Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Inquisitor80

Regulars
  • Posts

    18
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Inquisitor80

  1. DavidOdden,

    I don't see that at all. It's so objective that a computer can give you the answer, without the need for a human scorer.

    The answers to the test may be objective,being as how they can be scored by a computer, but the questions themsleves are designed/worded/constructed by men, and that makes them subjective. Rather that the men who make up the test think that they can test IQ with the questions makes it subjective. (i am not implying that man is subjective, merely that he can act in that fashion)

    What does it mean to "fail", in this context? Can you give any example at all of a "failure"?

    If you do not know the subjects or have insufficient knowledge in the fields they are asking questions from then you "fail" or get a low score. This is not truly a test of his IQ but a test of his knowledge, a separate thing.

    The whole what? A specific question should "represent" something specific, and a more general question should represent something more... general. So what exactly are you objecting to?

    I ask you 20 general questions, you answer 18 right, or 90%. Therefore i say you are in the top 10 percent of intelligent people. Is this a good test? Or should i ask 1000? 10,000? Asking some questions cannot encompass all of knowledge, which is not the same as IQ

    There is a perfectly valid objection to intelligence testing, that you have to have some experience and training in such modes of reasoning. But this is natural: only a Kantian would believe in an a priori notion of "intelligence" that is totally divorced from experience. Of course your ability to score well on those exams has to do with your experiences. The proof is that the typical !Kung hunter-gather can perform just as well on these exams after they have received training in modes of reasoning that we have developed in the west after millenia of struggle.
    My general objection is this: A man can be "smart" or "intelligent" without having been taught anything. He can use the power of his mind to get by from basically zero. Where do you think we came from? God didn't wave his hand and make us with everything we have, therefore at some point before now there was point when man had to learn for himself, and i would argue that the ones responsible for the advances that brought us today where intelligent. Give these same men that harness fire for the first time or the discoverer of the lever a basic IQ test today and he will fail (IE get a low score). He is not dumb he just doesn't know the subject manor (he may also not know how to read and therefore get a zero)

    Maybe i am not efficiently conveying my message, we may just be going around each other.

    I bet $500 that any educated person from the 1300's would do as well as one from the 2000's. Money will meet mouth: all you need to do is provide the test subject

    As a side note: If i ever develop a method to travel through time or to pull people from other areas in time(not possible) then i would be to busy making money hand over fist to remember to collect your $500 :huh:

    <edited for spelling>

  2. ...my understanding of IQ is ones CAPACITY for intelligence....

    All i am saying is that the tests are flawed and cannot be relied upon. They say they test capacity, but they do so in a flawed manor. It is like me judging your intelligence by how well you use Russian grammar. If you did know Russian you would appear brilliant, if not you as smart as pondscum. Like i said they are just not valid.

    I think it is best to merely state that AR (through my knowledge of her works) is one of the smartest people i know. :nuke:

  3. Why?

    Those tests are very subjective and are very prone to failure. They ask general questions and expect it to represent the whole. Well they don't because you don't have to know any specific information to be smart. I am sure there where smart people back in the 1300's but they would fail horrible on these tests.

    As a side note, why do you care? Does her brilliance need validation?

  4. Although i like the land idea, for limiting such things as voting and the what not, i can already see a few flaws.

    What is to stop some forward thinking individual from selling a 1 foot by 1 foot square of land? Now whoever buys this land is a land owner. Now you multiply this up, and now being a land owner is meaningless. Not to mention the hassles it would mean for people trying to build near that cut up property 20, 30, 50 years later when those people are dead. Now what do you do to solve this? modify it so it is land owner of "X" size? Or perhaps a length of time owned times size = citizen?

  5. I'm with DrDriveby on this one. Allow me to explain:

    ---

    The thought has crossed my mind that it would be nice if someone dropped a big bomb on Indonesia to finish the job and to eliminate the "need" for MY rights to be violated.

    ---

    AND not only apologize for them, but also sacrifice them; give them up to the aforementioned savages and irrationalists. It makes me sick.

    I cannot agree with that any more. Although i would cheer long and hard if we actually dropped bombs on them and ended the problem, the screaming left would have a flaming cow over that. Besides Bush is to much of a softy to do that anyway.

