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Huntsman on evolution, warming: 'Call me crazy'

Very Nice AdamT.
Selectivley Plagiarizing, or more accurately, withholding the Link to be able to MISLEAD the board by 'short-quoting' it.

Dog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This is Underhanded and Unacceptable posting practice.

Um, the full quote you included adds nothing. It does not establish that each breed of dog is a separate species, as you speciously claimed. I think it's pretty apparent that I wasn't plagiarizing, as I didn't remove the footnote numbers. :roll:

[EDIT: my apologies. I misread your original post. I thought you were saying that every breed is a different species -- not all breeds are one species.]
 
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Do you believe in an infinite universe, all things are possible?

I don't think that there is sufficient evidence to conclude one way or another that the universe is infinite. And no, I don't think that all things are possible.
 
One can be very analytical when it comes to religion...the kind of guy that needs proof. He can never really understand when it comes to faith. But for me, faith is enough.

Do you ever just sit back and watch a sunset, or a huge thunderstorm, or marvel at the sheer size of a huge hurricane in satellite photos, or wonder how the moon controls the tides from way out there, or how something as simple as a tree can be so complex, etc., etc.?????

Just awesome

yes, the marvels of nature do speak to a creator. They don't prove it, but it is difficult to see how all of the great things we see in this world just happened with no reason or intelligent guidance.

I think god created us, but then we created many gods. I can't prove that of course, but it seems more likely than simply believing that everything just sprang into being on its own.
 
Because it's about as useful as putting together people based on what letter their name starts with.

Let's try an experiment.

You find a drug that works only on people whose names start with the letter A.

I will find a drug that works especially well for African-Americans.


First treatment specifically for African Americans with heart failure

BiDil® (isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine hydrochloride) is a medicine for the treatment of heart failure in African Americans that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).​
 
Sorry, that's a no-go. Here's what's going on: We can indeed raise IQ in young children because we can totally dominate their environment and so we find that the IQ gains last only so long as that environmental control is maintained. Any parent on this board can tell you that as their children get older the parent has less and less control over how their children lead their lives. By the time that the children become teenagers, parents and educators can never again control so much of the child's environment and all early gains have been completely lost.
This is at least somewhat untrue. The Abcedarian study he references purports to show lasting differences in mean IQ up to the age of 21, although the environmental control was in place for just the first five years (with some variation, but interventions beyond this period were shown ineffective). Thus, some lasting differences were maintained for quite some time, long after environmental controls were in place. It's still not clear whether the resulting differences are due to a change in "intelligence" or whether is results from some other latent disposition. The effect sizes do decrease over time - I don't know if further followup tests are planned, but such tests may the difference disappearing altogether in another 8-10 years.

Still, whether the difference can be truly attributed to a credible boost in intelligence seems to me rather academic. The study has found quite meaningful differences in real-life outcomes as a result of the early intervention. By young adulthood, the treatment group was more likely to maintain education or hold skilled jobs, had a lower incidence of teenage pregancy, and were three times as likely to attend college or university.

It should be noted that the variance between groups was almost entirely due to early verbal development - talking and reading to kids from a young age. And, as with most of these studies of early intervention, the results only generalize to children of low income, black families.

I do agree with your larger point that most experts on intelligence do not believe such programs produce lasting, meaningfully significant gains in the purported construct.
 
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I don't think that there is sufficient evidence to conclude one way or another that the universe is infinite. And no, I don't think that all things are possible.

Do you think life was created by God?

Coicidence? Just luck? ...or purposeful intervention?
 
This is still an error on your part.
You have been unable to argue/demonstrate otherwise so I stand by the point.

IT is still to show that not all theories mean something that we are unsure about. Theory has an additional meaning in addition to that such as in teh cases of gravity and evolution.
Which is a much better rebuttal than the standard, "Oh, like gravity is just a theory?" The truth of the matter is that ALL theories DO imply uncertainty. Let's be honest about that. The real question is the degree of uncertainty. Scientific (falsifiable or testable) theories that have lasted for decades greatly reduces that uncertainty. Nonetheless, the Theory of Evolution is by no means as certain as something like the Theory of Gravity, because of the relative difficulty in addressing falsifiability.

