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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmail com> wrote in message
news:4c082cfe$1@news.povray.org...
> developers and, in addition to programming tests, had the candidates run a
> 100-meter sprint, effectively eliminating the overweight ones.
Therein lies the problem. It may be obvious that overweight individuals are
physically inferior to normal weight ones - I'll leave it to you do decide
if this statement is "weightist" or not, or even if it's true or false. But
in the same vein, the ruling carries the implication that blacks are
inferior according to at least one metric. Is that the message SC intends to
send? This is irrelevant of relevancy of the test - an irrelevant test may
not be discriminatory. Say, in lieu of the test, they decided to toss a
coin. That would not be discriminatory (unless one believes that certain
individuals are inherently luckier than others), because there would be no
predictable (a priori) bias. By saying that the test is discriminatory, it
is being said that there exists ways to separate blacks from whites
*without* looking at their skin colour, or that the basic premise of racial
equality is false.
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>> This logic is so horrifyingly broken...
>
> Not if the prime axiom of anti-racism holds true, that all races are
> equal; because if you take that for granted, any test that exhibits
> significantly different test results for different races /must/ be broken.
False.
It's not difficult to prove that different races have different access
to education, which quite obviously has a radical effect on the ability
to pass tests that measure how educated you are. Nothing inherant about
the ability of a race, just environmental factors.
The correct thing, of course, would be to correct the environmental
differences rather than all this "you have to hire X% black people" crap.
> Then again, I never managed to understand how anyone can even claim that
> men and women are equal, given the pretty obvious anatomic differences -
> and the same goes for "whites", "blacks", "yellows", "reds" and
> what-have-you-nots: They obviously /are/ different, if only in outer
> appearance (and in fact there are less obvious differences, such as
> resistances against certain ailments and drugs).
From what I've heard, the less superficial differences are fairly
minor. For example, females have higher intelligence *on average*, and
yet it's not difficult to find a particular male who is more intelligent
than a particular female (i.e., there's a large overlap in the ranges).
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Am 04.06.2010 19:19, schrieb Orchid XP v8:
>>> This logic is so horrifyingly broken...
>>
>> Not if the prime axiom of anti-racism holds true, that all races are
>> equal; because if you take that for granted, any test that exhibits
>> significantly different test results for different races /must/ be
>> broken.
>
> False.
No Sir, because...
> It's not difficult to prove that different races have different access
> to education, which quite obviously has a radical effect on the ability
> to pass tests that measure how educated you are. Nothing inherant about
> the ability of a race, just environmental factors.
... if a test measures education instead of ability, according to
aforementioned prime axiom the test /is/ broken. Q.E.D.
> From what I've heard, the less superficial differences are fairly
> minor. For example, females have higher intelligence *on average*, and
> yet it's not difficult to find a particular male who is more intelligent
> than a particular female (i.e., there's a large overlap in the ranges).
I was thinking about things like anatomy (which is /far/ from
"superficial" as in "looks different superficially but does the same"),
hormones, different(!) intelligence (more focused on "social
intelligence" in women for instance), possibly related to different
anatomy of the brain (more links between brain hemispheres in women),
better ability of women to pay attention to multiple things at once,
better ability of men to focus attention on a single thing - stuff like
that.
(Hey' we're talking about a difference of a whole chromosome, after all.)
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Am 04.06.2010 10:12, schrieb somebody:
> Therein lies the problem. It may be obvious that overweight individuals are
> physically inferior to normal weight ones - I'll leave it to you do decide
> if this statement is "weightist" or not, or even if it's true or false. But
> in the same vein, the ruling carries the implication that blacks are
> inferior according to at least one metric. Is that the message SC intends to
> send?
No, as far as I understand the SC's ruling says no more or less than
that if people want to have an official /examination/ of whether a test
or the use of its results constitute racism, sexism or whatever-ism,
then their right to get such an examination does not depend on how long
ago the test was taken, but on how long ago the results were actually used.
