I don't know why you don't like evolutionary biology, Mom says

[farla]

Applying perfectly sane and logical reasoning to the problem of poverty in Africa: Clearly, the reason there is widespread starvation and illness in Africa is because the people do bad on tests. It cannot possibly be that starving tends to make people do badly on tests. Especially not since there's actual data showing that starving people do, in fact, do badly on tests, what with the starvation and the shutting down of the brain. And certainly chronic illness doesn't harm test scores. And the infant mortality? Also the cause and not effect of starving. Stupid dead babies, don't they know it's all their fault for making Africa impoverished? If they had stopped being lazy quitters and dying they wouldn't have been malnourished.

In conclusion, nuke the London School of Economics. They'll be okay because only stupid people with low IQs die from megatons of explosive force followed by lethal amounts of radiation. And if they die, well, it's all their fault for being stupid.

Comments

[charizamdc.livejournal.com]

To be fair they probably would have worse IQs than a first world country if fed because of the effects of malnourishment and lack of educational stimulus when growing up (enviroment being the main issue where IQ is concerned, not genes). On the other hand, unless you're as retarded as those guys then it is clear that this is the effect of poverty and starvation and not the other way around. Maybe it exacabates the problem (leading to a slippery slope effect) but it surely did not cause it in the first place.

What an idiot that guy is.

[farla.livejournal.com]

See, he's arguing it's genetic. The malnourishment of babies is because their parents are genetically inferior and the babies are genetically inferior.

[charizamdc.livejournal.com]

Isn't this actionable under anti-inciting hate crimes law?

[farla.livejournal.com]

I think only actionable thing that should be done is a hate crime. Unfortunately it seems England doesn't know how to lynch people.

[charizamdc.livejournal.com]

It's a lost artform.

[(Anonymous)]

Out of curiosity, why don't you like evolutionary biology? As the article states, the dude who's making claims about IQ is talking eugenics, which is a different (and highly discredited) field entirely.

[farla.livejournal.com]

From the article:
Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, is now accused of reviving the politics of eugenics.

A lot of evolutionary biology I read about is taking a look at a random thing and saying "This is because (insert opinion here)", sometimes with bonus stupid (like arguing humans are under more selective pressure because there's been an increase in mutations and diversity, even though selective pressure means mutations and diversity get weeded out and an increase in mutations means the exact opposite.) Really good example - men will ovulating women by smell, because there was clearly strong selection pressure to be able to select women who could be impregnated. Also, men will select nonovulating women by walk, because there was clearly strong selection pressure to select women who won't be impregnated. It's basically making up reasons for things. Call me in fifty years after someone guts it, tears out the bones from the bloated carcass and uses them to reconstruct the entire field from scratch.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Eh, we seem to have met different sides of the field.

Also I do fail at logging in, why yes.