Tracing Woodgrains’ recent Substack on all the damage done to Wikipedia by one energetically obsessive leftist editor, David Gerard, should lead to heightened skepticism about Wikipedia’s decline in objectivity on a number of topics, such as its notorious
I am retired now but gave IQ tests for about 17 years as part of my job as an “academic language therapist” otherwise known as a dyslexia specialist for 17 years. I also administered IQ test as part of my job as the “gifted and talented” coordinator for a few short years. In any case, an IQ test is made up of several subtests such as long term memory, short term memory, working memory, crystallized intelligence, processing speed, visual perception etc. and a few more (my long term memory is diminished 😁). I have never seen any discussion on the IQ topic that stratified the data by subtest. That would be elucidating. Most of the children I tested that had profound learning deficits had low scores in working memory. I tested many with 90th percentile scores for crystallized intelligence, but 40th percentile scores for working memory. The way the scores laid out gave much more important information than the cluster score. The cluster score was not that helpful in understanding the student. The schools I taught in were mostly populated by white students, but as the years went on we had more cultural diversity including black, Indian, and Chinese students. I was assessing for reading specifically, and all students I tested were having academic difficulty, so my memory of the data is biased in that way. I was able to teach ALL of the students to read if their scores mapped out in the pattern common to dyslexia. While testing I frequently found students with high subtests scores which were negated by one or two lower subtest scores. So what does it all mean?? After many years I found the IQ test was irrelevant for identifying the students who needed reading intervention. I felt like I could select them with confidence based on a teacher interview, a parent interview, and a student interview. Our purpose in school is to facilitate grade level achievement at a minimum. Anything beyond that appears to be the result of the family values and structure and student motivation in my experience.
Huh? There is volumous research on so-called Spearman's Hypothesis, which concerns the relationship between the magnitude of group differences on subtests and subtest features such as g-loadings. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the topic knows this. It's well discussed in the IO literature, in addition to differential and educational psychology.
Bridget Cresto is probably talking about popular-references to IQ and not academic-references. In other words, pop-references treat it with a touch of the astrological, as some magic number.
I am referring to the IQ scores schools typically use to assess learning disabilities and or “giftedness”. We used the WISC most often for IQ and administered a number of achievement tests as well. The Woodcock-Johnson was the achievement test often used. My point is that the IQ number was not really that helpful in designing programs or placing children into programs. In other words I could get the information I needed by careful observation. My job was to make sure all students could read at grade level by the time they left elementary school. That’s it. The black kids and the white kids could get to grade level in reading.
Did you see an increase in the number of kids with learning deficits in those 17 years? Slightly of topic, but I truly believe this number is increasing, quite dramatically. I myself have a child with a learning disability and it seems his deficit is becoming more and more common. He is not alone amongst his peers. It seems to be, to be somewhat of an epidemic.
Yours is a very complex question that I can’t answer with any level of certainty. And my expertise is in dyslexia specifically and not other types of LDs. My students frequently (about 30%) had co-morbid speech issues and “attention” issues. Because our school district implemented a program to remediate dyslexia we initially had a huge increase in referrals for testing. And as the program proved successful the referrals again increased. Also, there was a huge dump from the Special Education department into the dyslexia program because most elementary age children in Special Ed have a reading disability. As referrals increased there was pressure to narrow the definition of who qualified. (In Texas, at the time I taught, dyslexia was served as a 504 general education issue. It is now changing back). My experience is only in one school district so anything I noticed would be biased toward our demographics and considered a small sample size, and thus not valid. I will go out on a limb and say, in the population of children I tested, those with school difficulties had low scores in processing speed coupled with low working memory scores. These deficits seemed to ride along with dyslexia but may not have been the driver of the difficulty. I did not test students with autism, but over 30 years that group of students increased for sure. And behavior issues, including what people like to call ADHD, has definitely increased. Sometimes though we can’t tie it to a cause or a particular therapy. And it’s hard to know if behavior issues are biological or environmental or a combination.
