Lying liars
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a long post about "Lying in the name of God, surveying several instances of scholars who were misrepresented in sleazy, dishonest "creationist" DVDs. You should go read the whole thing (and, as always over there at Making Light, you should read all the comments as well).
Realizing that "go read the whole thing" might not prompt you to actually go and read the whole thing, here are the magnificent final two paragraphs:
Lying about evolution is not evidence of faith. Lying about anything is not evidence of faith. Lying to one’s co-religionists is not evidence that you care about the state of their souls or your own. So why do it? Possibly because it fosters an unwarranted certainty, an us-and-them mentality that can be exploited for political gains. And possibly, just possibly, because it leads believers into distracting thickets of false exegesis, and away from a faith whose basic tenets have never been terribly complicated: Love god. Love one another. Share what you have, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, comfort the afflicted, be humble, love justice, seek peace, tell the truth, pray often, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, recognize everyone as a child of God just like yourself, and forgive trespasses as you hope to have your own forgiven.It’s a disturbing religion when you take it straight. Heaven only knows what would happen if more of these people started practicing it.
As my seminary classmates used to say, that'll preach.
My favorite thing in this post, though, is the logical distinction Teresa employs to substantiate the claim that the liars she's talking about are, unequivocally, lying.
It's not always easy to classify a false statement as a lie. Lying requires the intent to deceive, which is a difficult thing to prove. Journalists, therefore, are extremely cautious about using the L-word. Yes, they argue, President Bush is, indisputably, on record as saying hundreds of things that are not true. But these hundreds of false statements are not sufficient proof that he is a "liar," only that he is someone who is very, very often mistaken, misinformed or deluded.
I could applaud this alleged journalistic concern for precision if reporters would follow its implications. Yet despite the abundant evidence, they refrain not only from calling the president a liar, but even from pointing out that his false statements are, demonstrably, false. They do not say that he is prone to stating falsehoods or that many of the things he says are simply not true. That suggests to me that they are not being careful and precise so much as they are simply being cowardly.
All of which brings us to the test Teresa employs to evaluate the false statements made by those creationist documentarians:
It’s not possible to produce such programs honestly. Chopping logic and falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it. To put it another way: if you know enough about the Book of Job or the Tel Dan stela to make up really effective lies about them that will fit into your preordained agenda, you know enough about them to know you’re lying.
Certain kinds of false statements cannot be made without full knowledge of the facts of the matter. Such statements are, by definition, crafted to deceive. They are, in fact, lies.
Apply this test to the myriad false statements made by President Bush -- on pre-invasion Iraq, on Social Security, on his tax cuts, on his preference in cheesesteaks -- and it is clear that "falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it." George W. Bush is a liar.
On many occasions, the faithful right-wing blogosphere has quoted Bush exactly, and pointed out that - parsed as the White House direct - those words are, technically, not a lie.
For example: in the 2003 SotU:
Both of those statements are technically, literally true. The British government did claim to have learned that; and US intelligence sources did say that those aluminum tubes were suitable for nuclear weapons production. The statements are literally true, and yet false in any real sense - actively misleading, while technically, carefully, literally true. (In both instances, blame for the statement being incorrect could be placed elswhere than Bush/his speechwriting team, too: with the British government or with the CIA.)SOTU 2003, ramping up the US for a war that Bush had made up his mind to have at least six months earlier, which he was as yet not admitting was something definitely intended, was full of such carefully crafted statements. You cannot artfully mislead with carefully parsed statements accidentally.
Of course Bush is a liar.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | Sep 29, 2007 at 04:50 PM
Our courageous media has forgotten what ipso facto means. "By the fact itself."
Posted by: Linkmeister | Sep 29, 2007 at 06:01 PM
Jesu: You're absolutely right about Bush. My husband is very fond of pointing out the many ways in which Bush's statements are literally true (if you look at the words very carefully) even if their intent was clearly deceptive.
One example: regarding the outing of Valerie Plame, Bush is on record as having said that if anyone in his administration was involved they would be "taken care of." The statement was meant to imply that they would be fired, but of course, that's not at all what he meant.
It's creepy when you really look at it. Not only does it imply a level of sociopathic deliberation to his folksy moron schtick, but it also invites one to look at some of his other statements in a different light.
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our people, and neither do we."
