument.

3. Intelligence is usually "built in" processing ability as I'm talking about it.

4. Education is learned knowledge: It's "software."

5. Intelligence tends to make it easier to gain and benefit from an education. It's perfectly possible for a person to be intelligent without an education. Someone who is "street smart" and "book dumb" and is able to think on his feet is an example of someone who is intelligent but not educated. An opposite example can be someone who can solve complex problems by careful research, rather than intelligent intuition: Educated without being super-intelligent.

So can you be intelligent without a education/knowledge, or is it related to eachother, as you stated earlier?

It's perfectly possible to be intelligent without being educated. Intelligence does tend to make it easier to benefit from education.

I wont hold the contradiction against you, its cool, im tired to, sitting here next to a bunch of spics in the middle of nowhere..

There is no contradiction. They are two different properties. They can be had independently, though they do work well with one another.

Anonymous said...

Okay, fine, its just that I have this nagging feeling that you claimed that Intelligence and Education/Knowledge is related.

As I am sitting in a Internet Cafe using a none-standard keybard (you do not want to know), im just going to ask you, Did you not say that Intelligence and Knowledge/Education is One, I think you stated this during your claim that Americans/Whites where more intelligent/Creative/Superior then Negros/Spics because of our history and education giving us an "edge"?...

Didn't you?

Bronze Dog said...

It's the infrastructure that supports educational institutions and access to information that given us the edge.

Computer analogy time: I see no significant difference in our human "hardware": I see no reason to believe any group has an overall higher average for intelligence.

What gives America and other first world nations the edge is that we have Internet access to many download locations, and trays full of installable software. Third world nations have much more limited access to those sorts of resources.

A computer without access to good software can't operate at its full potential. "Race" is a hardware issue, and irrelevant to all this discussion about infrastructure.

So far, about all I've been able to piece together about your view about race after you distanced yourself from talking about evolution and genetics is that you're treating it like a brand name, rather than something measurable like hardware or software. The "Dell-ness" of a computer isn't going to shove electrons through the transistors any faster.

Anonymous said...

Herr Feigheit whined:

"I just got the feeling you contradicted yourself.."

Says the wizened wannabe Nazi that makes a habit of contradicting himself all the bloomin' time.

"I dont know..."


You know Gabe, that is the most honest thing a person can say.
Why don't you admit that you don't know what "white" means in your messed up excuse for a weltanschauung? Instead of embarassing yourself by dancing around like a tipsy grandmother at a wedding reception.

JS;)

djfav said...

Okay, fine, its just that I have this nagging feeling that you can't support your accusations with textual evidence, Gabe.

See what I did there?

Bronze Dog said...

I feel like reiterating my hypothesis about Gabe's post-genetic definition of "white": It's an intangible, unmeasurable property, like a computer's brand name.

That's why it tends to sound like he's blaming the hardware for a user's inability to get good deals on software.

---

Completely off-topic: Speaking of computers, I need to find something I can do with my now-old but still underused desktop. Wonder how resistant it'd be towards FPS drops in Dwarf Fortress. I'm still a newbie, but I ended up thinking about a big building project I'd like to do: Glassmaking fortress in a piece of desert with a lava pipe and river: Make gigantic hourglass-shaped structures out of obsidian, along with a lava river and an intersecting aqueduct. For further insanity, make a glass ceiling over the whole map, using the obsidian hourglasses as the supports.

MWchase said...

I should point out, before it comes up, that intelligence-as-an-inherent-quality is distinct from any kind of IQ test. Nobody's managed to make culture-neutral IQ tests. (Consider how difficult it is to get objective benchmarks for systems that have been designed from the ground up.)

"Intelligence" is basically a shorthand for a variety of different cognitive abilities that vary independently, with a higher variation within racial boundaries than between, unless the definition of "race" gets tortured to align it with intelligence trends.

Keeping in mind that the sophistication of brains is nonlinear (there's anecdotal evidence that suggests that we've been getting diminishing returns on brain size for some utterly ridiculous amount of time), and the different types of sophistication have nothing to do with each other (and some abilities can be trained), talking about proportionalities of intelligence (as Gabe was earlier) is the mark of severe illiteracy in the relevant fields. Sadly, this is by no means limited to crazy racist guys.