Perhaps we could get beyond the controversy of racialdifferences in intelligence if we transitioned to a society in which anyone, regardless of intelligence, who works hard and plays by the rules could realistically look forward to a rich and rewarding life: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
If your idea of employing lower IQ workers part-time in rural factories were profitable, wouldn't it already have been weirdly implemented? Moreover, people become better employees through a full-time working experience in my view.
True, but the situation is more complicated than that. I work in a university, and am a part of course materials development teams. Our materials writers, all academics, know that they're not supposed to cite Wikipedia. But we catch them pilfering text from Wikipedia (sometimes directly, believe it or not; other times with a bit of paraphrasing or rewriting, but the structure is still there) far more often than you might think.
As I mentioned in a thread yesterday, Wikipedia is convenient, comprehensive, and free. It's quite a temptation to exploit it, especially when you're writing basic conceptual material for an intro-level course.
And now, obviously, generative AI has stepped into the same role. My team is catching lots of materials writers using ChatGPT or the like very liberally indeed. Some hide it better than others, and some we likely don't catch, because they're good at writing prompts. But then a strong argument can be made for just going with the flow on this anyway -- if the final written product does what it's supposed to do, and you can't pin it down as an obvious AI job, has an academic wrong actually been committed?
Another fine article. Thank You. Always worth the subscription.
All my professional experience is associated with Nuclear Power, which, due to the "hair on fire" effect of simply mentioning the word "Nuclear" amongst the Natives (try it in social settings sometime...) and *actually working* with what the USNRC terms special nuclear materials (https://www.nrc.gov/materials/types/sp-nucmaterials.html), creates an almost Biblical leprosy separation social effect amongst the general public, and the now Leprous man with the undoubtedly contaminated Body must maintain what we now call Social Distancing, Oh Dear! Unclean! Like believing (as I do) that different races have different, on average, strengths and weaknesses. (Again, Social Distancing, please)
Which, to be accurate as to Nuclear, began after the advent of the Movie "China Syndrome" followed helpfully by the accident at Three Mile Island, Unit 2, both in 1979. The fear at that time was palpable.
Subsequent accidents, despite the 1000's of reactor-years of safe operation, added to the Cloud of Disapproval.
Amongst physical science professionals, normality/thoughtful discussion reigned and this two-group ongoing lived experience characterized my few professional days on this troubled Orb.
That Our Friends at Wikipedia tracked, in Nuclear Power, with the folks who deal in IQ/Race/OMG! space is roughly co-linear in time and is evident upon review (to an engineering approximation).
At first, when Wikipedia was young (I also took a Degree in Computer Science beginning in 2000) and was not at all surprised by the Leprosy! effect, as various Editors who apparently knew something about Nuclear Power were surrounded and harried to the point where the subject had to be locked down for editing until calmer minds and keyboards reigned.
The two subjects (Nuclear Power and Race/IQ/OMG! are, in the US, in a roughly similar state, IMHO.
Nuclear Power growth and advancement (in the USA) is resisted by a swarm of enemies from Government to NGOs to Community Organizers, etc., as is the otherwise straightforward recognition of DNA differences amongst various racial groups. Simple acceptance of DNA differences and appropriate measures to reward all and everyone's specific strengths while minimizing their respective weaknesses seem the obvious next move, except (fill in the blank) would not be, well, happy, for reasons that still escape me.
Relief from the persecution of these areas shows the promise of helping propel our Nation into a more effective pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness and yet remain nearly completely hobbled.
We have nothing to lose but our chains. Wonderful Weekend Everyone!
Lots of typos in this, which suggests it was written quickly and angrily. Respectfully suggest you clean it up, so the impact is not blunted by distractions.
This version, from 2014, also was fairly good. It was written primarily by the Wikipedia user Maunus, who was personally opposed to a genetic explanation for group differences, but who also cared about the arguments for that position being adequately represented. There aren't many people like that left at Wikipedia anymore nowadays.
Some Wikipedia articles, oddly enough, make no mention of—let alone contain a long preamble warning about—the claim that race is simply a social construct with no biological or genetic meaning. Those include:
I thought the most interesting part of the Tracing Woodgrains piece was the middle section about Gerard's decline from Gandalf to Saruman to Soros.
