James Watson: Avoid Black People

we really don't need to do this.

James Watson bottle opener

This is basically The Bell Curve all over again.

the thread title could've been phrased more accurately to reflect his in actual fact more disturbing opinion.

oh geez, you're right Frogman! sorry!

and yeah, i guess blueski's right. i was still *_* when I read the article, though. c.f. his crazy opinions on genetically engineering pretty girls.

was it watson or crick, that did all the acid?

Crick.

intelligence isn't genetically influenced in any way?

*disclaimer*

not agreeing with theory, not supporting racism, sexism, or an other -ism, just wondering.

Here we go...

I don't think you can make a blanket statement that one race is genetically more intelligent than another without making a culturally-loaded definition of the word "intelligence".

point taken.

not to mention a loaded definition of the word "race"

when people are deprived of food in their infancy, they lose IQ

that been your personal experience?

possibly

RESPECTED SCIENTIST: NABISCO NOT OTM

I would think they lose not only IQ, but also life.

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

this has to be fake guys

james watson is fake!!

i mean they get insufficient food, because of famine or just poverty

deeznuts is right; there's no way a 79-year-old white person could be ridiculously racist towards black people.

(HH: I knew what you meant, I was making a lame joke.)

really old white dude is a racist shockah!

especially not a 79-year-old RESPECTED SCIENTIST

srsly I almost wish they didn't bother printing this shit at all, it just lends undeserved credibility to a batshit statement.

but, but HE'S A RESPECTED SCIENTIST!

he also wants homosexual babies to be aborted, and women to be genetically prettier. and jol out.

This story was (bizarrely) on the front of the Independent today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00257/p1-171007_257291a.jpg

lookin' good, watson

FTW

i regret starting this thread

Why they gave this the space, god knows, but here's the story:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece

INSIDE: 20-PAGE FREE BOOKLET
HOW TO SUCCEED AT INTERVIEWS

Page 1. "Don't be James Watson."

(The remaining 19 pages are pictures of unicorns.)

is he that respected?

What's really frustrating is that the article does very little to actually examine what might be wrong with Watson's conclusion.

CONTROVERSIAL PERSON: Black people are dumb
CRITIC: That's racist!
JOE READER: Well, it's true, but it's racist, so I won't mention it at the office.

didn't watson also try to test the claim that "fat people are jollier than skinny people"? or am i thinking of some other batshit scientist dude

On the issue of obesity, Watson has also been quoted as saying: "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

damn, just came here to post that!

at least he didn't say "Whenever I interview fat people, I feel bad, because I know I'm not going to hire them."

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76rblackperspective.phtml

Garrett Morris: [ interrupting ] Well, I think I understand the problem with the tests. But the fact is that people have been saying that white people are smarter than black for hundreds of years. We've only had I.Q. tests for 20 or 30 years. How did the idea of white intellectual superiority originate?

Julian Bond: That's an interesting point. My theory is that it's based on the fact that light-skinned blacks are smarter than dark-skinned blacks.

Garrett Morris: [ not sure he heard that right ] Say what?

fact!

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9923/p1171007257291boq7.jpg

B+

Oh yeah, Mr. Watson? Well we hope you like the scare quotes that will be now going around the word "scientist" when we are talking about you in conversation! Take that!

Good job, BIG TIME, "Mr. Scientist."<sarcam>

whoever asked "is he that respected?": my impression has always been that in fact, he's not. That Crick and Rosalind Franklin were the scientific engine behind the discovery of DNA and Watson was more of an opportunist and a popularizer (the latter is an important role, of course, but has little to do with his chops as a scientist.) Also, he comes off as a total dick in The Double Helix and a real creature of his time in terms of his social views, so I can't say I'm totally surprised by this. it's infuriating, of course.

"I think at sort of a young age I began looking at sort of ornithographical magazines, so I became aware of...of science through people interested in birds, and particularly bird behavior. Because the migration of birds was the thing with which you were dominated. Some birds came through in the spring, and in the fall, and in the winter you saw another collection of ducks"

what is it with ducks today?