As I was saying, everyone should be careful when they talk about "intelligence". Sure, it's possible to slap together an aggregate measure, but it's honestly not too helpful—and I say this as a genius, so this is my potential for smugness that I'm taking down. (Well, part of my potential. I have some small accomplishments.)

Now, I think there might be some place for "intelligence", but keep in mind, IQ tests to the contrary, intelligence is qualitative rather than qualitative.

Infrastructure helps because it lets people do what they do best. All of modern life is intimately intertwined with infrastructure. For example, without a solid transportation infrastructure, my parents probably would not have met. Failing that, an insufficient medical infrastructure would have cost me my right eye due to a small developmental defect. (I'm sure the knowledge that the modern infrastructure has devoted resources to giving a bisexual quarter-latino atheist a good quality of life endears it so much to Gabe.)

Tom Foss said...

MWChase makes some good points, and I'd add the point that not only can we not measure intelligence in a cultural vacuum, but we can't even measure it directly. What we call "intelligence" is a collection of processes like spatial and logical reasoning, planning, problem solving, learning capability, abstract thinking, recall, and so forth, most of which can be measured in some degree by IQ tests. But there are quite a lot of confounding factors involved, not the least of which are the problems inherent in trying to indirectly assess some skills using standardized tests. The kind of reading and thinking one must do on standardized tests is a skill in and of itself, and decades of education research bear out the fact that some people are just better at taking standardized tests than others.

Yet again, intelligence is a complicated thing--far more complicated than a numerical score on a standardized test would lead you to think. There is no number stamped into anyone's brain, certainly not some weighted average of their parents' brain-numbers as determined by an IQ gene. Intelligence manifests in a wide variety of different ways, and I recommend anyone who's interested should take a look at the research on multiple intelligences. For instance, I'm a very visual learner, and I'm pretty strong in tasks related to language use, logical reasoning, and abstract thought. On the other hand, I suck at spatial reasoning, and I have to think really hard in order to do things like locate my position in reference to other places or remember how to get someplace that I've only been to a couple of times before. I know people who can do that sort of thing effortlessly, but can't do long division in their heads. These--and things like tool-making or weapon-use or gymnastics--are different kinds of intelligence, and some are more useful than others in different contexts.

This is really basic stuff in education research and cognitive theory, and it all exposes serious flaws in Gabe's simplistic concept of one predetermined, heritable-but-dilutable, objective, quantitative, melanin-linked abstract numerical quality called "intelligence."

Bronze Dog said...

Yeah, it's a complicated thing. That's one reason in-depth studies, new tests, and so forth are needed to find useful ways of quantifying it.

I recognize that I'm simplifying for the sake of making my points and I know that there are many, many aspects to intelligence. Of course, even with my simplified version, Gabe still needs to exercise scientific rigor to account for alternative hypotheses like the absence of a good educational system.

Either that, or give us a causal mechanism that actually exists in the physical universe, not in the marketing one, like brand names and labels.

Anonymous said...

Just curious here, asking everyone, if we would give a specific definition of "intelligent", something that would make sense, say someone prone to reason and commonsense and have the ability to use it.

Would it be possible to be intelligent and religious?

In this case, wouldn't the belief in something that does not exist, such as gods or deamons in affect disable the definition of "intelligence" (in this scenario)? Even if you have a keen ability to calculus and science, you would still accept this that goes against commonsense and logic and in this sense, be delusional.

What is your thoughts on this Bronze and others?

Anonymous said...

As a note, IQ tests have nothing to do with intelligence as you can study for them, in this, a IQ score means very little.

It may be a good way to get a GENERAL idea, but as you can study for a test and understand the questions (we got lots of variations), it is really no difference between a ordinary exam in school and a IQ test based to test your "intelligence".

I for example get very high points in most IQ tests i do, the professional ones I done (related to military as I was a captain) put me in less then 2% of the population, that is, I am one of few in the nation with this "high IQ", but this means nothing, I hold that these tests can be studied, and if you would take an average american getting 96%, and give him a good chance to study and understand the system of the questions (and assuming he is not retarded) he would improve his scores enormously.

Anonymous said...