<blockquote>
<b>The Early Romantic Years</>
early career sysadmin... proudly weird... a gay furry... his tribe... nerdy, edgy iconoclastic men
<b>Less Wrong and the twilight of the old internet</b>
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a high school dropout... AI, transhumanism... cryonics, life extension. Bayes' theorem, game theory, prediction markets. Roko's basilisk... [Gerard] was repulsed.
<b>The bitter end</b>
Mencius Moldbug... a Silicon Valley tech company founder... a reactionary return to order, unitary rule, hierarchy and strength... waging war against Gerard's beloved internet.
</blockquote>
I know the type well. They are no strangers to sex, drugs and nightclubs and they work unsocial hours, but they always turn up to work. They know a lot about computer science, but it did not teach them to assess evidence. Iconoclastic, but not as much as they think they are. Having found validation they cling to it They know they are right, their views are a package deal and anyone who mounts a serious challenge to their smug enlightenment must be a modern William Jennings Bryan.
That is how we get from 2010
<blockquote>
many scholars... the observation... this debate... meaningfully quantify... proposed explanation
</blockquote>
to 2024
<blockquote>
modern science has concluded... the scientific consensus... pseudoscientific claims... such beliefs... broadly rejected by scientists
I am retired now but gave IQ tests for about 17 years as part of my job as an “academic language therapist” otherwise known as a dyslexia specialist for 17 years. I also administered IQ test as part of my job as the “gifted and talented” coordinator for a few short years. In any case, an IQ test is made up of several subtests such as long term memory, short term memory, working memory, crystallized intelligence, processing speed, visual perception etc. and a few more (my long term memory is diminished 😁). I have never seen any discussion on the IQ topic that stratified the data by subtest. That would be elucidating. Most of the children I tested that had profound learning deficits had low scores in working memory. I tested many with 90th percentile scores for crystallized intelligence, but 40th percentile scores for working memory. The way the scores laid out gave much more important information than the cluster score. The cluster score was not that helpful in understanding the student. The schools I taught in were mostly populated by white students, but as the years went on we had more cultural diversity including black, Indian, and Chinese students. I was assessing for reading specifically, and all students I tested were having academic difficulty, so my memory of the data is biased in that way. I was able to teach ALL of the students to read if their scores mapped out in the pattern common to dyslexia. While testing I frequently found students with high subtests scores which were negated by one or two lower subtest scores. So what does it all mean?? After many years I found the IQ test was irrelevant for identifying the students who needed reading intervention. I felt like I could select them with confidence based on a teacher interview, a parent interview, and a student interview. Our purpose in school is to facilitate grade level achievement at a minimum. Anything beyond that appears to be the result of the family values and structure and student motivation in my experience.
Huh? There is volumous research on so-called Spearman's Hypothesis, which concerns the relationship between the magnitude of group differences on subtests and subtest features such as g-loadings. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the topic knows this. It's well discussed in the IO literature, in addition to differential and educational psychology.
Bridget Cresto is probably talking about popular-references to IQ and not academic-references. In other words, pop-references treat it with a touch of the astrological, as some magic number.
I am referring to the IQ scores schools typically use to assess learning disabilities and or “giftedness”. We used the WISC most often for IQ and administered a number of achievement tests as well. The Woodcock-Johnson was the achievement test often used. My point is that the IQ number was not really that helpful in designing programs or placing children into programs. In other words I could get the information I needed by careful observation. My job was to make sure all students could read at grade level by the time they left elementary school. That’s it. The black kids and the white kids could get to grade level in reading.
It sounds like the IQ subtests are similar to the ASVAB subscores
Did you see an increase in the number of kids with learning deficits in those 17 years? Slightly of topic, but I truly believe this number is increasing, quite dramatically. I myself have a child with a learning disability and it seems his deficit is becoming more and more common. He is not alone amongst his peers. It seems to be, to be somewhat of an epidemic.
