Re: META: Time to enforce the List Rules! (personal revelation)

From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 13:24:36 MDT

  • Next message: Ramez Naam: "RE: greatest threats to survival (was: why believe the truth?)"

    In a message dated 6/17/2003 1:48:41 PM Central Standard Time,
    alex@ramonsky.com writes: There are a lot of very clever people on this list. By 'clever' I
    mean they know a lot of facts, are competent in maths and the sciences, take
    an interest in world (or at least US) affairs, and are very very good at the
    sort of skills that enable us to pass IQ tests.

    Alex,
           Let me back away from your position just a little to recall what
    Herrnstein and Serebriakoff said that seems to me to be applicable to this list and
    the heat that is generated here.
           Herrnstein claims there is evidence that since about 1900 AD the
    clever Hi IQ types have slowly been coming into community. I think Mensa, the
    Extropian list and lots of other evidence is indicative that Herrnstein was
    correct.
           Second, Victor Serebriakoff was saying back in the 60s that when a
    bunch of Hi IQ types get together they behave badly. They are not used to being
    around those as clever as themselves and behave badly when they can't dominate
    anyone with their intellectual agility.
           Given what we observe on the list why shouldn't I assume that
    Serebriakoff and Herrnstein are correct?
           Let me give a minor example: we have a thread called "Dishonest debate
    (was Cluster Bombs)" I haven't looked up the origins of that thread name but
    I will bet you that the guy or gal that changed that name didn't do it to
    warn us of his dishonest tactics. In fact I will hazard a guess that he or she
    was involved in the debate called "cluster bombs" and changed the name while he
    was losing the debate called "cluster bombs." I'll let you look it up and
    you can be the judge, Alex.
           In my view the arguments and the dishonest manipulation of threads
    through name changes serves the Serebriakoff purpose. Immature people are being
    given an opporturnity to vent their spleen and learn how to behave in polite
    society. Alex, I'll let you be the judge of that also -- think about it for
    awhile and watch.
    Ron h.

    No, I don't know who made that change, hope it wasn't me. <G>

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jun 17 2003 - 13:34:43 MDT