Hiding IQ is the rule not the exception, do you agree with that?
Depends on the social group. I hang out in a number of social circles where signalling high intelligence is highly endorsed. But, sure, I agree that's the exception and not the rule; in most social circles, signalling high intelligence is seen as a status grab.
But when something isn't okay to talk about in most contexts, that's how we know that there's a widespread bias that can be said to be cultural. Do you agree with this?
Sure.
What if I introduced myself with "Hi, I'm Sue. I like sports and I am a doctor. What about you?" That would be interpreted as talking about a difference you have that affects who you are, not a boast, am I right?
Again, that depends on the status implications of those claims in the context of the group you're introducing yourself to. There are many contexts in which introducing yourself as a doctor would be seen as boastful, and many contexts in which it would not. (There are few contexts where introducing yourself as liking sports would be seen as boastful.)
To be clear, you do agree with me, then, that there is a cultural bias against talking about giftedness and IQ - am I correct?
I would agree that there are contexts where talking about my giftedness and my high IQ is seen as a status grab, and therefore rejected. Many of those are contexts in which talking about giftedness and IQ in general is seen as OK.
If talking about high IQ and giftedness are usually seen as a status marker, this makes them socially unacceptable to talk about most of the time
Again: where high IQ and giftedness are seen as status markers, talking about my high IQ and my giftedness is usually unacceptable. (Similarly, talking about my wealth or my really beautiful spouse or various other status markers is usually unacceptable.)
Do you agree that when [there is a group of people that have significant social differences, and it is socially unacceptable to talk about the difference] it is sign of oppression:
I agree that these things are frequently present where oppression exists. But they are also frequently present where oppression does not exist.
For example, if I'm a white-collar millionaire participating in a social group that is primarily lower-middle-class blue-collar workers, that's a significant social difference that is socially unacceptable to talk about, but I would not agree that I was being oppressed, or that millionaires are generally being oppressed by blue-collar workers.
Relative levels of power and status matter, here.
Do you agree that gifted / high IQ people meet the two definitions above of having significant social differences, and that it is considered socially unacceptable for them to talk freely about their differences?
In many contexts, yes.
If so, then does this qualify as a form of oppression?
In some contexts, yes. Not many.
I enjoy your precision.
If talking about high IQ and giftedness are usually seen as a status marker, this makes them socially unacceptable to talk about most of the time
Again: where high IQ and giftedness are seen as status markers, talking about my high IQ and my giftedness is usually unacceptable. (Similarly, talking about my wealth or my really beautiful spouse or various other status markers is usually unacceptable.)
You make my verbiage look sloppy. (:
Sorry for seeming to ignore this comment for a few weeks. I was busy.
Right now the way I'm s...
Idang Alibi of Abuja, Nigeria writes on the James Watson affair:
An intriguing opening. Is Idang Alibi about to take a position on the real heart of the uproar?
Darn, it's just a lecture on personal and national responsibility. Of course, for African nationals, taking responsibility for their country's problems is the most productive attitude regardless. But it doesn't engage with the controversies that got Watson fired.
Later in the article came this:
This intrigued me for two reasons: First, I'm always on the lookout for yet another case of theology making a falsifiable experimental prediction. And second, the prediction follows obviously if God is just, but what does skin colour have to do with it at all?
A great deal has already been said about the Watson affair, and I suspect that in most respects I have little to contribute that has not been said before.
But why is it that the rest of the world seems to think that individual genetic differences are okay, whereas racial genetic differences in intelligence are not? Am I the only one who's every bit as horrified by the proposition that there's any way whatsoever to be screwed before you even start, whether it's genes or lead-based paint or Down's Syndrome? What difference does skin colour make? At all?
This is only half a rhetorical question. Race adds extra controversy to anything; in that sense, it's obvious what difference skin colour makes politically. However, just because this attitude is common, should not cause us to overlook its insanity. Some kind of different psychological processing is taking place around individually-unfair intelligence distributions, and group-unfair intelligence distributions.
So, in defiance of this psychological difference, and in defiance of politics, let me point out that a group injustice has no existence apart from injustice to individuals. It's individuals who have brains to experience suffering. It's individuals who deserve, and often don't get, a fair chance at life. If God has not given intelligence in equal measure to all his children, God stands convicted of a crime against humanity, period. Skin colour has nothing to do with it, nothing at all.
And I don't think there's any serious scholar of intelligence who disputes that God has been definitively shown to be most terribly unfair. Never mind the airtight case that intelligence has a hereditary genetic component among individuals; if you think that being born with Down's Syndrome doesn't impact life outcomes, then you are on crack. What about lead-based paint? Does it not count, because parents theoretically could have prevented it but didn't? In the beginning no one knew that it was damaging. How is it just for such a tiny mistake to have such huge, irrevocable consequences? And regardless, would not a just God damn us for only our own choices? Kids don't choose to live in apartments with lead-based paint.
So much for God being "just", unless you count the people whom God has just screwed over. Maybe that's part of the fuel in the burning controversy - that people do realize, on some level, the implications for religion. They can rationalize away the implications of a child born with no legs, but not a child born with no possibility of ever understanding calculus. But then this doesn't help explain the original observation, which is that people, for some odd reason, think that adding race makes it worse somehow.
And why is my own perspective, apparently, unusual? Perhaps because I also think that intelligence deficits will be fixable given sufficiently advanced technology, biotech or nanotech. When truly huge horrors are believed unfixable, the mind's eye tends to just skip over the hideous unfairness - for much the same reason you don't deliberately rest your hand on a hot stoveburner; it hurts.