Yours is a very complex question that I can’t answer with any level of certainty. And my expertise is in dyslexia specifically and not other types of LDs. My students frequently (about 30%) had co-morbid speech issues and “attention” issues. Because our school district implemented a program to remediate dyslexia we initially had a huge increase in referrals for testing. And as the program proved successful the referrals again increased. Also, there was a huge dump from the Special Education department into the dyslexia program because most elementary age children in Special Ed have a reading disability. As referrals increased there was pressure to narrow the definition of who qualified. (In Texas, at the time I taught, dyslexia was served as a 504 general education issue. It is now changing back). My experience is only in one school district so anything I noticed would be biased toward our demographics and considered a small sample size, and thus not valid. I will go out on a limb and say, in the population of children I tested, those with school difficulties had low scores in processing speed coupled with low working memory scores. These deficits seemed to ride along with dyslexia but may not have been the driver of the difficulty. I did not test students with autism, but over 30 years that group of students increased for sure. And behavior issues, including what people like to call ADHD, has definitely increased. Sometimes though we can’t tie it to a cause or a particular therapy. And it’s hard to know if behavior issues are biological or environmental or a combination.
> And it’s hard to know if behavior issues are biological or environmental or a combination.
Also some of the "behavior issues" are schools pathologizing normal behavior.
Surprised that web archive still has that. If you ever find that it's scrubbed its archives for inexplicable reasons, use archive dot today.
I’m not seeing anything at that web archive link. Just a note that the URL hasn’t been archived.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100213035108/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
I get the message:
“ Hrm.
The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.”
Maybe it’s banned in Canada? Someone linked to a copy in a different archive and it worked for me.
https://archive.is/BXAlO
That one works.
What I meant was use www.archive.today in case the internet archive Steve used below doesn't work. Internet archive is lefty.
Searching a site like is difficult from an iPhone. That’s all I have.
Perhaps we could get beyond the controversy of racialdifferences in intelligence if we transitioned to a society in which anyone, regardless of intelligence, who works hard and plays by the rules could realistically look forward to a rich and rewarding life: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
If your idea of employing lower IQ workers part-time in rural factories were profitable, wouldn't it already have been weirdly implemented? Moreover, people become better employees through a full-time working experience in my view.
There's a third option often mentioned on substack: UBI. Maybe the above proposal would forestall that very unfortunate idea.
When was the last time you saw Wikipedia used as a reference.
Nuff said.
True, but the situation is more complicated than that. I work in a university, and am a part of course materials development teams. Our materials writers, all academics, know that they're not supposed to cite Wikipedia. But we catch them pilfering text from Wikipedia (sometimes directly, believe it or not; other times with a bit of paraphrasing or rewriting, but the structure is still there) far more often than you might think.
As I mentioned in a thread yesterday, Wikipedia is convenient, comprehensive, and free. It's quite a temptation to exploit it, especially when you're writing basic conceptual material for an intro-level course.
And now, obviously, generative AI has stepped into the same role. My team is catching lots of materials writers using ChatGPT or the like very liberally indeed. Some hide it better than others, and some we likely don't catch, because they're good at writing prompts. But then a strong argument can be made for just going with the flow on this anyway -- if the final written product does what it's supposed to do, and you can't pin it down as an obvious AI job, has an academic wrong actually been committed?
Definitely sounds like an ethics question.
I will check with Claudine Gay.
Here's an idea for a website. Wikipedia, but from the internet archive before the weirdos took over. Retrowiki or something.
Encyclopedia Britannica: What am I, chopped liver?
Damn. I like to imagine that if I'd just paused a minute longer I'd have come up with that.
Well done.
Another fine article. Thank You. Always worth the subscription.
All my professional experience is associated with Nuclear Power, which, due to the "hair on fire" effect of simply mentioning the word "Nuclear" amongst the Natives (try it in social settings sometime...) and *actually working* with what the USNRC terms special nuclear materials (https://www.nrc.gov/materials/types/sp-nucmaterials.html), creates an almost Biblical leprosy separation social effect amongst the general public, and the now Leprous man with the undoubtedly contaminated Body must maintain what we now call Social Distancing, Oh Dear! Unclean! Like believing (as I do) that different races have different, on average, strengths and weaknesses. (Again, Social Distancing, please)
Which, to be accurate as to Nuclear, began after the advent of the Movie "China Syndrome" followed helpfully by the accident at Three Mile Island, Unit 2, both in 1979. The fear at that time was palpable.
