Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing on a method for testing canine intelligence, as they do for human intelligence.
Certain breeds, like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are generally easier to train than others. It is worth noting that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. The ability to learn and obey commands is not the only possible measurement of intelligence. Other breeds, such as sled dogs and Border Collies demonstrate intelligence in other ways.

When you read what he actually said in the apology it doesn't sound to me like it's reinforcing his original statement.

real life wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Your link makes my point very well...

wiki wrote:

Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing on a method for testing canine intelligence, as they do for human intelligence.
Certain breeds, like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are generally easier to train than others. It is worth noting that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. The ability to learn and obey commands is not the only possible measurement of intelligence. Other breeds, such as sled dogs and Border Collies demonstrate intelligence in other ways.

And the same general observations relate to humans as well (which was the point of my previous question about musicians and artists being as intelligent as physicists and engineers). "Intelligence" has a slippery definition, so Watson should probably take his preconceived notions of what is intelligent and what isn't, and quit trying to force-fit science into his narrow minded boxes.

A good question:

Why do those who train dogs to do various tasks choose only certain breeds to work with?

Does it have nothing to do with intelligence?

RL,

You seem to be "jumping through hoops" to connect Watson's odd statement to the subject of this thread.

rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Your link makes my point very well...

wiki wrote:

Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing on a method for testing canine intelligence, as they do for human intelligence.
Certain breeds, like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are generally easier to train than others. It is worth noting that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. The ability to learn and obey commands is not the only possible measurement of intelligence. Other breeds, such as sled dogs and Border Collies demonstrate intelligence in other ways.

And the same general observations relate to humans as well (which was the point of my previous question about musicians and artists being as intelligent as physicists and engineers). "Intelligence" has a slippery definition, so Watson should probably take his preconceived notions of what is intelligent and what isn't, and quit trying to force-fit science into his narrow minded boxes.

As predicted, you try to make the difficulties associated with DEFINING and MEASURING intelligence to appear as insurmountable barriers to establishing intelligence as a relevant subject.

Do you think intelligence is just a matter of opinion, ros?

real life wrote:

A good question:

Why do those who train dogs to do various tasks choose only certain breeds to work with?

Does it have nothing to do with intelligence?

Maybe it's for behavior and temperment. Do you consider those things "intelligence"?

real life wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Your link makes my point very well...

wiki wrote:

Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing on a method for testing canine intelligence, as they do for human intelligence.
Certain breeds, like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are generally easier to train than others. It is worth noting that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. The ability to learn and obey commands is not the only possible measurement of intelligence. Other breeds, such as sled dogs and Border Collies demonstrate intelligence in other ways.

And the same general observations relate to humans as well (which was the point of my previous question about musicians and artists being as intelligent as physicists and engineers). "Intelligence" has a slippery definition, so Watson should probably take his preconceived notions of what is intelligent and what isn't, and quit trying to force-fit science into his narrow minded boxes.

As predicted, you try to make the difficulties associated with DEFINING and MEASURING intelligence to appear as insurmountable barriers to establishing intelligence as a relevant subject.

Do you think intelligence is just a matter of opinion, ros?

Just because you predicted it doesn't mean it's not a valid point. Besides, it was the article you posted which made the point.

How do you define intelligence RL? Do you think it's just a matter of opinion?

Do you think that dogs (or humans) ever exhibit behavior based on what they have learned, or always based on something else?

rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Your link makes my point very well...

wiki wrote:

Dog intelligence is the ability of a dog to learn, think, and solve problems. Dog trainers, owners, and researchers have as much difficulty agreeing on a method for testing canine intelligence, as they do for human intelligence.
Certain breeds, like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers, are generally easier to train than others. It is worth noting that these descriptions are relative to other dogs, not relative to the world at large. The ability to learn and obey commands is not the only possible measurement of intelligence. Other breeds, such as sled dogs and Border Collies demonstrate intelligence in other ways.

