Jason Arday dead

[ThisWiseRobin]

Just putting this out there, but just heared.A sad end to a whole sorry mess.

It is interesting. I think you’re highlighting how we do attach value to perceived intelligence, at both an individual and group level. Lots of people ascribe their opposing tribe, whether left/right, racist/anti-racist as less intelligent, and themselves by default as more intelligent.

Lots of intelligent racists, in history and now, Education isn’t inoculation against any kind of prejudice unfortunately.

It seems there’s a lot you are finding fun in this convo, which is great.

If we move away from the argument from mirth, however, tested IQ correlates strongly with educational outcomes, lifetime earnings and negatively with schizophrenia, mortality, incarceration, dementia in women, and many other things.

There are of course some bad things that correlate positively with tested IQ.

So how are we going to work out which is “harder” or worse?

Here’s my proposal: your child. You can choose for them to be one sd above the mean or one sd below in tested IQ. Which one are you choosing?

Correlation does not equal causation....

How terribly terribly sad this whole situation is.
I feel bad for JA that he could not find a way through this without taking his life.
He was set up and used by the ideological disgracefulness of Cambridge University.
Without them and other guilty establishments he would not have been in this position and would still be alive.
You cannot blame him for taking advantage of the disgrace that is DEI.
He should never have been appointed, it’s as ridiculous as appointing an airline pilot based on ideology rather than competency, with the catastrophic results that could follow.
Cambridge University, he was their poster boy and it’s massively backfired on them.
Disgracefully they are trying to blame anyone else but themselves.

'Lots of intelligent racists, in history and now, Education isn’t inoculation against any kind of prejudice unfortunately.'

You see my personal view - is that one cannot be intelligent and racist. To be intelligent means to understand how ridiculous it is to think that race affects innate intelligence. Environmental factors - eg. education quality obv then affect perceived intelligence.

Indeed. Agree .

(Bit like immigrants coming to the UK for cash, health care and a roof over their head. Why wouldn't they take advantage of that open offer. I know I would if I was born in a place where I had none of those things.)

Strong agree.

Cambridge have simply compounded their failings.

Utterly shameful.

I agree it’s shaky across countries, though much less reason to treat it as shaky within countries.

And although I’m arguing against taking it as a measure of worth, I do recognise that it in fact often is.

I just think that we’d have a much more healthy long-term outcome if we tried to remove as much of the moral freight from it as we can, and replace taboo with understanding.

I also note that denying there could be differences often creates problems of its own. Harvard going to the Supreme Court to argue that Asians have defective personalities which is why they are admitted at much lower rates than their test scores would predict, because the idea that rates could be different is a moral taboo in elite circles. That leads to direct anti-Asian discrimination. Or how do we explain why such a massively disproportionate share of Nobel prize winners are ethnically Jewish. They must be cheating, right? Probably got it all stitched up between them. These logical consequences aren’t harmless either.

So a coin flip for your child?

Yes. That is definitely true. So I do at base understand why it’s going to be treated as a mark of worth and thus as a taboo. I just think it’s the wrong way to go.

Like, if everyone thought women were inferior to men because they are weaker, the right answer isn’t “actually there’s no sexed strength difference”, it’s “that’s a stupid mesure of value”.

You cannot blame him for taking advantage of the disgrace that is DEI.
He should never have been appointed, it’s as ridiculous as appointing an airline pilot based on ideology rather than competency, with the catastrophic results that could follow.

I totally disagree with this. Why can’t you apportion blame to someone for exploiting DEI, exaggerating their achievements and using accusations of racism to close down scrutiny? I apportion blame the same as I would to anyone taking a job as a pilot whilst knowing they were not qualified for the job and so presented a hazard.

Why didn’t anyone that loved and adore him, not notice he has pathological issues and the most loving thing to have done was go get him some professional health

What you said is this. Let me break down your thinking on this being as you don't seem to be consciously aware of this yourself.

The 'fact' which lies beneath a statement like this is that his loved ones did not notice his issues or do anything about them. Your statement does not make sense without this underlying 'fact'.