Gabriel said...
"Just curious here, asking everyone, if we would give a specific definition of "intelligent", something that would make sense..."

Intelligent is the opposite of Gabe.
See, nice and compact as far as definitions go.

Are you up to giving us a definiton of "white" yet? Or are you going to display your trademark cowardice by running away from the question?

JS:)

Chakat Firepaw said...

Sorry Gabe, but you shouldn't expect people to answer your questions if you are unwilling to answer very simple and basic questions about your position.

You still need to answer the question: Who do you mean when you say white?


But, since I'm in a good mood, I'll answer your question about being both intelligent and religious: It is quite possible, as someone who is intelligent can also have mental problems, (e.g. hallucinations), be misinformed[1], or be in a situation where a supernatural explanation is the only viable one[2].


[1] No matter your religious beliefs, you have to conclude that some people are teaching their children things that are simply wrong.

[2] No longer the case, but true until discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries removed the last of the large gaps.

Tom Foss said...

Just curious here, asking everyone, if we would give a specific definition of "intelligent", something that would make sense, say someone prone to reason and commonsense and have the ability to use it.

This is neither specific nor accurate. As I said, "intelligence" is an aggregate term for a wide variety of abilities. Here's a quotation from the American Psychological Association in 1995 on the subject:

"Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions."

In other words, it's not an easily quantifiable concept. IQ tests attempt to quantify intelligence by breaking it down into component abilities like logic, spatial reasoning, problem solving, and memory recall, and it can assess those skills to some degree, but how accurately that measures someone's "intelligence" is debatable.

As far as "studying" for IQ tests goes, I'm not sure how feasible that would be. It's been a very long time since I took an actual IQ test (as opposed to the ones you see online, which typically aren't), but I recall most of it required me to perform tasks of memorization and recall, analogical reasoning, and spatial reasoning. While I suppose you can prepare by doing lots of different iterations of that problem where a box is unfolded into six connected squares and you have to choose which of the pictured boxes corresponds to the unfolded one, and that might improve your ability to do that kind of spatial reasoning, it's not like the ACT or SAT where if you know certain mathematical laws and vocabulary words, you'll do fine.

Here's the rub, though, Gabe: given that intelligence is a fuzzy concept at best, and given that the best method we have of quantifying it--IQ tests--are of dubious accuracy, and given that you seem to reject the results of these tests (that they "mean nothing"), how do you propose we compare intelligence? By what objective standard are you able to claim that one group has greater intelligence than another?

Obviously, if you could demonstrate that one racial group consistently performed better on IQ tests than another--especially if the groups and tests had been controlled against cultural confounders--then you might actually have the beginnings of an evidential foundation for your racist position. It'd still be flawed, but it would be more than what you have so far. Unfortunately, you've rejected outright the only quantitative method we have of evaluating intelligence, which means that you've rejected the only objective measurement system that you could use to justify your case.

You know, if you don't drop the gun soon, Gabe, you're not going to have any feet left to shoot.

Tom Foss said...

As to whether an intelligent person can be religious, certainly, and by any reasonable definition of the word. Intelligent people are perfectly capable of being mistaken, and it's certainly possible (though I think unlikely) that some intelligent (and some non-intelligent) people have received personal revelation which justifies religious belief in their minds. There is nothing about the qualities of intelligence as they are normally formulated which rules out religious belief--even "logical reasoning." It's perfectly possible to reason one's way into religious belief, depending on the assumptions and axioms that the person starts with.

Furthermore, it's certainly possible to be intelligent--even highly intelligent--while also being deficient in aspects of (or kinds of) intelligence. This should be obvious from every Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who can't do math, or every Nobel Prize-winning scientist who is socially inept. People naturally tend to excel in some aspects and kinds of intelligence more than others.

djfav said...

Orthogonal, Gabe. It's a good word. Look it up.

Anonymous said...

Years ago I bought a book for my grandson, it was called "Harry Potter", written by some unknown author called Rowlings something.

Before I gave it to my grandson, I thought I would read it myself, I do not want to give him some rubbish childrens book without atleast knowing what it is (then he can blame me for it rather then me being ignorant of how bad it was).