Posted by: McJulie | Sep 29, 2007 at 06:02 PM
Great quote from some guy in the comments section of that page (read this well oh Bugmaster (though I don't know if you still hold these sorts of sensiblities, i recall you used to)):
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 29, 2007 at 06:25 PM
Another aposite quote:
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 29, 2007 at 06:31 PM
Yeah, but MoveOn called Gen. Petraeus a bad word. And, um, Hillary has fat ankles.
Posted by: ChristianPinko | Sep 29, 2007 at 07:29 PM
Yet despite the abundant evidence, they refrain not only from calling the president a liar, but even from pointing out that his false statements are, demonstrably, false. They do not say that he is prone to stating falsehoods or that many of the things he says are simply not true. That suggests to me that they are not being careful and precise so much as they are simply being cowardly.
This is demonstrably not true. They had no problem at all throwing out quotes calling Gore a liar. They know what they're doing, and who pays the bills. We haven't had a truly free press in ages.
Posted by: Jeff | Sep 29, 2007 at 07:29 PM
Apparently I'm intent on chanelling half this other blog here, but yet another cool sequence (appologies to all). Someone talks about Altemeyer's book on authoritarianism (free to read online):
and then, just for total awesomeness, someone quotes fred!
"I've had the privilege of knowing a few saints who devoted their lives to imitating and demonstrating the love of God. These people also became models of God's holiness. I've also known many pious folk who devoted their lives to imitating and demonstrating the holiness of God. None of those people ever seemed to become a model of God's love." --Fred Clark, The Slacktivist, "God Hates Divorce", July 19, 2007
Nice!
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 29, 2007 at 07:30 PM
I would just like to say that this sort of cross-pollination between my two favorite blogs is a font of pure "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter"-style awesome.
Posted by: fermion | Sep 29, 2007 at 07:39 PM
I would like to second Fermion, and note that the only reason I haven't commented on this thread yet is that I already read the other one (all several hundred comments thereof! :D) and am now having to pace myself when it comes to long fascinating blog posts.
Posted by: Nenya | Sep 29, 2007 at 08:35 PM
A few years ago my parents gave me a DVD for Christmas with the subtitle "Was Jesus Real??"
I have always assumed that the answer they come up with is "yes", and have never watched it.
Posted by: cjmr's husband | Sep 29, 2007 at 08:41 PM
(Comment 105 on the linked post)
Reminds me of the bit that came out about blessed Mother Theresa last month or so. In her own letters and diaries she talks about her crises in faith over the years; and suddenly there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. "How can you make this woman of poor faith a saint???" people would say.
Thing is, these letters were released as evidence FOR sainthood. Y'see, works can be more important than faith...
Posted by: cjmr's husband | Sep 29, 2007 at 08:58 PM
It seems that the primary religious belief of many is not a belief in the Bible, but a belief in belief in the Bible.
In another context, I've referred to this kind of belief in the Bible as "Schroedinger's God." They refused to open the Bible-box that contains their God for examination, because they are secretly terrified that they'll discover that He's dead...
Posted by: hapax | Sep 29, 2007 at 09:31 PM
Nice. Though I seem to recall some catholic dogma about doubt being the unforgivable sin. How does that fit in?
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 29, 2007 at 10:06 PM
@ecks:
Not even close. The "unforgivable sin" is "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit." (Mark 3:22-30 and Matthew 12:22-32)
There are infinite number of interpretations of this story, but "doubt" doesn't seem to play a role. RC teaching is usually along the lines of "denying the power of the Holy Spirit to endow grace wherever God wills" -- e.g., in the certitude that oneself (or anyone else) is irredeemably damned.
Another common interpretation is "condemning righteous deeds as evil" -- e.g., abrogating the power of the Holy Spirit to judge the deeds of men.
Either way, L & J (and most of their theological ilk) are screwed.
Posted by: hapax | Sep 29, 2007 at 10:15 PM
Ah. I read this book (actually listened to the book on tape in a long long car ride - excellent way to pass the time) called "Father Joe, the man who save my soul" by Tony Hendra. It's an autobiography, though all the really good bits center around Father Joe, a Benedictine Monk Hendra knew throughout his life (and those bits are really really good). I actually recommend the tape version because Father Joe seems to come alive more with Hendra supplying his voice and verbal mannerisms.
