Liberal self-pwnage??

[Scrapheap]

I do not agree.  Mental agility has much more to do with those decisions you make without even being conscious of there being an option in the first place.  If you test the "real world" stuff the author was after, you are not testing neurology at all, but merely psychology.

I thought the Slate article was, if not sarcastic, then perhaps a bit ignorant of the disciple.  It is the sort of article which strikes a "common-sense" chord with people, whilst evading the more technical, scientific questions actually raised.

Perhaps my use of the term "mental agility" was a bit to vauge. You make a point here that agrees with the criticisms of the study though, namely the study was focused on the neurology of the subjets, and that data was used to infer the psycology of the subjects.

The study was junk science.

Really?? can you point to any peer reviewed science that says this is the case?? Could it just be that this field of science is just dominated by people with political axes to grind??

Could it be?  Sure.  But I'll also agree that the moon could be made of swiss cheese; it's just not terribly likely. 

I wouldn't be so dismissive of the notion that this area of science is colored with the political opinions of the people in the field.

I have yet to encounter information that didn't have some kind of agenda behind it. This would especially be the case for this study, which was an obvious exercise in conservative bashing.

But by the same token, I do not think that nature gives us more than a good, solid start, and that culture plays the decisive role in shaping that initial material into the individuals we become.  The Richerson book is a good one for staking out that territory, but Wilson got there before practically anyone else and his insights are still beautiful.

...and yet the research I've seen in this area comes to the opposite conclusion. That initally, culture and environment has a large influence on a person, but as time progresses, the more we fall into genetic paterns of behavior and become like our parents.

[Scrapheap]

Did you ever bother to check the figures for that, or are you just quoting another ditto-head?!
Look here to see where the real "lion's share" of the money goes, and how little feeds anything remotely like your assumptions.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/summarytables.html

Besides... if we got to choose between banana slug research and nukes in space, I think the former is far more worthwhile... 

I was mixing sarcasm with facts here. Entitlement spending (Including Social Security) IS the largest part of the federal budget.

have personal property rights

On this one, you're going to have to elaborate please.

Environmental laws an zoning laws mostly. They are often corrupted and abused to prevent property owners from doing anything on thier own property (building or improving it) by using the excuse that they're damaging the environment by doing so. (The red-legged frog fiasco in California comes to mind)

Oh, heavens forbid we might actually want to leave a sustainable ecosystem for our children!  I swear, arguments about how people should be able to do as they please with 'their property' just remind me of how thoroughly fucked up our species is.  And of why I became an anarchist in the first place...

This statement seems a bit contradictory. How are private property rights and Anarchism remotely conflicting??

Did you read my original statement?? I was making the point of how those laws get CORRUPTED as in how the laws actually get enforced. The red-legged frog being a case in point where ranchers on the central coast can't even clean out drainage ditches on their property (proper maintenance) because red-legged frogs were everywhere where ther was water (Funny how an animal is both endangerd and thriving at the same time)

I'm talking about school voucher programs that would allow poor kids to go to private schools. Teacher's unions hate them because they would introduce (GASP) accountability.

I've always wondered about this one.  The vouchers make good sense if you're one of those people who think that education should be entirely privatised and offered for profit.  But this doesn't seem to describe most proponents of the topic!  Maybe you can help make sense of this for me?  Here's how I understand the issue:

1. Public schools are short on proper resources and sensible budgetary accountability, so they start to suck.
2. Vouchers could allow parents to opt out of the system, but at a cost of less funding for those public schools.
3. This seems like it would lead to further school-suckiness, and eventually to utter collapse...

Given that our elementary education in this country is already abysmal, why would cutting resources make things any better for our kids?  Sure, maybe things would be better for your kids, but the nation as a whole would decline.  And since our entire economy is coming to depend upon high-tech services and knowledge industries, we need more comprehensive education, not a total collapse of the system.

It's doubtfull that this worse-case scenario would happen. Our schools (at least in California) are some of the most expensive in the Industrialized world, and yet they suck and often lack basic supplies. What black hole is all this money going into?? Ask any California school teacher...... it pays for the 6 digit salaries of fat cat Admininstrators and Superintendents. A whole fucking TON of them. WAY more than is actually necessary to run the system. Teachers unions have seen to it that almost any tenured teacher who spends enough tim in the system, will get a cushy high paying Admin job to retire from. The teachers unions primary concern is the carrers of it's teachers. (suprize, suprize)

You can have whatever beliefs you want.  You just can't force them on the rest of us.  And we have as much right to the belief that you're an idiot for having them.