It turned out that it was really really good (yes I know, ¨bit they are crap¨you say, you most likely seen the movies, never read the books, I will come to that), the story was well formulated and more REALISTIC then most books, especially childrens books, usually are. This was something to Astrid Lindgrens superior writings you see.

Now, I did not care for the books, I did read the second books released but nothing other then that, I then decided to watch the first movie a couple of years ago, I thought, How in hell are they going to make this a good movie following the actual book? This is published by Dinsey style, they can not handle the hard truth and REAL type of emotional and mental function of the books...

They did not, they completely fucked it up, to put it straight.

One specific point that ALWAYS comes up in my mind is the movie scene of the first movie when "Harry Potter" is suppose to decide which "side"/group he is to be with. The differences says it ALL about the differences of the quality of Book(s?) and Movies... It is truly sad.

In the movie, we have the EVIL side, and the GOOD side, Harry´s Friends and that group, which I forgot the name of, is GOOD, they are LIGHT they are nice and so on, the other side is EVIL, bad people, they are dark....


Now, whats wrong with this black and white view of the world? Do you feel hollywood coming over you? Indeed we do, and this was the good part of the books, they are REALISTIC.

As you no doubt read the books I speak of and only seen the movies, Let me explain:

The book, atleast the two first, do not have GOOD and EVIL, but DIFFERENCE. The other group is not evil, not is it bad in any way, it is simple a different way of being, and this is stated very clear in the book where Harry is told my the "hat" that suppose to decide where he is going that there is two ways, neither of them is wrong, just different, there is no good or evil, there is different ways to be.


Now, I understood that the more recent books do indeed have GOOD and EVIL and the "other side" is bad, but this is clearly related to that Rowling is sold out, she wants money and do not write for love of the story as she did originally, now its Cash and she writes whatever sells more, she gets lots of money for the movies, she doesn´t care.

But if you read the original, you see a love for the art and that it is truly really well done. It is sad that someone changes side so quick and she didn´t keep it up.

Bronze Dog said...

...And what does this have to do with anything?

MWchase said...

Maybe he's trying to tell us that the world isn't full of black and white absolutes.

I'm kind of confused about what he's saying. I feel like you could only get that interpretation out of book 1 if you insist on believing that Quirrel is reliable.

Anonymous said...

Feigling wrote:


"The book, atleast the two first, do not have GOOD and EVIL, but DIFFERENCE. The other group is not evil, not is it bad in any way, it is simple a different way of being, and this is stated very clear in the book where Harry is told my the "hat" that suppose to decide where he is going that there is two ways, neither of them is wrong, just different, there is no good or evil, there is different ways to be."

So because of a fantasy story it was okay for Hitler and his lackeys to round up a load of people they disliked and put them in gas chambers, and murder them. Hitler and his lackeys weren't evil, they were just different. Thats all. Lets all be objective about this, shall we? RIIIIGHT!

"Now, whats wrong with this black and white view of the world? Do you feel hollywood coming over you? Indeed we do, and this was the good part of the books, they are REALISTIC."

So a fantasy story aimed at older children featuring magic talking hats and wizards is REALISTIC. So a black and white view of the world, where black folks are a subhuman ape race and white men are the morally and mentally superior super race is REALISTIC.
Well thanks Gabe for confirming that you live in a wankfantasy world, and it doesn't come near the REAL WORLD at any point.

"Now, I understood that the more recent books do indeed have GOOD and EVIL and the "other side" is bad, but this is clearly related to that Rowling is sold out, she wants money and do not write for love of the story as she did originally, now its Cash and she writes whatever sells more, she gets lots of money for the movies, she doesn´t care."

Or maybe it was Rowlings intention that as the Harry Potter character developed mentally, as he grew up, he was able to see the prejudice against "muggles" that was always there? It is a pity that you haven't developed beyond your simplistic Nazi notions to see how your prejudices have coloured your perceptions and distorted them to an extreme degree, Gabe.

By the way feigling, you are doing a good impression of someone suffering from demetia. Or are you still trying to flee from the defintion of "white"? Don't tell me, white means "everything good, advanced, and noble in this world" to you.
Like Bronze once said "IT'S MAAAAAAGIC!!"



JS;)

Chakat Firepaw said...

So Gabe, are you going to answer my question or are you going to continue with your smokescreen digressions?