ANYWAY, Hendra struggles with his catholicism as a youth, and at one point has a night of real doubt, which sends him into a full blown panic that he's committed the unforgivable sin. Presumably this either falls under the heading of "denying the power of the Holy Spirit to endow grace wherever God wills," or as "failure to grasp the real meaning of the Catholic canon." This is what provoked my question.
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 29, 2007 at 10:30 PM
Jeez, Ecks, you quoted extensively from my comments and didn't even credit me! I'm not the most frequent commenter here (and still less there) but still... did you like it?
(Three hundred comments over there? I'd forgotten about it - I've got family responsibilities and a trip to Italy in a week - but vanity alone compels me to revisit it.)
Posted by: bad Jim | Sep 29, 2007 at 10:45 PM
Dude, that was you? Didn't even put it together. I suck at names. my bad.
Mad props :)
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:35 AM
I get torqued whenever the argument is made that women can't do X or that blacks can't do Y. The argument is thousands of years old and it's been shown false from nearly the moment it was mentioned.
Posted by: bad Jim | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:55 AM
Seriously. And it's lucky they have us boys who are able to make that argument and defend them.
KID! DING!! Har har har. Wasn't that an ironic thing to say under the circumstances.
putting the serious hat on again, there are actually some gender differences in intelligence that seem somewhat robust. The thing to keep in mind is that a) they're small (like quarter to half a standard deviation shift in the distribution - there's plenty of people from the "better" group who do worse than lots of people in the "worse" group), and b) some of the differences favour women. Men tend to do better at mental rotation type tasks, women do better at spatial memory and verbal fluency. But as I said in point a), these differences are not large - you pretty much only see them at the statistical aggregate level.
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 30, 2007 at 05:06 AM
putting the serious hat on again, there are actually some gender differences in intelligence that seem somewhat robust. The thing to keep in mind is that a) they're small (like quarter to half a standard deviation shift in the distribution - there's plenty of people from the "better" group who do worse than lots of people in the "worse" group), and b) some of the differences favour women. Men tend to do better at mental rotation type tasks, women do better at spatial memory and verbal fluency. But as I said in point a), these differences are not large - you pretty much only see them at the statistical aggregate level.
The annoying thing is when people use this to justify inequality between the sexes. Or should I say, "believe this explains most of the inequality between the sexes". (because I read a debate between Steven Pinker and another evolutionary psychologist about Harvard Guy's statement about women in academia where Pinker made this very argument, and I really don't think Pinker's a closet misogynist).
Those people seem not to notice that unconscious sexism is pervasive in our societies, that many studies have shown it, and that alone it's enough to explain the inequalities we see. And that it will also affect any studies on the biological differences between men and women, because where on Earth are you getting your control group ?
It's like saying the Earth's orbit is caused by Jupiter. Sure Jupiter influences the Earth's orbit, probably a lot, maybe not, but before you study this maybe you should factor out the influence of the Sun.
Posted by: Rozzen | Sep 30, 2007 at 05:40 AM
The annoying thing is when people use this to justify inequality between the sexes. Or should I say, "believe this explains most of the inequality between the sexes".
Yep, that would be pretty dumb.
(because I read a debate between Steven Pinker and another evolutionary psychologist about Harvard Guy's statement about women in academia where Pinker made this very argument, and I really don't think Pinker's a closet misogynist).
What exactly was he arguing? There are some who have claimed that the difference in distributions means that for some very pure things like math, the extreme thin genius end of the distribution tends to be more heavily male. In their favour, most of the genius mathematicians we've had to date have been male. Not so much in their favour is that there are a whole LOT of reasons this would have come about, only one of which is at all due to genetics (I don't think the rest need explaining to this group).
Those people seem not to notice that unconscious sexism is pervasive in our societies, that many studies have shown it, and that alone it's enough to explain the inequalities we see.
I don't know about your last clause there, whether unconscious sexism is enough to explain everything. I don't think that study could ever definitively be done.
I mean, it's plausible, although likely to be a tad more complicated given a lot of the not-unconscious history of these things.
And that it will also affect any studies on the biological differences between men and women, because where on Earth are you getting your control group ?
It's like saying the Earth's orbit is caused by Jupiter. Sure Jupiter influences the Earth's orbit, probably a lot, maybe not, but before you study this maybe you should factor out the influence of the Sun.