Yeah, like Germ Theory and the Theory of Gravity.
How come none of the candidates are coming out against these other nut-ball theories?
Perhaps the best response to such rebuttals is something like "No, more like Meismatic Theory, Steady State Theory, and the Theory of Spontaneous Generation.
 
This is at least somewhat untrue. The Abcedarian study he references purports to show lasting differences in mean IQ up to the age of 21, although the environmental control was in place for just the first five years (with some variation, but interventions beyond this period were shown ineffective). Thus, some lasting differences were maintained for quite some time, long after environmental controls were in place. It's still not clear whether the resulting differences are due to a change in "intelligence" or whether is results from some other latent disposition. The effect sizes do decrease over time - I don't know if further followup tests are planned, but such tests may the difference disappearing altogether in another 8-10 years.


When the results reported in one study stand part from the consistent results reported in the body of literature, then attention must be paid to WHY the results contradict the literature. The abecedarian project has generated quite a bit of back and forth on this issue.


Does the Carolina abecedarian early intervention project prevent sociocultural mental retardation?

An assessment is made of the claim that, when compared with a control group, this early intervention project has produced and maintained higher IQs in children who, because they were from economically and socially impoverished homes, were considered to be at high-risk for mild mental retardation. Four cohorts were recruited over a 5-year period, but the experimental group in Cohorts 3 and 4 produced unusually high scores on the Bayley MDI. Differences between experimental and control groups at 60 months of age were comparable to differences at 6 months of age. The assertion that the experimental group's advantage was due to the effects of the first few months of intervention, rather than to the chance allocation of brighter children to the experimental group, is discussed.


Here's another paper which looks at differences at 12 years of age.


Responses are given to Ramey's 10 “substantive amplifications.” The ability test difference between the intervention and control groups at 12 years of age is approximately the same as the difference had been at 6 months of age. This finding remains unexplained. Some of the data are still not forthcoming. I remain unconvinced that the Abecedarian Project provides evidence that quality educational day-care services can prevent mild mental retardation in children who are said to be at risk because they come from economically and socially impoverished homes.​


It's difficult to claim that you've raised IQ when the gap between the intervention and control groups remains unchanged between when the project started and when it finished. This criticism would point to Abecedarian Project being consistent with the results found in the existing literature on early childhood intervention.


Still, whether the difference can be truly attributed to a credible boost in intelligence seems to me rather academic. The study has found quite meaningful differences in real-life outcomes as a result of the early intervention. By young adulthood, the treatment group was more likely to maintain education or hold skilled jobs, had a lower incidence of teenage pregancy, and were three times as likely to attend college or university.

This was Heckman's conclusion as well. I have no issue with this conclusion.

It should be noted that the variance between groups was almost entirely due to early verbal development - talking and reading to kids from a young age. And, as with most of these studies of early intervention, the results only generalize to children of low income, black families.

In another project Heckman found something similar:


Understanding The Sources Of Ethnic And Racial Wage Gaps And Their Implications For Policy



Minority deficits in cognitive and noncognitive skills emerge early and then widen. Unequal schooling, neighborhoods, and peers may account for this differential growth in skills, but the main story in the data is not about growth rates but rather about the size of early deficits. Hispanic children start with cognitive and noncognitive deficits similar to those of black children. They also grow up in similarly disadvantaged environments and are likely to attend schools of similar quality. Hispanics complete much less schooling than blacks. Nevertheless, the ability growth by years of schooling is much higher for Hispanics than for blacks. By the time they reach adulthood, Hispanics have significantly higher test scores than do blacks. Conditional on test scores, there is no evidence of an important Hispanic-white wage gap. Our analysis of the Hispanic data illuminates the traditional study of black-white differences and casts doubt on many conventional explanations of these differences since they do not apply to Hispanics, who also suffer from many of the same disadvantages. The failure of the Hispanic-white gap to widen with schooling or age casts doubt on the claim that poor schools and bad neighborhoods are the reasons for the slow growth rate of black test scores.
 
It's difficult to claim that you've raised IQ when the gap between the intervention and control groups remains unchanged between when the project started and when it finished.

What's the logic behind that statement? If anything, the fact that the gap remains constant is proof that you've raised IQ (not intelligence).
 
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Because it's about as useful as putting together people based on what letter their name starts with. The point is that population groups that are genetically similar can look very different.
Certainly not true.