Stop hiding from the most basic question about your position: Who do you mean when you say white?

If you can't answer that simple question, then your entire position is not wrong, but rather it is utterly meaningless.

djfav said...

Wow, Gabe. How is this relevant?

Bronze Dog said...

Kind of dips into why I'm calling him a PoMo: We're asking questions about reality, and he references the tropes used in fiction. Falls into the category of "fiction is more real than reality" vibe we get from a lot of cursive-L liberal arts majors.

Anyway, just clarify: There are lots of grays out there in the real world. This preponderance of grays does not rule out the existence of a few blacks and whites. Genocide still looks very black to me.

Anyway, I tend to find it pointless to argue about the morality right now: Gabe has a lot of scientific questions to answer, and changing the subject to morality won't make them go away.

Tom Foss said...

Besides it being completely off-topic and irrelevant, I'd also say that Gabe didn't read "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone" very carefully. No good or evil? I beg to differ, since there was a clearly evil fascist living on the back of a teacher's head who literally burned at the touch of the morally pure protagonist.

If he read "Chamber of Secrets" more closely, he might have also realized that said fascist--and his followers--were all vitriolic racists, while the hero and a few of his best friends were of mixed heritage--and, incidentally, better wizards than the purebloods.

It's true that the book is generally pretty good about exploring moral gray areas and avoiding stark dichotomies--though that really doesn't happen much until the later books. That doesn't change the fact that there are still good and evil characters, even from the start.

As usual, Gabe, you fail at reading.

Anonymous said...

Bronze, I am curious, your obsession with Memes and lack of excuse and such, it makes me want to ask you a question which I believe you will not want to answer. But alas, I will try.

Lets pretend that Race is irrelevant, Race has nothing to do with anyones ability, a negro and spic is equal to Whites in this sense, would that mean you would accept them to be Inferior Because of their MEMES?

That is, as they, say a nigger community, has inferior memes with sticks and stones and such, and a white socity has a superior meme, living a glorious life with rockets electricity and computers, We Are Superior?

Right?
That is, our Meme is who we are, is it not? When speaking of us, we speak of our Meme, our culture, and We are Superior to the Nigger one, yes? So this owuld not be related to Race, but simple our Memes, and that Whites happen to have all these memes is a mere coincidence and some, few negros can learn the same Memes as we, with help from us, but most can not..

Would you accept that, or give excuses somehow? That is, wouldnt they be inferior?

djfav said...

You're the one who is afraid of answering questions, Gabe. Nice projection, idiot.

djfav said...

Prediction: Gabe's question will be answered (again!) by more than one person.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: Lets pretend that Race is irrelevant, Race has nothing to do with anyones ability, a negro and spic is equal to Whites in this sense, would that mean you would accept them to be Inferior Because of their MEMES?

That is, as they, say a nigger community, has inferior memes with sticks and stones and such, and a white socity has a superior meme, living a glorious life with rockets electricity and computers, We Are Superior?


For the millionth time, yes!

Their society is inferior because of meme-related things like culture, bad government, technology, a lack of an educational infrastructure that supports the survival and propagation of useful memes. Throw in some resource inequalities as well. That's what this is all about! That's what I've been presenting as an alternative to a genetic/racial explanation that you've been avoiding elaborating on.

Right?
That is, our Meme is who we are, is it not? When speaking of us, we speak of our Meme, our culture, and We are Superior to the Nigger one, yes? So this owuld not be related to Race, but simple our Memes, and that Whites happen to have all these memes is a mere coincidence and some, few negros can learn the same Memes as we, with help from us, but most can not..


And here come the twisty semantics games.

Memes don't have a racial label!

Memes also require certain infrastructure to be passed on to future generations. That's why we need institutions like schools, communications networks, printing presses, scientists performing research, and so forth. Memes do not spread by magic!

Would you accept that, or give excuses somehow? That is, wouldnt they be inferior?

Riiiiight. Common sense explanations that use known mechanisms with known limits that explain the whole of human advancement (and why there are regions where it meets great adversity) is only an 'excuse'.

What's your alternative, Gabe? This mystical, magical, non-genetic thing known to all the bearded people in robes and pointy hats call "race"?

