D
droid
Guest
And surely, working class kids are less likely to be familiar with classical composers?
matt b
Indexing all opinion
yeah- tea's shiraz/stella point
An interesting thought experiment is to substitute "character" for "intelligence". Suppose that character is heritable (whether "genetically" or through home environment) and that some character traits make for worldly success more than others. Suppose that there is some such thing as "general character", or "C", for which there is supposed to be some measure (using phrenomenology, say, or neurotransmitters...) and which gives an indication of whether a person is of "high" or "low" character. High-characters are more likely to be diligent, altruistic, responsible, honest etc., and as a result of this rise to the top of the professions (stop giggling at the back there). Low-characters are sneaky, feckless egotists with poor impulse control; they're lucky if they can hold on to a job at all. A society is meritocratic and well-ordered, to the extent that it enables the high-charactered to flourish and assume positions of status and responsibility, and compassionate to the extent that it looks after the low-charactered while keeping them away from sharp implements. And so on. Isn't that after what Martin Luther King dreamed of? That a man might be judged not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character? etc., etc.
Question: is this more or less obviously offensive, classist, risibly stupid etc. than the "intelligence"-based account of social station and mobility? Is there anyone who perceives that the above is pernicious nonsense, but still believes that an analogous account involving "intelligence" might have some merit?
Question: is this more or less obviously offensive, classist, risibly stupid etc. than the "intelligence"-based account of social station and mobility? Is there anyone who perceives that the above is pernicious nonsense, but still believes that an analogous account involving "intelligence" might have some merit?
vimothy
yurp
You're conflating several things here, though, and I'm not sure that it is helpful. I would be more interested in learning exactly what is heritable and why. As far as I'm aware, no one on the genetics side thinks that it is all nature, but rather that it is both nature and nurture, which seems reasonable to me, though perhaps this reflects my lack of understanding, or indeed, my structural racism. Does being able to run fast have a genetic component? Hand-eye coordination? Is it the case that physical attributes have a genetic component, whereas there is a mysterious 'mental' set of distinctly non-physical attributes that accrue to the child from birth?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That may well be the case, but I can't think of a test I was ever graded on at school that involved my having to write down all the composers I could think of.
OTOH, I was never tested on my knowledge of boxers, either.
The "plasticity" of the human brain is physical and non-mysterious, has a plausible adaptationist back-story, and means in practice that most bets are off (at least for the time being) when it comes to identifying discrete and heritable mental attributes. However: a) the brain's not absolutely plastic, and it's harder to unlearn something than to learn it, and b) there are things like autistic spectrum disorders which are possibly more like colour-blindness than they are like preferring Shiraz to Stella.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
well I'm pretty sure that one reason which has been (credibly, as I understand) for the preponderance of black athletes is that black people - on average - have more fast-twitch muscle fiber. or perhaps that should be a greater density of fast-twitch muscle fiber. so that there is a higher concentration of great athletic talent - all professional athletes being essentially genetic freaks - among black people than whites (& everyone else I guess).
plus just on empirical evidence - there are tons of second-generation pro athletes in the NBA, NFL, baseball, etc. presumably in footie too but i wouldn't know about that.
tho I reckon the mental attributes are probably more a mix of nature/nurture than the physical stuff which is almost entirely genetic?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
re: class knowledge - which I reckon does exist, in the kinds of things which kids are channeled into learning, not so much in school (tho the quality of education offered, at least in the U.S., is directly correlated to level of income of parents in the school district - assuming the kids are going to public school) as outside of it in day-to-day life. e.g. my folks are middle class intellectuals, I learned to read & so on quite early but never learned any practical with-your-hands skills til I moved out & picked them up on my own.
on the other hand going to rural Mexico - an utter shock to see 5 yr old kids wielding machetes with nonchalant confidence. on the other hand I spoke better Spanish than many of the Maya adults, most of whom were illiterate.
on the other hand going to rural Mexico - an utter shock to see 5 yr old kids wielding machetes with nonchalant confidence. on the other hand I spoke better Spanish than many of the Maya adults, most of whom were illiterate.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
right but in the case of pro athletes they have a virtually unimaginable level of physical talent just to merit someone wanting to spend the resources to train them.
so not fully formed but there is a very high genetic bare minimum which they have to meet.
obv nature doesn't determine what you do with the tools it provides, it just provides you with them.
"Intelligence" has had from the beginning a bit of a dual meaning. A reference to the quality of one's intelligence could mean how clued-in one was, how much "intelligence" of the outside world one was plugged into. And then also the ability to process that "intelligence", to discriminate between significant and insignificant features, to discern finer points of distinction and so on. Intelligence in this sense can be relative to a domain: I know lots about English Literature, and can say "intelligent" things about it, but very little about JCBs.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
There is a distinction drawn between 'crystallised' intelligence - command of one's base of knowledge - and 'fluid' intelligence - improvised reasoning when facing novel problems. Tests that aim to be 'fair' minimise use of the former and maximise that of the latter.
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scottdisco
rip this joint please
there's plenty of character building in Huck Finn, Josef.
that's a novel.
ba-dum tissh