(I am relying for this impression of Watson's insubsantiality as a thinker on my reading of The Double Helix for a bio class my first year of college, so I could be wrong, but I remember hardly anything about that class except this, which I remember pretty clearly.)

xpost

What would rather you have – surgeon with high IQ score or surgeon that plays basketball well? Note: IQ is not politically correct since results would favor Dr. Watson’s view. Bottom line: you dead and surgeon receive extra credit for basketball skills since IQ was never determined.

Tom, New York City, US/NY

um

Bottom line: you dead and surgeon receive extra credit

hahaha

because they stop people from being surgeons after the IQ determination phase of medical school.

sorry, xpost

It's nonsense - your right to free speech doesn't mean that the New York Times has to print your infantile rantings. No-one is stopping 'dethkller' from saying what he says, printing leaflets etc. But telling him to go fuck himself doesn't affect that right.

if assholes could shop this place would be a mall

if assholes could make or purchase chinese food, this place would be a chinese restaurant

I've obviously touched a nerve for some reason.

haha well that was your whole point! Congratulations, have fun on ILM or wherever. I don't think dethkiller's coming back but I'm banning him sitewide permanently. For being an obvious troll of the even more boring variety, Assholes gets a 3-day from ILE.

if he's genuinely confused by this then I'm sorry he's only been on the internet for three months and hasn't learned anything.

power-crazy tombot!

The only nerve I have that's been touched is knowing that people here have the self-discipline of Pac-Man in a maze full of dots and that this entire thread would turn into "lol bait the racist" bullshit that isn't funny.

You, Assholes, are encouraging/attracting posters like dethkiller by defending his nonexistent right to say whatever he wants on this forum without censure. Whether you agree with his position or not is unimportant. Also lol u got banned.

Roughly it goes:

Ashkenazi
East Asians
Whites
Middle Easterns/Indians
Blacks

-- dethkiller, Friday, November 2, 2007 4:29 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Funny how most Ashkenazi Jews tend to be in the liberal camp that argues against your conclusions then, isn't it?

I was totally having the Pac-Man problem with this dude. I held out most of the afternoon, but it Just Kept Going till it found me at a weak point.

I have the right to walk into your house and scream "YOUR MOM'S A CUNT" at you over and over, and you don't have the right to show me the door!

What's the pac-man problem?

I don't get the pacman or avon lady/dinner's ready metaphors, what are you guys on about

troll feeding habits

I typed an entire paragraph that Tom made redundant with three words.

same here:

Pac-Man = dude drops breadcrumbs you are meant to argue with / get offended by and thus give him the opportunity to espouse his views at length, just as a patient response to your questions and arguments (a.k.a. "trolling"), and while we'd all be better off just ignoring it, it's too tempting to start arguing

Avon lady = is invited to your house in a spirit of openness, but once her presence is starting to bother you, it's your house, and "free speech" is no reason not to tell her to get out so you can enjoy the rest of your day

hahaha but I am an idiot so I post mine instead of redacting it like Dan

lol black ppl can't be concise

troll genocide now
burn all bridges

lololo nabisco, good zing defense there!

us ashkenazis have a notoriously poor grasp of internet metaphors

a random group of non-chess players are shown a chess game in progress for 30 seconds

a random group of chess masters are shown a chess board in progress for 30 seconds

which group tested better at remembering the layout of pieces on the board?

sike

argh you are good at proofreading my posts

it should read something like "an arrangement of chess pieces on a chessboard"

The big problem with black people is that they don't start massive threads on the internet about how there isn't enough "miscegenation" of different ethnic musical styles.

The fuckers.

And how they have a problem with sounding "faux-white".

