the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Okay. In your mind racism is bad, in mine it isn't. It just is.

Right. It isn't bad, and you're not a racist. You just are.

Quigga wrote: For me, everything is true at the same time. Truth is relative yet absolute.

It's good, indeed important, that one is always willing to examine and question 'established truths'. Is a tenet, an assumption, a theory, a hypothesis (still) valid? Or does examination, with reference to observations, data and/or arguments, indicate that it needs to be revised? Although that's not the same as rejecting the tenet, the theory etc. just because you don't like its consequences/implications. If the idea has facts and arguments to back it up, then you need to come up with stronger facts and arguments to counter it.

You seem to be saying something else. Still, your standpoint is increasingly en vogue. 'Alternative facts', 'there's no such thing as truth', 'you can present all the 'facts' you want but I feel/know the truth is different!!', 'keep throwing alternative explanations into the mix until people only perceive a murky porridge, will believe anything and nothing' (a Putin specialty), etc. etc.
---- 1. 'Princess Diana died in an accident caused by a drunk chauffeur' / 2.' Princess Diana died in an accident caused by the British secret service' / 3. 'Princess Diana is still alive, living somewhere in secret.' (There's that well-known study showing that some people have no problem simultaneously believing both 2. and 3. are true).

I know it's a really tricky issue. Maybe the future belongs to people who think like you. "Truth is relative yet absolute" sounds to me more like Orwellian "doublethink" than wisdom.
Or am I misinterpreting you, doing you a disservice?

Truth is relative yet absolute.

Aw, this is why Plato had dialogues and Aristotle invented logic. Orwell said " 'In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions."

One can keep his subjective truth. Otoh, it's likely that those who do also have problems with justice and liberty. Everybody objectively wants justice and liberty for themselves subjectively. Those who don't can hold up their hands now.

It seems to me that there are some very poor interpretations of perfectly reasonable postmodern philosophic notions being bandied about here. First, while there may be reason to question Truth, no postmodernist meant that reason, facts, or seeking the truth was worthless. If anything, they were trying to get to new truths that hadn't been spoken.

If someone wants to say that nothing is bad, then they should stop using the word. Find something else that you think works.

The claim that racism isn't bad, it just is, is a hackneyed position that takes the most absurdly exaggerated straw person caricatures of critical theory and puts them to use in a reactionary framework. Exactly the sort of framework that critical theorists reject.

If racism isn't bad, what is it? OR, what is bad? Bad for who?

I think I'm out of my preferred depth of water here intellectually to respond quickly and came into this thread with the wrong intention Maybe, after some more thinking, I'll try to give a thought out answer.

The leader of the free world - Pres Biden says -

We choose Truth over Facts

We choose Truth over Facts

That's certainly a head scratcher . But, not because he or we know what it means. Ya gotta explicate --as they used to say in school. What truth is being chosen over which facts? Yeah, I'd say it's a gaffe that says nothing about the nature of truth or "facts." Both are major subjects in schools of western philosophy.

It's better than Giuliani's "Truth is not truth," which is just a contradiction; or the idea of "alternative facts," that argues truth is relative. But, this is more about the limitations of language than anything else (epistemology). I'd say it's safer to assume that facts are true. It's important because we are expected to act based on facts and truths, not on lies.

However, interpretations of facts can be true or false. For example, how beneficial is it to wear a mask? Waitaminute. Let's apply that to the "dangerous debate about IQ." What do the differences in statistical data mean? Is there automatically one conclusion? How do we act based on that conclusion? Can that behavior be wrong (aopt "right")?

There are poor people; that's a fact. Choosing to help them would be right (and true). People who don't do well on tests require more assistance, not less funding for their schools because they "can't learn" or "aren't as likely to succeed." Women are registering and graduating from colleges at a higher rate than men. What should we do?

roger hao wrote:The leader of the free world - Pres Biden says -

We choose Truth over Facts

What a hoot!

One of the best insights about IQ comes from Malcom Gladwell in his seminal work, "Outliers" where IQ is more than numbers on a test! It environment, family and qualities that cannot even be quantified. Mr Gladwell is not discounting test score IQ but he notes that those students able to benefit from their parents influence, class status, etc have the money for exam. prep tools and others support variables that can propel them forward. Thos who lack these tools fall behind!
Another variable is the bias that exists for some groups where they are forbidden from particiapting in the natural congress of the nation, their boots for survival were taken from them forcibly and illegally then many say they should have been able to tie their own bootstraps but if their oppressor has stolen thhose boot, WT

Gladwell speaks of those who have a tradition of "success' do better than those from the peasant or "lower class" since they appear (the latter) to lack the tools to go beyong their environment so they suffer!
Gladwell also points out that Asian languages being 'symbols'/graphics oriented tend to be better in maths as opposed to the notion that this natual IQ is the reson when it falls on, again, the Rice Field Mentality (hard work, eating bitter, the design of the rice field and its architecture (rain, drainage, etc though it was simple, wasn't it?) anyway it is a good read and I learn different things (awareness) each time I read it.

Gladwell speaks of those who have a tradition of "success' do better than those from the peasant or "lower class" since they appear (the latter) to lack the tools to go beyong their environment so they suffer!

Ime, a teacher at an Ivy League school in the US will find that though his students may be actual princes and from families of high status, they're not any smarter than the students who were valedictorians at their midwest or urban high schools. Having fewer advantages often leads to people working harder.

When it comes to tests, educational opportunity is the crucial aspect. However, it is up to the student to recognize that the opportunity is there. Someone in their life has to tell them, and they have to think it's necessary. Sometimes that doesn't happen, and it doesn't have to. Not everyone needs to go to college. Having a trade, driving a truck, or digging coal is fine.

I'm only arguing against trying to predict interest or ability based on any test, and don't let what anyone says determine what you try or can do. There'll always be people who'll smugly argue about your ability based on their idea of your group's performance.