Any other implication of the ruling is artificial flavor added by the press.
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clipka wrote:
> (Hey' we're talking about a difference of a whole chromosome, after all.)
I have read that a human male is more genetically similar to a chimpanze
male than to a human female.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
that the code does what you think it does, even if
it doesn't do what you wanted.
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On 6/4/2010 10:50 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 04.06.2010 19:19, schrieb Orchid XP v8:
>>>> This logic is so horrifyingly broken...
>>>
>>> Not if the prime axiom of anti-racism holds true, that all races are
>>> equal; because if you take that for granted, any test that exhibits
>>> significantly different test results for different races /must/ be
>>> broken.
>>
>> False.
>
> No Sir, because...
>
>> It's not difficult to prove that different races have different access
>> to education, which quite obviously has a radical effect on the ability
>> to pass tests that measure how educated you are. Nothing inherant about
>> the ability of a race, just environmental factors.
>
> ... if a test measures education instead of ability, according to
> aforementioned prime axiom the test /is/ broken. Q.E.D.
>
Still broken if it does test "ability". The problem is, a lot of what we
call ability is training the body or brain to do something a certain
way. If you don't ever get the education needed to train them to do X,
testing for X will show a lack of skill, even if you avoid testing for
knowledge. The stuff we can "do" without training is roughly the same as
any other animal, walk, make meaningful noises, and do basic stuff
needed to survive. What differs is the **capacity** to learn to think
logically, which goes against some of those "instinctive" processes,
create complex noises, instead of simple ones, and make complex tools.
All of which, if ones *skill* is being tested, generally require a lot
of pre-knowledge, representing a significant portion of what other
people already came up with, in order to "test" the skill at dealing
with something founded on those much simpler tools, thought processes, etc.
One person I once heard put it like this, "Nearly anyone can learn to
get into MENSA, since the more you work on the sort of puzzles they use
to test you, the easier they become." What you are trying to test for,
on the other hand, it a bit... harder. You want to know how long it
takes them to figure out the tests in the first place, blind, without
any prior input. This is nearly impossible for anyone that has variable
levels of knowledge and existing skill, which *relates* to the
puzzle(s). Its also useless for testing someone that has never been
exposed, in one fashion or another, to even the *basic* concepts needed
to figure out what you are supposed to do in the first place, never mind
how to solve it, once you have that critical detail.
In short, its not testable, since you can't test low level "capacity",
there being no way to reset the person to a state where you can see how
long they "relearn" something. And testing someone's capacity, by aiming
at a more complex, pre-existing knowledge dependent, puzzle or skill
set, also won't work, because they might, by shear chance, completely
lack the context needed to figure out what they supposed to do.
Most people, even with something as simple as, "fit the pugs in the
right shaped holes", will get better the more they do it. Especially
true if, as a child, they already had one as a toy.
I don't think you can get any statistical data about what people are
*capable of* from these. What you can get is statistics that could mean
either that X people never learned this, or X people find it harder, or
**both**, but unless they have a cognitive problem that result in them
failing over multiple trials, you can't say if they are "less capable",
in any meaningful sense. Worse, if there is *any* pre-knowledge needed,
perceive or not, you will still not get accurate results, and you may
not have a means to accurately assess what that pre-knowledge *is*, or
how/why some group might be lacking it.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
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call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
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On 06/04/10 01:12, somebody wrote:
> inferior according to at least one metric. Is that the message SC intends to
> send? This is irrelevant of relevancy of the test - an irrelevant test may
Not only did you fail to comprehend the article, you failed to
comprehend my response to you, as well as Gilles's message that you are
responding to.
--
Guitar for sale. Very cheap. No strings attached.
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Am 04.06.2010 20:50, schrieb Darren New:
> clipka wrote:
>> (Hey' we're talking about a difference of a whole chromosome, after all.)
>
> I have read that a human male is more genetically similar to a chimpanze
> male than to a human female.
Wouldn't surprise me much.