There are measurable racial differences in such things as muscle fibers and anthropometry. The differences are of course probabilistic, but that's a far cry from claiming them "useless." I can build a cockpit that will accommodate 98% of the projected soldier population in 2025 by sampling body dimensions and projecting the racial makeup of that future force (along with changing trends in height, weight, gender, etc.). Race is a very valuable construct in such an undertaking, and nothing like a consideration of "what letter their name starts with."

Furthermore, a consideration of the genetic diversity you speak of would be uneccesary for such a task, greatly increasing the cost and difficulty of the study while providing no useful information above and beyond race.
 
Do you think life was created by God?

Coicidence? Just luck? ...or purposeful intervention?

No, I think God is a fantasy created by people to explain things they can't understand.
 
What's the logic behind that statement? If anything, the fact that the gap remains constant is proof that you've raised IQ (not intelligence).

- The logic is that the average age of starting the program was 4.4 months. Establishing an IQ start point at 4.4 months presents some problems.
- The IQ of all children increases when they are young and subjected to total environmental control.
- If the IQ of the intervention group and the control gap rise in unison, then that casts very serious doubt on the effect that the intervention is supposed to be causing.
- Improved social skills for these borderline retarded children is a beneficial outcome.
 
- The logic is that the average age of starting the program was 4.4 months. Establishing an IQ start point at 4.4 months presents some problems.
- The IQ of all children increases when they are young and subjected to total environmental control.
- If the IQ of the intervention group and the control gap rise in unison, then that casts very serious doubt on the effect that the intervention is supposed to be causing.

I still don't see the logic of your argument. If the intervention improves IQ, and IQ improves with age (generically), then you would expect the IQs of the intervention group and the control group to rise in unison with age.
 
I still don't see the logic of your argument. If the intervention improves IQ, and IQ improves with age (generically), then you would expect the IQs of the intervention group and the control group to rise in unison with age.

Step back and think this through for a moment. Let's grant you the bolded red text. Let's say that intervention improves IQ. Secondly there is the more universal phenomenon of IQ in young children being somewhat responsive to the heavy control adults have over their environment and so we see slight improvement as the children age, but that process reverses itself as the children begin to assert their own individuality more.

Now, if you tailor your intervention within the window of time where IQ can be raised and before it begins to recede, then your intervention will show success. Your control group is also showing success from normal parental, teacher, involvement. The way you phrased your question appears like you don't credit the children in the intervention group with aging, and so also enhancing their IQ via this normal process, but you grant that the children in the control group get this benefit.

What has really happened is that the gap that was there in the beginning remained fairly steady over the 5 years of the study. If the intervention was successful then we would expect the gap that was recorded at the onset of the experiment to grow over time, thus showing the effects of the intervention.
 
No, I think God is a fantasy created by people to explain things they can't understand.

You don't have to bend reality or reject science to have faith.
 
IQ tests fail as a measure of genetic intelligence. The Flynn effect is solid proof against it. The constant increase in IQ scores over the last hundred years shouldn't be possible, as there has been no meaningful genetic changes in that time period. The reality is that the test is flawed and doesn't actually measure anything other than one's ability to take IQ tests.

There are many shortcomings with IQ tests. However, we cannot discount them entirely because the measure only certain specific cognitive abilities, such as pattern recognition. Certainly we can all agree that IQ tests are not perfect, but neither are they meaningless.
 
Hate to break it to you Deuce but the theory of man/everything evolving from a single cell is real and very much part of the evolution theory.

My use of the term “man from monkey” is just as amusing to agnostics like me who think people like you are fools for what you believe and to make fun of them as well.

Sounds like you and I agree on this issue other than the fact that you felt the need to insult me by comparing me to a redneck and dumb people.

If you don’t think life evolved from a single cell or whatever twist you want to put on it, be sure to clarify.

You said man from monkey, not man from unidentified single-cell organism.
You said "care to explain" as if this was a legitimate question you thought evolution couldn't answer, or that it was a hole in the theory of evolution.
Are you saying your question was misleading?
 
Ahh, but the existence of limited evolution doesn’t rule out the existence of God.

Not a all. It does however contradict a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Care to explain why monkeys have stopped evolving into men?