    But what i would love to see is this: Oh you don't like us? We give too little? We owe you? Well piss off, the tap is closed, you get nothing.

    Give them nothing, no foreign aid, no hardship this, not famine that. Nothing.

    When they stop being royal b*tches to us then maybe they get a little back.

    If i had my way then everybody who is receiving a free ride would find themselves with no more funds. That includes the people in this country that expect it.

  6. I would like to add a small rant to this thread. It goes something like this:

    I hate Christmas, you know why, because of other people. It is bad enough that the whole shin-dig is a government endorsed slap in the face to anybody who is not a Christian. The bad part is the looks you get from people when you say you don't care about Christmas, the looks, the whispers, the hushed conversations when you tell your co-workers you don't want to pitch in for a gift to your boss. The looks of contempt when you tell them you don't want to be part of their secret Santa nonsense. The cries of scrooge or "bah humbug" from people that could care less to talk to you 355 days of they year, but it is Christmas time so they get chatty all of the sudden. I hate the altruism shoved down my thought when the charity collector walks by and gives his speech. I hate the Songs, oh man do i hate the songs. I hate the news every year about somebody stealing baby Jesus from this or that. I hate the news stories that X person is offended because there is a Y in front of government build Q.

    The rant goes on but i will stop, for now...

    <PS: Punk, i like your sig, and i do know where it comes from :D >

  7. I don't agree that all stigmas are based off of religious doctrine. There is a stigma against having sex with your sister...

    You misunderstand what i wrote, maybe it was poorly worded, but what i said was:

    For the most part those stigmas are based off of religious doctrine
    Those, meaning the stigmas attached to children out of wedlock. The stigmas about your sister are unrelated, and are good ideas although the messenger is bad.

    Having large numbers of children born out of wedlock is a serious problem for a society (just look at stats)

    Again, i said:

    If you can pay for the child and care for the child and educate the child then go for it.
    If these conditions are met then society should have no problem. I would also point out that your stats are based mostly off of lazy welfare recipients and not real working people.

    Zoso:

    I don't have an ethical objection to it. I would just, personally, be uncomfortable with it due to the backlash, mainly from our families. We were thinking we would get married before the actual baby was born, but that doesn't change the pre-marital conception. And, since her family is Catholic, that would be a bad thing.

    I understand your concerns, but at some point you have to stop caring about what the irrational people in society say about things and do what is right for you. Even if those people are your own parents. Personally i don't listen to anything (philosophically speaking) that my parents say anymore. They are both irrational monsters who's own contradictions will destroy them one day. But i still love them as my parents.

  8. For the most part those stigmas are based off of religious doctrine. Most people that believe in that as a stigma these days are the type of people you shouldn't care what their option is on anything.

    If you can pay for the child and care for the child and educate the child then go for it. Ignore what the brain-dead masses think about such things.

    I cannot speak and will not speak for anybody else on this board but I say you should not concern yourself with this at all. If the hag that lives on the corner gives you a dirty look when you walk by the deficiency is hers, not yours.

  9. I have been using the same system since High School and it has worked very well for me. It is a passive system so it takes little work and actually helps me out in other areas. My system is simple. I wear Black. I wear black every day and every night. I don't dress up like a Goth or anything, i don't have piercings or tattoos or anything else. I just wear black.

    Most people will make a quick judgment about somebody based on how they look (prejudge). They then splice this with all the stereotypes that they have heard and then treat accordingly.

    I don't want to talk to those people, anybody shallow or vapid enough to judge me based on the color of my clothes is not worth 5 minutes of my time.

    Another up side to this is that getting dressed in the morning is very easy. But it does have a down side to. As with any other powerful filter, every now and again it filters out a person that may be worth some time.

    But with any system you have to take the good with the bad. Anyway just throwing in my two cents.

  10. If we started to experiment on captured terrorists it would certainly anger the terrorists who were not captured. It may possibly lead them to do even worse things to the hostages they capture.

    Worse? Worse than what? I am thinking that you cannot get much worse than cutting somebody’s head off with a dull knife with no drugs.

    Besides we cannot rule ourselves by "fear of what they may do"

    I am of the option that criminals, ANY criminals, have no/limited rights until they suffer the penalty for the crime they committed. If they committed murder, then they forfeit life/rights and the judicial system can do with them as the law(s) deem appropriate.