You're not allowed to have those beliefs when you go to Universites and other schools. Haven't you head of "Campus speech codes"?? Here come the thought police.

Not that you're talking to me, but I haven't, no.  Does this mean that certain positions are not allowed to be shouted out during, like, school protests and rallies and suchlike?  Because 'speech codes' there would seem just as 'legitimate' as they would outside, say, the headquarters of a multinational corporation! 

From my perspective, any restrictions on free speech that do not impinge on public safety, etc, are intolerable, so don't think I am defending the restrictions on your campus or anything.  I'm definitely a free-speech zealot.  But I am genuinely curious about what those 'codes' are and how they measure up against the kind of things enforced elsewhere in society.

(Damnit all, now I have Frank Zappa's 'Who Are The Brian Police?' playing in my head!!!)

I was thinking of a particular incident in Massachusetts where a student was thrown out of the school for calling a group of black students "Water Buffalo" The school Admins took this as being a derogatory term meaning "Large animals from Africa" neglecting the fact that water buffalo are from ASIA. As it turned out, this student violated a campus speech code (common in colleges back East). Since so many schools were discovered to have simmilar codes, conservative commentators jumped on the fact that Liberals were the primary censors of free speech on American college campuses.

[morthaur]

Perhaps my use of the term "mental agility" was a bit to vauge. You make a point here that agrees with the criticisms of the study though, namely the study was focused on the neurology of the subjets, and that data was used to infer the psycology of the subjects.

Well, not exactly; they made an inference about the subjects' neurology and offered an interpretation of that inference that has psychological implications.  That was my reading of the paper, anyway.

The study was junk science.

Perhaps, though as is obvious I do not yet agree with you.  But then, I am open to all kinds of studies that people call 'junk' science.  To give you an example of turned tables, most people dismiss studies into natural intelligence entirely, calling them racist and fascist and suchlike.  But the potential implications of a study should not be allowed to block it; otherwise our ideology will keep us trapped and unable really to learn.

Really?? can you point to any peer reviewed science that says this is the case?? Could it just be that this field of science is just dominated by people with political axes to grind??

Could it be?  Sure.  But I'll also agree that the moon could be made of swiss cheese; it's just not terribly likely. 

I wouldn't be so dismissive of the notion that this area of science is colored with the political opinions of the people in the field.

I am no more of less dismissive of that than anything else.  I was, on the one hand, noting my own ridiculous capacity for taking anything seriously, even if only as an intellectual exercise.

But yes, I was being flippant with regard to your original argument, which is ironic given that I agree with the main thrust you express here.  I will generally side with folks like Michel Foucault and argue that all of our perspectives, which means also all of our scientific studies, are coloured by our subjective positions and by the particular discourse in which we are immersed.  Even unconsciously, many scientific projects, then, are 'politically motivated'.

But I might be taking this is an entirely different direction than you imply.  If we are to think of the scientist as being actually disingenuous, and out to attack a particular kind of people, I cannot agree at all.  The discipline is pretty harsh on people who step outside the lines and make politically-motivated attacks in the guise of science.  When they are discovered a career is usually destroyed...

I have yet to encounter information that didn't have some kind of agenda behind it. This would especially be the case for this study, which was an obvious exercise in conservative bashing.

Agreed for the former, not for the latter.

But by the same token, I do not think that nature gives us more than a good, solid start, and that culture plays the decisive role in shaping that initial material into the individuals we become.  The Richerson book is a good one for staking out that territory, but Wilson got there before practically anyone else and his insights are still beautiful.

...and yet the research I've seen in this area comes to the opposite conclusion. That initally, culture and environment has a large influence on a person, but as time progresses, the more we fall into genetic paterns of behavior and become like our parents.

Interesting!  Please recommend some articles and books.  As for becoming like our parents specifically, though, I would not challenge you there.  But expressing their character traits and reflecting the culture in which you are raised do not, in most cases, seem to conflict with one another.  Don't we all get kinda curmudgeonly as we age anyhow?   

[morthaur]

Did you ever bother to check the figures for that, or are you just quoting another ditto-head?!
Look here to see where the real "lion's share" of the money goes, and how little feeds anything remotely like your assumptions.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/summarytables.html

Besides... if we got to choose between banana slug research and nukes in space, I think the former is far more worthwhile... 

I was mixing sarcasm with facts here. Entitlement spending (Including Social Security) IS the largest part of the federal budget.

Not quite, as Social Security is not part of the federal budget!  Check with the Congressional Budget Office and see for yerself.