A little confused here. If you can measure things, then you can try to statistically control for them... somewhat. Like if you can measure a gender gap in verbal fluency, you could try to remove that from the stats in working out why there are not so many boys in English programs... though first you'd need to estimate how much verbal fluency contributes to success at those English programs (which you could measure, but I bet the answer wouldn't be a super-lot... You can't be totally craptastic at it, but you don't have to be a very cunning linguist (oh, those old chestnuts) to do well in Composition 101).
Posted by: Ecks | Sep 30, 2007 at 05:54 AM
What exactly was he arguing? There are some who have claimed that the difference in distributions means that for some very pure things like math, the extreme thin genius end of the distribution tends to be more heavily male. In their favour, most of the genius mathematicians we've had to date have been male. Not so much in their favour is that there are a whole LOT of reasons this would have come about, only one of which is at all due to genetics (I don't think the rest need explaining to this group).
He did talk about that. Here's the link :
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
But the question isn't what the distribution is, but whether that is the reason there are fewer women in the highest places in academia. And given how this "fewer women in high places" thing is true across the board in traditionally male venues - businesses, politics, etc - and that this isn't even true to the same level in all countries... Well, biological differences may play but if social factors explain it in all those other domains why coudn't it explain it in academia ?
I don't know about your last clause there, whether unconscious sexism is enough to explain everything. I don't think that study could ever definitively be done.
I don't know about my last clause either, I just didn't want to weaken it with "most of the inequalities we see" because I do believe it's a bit more than the two-thirds that "most" implies to me. So yeah, sorry about that ^^
A little confused here. If you can measure things, then you can try to statistically control for them... somewhat.
True, the astronomical metaphor breaks down because you can know the Sun's influence pretty well with the theory of gravity. But I don't see how you can measure social factors that precisely, and how you separate them from biological factors and vice versa. (where's your control group ?).
For instance, how much of your gender gap in verbal fluency would be actual difference between sexes and how much would be parents and teachers expecting less verbal fluency (and therefore enforcing it less) in boys ? Even a small social influence would make using those stats to control for biological influence in another study problematic at best... The error would increase each time you used a previous study's data for the next study, until you got gibberish.
Posted by: Rozzen | Sep 30, 2007 at 06:26 AM
"True, the astronomical metaphor breaks down because you can know the Sun's influence pretty well with the theory of gravity. But I don't see how you can measure social factors that precisely, and how you separate them from biological factors and vice versa. (where's your control group ?).
"For instance, how much of your gender gap in verbal fluency would be actual difference between sexes and how much would be parents and teachers expecting less verbal fluency (and therefore enforcing it less) in boys ? Even a small social influence would make using those stats to control for biological influence in another study problematic at best... The error would increase each time you used a previous study's data for the next study, until you got gibberish."
I think that's why you tend to need a lot of studies across various cultures, and then some meta-analysis of them. I'm not sure if that's been done yet in this area, though I may ask my psychologist buddy next time I see him. Of course, modelling the various factors that might affect performance is a pain, and is probably never going to be entirely accurate.
Posted by: Iorwerth Thomas | Sep 30, 2007 at 09:13 AM
You know Dan, that's a really good point. What has religion ever contributed to humanity's progress? Certainly none of those religious philosophers like Aquinas, Descartes and Spinoza ever did any work of real value. And tell me, what's the point of preserving books and a literary tradition through a centuries-long, continent-wide political collapse anyway? Not to mention that none of those religiously-funded and/or -inspired artist were worth much either: who's ever heard of Michelangelo, Milton, or Rumi? Personally, I think that the Blue Mosque, St. Peter's, Tenryuji, and Angkor Wat are a collection of just about the most boring buildings ever built. Straight-up modernism for me!
And to top it all off, not a single religion has ever improved humanity's understanding of what it means to be human a single jot! Catholicism, Sufism, Zen Buddhism, Shinto, (neo-)paganism, and all the rest have been an unrelenting drag on the momentum of history since the very first human came up with the idea that there just might be more to the world than meets the raw, purely material eye. The sooner we're rid of them, the better.
Uh huh. So good architecture, lots of important books, good charitable works. That's all good stuff.
But how does any of it add up to proof that a magic man in the sky actually exists? Or what particular name he goes by? Or that he's irritated that I eat bacon? (In point of fact, I don't, but why would he care if I wanted to?) Or by certain things I might choose to do while naked? Or that supernatural miracles really happen? That people who claim to be "new creations" actually are that?