Monkeys never evolved into men (or women for that matter). What happened was that an ancestral species of old-world monkey evolved into an ape-like species about 30 million years ago. This species then then diversified into the many ape species that are extant on Earth today as well as those that are extinct over a period of 10s of millions of years. You belong to one of those species, Homo sapiens, which diverged from it's most recent common ancestor with other apes about 5-7 million years ago.

Remember - you're an ape, not a monkey (monkeys have tails).

Where are all of those cross species specimens that prove man came from monkeys?

Well, I guess you mean the fossils that show we share an evolutionary history with APES, such as...

Australopithecus from 2-4 MYA or...

One of the more recent finds (2006) of a truly ancient (6 MYO) ancestor,Ardipithicus .

My favorite though is actually something more like the MRCA to all primates, nicknamed IDA found in 2009 ida_fossil_pictures.jpg (Google Darwinius masillae for more information)

In reality however, there are hundreds of fossils that provide evidence of the evolution of humans from ancestral ape species. Wikipedia has an exhaustive list here

Evolution, as it was taught when I was in grade school, is a pile of warm excrement based upon half truth and half religion, just as the current AGW theories are.

No, you just make s*** up and pretend opinion matters as much as actual scientific research.

BTW, I am an agnostic on all three issues, and just as smart as any of you.

If by smart you mean intellectually capable, I don't doubt you. If you mean smart as scientifically well-informed, I have evidence to the contrary.
 
Not a all. It does however contradict a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.



Monkeys never evolved into men (or women for that matter). What happened was that an ancestral species of old-world monkey evolved into an ape-like species about 30 million years ago. This species then then diversified into the many ape species that are extant on Earth today as well as those that are extinct over a period of 10s of millions of years. You belong to one of those species, Homo sapiens, which diverged from it's most recent common ancestor with other apes about 5-7 million years ago.

Remember - you're an ape, not a monkey (monkeys have tails).

While life has resurged after mass extinctions, there hasn't been any evolution of intelligent life except us

If evolution of intelligent life was so easy a process, why don't we see human equivalent birds, reptiles, cetaceans, felines, etc?
 
Very Nice AdamT.
Selectivley Plagiarizing, or more accurately, withholding the Link to be able to MISLEAD the board by 'short-quoting' it.

Dog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is Underhanded and Unacceptable posting practice.

You know, we could discuss the meaning of the term "species" for a whole long thread of it's own. And we could even fight over funny Latin names old dead white dudes gave these species... but what would it matter?

The thing I know the most about is prokaryotes... and hell - they have no problem conjugating with a member of an entierly different kingdom! Species smecies.
 
Let's try an experiment.

You find a drug that works only on people whose names start with the letter A.

I will find a drug that works especially well for African-Americans.


First treatment specifically for African Americans with heart failure

BiDil® (isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine hydrochloride) is a medicine for the treatment of heart failure in African Americans that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).​

You're conditions aren't fair: you tell me I must find a drug that works ONLY for people whose names begin with the letter A, yet your task is only to find a drug that works "especially well" for African Americans.

I posit that it is entirely possible that a drug could be more effective for people with only A names. Just because of the stochastic nature of population genetics, as well as ethno-cultural naming patterns, I bet significant genetic differences could be found among groups of people based solely on name. Obviously, this is just a conjecture, but it would make for an interesting study.

More importantly... you have provided excellent defenses for almost all of your assertions, regarding both the heritability of intelligence and the existence of clearly identifiable genetic markers of race. In doing so, you have earned the grudging respect of myself and others.

However, you have not yet provided a reference which supports your average racial IQs you posted earlier.

The IQ literature shows the following for group mean IQ: Ashkenazi Jew, 115; Northeast Asian., 105; Whites, 100; Hispanic, 89; African-American, 85.

I feel that providing a scientific reference for this rather extraordinary claim is crucial to your credibility.
 
Certainly not true.

There are measurable racial differences in such things as muscle fibers and anthropometry. The differences are of course probabilistic, but that's a far cry from claiming them "useless."

I accept that the word "useless" was an overstatement on my part. You did however identify the point I was attempting to make - that it's purely probabilistic. My contention is that there are probably significant genetic differences that will become apparent from the lumping together of disparate groups based on any characteristic - even what letter their name begins with.

Here's an example your post reminded me of: it would be correct but misleading to say that most marathon winners are of African heritage. It would be more useful to describe them as Kenyans.
 
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