    Now all of this is based off of having a logical/rational judicial system, if we are talking about what exists in the US today, well then the death penalty needs to be frozen, and torture is right out.

  11. Unfortuneitly i had no opertunity to sue them. They move like a week latter, besides they where trash and nothing to their names. Also if the "dog" is allowed one free bite by the state what basis would the lawsuit be on?

    the same reasonable care should be used with dogs which are used as a means of self defense......and this reasonable care apparently was not used by the dog owner whose dog bit you.

    The problem is that this female that was holding the leash was unable to anything the beast because it was stronger than her. She would have needed a cattle-prod to keep the animal from coming right for me. This is the equivalant of playing catch with a hand grenade, with the pin removed.

    What really made me mad was that the cop said had i injured the dog in the course of the attack it would have been fine, but now that it is over there wasn't anything that i could do about it.

  12. I can tell you all that these "dogs" are not pets they are attack animals. I was bit by one, I got lucky, i didn't loose my leg.

    The stupid creature misjudged where my leg was in my loose work slacks and didn't get in a bite before i had a chance to react.

    The owner of this beast was a 90 pound female that the foul creature dragged straight to me. She didn't even have the decency to worn me the dog was coming. One minute i was standing in the parking lot of my apartment moving things around in the truck of my car, the next there was a pit bull on my leg.

    It bit me just below the knee on the back side.

    The lady the apologized profusely and said it was a nice "dog" and it had never bitten before. At this point her husband/boyfriend/brother/whatever came outside and dragged the animal inside.

    I called the cops and fill out a complaint and demanded that the beast be destroyed. I was politely informed that in NY all "dogs" get one free bite and that i could not press charges.

    300 dollars of medical bills later and 2 years of healing and i still have a scar and congealed blood under the surface of my leg.

    Don't tell me these animals should not be ban. We do not allow people to walk around with grenades with the pin removed, we do not allow people to have lions/tigers/bears as pets. There is a line where you have to say no, Pit bulls are over that line.

  13. I was discussing this in a thread on another board but a few of my questions went unaddressed. So i figured that i should try here and see what you all have to say...

    In a pure L-F society what would we do with the persons that the courts judged guilty of crimes bad enough to require a punishment beyond fines but lesser than to require execution? The current answer is prison. I am wondering a few things about this solution.

    First who runs it? Is it private or is it under the courts? Who pays for it?

    Also I have seen the joke that some prisons are and the over the top security that others are. This leads me to believe that this system is fatally flawed. But is there a replacement?

    In a pure L-F society what would be done about the criminally insane?

    I am talking about those that are so bonkers that they must be wired wrong or something, that may or may not be dangerous. (but do we want to take the chance?)

    If we put them in a something, who pays for it? Can we execute people who are obviously broken? If we leave them be, who is responsible when they go ape-s*** and kill 25 people with a weedwacker.

    I have more questions but this is a good start

  14. I disagree.

    What if a credit bureau falsely reports that "Godless Capitalist does not pay his bills, has no reliable source of income, and has been convicted of fraud twice" and, as a result, you lose your job, cannot get a mortgage, rent an apartment, or finance a car?

    If they do so you should be able to take them to court. If you can prove damage to your person or property then the court can find them liable and have to pay for their actions. This can be in the whatever form you and the relevant bureau can agree to or is ordered by the court.

    Maybe that is a bit simplistic, but i support the simplest solutions to problems most times.

    I am of the opinion that slander and the whatnot should not be illegal, but you are still responsible for what you say. If you yell "Fire!" in a crowded building and people or their property is damaged due to your actions then you are liable for those injuries and damages.

    If i am missing something, i don't think i am, let me know.

  15. RationalCop - You should try butcher shops, the meat is fresher and often better quality.

    ------

    When an animal (tasty animal) speaks to me, then i will consider not killing it for food. Until that time they are raised in most cases for the only perpose but to feed me. If I(nobody) didn't eat them then they would not have been born in the first place.

    Need i remind anybody what this world would be like if we held animal rights above human right, like the kook lefties want?

    All i need say is India, they let monkeys take over towns because it is illegal or something to kill them.

    Let me tell you, i say pave the earth. On a more realitsic note, only humans have rights, animals are either property, pests, or dead.

×
×
  • Create New...