Too, what about my people? Hypatia, Servetus, Giordano Bruno, Catherine Vogel, Viola Liuzzo, and all the rest? You religious folk never seem to meet an unbeliever in your silly creeds without thinking, "Hmm, your voice would sound better shrieking in pain from atop a burning pyre."
Sorry, but I'm not impressed by the solemn, baritone certainty with which all you religious folk--even liberal religious folk--seem able to agree that we unbelievers are just tragic dopes. Nor with the argument that there couldn't possibly be anything actually wrong with your mysticism but rather that it's simply a matter of a few misguided extremists perverting your otherwise wonderful teachings.
Posted by: J | Sep 30, 2007 at 11:19 AM
"Sorry, but I'm not impressed by the solemn, baritone certainty with which all you religious folk--even liberal religious folk--seem able to agree that we unbelievers are just tragic dopes."
Can't speak for the rest of us vile religious irrationalists, but most of the atheists I know are far from tragic dopes (with one exception, but that has more to do with him being a proto-fascist who never washes, as opposed to any lack of belief on his part).
Posted by: Iorwerth Thomas | Sep 30, 2007 at 11:35 AM
"proto-fascist who never washes" describes about the most repulsive person I can imagine. Actually, you can delete the "proto-fascist" and still get to repulsive. Other than homeless people or refugees or survivors of recent tragedies that killed their entire families*, I really think no one has an excuse for not washing, and it disturbs me how often lately I've been in the company of middle-class and higher people who fail to understand that principle.
*This was inspired by the Left Behind discussions. I can kinda see how the remaining population after The Event might lose interest in soap, at least for a while.
Posted by: Karen | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:00 PM
"...a proto-fascist who never washes..."
Anakin Skywalker?
Posted by: J | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:01 PM
For instance, how much of your gender gap in verbal fluency would be actual difference between sexes and how much would be parents and teachers expecting less verbal fluency (and therefore enforcing it less) in boys ? Even a small social influence would make using those stats to control for biological influence in another study problematic at best... The error would increase each time you used a previous study's data for the next study, until you got gibberish.
This is why studies that divide people by a characteristic instead of random chance are quasi-experiments, not experiments. No causal conclusions can ever be drawn form quasi-experiments because the risk of confounds are so great.
There is a lot of evidence that gender reinforcement starts at birth Researchers went out with babies and dressed them in blue or pink, randomly - irregardless of their actual gender - and measured how they were treated by people depending on their presumed gender. People treat babies markedly different depending on presumed gender; how can that not be taken into account when studying gender differences?
Posted by: Deoridhe | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:07 PM
On the point of innate differences in intelligence between races and genders:
This argument is always based on some kind of standardized test score. Standardized tests are about as purely a cultural artifact as it's possible to imagine. I know they try to eliminate bias in the questions, but there's no way to make taking the actual test, in the sense of reading a bunch of questions and picking a certain answer from a given set of answers as anything remotely resembling something humans evolved doing. Of course, I don't see how to design a real test, since getting the wrong answer would require the testers to let the subject get eaten by a large carnivore or fall off a cliff or die from eating poison leaves, but still.
Posted by: Karen | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:31 PM
Ecks: putting the serious hat on again, there are actually some gender differences in intelligence that seem somewhat robust.
I miss the days when I had you killfiled.
If you take two lab rats, as near to genetically identical without being clones as anything else on earth, and purposefully handle them differently and feed them differently from the day of their birth, by the time the two rats are a year old anyone will be able to tell the difference between them by eye.
As Rozzen says, before inventing the idea that male and female human beings have innate differences in intelligence, you first of all would need to get rid completely of any gendered treatment of human beings from infancy - and by the time that happens, no one will care about trying to argue that men are better than women in some areas and women are better than men in others.
Posted by: Jesurgislaccu | Sep 30, 2007 at 12:57 PM
"Anakin Skywalker?"
Nah, Anakin had better social skills, and didn't play my incredibly irritating fanatical underling/bodyguard [1] in a Vampire LARP, which meant that I had to spend far too much time in close proximity to the fellow. My sense of smell still hasn't recovered.
[1] He was a mute, self declared Inquisitor for the Lancea Sanctum, if you really need to know... One wondered how in hell he communicated with his inquistees -- through vigorous gesture, perhaps?