You're the one who lives by excuses known as logical fallacies, Gabe: You implicitly base your answers to life's questions on what you think I don't know. That's why you don't like it when I offer up reasonable explanations: Your whole stance on the issue boils down quite simply: "I assume some guy on the internet doesn't know, therefore I know it's magic!"

Gabe, even if I didn't have any answers at all, you'd still be in a deeper pit: You have no evidence. All you can do is set up a Creationist false dichotomy: "Bronze Dog, some guy on the internet, doesn't know, therefore we know with absolute certainty that it's a magic man in the sky who did it."

djfav said...

Cue Gabe's misinterpretation of BD's comment in 3...2...1...

Pro tip: BD referred to their memes and their society as inferior, not the people who hold those memes or live in that society.

Jim Roberts said...

For an example of that, come to New Hampshire, the least ethnically diverse state in the cosmos.

Drive far north, where there is little infrastructure and almost no education. Witness the trailer parks, the squalor and poverty caused by the departure of manufacture from the northern start of the state.

Now, come down south to the border with Mass where there are plenty of schools and the job market's among the strongest in the nation, chiefly for white collar, tech sector jobs.

Same population, even with the same hobbies and interests (NASCAR and country music, mostly), but radically different in terms of ability and capability. Both what you would call "white."

Chakat Firepaw said...

Rather than answering long standing, basic, questions about his positions, Gabe has chosen to attempt to pull a semantic bait-and-switch.

At least this digression wasn't totally out of left field, and the bait part was actually correct, (although given the number of times it was explained to him, it may just be a bit of parroting).


But the question still stands: Gabe, who do you mean when you say white? About all we know for sure is that you do not include Iberians.

Anonymous said...

Once again Bronze Dog, the people holding the Memes are the ones responsible, "Meme" (Culture) is not something mgical flying in the sky, it needs to be pushed by its people.

Therefore, the people holding INFERIOR memes are inferior by definition, do you not agree?

I already asked you this and you really did not want anything to do with it, I think you pretended that memes is a magical power somehow not related to the people.

No People, No Meme Bronze.

People Holding Inferior Memes are then Inferior as they do not change it, "Meme" is nothing to blame, WE MAKE IT UP, WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR CULTURE.

Or not?

djfav said...

I'll say this again: Anyone who uses the phrase "by definition" to answer and empirical question is (by definition?) a fucking moron.

And we've explained this to you a few times already, Gabe. Did you think we would forget?

From inferior memes to inferior people is a non sequitur. One does not follow from the other.

I'll put it in a way you can understand: Memes do not consist of people.

Remember that bit of nonsense?

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe, repeating a lie does not make it true. You were the one arguing that a person is magically responsible (probably via The Secret) for being born around people with bad memes.

And here's the thing about responsibility, Gabe: When you're looking at society at large, you can't rely on some Ayn Randian idea of responsibility that assumes everyone can just bootstrap themselves up.

And third if it's the memes that are causing the inferiority, are you now agreeing with us: That race is utterly irrelevant to the evaluation?

It sure sounds like you are in full concession mode, setting up for some crazy semantics ploy in a desperate effort to make my view sound vaguely like your watered down into nothing views on race.

After all, how can you blame the nearly identical hardware for a lack of good software? I've been arguing from the start the lack of access to good software is the problem. You've been flipflopping all over the place.

Dark Jaguar said...

A person can't single-handedly change all of society, and I am not responsible for the actions of my ancestors. I am responsible for what I do, but what I can do is limited by what is available to me. You may as well blame a person born in a well for being in that well.

Bronze Dog said...

Thinking about Gabe's rants on responsibility, it seems he's got an enthymeme that there's some sort of magical god-man in "white" people's heads that tell them which memes are the best, and that this is absent from "black" people.

The problem with this is that in the real world, people don't have this. If we did, religion would be pretty much dead in the US, since faith (belief without or in spite of evidence) would be dead in the face of the scientific method.

It seems like a rather silly way to make a nature versus nurture argument. Nurture is a very powerful force, and people do tend to be a product of their upbringing. There's no genetic/racial boogeyman haunting our heads to tell us which memes to accept or reject. It's just us using our memories, experiences, intuition and logic to reach conclusions. If you're born into a culture that limits your access to such things, you're naturally going to have a hard time accepting new ideas.

