Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.
He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.
The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.
The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.
I acknowledged this in my first post:
I’m not sure what made you assume I thought IQ testing was perfectly accurate and unbiased. Lots of people here are arguing against positions they imagine I hold rather than what I actually wrote.
What units does G have or it is a fundamental constant? How does G interact with the physical brain, midi-chlorian perhaps? What particles make up G? Please show me the property table handbook that matches up G with other physical testable measurable units.
Prove to me that it is as real as gravity and temperature or volts. Because if you can’t I am throwing it in the basket of horoscopes.
It is a construct. One can argue that G / general intelligence factor does not exist, I believe it does since mental ability seems to correlate with general competence across many domains. I believe it’s a better argument that IQ tests may not be an effective method of deriving it.
I see. So you have faith that it is there, not evidence. And if your test is not good at finding it, it must be the test that is wrong not that you are trying to detect the undectable. The same logic can be applied to horoscopes, prayer, god, and Bigfoot. Did we make a detection? No? Oh well we must have been looking wrong. We have faith that it exists so any type of failure can be safely disregarded with our preconceived notions intact.
Your Midi-chlorianians don’t operate like anything else in science. In science we find out things exist by following the evidence, in Midi-chlorianians we assume something exists and find “evidence”. I wonder why they don’t give you hard evidence of their existence. Why does your god… sorry G spirit hate you so much?
There’s plenty of debate about g in that article if you care to read it.
Your comparisons with bigfoot and horoscopes come across as glib and dismissive. Faith is defined by belief despite a lack of evidence. There’s lots of evidence that g is a thing. I mentioned correlates.
Here’s more evidence that general intelligence is actually a thing that can be measured.
Answer my questions. What units does G have? How does spiritual G interact with the physical human brain? What is the G particle? Is G quantized or fully analog? Why can’t you produce a property handbook with G as it “correlates” with other physical measurable testable things? Does G act like a point charge? Is there a counter-G and if so what equation models how they repeal? How much does it weight per units G? Does it move in waves or as particles?
You are using the rhythms of science without the actual science. You name the physical thing I can show you as much as you wanted to know about it and then some. But not your Midi-chlorianians. I have more evidence that ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness are real than G is because I can at least point out to eyewitnesses. No one even claims to have even seen G.
Now admit the father of eugenics is the person responsible for its invention as a concept.
IQ is supposedly the measure of G, in which 100 is average human intelligence, and ±15 represents one standard deviation. It is a measurement based on population averages, derived from various forms of testing, and not some natural unit.
However, if you must insist that non-physical things don’t exist, (like many mathematical and sociological constructs are,) note that intelligence has physical correlates.
Okay, evidently he was. I fail to see why this is relevant though. Whether IQ is valid conceptually or not has nothing to do with the one who invented the concept; this is fallacious reasoning. It does, however, make it clear that you think veracity is at least in part determined by ideology of the messenger.
Of all the questions I asked you, you tried to answer one. Not a great start.
Averages don’t have to be unit less. I do agree with you however that IQ is not natural unit. It has very little whatsoever to do with the natural world. You know like the power of prayer.
I never once insisted that non-physical does not exist. I am clear that we have no evidence of non-physical things and as such we should put that stuff in the stuff outside of our knowledge. Like invisible unicorns. Yeah sure maybe they are real but no evidence so moving on.
Mathematics is a shit comparison. Math falls under symbols, sometimes those symbols match real world stuff and sometimes they don’t. There really isn’t an integral but there is stuff that we can model with it. Not the same thing at all with IQ. With IQ you claim to have developed a detection of the G-Spirit and your proof is that it came out to a round number. You started with the premise that G-Spirit is real and tried to invent evidence for it instead of finding evidence and detected the G-Spirit. What you are doing has no difference at all than those who dress in black and claim to have found ghosts on the history channel.
I am glad you bothered to look up your hero. It does matter. You see you said it yourself. IQism is a construct and when someone invents bullshit why they invent it really does matter. If I declare you unfit to live and demand you take me on faith do you have no right to question me?
― Voltaire
Oh you wanted me to respond to all the rhetorical bullshit you were projecting onto me? Sorry, no. I’d rather ignore that and try to have an adult conversation about this topic. I addressed some of your questions that weren’t entirely bad faith projection by pointing out that IQ is sociological/behavioral, based on test averages, and does not measure anything physical.
You clearly implied that g isn’t a thing because it has no physical basis.
What on earth are you talking about? It seems like you’re arguing with what you imagine I’m saying rather than what I’m actually saying. Do you understand average distributions of test results? Because they are a real thing and not “G-Spirit.”
A reasonable criticism would be that these tests don’t accurately measure G, or that G doesn’t exist, instead it seems your position is that well-established ways to refer to these probabilistic distributions of test results, (with round numbers!) is equivalent to pseudoscience bullshit.
It’s like saying inches are pseudoscience because the length is arbitrary and the basis for the metric is biased. Okay, but does that imply length doesn’t exist? Our measurement of it may be arbitrary but we are measuring a real thing.
Similarly, general intelligence seems to be a thing, there are smart people and there are dumb people. Someone who experienced neurological developmental problems probably won’t be as good at taking tests, or be as adept at skills that require complex abstract reasoning as someone with normal development. I don’t believe this is a controversial statement.
Perhaps our rulers for measuring aren’t the best, perhaps the person that invented the yardstick was an asshole, perhaps the units could be better defined, but none of that means that length doesn’t exist. Just like intelligence, it’s pretty clear that it does.
Believing that G is a thing that may or may not be accurately measured by IQ doesn’t make him my hero. Voltaire was a racist, does quoting him mean he is your hero and you agree with his ideology?
A measurement of average human intelligence distribution is just like ghost hunters? You’re not even wrong, you’re clearly here in bad faith, and I’m done wasting my time with you. Good day.