Posted by: Iorwerth Thomas | Sep 30, 2007 at 01:22 PM
And tell me, what's the point of preserving books and a literary tradition through a centuries-long, continent-wide political collapse anyway?
Err... check with the librarians at Alexandria on that 'preservation' policy. Dark Ages Christianity was mainly interested in preserving A Book... and perhaps some approved commentaries. And they certainly had no interest in letting anyone but properly trained clergy read that book; dig around for the details of what happened to the first people to translate the Bible into "vulgar", common languages.
Posted by: MikhailBorg | Sep 30, 2007 at 01:58 PM
“inventing the idea that male and female human beings have innate differences”
Isn't it wonderful that jesurgislac can't even spot the irony of this in a thread called "Lying liars" ?
Imagine going through life thinking that you believe in science, when you actually believe in making something up and then hanging on to it no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented.
Which is stupider? YEC "science" or the "science" of biological equality ? I have no idea. Let's consign both to the dustbin please. People are not born equal, if we are to be equals then we must make that so by our own sweat.
Posted by: | Sep 30, 2007 at 02:08 PM
“Standardized tests are about as purely a cultural artifact as it's possible to imagine.”
See, it's possible to persuade yourself that we can't measure anything in this area, and then close your eyes to the terribly inequalities that these tests reveal because hey, it's just measuring some cultural artifact anyway.
But this is, not to point too fine a point on it, bullshit. You can go out to Africa and take groups of secondary school age kids and test them with the same sort of standardised tests, and for the groups that have the advantage of proper schooling* you get the same sort of results as you'd get for American teenagers. But for the disadvantaged kids, the results are really terrible. This isn't because the schools are slotting in a course on Coca-cola, the Simpsons and baseball on top of their maths and science lessons, it's because education is important to proper development of intelligence.
* Nothing expensive really, just textbooks, trained teachers, school buildings that are safe and comfortable places to learn, that sort of thing.
Posted by: | Sep 30, 2007 at 02:34 PM
we unbelievers are just tragic dopes.
From what I've seen of religious believers here, that would just be you.
Posted by: Jeff | Sep 30, 2007 at 02:52 PM
Unnamed poster: Which is stupider? YEC "science" or the "science" of biological equality ?
What is your operational definition of "biological equality" and what studies have used this as a basis for their research?
What study of gender has shown us is that humans train infant and young humans according to their perceived gender. In short - we don't know what humans would be like raised outside of this training. Trangendered and ambiguously gendered individuals can give us a peep hole into what some of the problems MIGHT be, but getting a sufficient S is difficult, not to mention the issues with generalizability.
This isn't because the schools are slotting in a course on Coca-cola, the Simpsons and baseball on top of their maths and science lessons, it's because education is important to proper development of intelligence.
Um, no... it's because people who are taught how to take standardized tests, and drilled in the schools for successfully taking those tests, do better at - shocker - taking standardized tests. Of course people not trained to take standardized tests will do badly; the problem is equating standardized test scores with some sort of innate "intelligence" or "IQ" with all of the connotations of each term.
The study of IQ and intelligence is incredibly fraught with bias and inaccuracy, with solid operational definitions few and far between. Right now, the main working theory I've run into is of nine (or twelve) different types of IQ which psychologists are attempting to measure in different ways, but they keep running into the problem that people are good at what their trained for and spend their time on, so measuring any sort of "innate" or "untrained" ability is really difficult.
So yes, standardized tests are a cultural artifact. Since we live in cultures, and culture frame our worldview and means of organizing information, cultural artifacts are critical. Some standardized tests may correlate with success in some set tasks (the SAT/College correlation springs to mind), but the confounds inherent in those correlations make drawing anything other than a correlational conclusion extremely foolish. In other words, one can't say scoring highly on the SAT causes one to be good at college - one can simply say that those who score highly on an SAT are also likely to do well at college, and drawing any conclusion beyond that (people in college are intelligent, for example) simply isn't supported by the data.
I find nothing more frustrating than people mistaking quasi-experimental and correlational data/studies for experimental data/studies, especially when they also claim to understand science. And please, for the love of the gods, learn what a confound is. And if you're going to make claims about intelligence, try to be both intelligent and educated on it. The irony is funny, but irritating.
Posted by: Deoridhe | Sep 30, 2007 at 02:54 PM
It might be useful, from time to time, to have a post on HTML mark-ups for comments.