And before Gabe whines again about how we haven't capital E-"Experienced" the world (even though some commentators here have traveled or even lived elsewhere), he should note that I included logic in there. Personal experience can be useful for lower-stakes, lower-standards problem solving, but logic and evidence must trump that when there's time to debate and analyze.

Anonymous said...

Wow Bronze, just WOW.

So no one is really responsible for anything then, its always onces memes fault... Thats what you are saying.

We can remove courts and prisons, you surely would not want to put a man in jail for raping and murdering his daughter, it waas his Memes fault, not Him, HE can not be blamed for what he does, the Meme that he followed is to blame... Correct?

Bronze Dog said...

Hardly, Gabe.

1. You're talking to someone who is essentially a determinist. Just because your appeal to some vague magical form of "free will" falls flat doesn't mean that I abdicate all concepts of responsibility. I just believe that upbringing determines a LOT about a person. This is hardly controversial.

2. Punishing people who break the "social contract" deters others from doing the same. Even if I look at the situation differently, I still advocate the same sort of common sense conclusions. It works either way.

3. Even if I denied the very concept of responsibility, it doesn't change the fact that this is about frame of reference. It's the same sort of thing astronomers do with galaxies: They don't bother with the tiny quantum fluctuations. When you're talking about societies at large, you rarely need to bother with individuals and who's responsible for what.

Anonymous said...

You jump between your beliefs I see.

First people are NOT responsible for their actions, its their Memes, then they ARE responsible for their actions and their memes is just background noise... Weird..


You need to make up your mind here Bronze, what is it?


Lets see if I got this straight, and hopefully you see your completely screwed up view:

A man raping and killing his daughter should be punished and jailed/executed for this, his Meme is not responsible for it, He is.

The same man living in the same society incotrinating his kids in believing in a 6000 year old world and that tezcatlipoca will bring them horrible pain and suffering if they do not obey their parentshis. His Meme is responsible for it, Not him.


You simple decided to, well, Decide where the line goes, if it does not suit, the Meme is at fault, if it suits,. the Meme is not at fault and, say, the murderer should be punished.

And still, No People, No Meme.... Its almost like people make and hold Cultures.. Somehow.. Strange.. But in Bronze World this is not so, its a force, a magical force making people do things which they are not responsible for.

Bronze Dog said...

Gabe: You need to make up your mind here Bronze, what is it?

Well, let's see: QM and Special Relativity are both accurate theories, but when applied to the wrong frame, they become less accurate. It's like that: You can't take the concept of responsibility and apply it to large masses of people.

A man raping and killing his daughter should be punished and jailed/executed for this, his Meme is not responsible for it, He is.

A collection of memes can share some of the responsibility. The level varies case-by-case. In some cases, someone with a terrible upbringing can be treated as a mental case. In others, where the individual doesn't have horribly damaging memes, you can say he's responsible, in which case, you treat him as a criminal.

The same man living in the same society incotrinating his kids in believing in a 6000 year old world and that tezcatlipoca will bring them horrible pain and suffering if they do not obey their parentshis. His Meme is responsible for it, Not him.

The meme has some, but not all responsibility. And should be quashed, like pretty much all religious memes.

And still, No People, No Meme.... Its almost like people make and hold Cultures.. Somehow.. Strange.. But in Bronze World this is not so, its a force, a magical force making people do things which they are not responsible for.

Duh. Memes require transmission and replication mechanisms. You know, like schools, communication media, educated individuals, etcetera. Memes are essentially a way of thinking about human interactions to simplify matters. A place without an infrastructure to support good memes cannot sustain them. That's what this is all about. You, however, seem to believe that the failure of people and memes to overcome various obstacles somehow places the blame on genetics.

Anonymous said...

So are you now accepting that people are responsible for their actions, or that, just as the lady at McDonald´s, should have the rigtht to sue for millions of dollars because she spilled her hot coffe over herself? THEY are responsible for it, she bought it THERE...

You seem to be one of these people blaming everyone else taking no responsibility, that is sad Bronze.

If you, as commonsense would make you do, Take responsiblity for the murder, rape or coffe spilling, you need to understand that this applies to all, You are responsible for the memes you follow and Create, therefore people doing bad things because of bad memes are bad people. Simple as that.

