How important are brains?

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Viewing 18 posts - 51 through 68 (of 68 total)
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  • #969467
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    midwesterner- where did I mention that single parent homes have anything to do with how smart someone is? That’s entirely Welfares credit. Again, slavery did have a factor in this. It takes many generations for families to establish themselves economically. Without Welfare, that’s easier done in a two parent home. Now that there is Welfare, a husband and father who isn’t earning much money feels like his family would be better off without him. They’ll get more money from Welfare than they would from his income. I’ve heard of several real families where this was the main reason the husband/father left.

    #969468
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    I’m not a biologist, but I don’t think that is how DNA works. For one thing, there is no such thing as a “smart” gene. You cannot pass on being “stupid” genetically to your children, it’s impossible. Also, the African Masai tribe in Kenya and Tanzania has people that are very tall, and were tall thousands of years before Europeans came and took slaves.

    It’s not one gene, it’s a combination of genes. Since stupid slaves were preferred (read Uncle Tom’s Cabin), they were more likely to be allowed to keep their kids. Since in normal populations a smart person is more likely to become rich and able to afford more children, after a few generations of freedom the balance should be able to go back.

    #969469

    People don’t choose to live on welfare. It’s what happens when they lose their jobs, and are financially destitute. Why would any father decide to not work because he gets welfare. You realize that a parent with two kids gets 12,000 dollars a year on welfare, right? You also know that the poverty line is 30,000 dollars, right? You’re basically telling me that fathers living3 times below the poverty line would decide to leave because their families are so rich????

    #969470

    Gamanit, slaves were technically not allowed to be taught to write and read, but that rule was trampled on. black preachers secretly taught slaves, free blacks taught slaves, the slaves that were literate frequently shared what they knew with other slaves. abolitionists also had secret schools.

    #969471
    midwesterner
    Participant

    Rf: And how much money did a nation of impoverished and oppressed Holocaust refugees have?

    Gam: they way I understood your comment was you were working off of RF’s philosophy, as in ??? ???, ??? ????? slavery was a cause of the lower intelligence. If you only meant economic circumstance and not intelligence, then I stand corrected.

    As long as it was brought up, may I ask something? Slavery ended almost 150 years ago. Why is that still being an excuse for anything anymore? If we can rise above the Holocaust to become a thriving community, an economic force, in 20 or 30 years, let alone the 68 years it is now, how come they are still blaming slavery after all these years? (This question is not coming from a ??? ???? ??? ??? ?? ?? ???? ??? perspective. I know it comes from ????. But He runs it through a ??? process. Can’t they at least try?)

    #969472
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    He’s not deciding not to work. He figures that since this job thing isn’t really working out, his family is better off without him while he tries to sort it out. Of course he’ll tell himself that as soon as he has a job that can support his family he’ll come back… it just doesn’t end up happening. I’m not making this up- I’ve heard it from families where this is what happened. As a single parent home they were eligible for enough government aid to make it, whereas when the father was in the picture they couldn’t afford clothing.

    #969473
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    midwesterner- I don’t know about your family, but my family prewar ran businesses. After the war, although they didn’t have any money, they knew how to run a business. Also, they grew up with a certain level of comfort, and couldn’t be comfortable with less than that. It wasn’t just a nice dream for them to have their own apartment and nice furniture- it was normality. Yes, throughout the holocaust they didn’t have that, but that was not their normality. The slaves that were let free did not have the intelligence, business skills, or standards of the general population. They have less to strive for. My grandparents found it worthwhile to go without furniture and use all their factory earnings to invest in building their own business because they knew they could. They had already done it successfully in Europe before everything was taken away from them. They actually never made it to the wealth they had prewar, but they did earn enough to survive on. It’s much harder to move to a higher economic bracket than to go back to your own…

    #969474

    That’s highly unlikely because on welfare a family gets only 12,000 dollars with 2 kids, even with one parent. Are you telling me they could live off that little money, without a working dad??

    Midwesterner: There were already millions and millions of Jews from eastern europe that came during the late 1800s and early 1900s to america. They were already starting to do well by the time the holocaust ended. Malcolm Gladwell also writes about why Jews are successful- from a review-

    #969475
    frumnotyeshivish
    Participant

    Now I’m sensing racism. From many places. As soon as the discussion shifted from observed correlations to hypothetical causations, biases and judgments shone through clearly. Destructive racism has killed and hurt many. Its hard to see how perpetuating such attitudes are constructive.

    #969476
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    frumnotyeshivish- I know you likely won’t believe me, but I’m actually not racist. I’m talking about averages here, but every person is a person for himself. Just like Ashkanazi jews tend to be worse at spacial reasoning compared to the general population, doesn’t mean there can’t be an Ashkenazi jew that’s good at it. Spacial reasoning happens to be one of my strong points. Judging an individual based on his race is just wrong.

    #969477
    Toi
    Participant

    im not rascist; i hate everybody equally.

    #969478
    haifagirl
    Participant

    I would not consider marrying somebody unintelligent. That could be why I’m not married. Not enough smart guys out there.

    #969479
    benignuman
    Participant

    haifagirl,

    If IQ is your definition of intelligence, statistically there are more “smart guys” than “smart girls.”

    #969480
    nitpicker
    Participant

    “Ashkanazi jews tend to be worse at spacial reasoning compared to the general population

    Very interesting. I would like to know more about this and how it was determined. Sources?

    #969481
    🐵 ⌨ Gamanit
    Participant

    A 2005 scientific paper, “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”, proposed that Ashkenazi Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence but lower spatial intelligence than other ethnic groups

    #969482
    King19
    Member

    I have to disagree vehemently against RD. Only reason why the Syria didn’t get into the professions, was bec they came straight off the boat. So they went into business, and bli ayinhara are very successful. The newer generation, are soon many talmidei chachamim , geniuses, And sincere bachurim.very wrong on u r observations RD. Don’t like the generalization of negativity against those special people

    #969483
    popa_bar_abba
    Participant

    I think the reason all you folks are dumb is from reading my posts.

    QED

    #969484
    Sam2
    Participant

    PBA: That’s why I’m not dumb. I never read your posts.

    How, then, do I ever know what your posts say? It’s simple. I have a dumb person read them first. If he thinks your post is intelligent, I tell him not to read it to me. If he thinks it’s dumb or doesn’t understand it, then I know it’s safe to read.

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