No spaces in the tags!
Italics (useful for identifying quotes): < i>[text] -- this is italics
Bold: < b>[text] -- this is bold
Hyperlink: < a href=[link]> text< /a > -- This is a link (to Wikipedia).
Always post some text after your last tag, PREVIEW, and then remove any added text before posting.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Jeff | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:15 PM
Professor Harry Frankfurt in his treatise On Bullshit and Professor Max Black in The Prevalence of Humbug both refer to having an intent to deceive as distinct from uttering statements which can be easily shown to be false. The latter are lies, while the former are Humbug and/or Bullshit.
The Scientific Creationists and the proponents of Intelligent Design and President Bush and my oldest brother probably could go into court and make their statements under oath without being convicted of perjury. But it's all Bullshit and if they do not know it is, then they have truly passed through ignorance and arrived at stupidity.
Posted by: Elmo | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:27 PM
About the Creationist deception thing, did you guys hear about CSE's "backdoor censorship" of youtube videos that criticize Kent Hovind?
Posted by: The Cynic Sage | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:31 PM
Dangnabit, I missed the end tags for italics and bold.
Italics is < i > text < /i >
Bold is < b > text < /b >
Another case of "Hey, look at this!"
Posted by: Jeff | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:45 PM
You know, I really like the commentary threads here, but it seems like more and more they're just becoming a fucked-up version of the Kevin Bacon game: given any topic, how many comments will it take to turn it into a debate about gender?
Posted by: Spalanzani | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:48 PM
Um, no... it's because people who are taught how to take standardized tests, and drilled in the schools for successfully taking those tests, do better at - shocker - taking standardized tests.
Actually the question of standardized tests is interesting to me because it seems very linked to questions of optimisation, learning for AI, and the phenomenon of overfitting.
By which I mean that if you want to make a program that can learn a certain law from a limited number of data points (practical applications would include programs learning to recognize handwriting for example, where the "law" is what kind of squiggles correspond to what letter), you'll have to keep a certain number of data points aside to test that program. Otherwise you don't know whether it actually learned the law you wanted to teach it, or if it "learned" something that only applies to the data points you fed it. (for instance, a program that learned the law would learn something like : "there's a loop and a straight line to the left : it's a 'b'", while a program that overfitted the data would learn : "squiggle 1 is an 'a', squiggle 2 is a 'c'...")
So you test it on the other data points, and if it guesses right about them you're happy, it's learned your law. If it doesn't guess right you might be tempted to start again, right ? Make it re-learn from your first data points, and then test it again.
The problem is that if you do this too often, by the time the program gets it right how do you know whether it's actually learned the law correctly, or if it just learned to fit the "testing" data like it learned to fit the "learning" data in a way that can't be generalized ? I.e. you're right back where you started.
The problem with standardized tests seem similar to me. If you test a child once to find her level, how well the level is gauged will depend on the test but you can get something pretty good. Such as if they can solve these math problems, you can suppose it's because they aquired a general understanding of math.
However if you keep testing the kids, with the same tests, the kids will end up "overfitting", i.e. they learn the test, not what the test was testing for in the first place. So you'll know the kid can solve those math problems, but you'll have no way to tell if it's because they got a general understanding of math or just because they learned those problems really well.
Posted by: Rozzen | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:50 PM
Ecks: putting the serious hat on again, there are actually some gender differences in intelligence that seem somewhat robust.
Unnamed poster: Which is stupider? YEC "science" or the "science" of biological equality ?
Er, is that really a question? Because there is no "science of biological equality." There is biological science and and there is social equality. But I guess, there's no science of Young Earth Creationism either. (Unless YEC actually means "Yog Elder Cthulhu" but that's also not science.)
Gender difference studies are the worst kind of pop science nonsense. They are nearly always biased and poorly designed. Even when they aren't actually bad science to start with, the reporting on them is extremely sloppy, where a minor gender-based difference in remembering where food is located is somehow transformed into women having a "shopping gene." And then people who haven't even read these extremely biased and sloppy articles on the study get, as received wisdom, an even sloppier mimetic factoid that they then replicate.
Then, this vague factoid based on a poorly designed study with little scientific value is used by defenders of the status quo, people with a tendency to be idiots, or sexist jerks trying to let themselves off the hook for being jerks, as an attempt to explain an effect (such as few women math professors) that is much more readily explained by historic institutional biases.