(Likewise, a human female might be more genetically sumilar to a
chimpanze female than to a human male, just to set the records straight ;-))
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Am 05.06.2010 00:12, schrieb Patrick Elliott:
> One person I once heard put it like this, "Nearly anyone can learn to
> get into MENSA, since the more you work on the sort of puzzles they use
> to test you, the easier they become." What you are trying to test for,
> on the other hand, it a bit... harder. You want to know how long it
> takes them to figure out the tests in the first place, blind, without
> any prior input. This is nearly impossible for anyone that has variable
> levels of knowledge and existing skill, which *relates* to the
> puzzle(s). Its also useless for testing someone that has never been
> exposed, in one fashion or another, to even the *basic* concepts needed
> to figure out what you are supposed to do in the first place, never mind
> how to solve it, once you have that critical detail.
... which reminds me of some survey they did on different ethnic groups,
which involved a question along the ways of "All polar bears are white;
all bears living in Greenland are polar bears; what color do bears
living in Greenland have?"
Among some ethnic group, a typical answer had been something like "I
don't know, I've never been to Greenland to see for myself" ;-)
In a culture where the most important thing to get along in life is
personal experience, that's a pretty smart answer I think.
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On 6/6/2010 11:14 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 05.06.2010 00:12, schrieb Patrick Elliott:
>
>> One person I once heard put it like this, "Nearly anyone can learn to
>> get into MENSA, since the more you work on the sort of puzzles they use
>> to test you, the easier they become." What you are trying to test for,
>> on the other hand, it a bit... harder. You want to know how long it
>> takes them to figure out the tests in the first place, blind, without
>> any prior input. This is nearly impossible for anyone that has variable
>> levels of knowledge and existing skill, which *relates* to the
>> puzzle(s). Its also useless for testing someone that has never been
>> exposed, in one fashion or another, to even the *basic* concepts needed
>> to figure out what you are supposed to do in the first place, never mind
>> how to solve it, once you have that critical detail.
>
> ... which reminds me of some survey they did on different ethnic groups,
> which involved a question along the ways of "All polar bears are white;
> all bears living in Greenland are polar bears; what color do bears
> living in Greenland have?"
>
> Among some ethnic group, a typical answer had been something like "I
> don't know, I've never been to Greenland to see for myself" ;-)
>
> In a culture where the most important thing to get along in life is
> personal experience, that's a pretty smart answer I think.
Hmm. Not really. Personal experience isn't always reliable, so you have
to rely on information from outside your own experience to fill in gaps.
That is the whole point of the question, if you can do that. There are a
lot of people I have seen which take that view, that personal experience
isn't just more important, but *better* than other forms of information.
They all tend to believe in completely absurd things, reject good
advice, in favor of doing things that are blindingly stupid, and/or
reject real facts, in favor of their "personal experience" on the
matter, no matter how flimsy that may be. If they run a small shop in a
village some place, this isn't a huge problem. If they are, say, the
president of a country... You damn well better hope someone else is
keeping things from getting out of hand, or who the hell knows what kind
of nationally, or even internationally, dangerous and stupid things they
might do. Bush was a bit like that, and still doesn't *get* why torture
was a bad idea. Palin... is a *lot* like that, and no one outside the
Teabaggers think that someone in their right mind would want her leading
so much as a parade, never mind a country.
It might be a smart ass answer, but a correct answer would be, "The
question itself suggests white, but I haven't seen it myself, so can't
be sure.", which at least shows an awareness that the information is
there to look at, even if its not personally confirmed. One ***badly***
hopes that most of the people answering, "I don't know, I have never
been there.", mean the above, not what they literally said. The ones
that mean it literally, are not people I would want making decisions, or
planning anything, since, well, its precisely the insane logic applied
by climate denialists, the wackos claiming the gulf oil disaster isn't
one, etc. They haven't "seen" it personally, so its **not happening**,
or even if it is, it can't possibly be as bad as claimed.
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void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
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