And the same general observations relate to humans as well (which was the point of my previous question about musicians and artists being as intelligent as physicists and engineers). "Intelligence" has a slippery definition, so Watson should probably take his preconceived notions of what is intelligent and what isn't, and quit trying to force-fit science into his narrow minded boxes.

As predicted, you try to make the difficulties associated with DEFINING and MEASURING intelligence to appear as insurmountable barriers to establishing intelligence as a relevant subject.

Do you think intelligence is just a matter of opinion, ros?

Just because you predicted it doesn't mean it's not a valid point. Besides, it was the article you posted which made the point.

How do you define intelligence RL? Do you think it's just a matter of opinion?

I asked you first!

The man is a terrible embarrassment to us all. ("Us" being scientists and rational types.) It is said by the press that Watson "makes his colleagues cringe when he goes off script" or "is known for making controversial remarks" and so on. Fine. But these are not apt descriptors for James Watson's most recent remarks or, for that matter, many of his earlier remarks. No, not at all. These descriptors make Watson sound like a somewhat crazy free thinking guy who doesn't care if he pisses off a few people with what he says. But that is not what he is at all.

No. James Watson is, simply put, a moron. I want to take a moment to explain why I think that.

OK, first, the science. There has been a lot of systematic testing of people divided into "racial groups" (including "Asian," "African," "Hispanic," and "White" and so on). In the US it is found that "African" or "Black" categories test, in terms of IQ, a consistent 20 points, more or less, below, "Whites" as a group. On further examination, it is found that socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment predict IQ as well.

When you analyze the data, you find that the latter ?- SES and Home Environment ?- are the main predictors of IQ across a given contemporary population, not skin color. It happens that skin color and SES and skin color and Home Environment, in the US and over the last few decades, are intertwined realities. The cause of the state of the SES and Home Environment variables is not IQ … it is cultural variation and, predominantly, racism. The IQ difference we see is the end product.

It is also the case that IQ varies across time in a way that is about as astounding as variation across time in stature in some populations … a group of American "Whites" brought forward in a time machine from the 1920s would test perhaps 20 points lower than a matched comparative set of "Whites" living in the first decade of the 21st century. That is not a genetic change … it is not the case that all the stupid people died any more than it is the case that all of the short people dying off, causing the secular increase in stature over the same time period. Rather, it is some other kind of change that has not been satisfactorily explained, but probably relates to factors like Home Environment and the vagaries of this kind of testing.

So, there is a problem. It is a social problem, an economic problem, and a problem linked in many different, insidious, ways to racism.

I assert, here and now, that Dr. Watson's remarks indicate that he is of substandard intelligence. I say this because he must know better … he is a scientist who has worked in ancillary areas, and there is simply no way that he is not familiar with the relevant scientific literature. Therefore, he must be stupid. At least, that is what the empirical evidence strongly suggests at this point.

It is time to stop fooling ourselves about James Watson. Anyone who has kept up with his remarks will tell you this.

It may seem odd that the guy who, with others, "discovered DNA" could be a moron, but a brief analysis suggests that this is in fact quite possible. There are at least three factors that could explain James Watson's obvious dullness, in spite of his professed brilliance: The Nature of the Academic Free Market; the Swinging Dead Cat Phenomenon; and the Benefits of Teamwork.

Watson's work was done in the post-war era of the mid to late 1950s and the early 1960s. Although we all know that the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 was an event that galvanized the United States into a major effort to build up academic capacity (see this for more commentary), it is also true that there was a general building of universities and scientific and technological capacities as part of a more general post WW II phenomenon. In those days, therefore, there was a shortage of trained university academics (professors, researchers) and an increasing demand for individuals to fill these positions. Those were the days when you could get a job running a physics department with a masters degree in auto mechanics, get tenure, and relax for the rest of your life. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. As we speak, myriad mediocre members of the academy from this era of high demand and undersupply have recently, are just now, or are about to retire. These gentlemen (and they were all gentlemen, or at least, men) were hired some time between about 1955 and 1967, often rising to important positions, but really, not doing much in the way of actually contributing to science. It is possible that James Watson was one of these individuals who happened to get lucky.