On the affirmative action thread I mentioned the study cited in Blink, where blind symphony auditions have, suddenly, magically related in symphonies going from being overwhelmingly male to being roughly 50-50. In a sense, this itself was a gender difference study, which showed that there isn't one, except in the minds of the judges.
Most "gender difference" studies seem to take it as axiomatic that commonly perceived gender differences are based on innate biological reality, and the job of science is to ferret out exactly what that biological reality might be.
Until those institutional biases are eliminated, there is no value in looking for a dubious secondary cause, unless what you are really trying to do is prove that the institutional bias doesn't exist.
Posted by: McJulie | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:52 PM
(Unless YEC actually means "Yog Elder Cthulhu" but that's also not science.)
Hello. My name is Cthulhu Montoya. You have offended me. I shall arise and wreak havoc on the earth.
Posted by: Cthulhu Montoya | Sep 30, 2007 at 03:57 PM
Cthulhu Montoya fthagn?
Posted by: Iorwerth Thomas | Sep 30, 2007 at 04:13 PM
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!
Posted by: Cthulhu Montoya | Sep 30, 2007 at 04:21 PM
“In other words, one can't say scoring highly on the SAT causes one to be good at college - one can simply say that those who score highly on an SAT are also likely to do well at college”
SATs don't do that, which is OK, because the recruiters looking at SAT scores know that. As with similar tests in other countries they are a fairly good predictor for year one results, but college isn't one year. The most highly prized places go, not to people with the absolute best available SATs, but to people who round things out nicely, a good quarterback with great-but-not-astounding SATs gets their pick of schools while a smart kid with near perfect SATs and nothing outside of the classroom may be lucky to get their third choice college.
Once kids are at college, lots of things change, they may discover that the subject they were passionately interested in when they arrived isn't what they thought it was, they may drop out for myriad reasons, they may just turn out to have reached the limit of their abilities sooner than expected. In any case, after a couple of years there's no significant correlation between SAT scores and academic achievement, so that's why recruiters don't just use some software to accept the applicants with the highest SAT scores.
“Gender difference studies are the worst kind of pop science nonsense.”
This is a non-argument. If you believe that some specific studies are poorly conducted, address the relevant disciplines directly through their journals. They are open to criticism. But what I keep seeing in this thread is the same nonsense we get from other anti-science groups, where someone claims that the truth is whatever they say it is and must not be subject to scientific scrutiny.
Actually I think your main problem is with science reporting and not with science. Journalists take an unpublished (and thus probably not yet reviewed) study which shows a minute but statistically significant gender difference in rate of change of reported happiness, and they write the headline "Women happier than men" which is untrue because they don't understand science well enough to see how they're misrepresenting it. Attacking science is not the answer.
Posted by: | Sep 30, 2007 at 04:33 PM
Rozzen: By which I mean that if you want to make a program that can learn a certain law from a limited number of data points ..., you'll have to keep a certain number of data points aside to test that program.
it sounds like you're talking about applied heuristics for computers? I know they're doing a lot of funky things with algorithms, but if they're attempting heuristics - that's really cool!
However if you keep testing the kids, with the same tests, the kids will end up "overfitting", i.e. they learn the test, not what the test was testing for in the first place. So you'll know the kid can solve those math problems, but you'll have no way to tell if it's because they got a general understanding of math or just because they learned those problems really well.
You run into this with autistic kids, too. I remember one time a teacher took a shortcut and photocopied the same pages - the kid learned those pages, not how to follow read commands.
Opps.
I taught one that was preternaturally able to read environmental cues. He figured out quickly that different cues meant he needed to do different tasks. But he wasn't learning to read. He fooled years of teachers, and me for three months; it's amazing how easy it is to end up NOT testing what you think you're testing.
Posted by: Deoridhe | Sep 30, 2007 at 04:39 PM
This is a non-argument. If you believe that some specific studies are poorly conducted, address the relevant disciplines directly through their journals. They are open to criticism. But what I keep seeing in this thread is the same nonsense we get from other anti-science groups, where someone claims that the truth is whatever they say it is and must not be subject to scientific scrutiny.
That's rich coming from someone who ignored all of my post except for a single sentence - a sentence which was included for clarification between causal and correlational claims at that.
Posted by: Deoridhe | Sep 30, 2007 at 04:46 PM