But rather than just making an only semi-serious, pedantic point here, I still challenge your basic argument.  Social Security could not be called a "lion's share", but it would be--just barely--a larger percentage of total revenues than security.  The difference is truly tiny; even the bloody Heritage foundation can give you the right figures on that.

But the programme itself remains the most popular one in the history of this nation, and it is still shamefully stingy by the standards of the rest of the Western world.  I think the system should be fundamentally reformed: but to offer more benefits, not less.  Providing for basic economic security in old age is terribly important in preventing another runaway economic downturn.

have personal property rights

On this one, you're going to have to elaborate please.

Environmental laws an zoning laws mostly. They are often corrupted and abused to prevent property owners from doing anything on thier own property (building or improving it) by using the excuse that they're damaging the environment by doing so. (The red-legged frog fiasco in California comes to mind)

Oh, heavens forbid we might actually want to leave a sustainable ecosystem for our children!  I swear, arguments about how people should be able to do as they please with 'their property' just remind me of how thoroughly fucked up our species is.  And of why I became an anarchist in the first place...

This statement seems a bit contradictory. How are private property rights and Anarchism remotely conflicting??

Err, by dint of fundamental principle!  Anarchism, as a political philosophy, has always held to the conviction that private property is theft from the collective good.  It is an area of anarchist theory that I disagree with, for the most part, but it has been present from the start and still defines the movement to-day.  See esp. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Did you read my original statement?? I was making the point of how those laws get CORRUPTED as in how the laws actually get enforced. The red-legged frog being a case in point where ranchers on the central coast can't even clean out drainage ditches on their property (proper maintenance) because red-legged frogs were everywhere where ther was water (Funny how an animal is both endangerd and thriving at the same time)

Yeah, but I have two problems here.  The first is that I do not think environmental laws are strict enough or properly enforced.  And examples like the one you give are usually exaggerated bullshit, passed along by the right-wing media in contravention of the facts.  I would have to read up on your example to see what it really means, but I will note that frogs--as an entire class of being--are in danger of extinction almost worldwide.

It's doubtfull that this worse-case scenario would happen. Our schools (at least in California) are some of the most expensive in the Industrialized world, and yet they suck and often lack basic supplies. What black hole is all this money going into?? Ask any California school teacher...... it pays for the 6 digit salaries of fat cat Admininstrators and Superintendents. A whole fucking TON of them. WAY more than is actually necessary to run the system. Teachers unions have seen to it that almost any tenured teacher who spends enough tim in the system, will get a cushy high paying Admin job to retire from. The teachers unions primary concern is the carrers of it's teachers. (suprize, suprize)

First of all, the worst-case scenario I outlined is the stated intent of many of the designers of the voucher proposal.  It is a 'trojan horse' tactic, freely admitted by some more honest pundits.  But to address the issue directly, I would have to say that vouchers are not a cure at all, as they mistake the problem entirely.  Proponents of vouchers are suggesting that, since the system is laden with (in this instance) "fat-cat administrators", that the best solution is to pull money out of the system and let it fail.  But a more reasonable approach--one that does not rely upon re-inventing the wheel--is to reform the bureaucracy of the school systems.

I would agree to comprehensive, non-political reviews of the way money is spent, and to changes where necessary to enforce good, conservative austerity.  However, this is not what the right really wants: It is out to destroy the programme itself, as part of the Reaganite plan to shrink government down to a size where you could "drown it in your bathtub".  If mis-spent money on salaries were really a conservative issue, your side of the aisle should look at how money is being spent in Iraq, where people are making more in a month than I make in a year just to sit on their asses and let Iraqis do the work.  The right is only after fiscal austerity when the money is going to a social programme, and never seems to give a damn that the military contractors are happily fleecing the American taxpayers, and the Administration is handing out new, multi-billion dollar contracts to companies that have already been convicted of fraud and mis-use of government funds...

I was thinking of a particular incident in Massachusetts where a student was thrown out of the school for calling a group of black students "Water Buffalo" The school Admins took this as being a derogatory term meaning "Large animals from Africa" neglecting the fact that water buffalo are from ASIA. As it turned out, this student violated a campus speech code (common in colleges back East). Since so many schools were discovered to have simmilar codes, conservative commentators jumped on the fact that Liberals were the primary censors of free speech on American college campuses.

How awful.  Well, when it comes to "political correctness", I stand with your side: free speech should not be abridged to make anyone feel more "safe".  But I still think the issue is more of a canard than a principled objection, at least in the media's hands; the right does quite a lot to restrict free speech, too.  No-one is an angel in this area.