Seriously tho', I'm a bit shocked this crap made the front page of The Independent.

i opened up a time magazine at the doctor's office today and there was an infographic on the "in brief" page about how the average height of men is increasing. there was also a comparative graph of the average height of white men and black men over the last 50 years

thank you time magazine for improving the discus

tom i don't really have any great suggestions for an overview book because i'm in the field, so i tend to run towards journal articles. the other thing is that i'm coming from the liberal wing of the "soft" side of the field. so i tend to look at things from a particular (educative) focus, you'd get a different perspective from people who approached cog sci as computer scientists, yet another from neurobiologists, yet another from linguistics, yet another from classic psychologists, etc etc

i can say that as far as my engagement w/ the field goes (education context) the don of the field is howard gardner and the one to read is "the mind's new science".

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell sometimes does me a solid by writing something both well-reasoned and interesting.

How is it that until I listened to the "New Yorker Out Loud" podcast and then read that Gladwell story, that I had never heard of the "Flynn effect?" It answers this shit so elegantly!

I know. It's frustrating how poor the reporting has been on this, as though most of the media either already wanted to believe what Watson told them or thought no way a famous geneticist dude could be wrong about anything.

It's sad too - the subject has already come up in several low-voiced conversations I've been party to, so it's clearly making the rounds and convincing some people of some pretty wrong-headed shit.

HOW TO SUCCEED AT INTERVIEWS

WHITES DON'T HAVE ENUF RIGHTS

I AM THE SMARTEST CAPSLOK POSTER ON THIS THREAD GO KNATLIPS!

are you saying Immanuel Kant had big lips?

QUIT HURTING YOU BRAINPIECE CLEVERBOY WITH TEH JOKE TRIES IT MAKES ME SAD LIKE YOUR MOM IS OH SHIT

waht

kantlips OTM

james watson talks to henry louis gates, jr

http://www.theroot.com/id/46667/output/print

JW: I was watching the basketball games yesterday. And I'm just trying to say, you dominate.

HLG: Oh, you mean black people?

JW: Yes.

That interview is great!

it really is though, beautifully handled by HLG

HLG is one of the best interviewers in the country right now, particularly when talking about racial issues.

HLG: I can't run. It's a good thing I was a good student because I wouldn't have made it. … My father, though, will be 95, June 8th, God willing. And my father, every time he passes a basketball court of black boys, young black men, he will say, "If we study calculus like we study basketball, we would be running MIT." So to him, it's not genetic. It's the fact that we're in basketball laboratories instead of math laboratories, all of our lives.

JW: Yes, and that's bad. Black kids have got to get different aspirations.

HLG: Right. But even you said, "You dominate us." You see what I mean? We have this image of being dominant as natural athletes.

JW: Well, one of my rules in my books is, take courses where you can get good grades.

goddamn someone please just take that old goat out back and shoot it

thing is if you watch the vids you can see he really is falling apart mentally

hlg does a great job of being genuinely respectful while still making his points forcefully

JW: You're bigger, and bolder, and rougher and tougher, in other words sucker, there is no other...wanna kiss yourself?

HLG: Security!

I like to think he was watching a Globetrotters game.

i didn't used to like hlg but he's been rolling the last few years.

but, but HE'S A RESPECTED SCIENTIST!

he also wants homosexual babies to be aborted, and women to be genetically prettier. and jol out.

-- darraghmac, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 15:27 (7 months ago) Link

Holy shit I keep finding all these old Jol bombs and they still make me laugh.

i totally missed all revives of this thread

moonship is yoga flame, and the avon lady made actual lols for this guy

OK guys and gals - a really serious plea for help here.

I have to compile a list of interview questions for an Oxford scientist to put to Jim Watson on Wednesday this week. The scientist wants to ask him about atheism and make the suggestion Watson should have made more fuss about that (ie does he more like wish he were Richard Dawkins) but I need more sensible (though they can be as mischievous and controversial as you like) questions urgently. Without too much flippancy, is there anything you would like to see Jim be pinned down to answer? Help!

Will email something :)

bumpity bump