The other thing that was going on during this period, in science, was a major shift in instrumentation and technology. To see this in a somewhat humorous and entertaining way, go find yourself a stack of science magazines … Science, Scientific American, Nature, etc., from Pre- World War II, and get another stack of similar magazines from the mid 1960s. Compare the contents of the two … just look at the pictures, the ads, the illustrations. You will quickly and without needing a degree in the History of Science perceive a major shift in topics of interest, the machinery that was being sold or talked about, and the kinds of phenomena that scientists were addressing. Large, bulky machines designed to move things, burn things, or that produced or detected energy of various types gave way to somewhat more graceful and delicate machines that were designed to see the invisible … to peer inside cells, or to divine the micro crystaline structure of dehydrated organic compounds, etc.

In any given subfield, this transition was pretty sudden. One day you're wondering what those dots floating around in a cell are, the next day you are collecting data that allow you to understand the structure of proteins. Wow. This transition is what allowed any moron with a grant to look at pretty much anything and discover something never before imagined.

Watson and his colleagues could not have missed the structure of DNA if they were trying to avoid it. They were living in times when you could not swing a dead cat without discovering a fundemental property of nature.

Especially if you are working with others, or even better, Rosilind Franklin did all the work for you. OK, I admit, I am nothing like an expert on the whole Rosilind Franklin affair. Watson seems to have only bad things to say about her. It does appear to be the case that some of her work was important to Watson and Crick but was not properly cited. It also appears to be the case that Watson remains to this day a misogynist. I don't know what to conclude from this, but it does not smell right to me. In any event, just as it is possible for Watson to have had a reasonably successful career and not been very good, and for Watson to have not been able to avoid the discovery of the structure of DNA, it is also possible that he was part of a team on which anyone could have played his role. There may be nothing special, nothing "genius," about him. Just circumstance and linkage to a particularly important event.

was given to strong opinions, once describing her thesis advisor,Ronald NOURISH, a future Nobel laureate as a"stupid, ill mannered, and deceitful person"...(Implying that Franklin was "goofing off" )Watson then states that Franklin was fresh back from a 4year crystollographic investigation of graphite when she was installed as a new research biophysicist at Kings College

Sure, intelligence is a valid subject for discussion, but if you're gonna discuss it, ground the discussion on fact and what we know, not just on airy supposition.

I. What intelligence tests "measure", to the extent that they do, is only one of somewhere between seven and ten or more different kinds of "intelligence" (depending on who's counting), some of which seem to have far more relevance to success in life than Stanford-Binet does.

II. As noted in the links above, I.Q. seems not to be fixed, but have significant dependency on social and economic variables. That is, it's risen five to ten points for EVERYBODY over the last eighty or ninety years, as social and economic conditions have ramped up for the country. If it were actually measuring something genetic, that shouldn't happen.

III. As also cited in other posts above, when social and economic variables are taken into account, most of the supposed differences between "races" dis appears.

IV. The variations within "races" are greater than the differences between "races".

V. The genetics indicates that ALL of us came from a small population, of an order of magnitude around 10,000 individuals, around 160,000 years ago. There just isn't a whole lot of genetic diversity in modern humans--far less than in most mammalian species. And most of that is in external characteriestics like skin color or eye color. So far there's no indication of any genetic differences in "intelligence". You can suppose all you want. But in the absence on any evidence, that's all it is, is supposition.

VI.Something the "racial difference" demagogues conveniently ignore is that the same test results they trumpet also indicate that whites score up to twenty IQ points LESS than Asians, on average. Which means that if they're going to write off Africa as hopeless, then Europe and America are equally to be written off, and we should just bow to the natural superiority of the Chinese....

because they are far smarter than we are and much better able to determine what is best for us and for the race as a whole........