Bronze Dog said...

It sounds like you're arguing that QM is right, therefore Relativity is wrong, even though they're both accurate within their frames of reference.

I'm talking about different ways to measure or talk about something when I talk about memes.

The problem, Gabe, is that your subject change is talking about something on the individual level outside of the individual frame.

Anonymous said...

Gabe's idea of the world seems to function in an either/or mode, with little room for more sophisticated thinking.
He can't seem to see that the world is more complicated than his simplistic notions.
By the way feigling, care to explain where the magical superiority lies within "whiteness"?



JS:)

Anonymous said...

Feigling wrote:

"A man raping and killing his daughter should be punished and jailed/executed for this, his Meme is not responsible for it, He is."

But Gabe, you said "there is no good or evil, there is different ways to be."

So why punish someone just for being different?

Shooting yourself in the foot is becoming a habit.



JS;)

Chakat Firepaw said...

Gabe, we caught your bait-and-switch with the first comment. Continuing to try to make the switch is pointless.

How about you spend your time a bit more usefully: Answer the long standing, basic, question about your position. Who do you mean when you say white?


As for the McDonald's coffee incident: You've fallen for the McD's spin, it leaves off little details like the fact that that McD's had been repeatedly ordered by the local Board of Health to reduce the temperature the coffee was served at.

djfav said...

Gabe must think in binary. He just can't stop himself from erecting false dichotomies or posing false dilemmas.

Anonymous said...

I been away for awhile, thought I would post a comment, make Bronze Dog Think (you do not get much of that with the following sheep you got)..

I just bough the "entire" Potter Series and sat down and watch it all. Yes Yes, what the hell you say? I know, I was really bored and these kind of movies aren't the best quality package for an old man like me, but hell, I love pretending im young... Well,. these movies seem maybe a bit to young, anyway.

So, something that came to me when I watched this rubbish (I assume that you Bronze, as a Roleplayer/nerd look up to Harry Potter similar to lord of the Rings and, possible, Starwars?) was the stupidity and lack of construct.

The difference between a "Magic" person and a "none" magic person is... Very very little, but yet they make it out to be, which is weird. They call none magic folks "muggles", but do not know about the spelling, so lets call the other ones "wizards". Whats the difference?

Wizard: Needs a special staff to do magic!

Muggle: No magic, and no special staff!

Note: Well, this is weird and does not seem to have been well thought through by the writer, for example one of the "greatest wizard of all time" gets killed/defeated as he can not defend himself without a staff (which je throws away willingly).

But earlier, in the same movie, he did indeed use magic without a staff and it is shown and refered to several times, they NEED their "staff" else they are useless, yet this is ignored sometimes and they can use magic, so I do not know if it is just the movies or "need for action" that changed the rules. Anyone know?


Wizard: Can use magic potions.

Muggles: Can use potions? Why wouldn't they?

Note: Never stated nor seen, but logically if you got a portion of magic it wouldn't turn none magic if a muggle took it, would it? So here they are the same it seems.



All in all, it seems to be a difference between muggles and wizards that do not really exist, Harry Potter is very ignorant and a poor student, he gets a magic staff/wand that is apparently BETTER then others, that is, the staff, not him then?

And when they play something that looks like rugby on a flying staff, sorciery is not involved at all, the Flying Staff/broom they sit on is a seperate entity, the better broom, the better flight, that is, Nothing to do with the person, so none magic people can use it and the only time magic is involved during these weird time-off events (I guess its made so people can go to the bathroom because its really silly) is when someone is cheating, either Harry Potter or his friends or the "bad guys".

Weird stuff I tell you. Man I hope they dont make more movies, the last one was a cliffhanger, so I suspect it will come, but for some reason, I dont really feel any urge to see it. Half Blood prince something it was called.

Bronze Dog said...

The problem: The "magic" of civilization is in the infrastructure. Without good schools, libraries, communications, and so forth, it doesn't matter what race you are: You can't live up to your potential.

That's why telling us about societies with poor infrastructures tells us nothing about the alleged effects of race: The the power of the "magic wand" far overshadows any genetic difference between the races.

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