Subsequent accidents, despite the 1000's of reactor-years of safe operation, added to the Cloud of Disapproval.
Amongst physical science professionals, normality/thoughtful discussion reigned and this two-group ongoing lived experience characterized my few professional days on this troubled Orb.
That Our Friends at Wikipedia tracked, in Nuclear Power, with the folks who deal in IQ/Race/OMG! space is roughly co-linear in time and is evident upon review (to an engineering approximation).
At first, when Wikipedia was young (I also took a Degree in Computer Science beginning in 2000) and was not at all surprised by the Leprosy! effect, as various Editors who apparently knew something about Nuclear Power were surrounded and harried to the point where the subject had to be locked down for editing until calmer minds and keyboards reigned.
The two subjects (Nuclear Power and Race/IQ/OMG! are, in the US, in a roughly similar state, IMHO.
Nuclear Power growth and advancement (in the USA) is resisted by a swarm of enemies from Government to NGOs to Community Organizers, etc., as is the otherwise straightforward recognition of DNA differences amongst various racial groups. Simple acceptance of DNA differences and appropriate measures to reward all and everyone's specific strengths while minimizing their respective weaknesses seem the obvious next move, except (fill in the blank) would not be, well, happy, for reasons that still escape me.
Relief from the persecution of these areas shows the promise of helping propel our Nation into a more effective pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness and yet remain nearly completely hobbled.
We have nothing to lose but our chains. Wonderful Weekend Everyone!
I heard nuclear power sets hair on fire.
Lots of typos in this, which suggests it was written quickly and angrily. Respectfully suggest you clean it up, so the impact is not blunted by distractions.
There are a few other old versions of this article that I think are better than the one you linked to from 2010.
https://archive.is/8cYHT
This version, from 2007, is probably the most detailed the article has ever been, although it didn't stay that way for long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_and_intelligence&oldid=637890061
This version, from 2014, also was fairly good. It was written primarily by the Wikipedia user Maunus, who was personally opposed to a genetic explanation for group differences, but who also cared about the arguments for that position being adequately represented. There aren't many people like that left at Wikipedia anymore nowadays.
Thanks. I can see that archived link, unlike the other one.
I'm a Christian but the leftist creationists are persistent but they will eventually lose
Some Wikipedia articles, oddly enough, make no mention of—let alone contain a long preamble warning about—the claim that race is simply a social construct with no biological or genetic meaning. Those include:
Race and sports
Race and crime in the United States
Racial quota
Racism in Africa
Reverse racism
Odd, no?
I thought the most interesting part of the Tracing Woodgrains piece was the middle section about Gerard's decline from Gandalf to Saruman to Soros.
<blockquote>
<b>The Early Romantic Years</>
early career sysadmin... proudly weird... a gay furry... his tribe... nerdy, edgy iconoclastic men
<b>Less Wrong and the twilight of the old internet</b>
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a high school dropout... AI, transhumanism... cryonics, life extension. Bayes' theorem, game theory, prediction markets. Roko's basilisk... [Gerard] was repulsed.
<b>The bitter end</b>
Mencius Moldbug... a Silicon Valley tech company founder... a reactionary return to order, unitary rule, hierarchy and strength... waging war against Gerard's beloved internet.
</blockquote>
I know the type well. They are no strangers to sex, drugs and nightclubs and they work unsocial hours, but they always turn up to work. They know a lot about computer science, but it did not teach them to assess evidence. Iconoclastic, but not as much as they think they are. Having found validation they cling to it They know they are right, their views are a package deal and anyone who mounts a serious challenge to their smug enlightenment must be a modern William Jennings Bryan.
That is how we get from 2010
<blockquote>
many scholars... the observation... this debate... meaningfully quantify... proposed explanation
</blockquote>
to 2024
<blockquote>
modern science has concluded... the scientific consensus... pseudoscientific claims... such beliefs... broadly rejected by scientists
</blockquote>