Except its not a fact. Its something you made up. To criticise his family. And it is a criticism looking to spread the blame to them.

Ironic really that in a post about a fantasist you are also confusing things you have made up with reality. You perhaps are more Arday adjacent that you care to acknowledge.

Furthermore you cannot ' get someone help' who has mental health issues ( and we don't know if Arday did - no-one knows his motivations), unless they are so severe they can be sectioned. People have to want to seek and engage with mental health support. No-one knows if his family tried and were unsuccessful. Which is why its pointless to speculate as well as immoral in the circumstance.

And btw, interesting that you have dismissed me into a social box with your 'ilk' comment. What ilk do you think I am in? Whatever it is, its not one I am in and I don't even think I have opinions on this story that you seem to think I do. This is yet another fantasy you have created and confused with reality.

Yes your pompous faux intellectual response from someone acting in a grubby tabloid manner, and with even less critical thinking, did make me feel contemptuous of you. Unapologetic for that.

What an ironic comment coming from you!

For me, on racism is an emotional response (probably fear but maybe something else too) and therefore intelligence is nothing to do with it. Because quite - race does not and cannot influence innate intelligence, criminality, greed or carnality (to list a few things thrown at various groups).

Yet didn’t recognise any traits in her son that may have warranted some medical intervention

Oh look, here's another 'fact' you just made up.

And beneath it a deflection from the fact you made it up, by attacking the person (me) who pointed out you made it up.

Very, very similar to the tactics Arday and Cambridge took their untruths were exposed in fact...

Shaky within countries is potentially explicable by massive social and economic variation though, affecting nutrition, air quality, epigenetics etc.

Agree that denying is not the right route either - though questioning whether there is really a genetic basis for differences isn’t the same as denying they exist. I’ve seen that description of the Harvard case but need to read the detail myself before I form a view - maybe it really was that base but surely not??

To a bear we all taste like chicken!

You said: tested IQ correlates strongly with educational outcomes, lifetime earnings and negatively with schizophrenia, mortality, incarceration, dementia in women, and many other things.

The thing is, educational outcomes correlate strongly with those things, and have quite a strong explanatory power. So if you can find anything that correlates with educational outcomes, it will also correlate accordingly with those things.

What else affects educational outcomes? Maternal education level, level of household disadvantage etc. If IQ correlates with educational outcomes, then it will also correlate with level of household disadvantage.

The Harvard data (discussed by Cofnas) wasn't anything to do with IQ.

Also, she may have noticed them and talked about it and he may have not been receptive to this.

If people are going to make up stuff and present it as true, how are they different from people like Arday?

Plus, its just immoral to spread misinformation about a grieving family.

It also shows a stunning lack of knowledge of mental health issues ( if he had any, we also don't know that) and the feasibility of persuading someone to seek help. Thinking you can just point out to someone that there behaviour is a bit off and they will go, ' gosh yes it is, I must do something about that', is stunningly ignorant. Especially for someone whose alleged MH issues are working really, really well for them as they were for JA until the end.

So to conclude that as he lied his family must not have pointed out him he was a liar is utterly bogus.

I am sure the response posts I will get from @DestituteDesperate will also help to demonstrate that pointing out to someone that what they are saying is not true or known, does not in anyway dissuade them from believing said things. In fact she already has.

I’ve just looked it up again and I’ve slightly mischaracterised it. The plaintiffs’ case was along the lines I said (that Harvard penalised Asians on their personality scores in order to justify discriminating against them). And indeed Harvard does score Asian applicants’ personalities lower than other groups and uses this for admissions decisions. But Harvard’s own case was that this reflects differences in teacher recommendations not literally that Asians do indeed have defective personalities.

Was that aimed at me?

Yes, what you said (repeatedly) and doubled down on was made up and no amount of you not acknowledging this will change that.

Yes. And thanks to twins studies, we know that tested IQ correlates with educational outcomes even after controlling for maternal/household environment. We also know that the effect diminishes only a little after those controls, ie IQ matters much more than those factors.

Absolutely.

It’s the very definition of the verb ‘grifting’, surely?