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Are you smarter than The Obama?

Are you smarter than The Obama?

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Ooo...poor word choice.

You're conclusion is funny though. I will also add that Maureen Dowd of the NYT seems to think that Obama didn't even put his race on his Harvard application. That's an unexpected turn of events.


Op-Ed Columnist - McCain’s Green-Eyed Monster - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
 
teamosil said:
Seriously, that's all you got? Insult him because of the color of his skin? Even if a black guy is a professor at a top 5 law school, in your eyes he's still just a stupid nigger? Go **** yourself.
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these kinds of threads are the best for finding out who the racists are. they cite all kinds of stats to support their point all the while knowing that elite schools don't just admit students on gpa/honors. A lot of stuff goes into consideration, but they will only consider that race was Obama's in.
 
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theplaydrive said:
Ooo...poor word choice.
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Accurate description of the real world = poor word choice. Thank god I'm not a liberal. Living in purposeful ignorance must really blow.
 
RiverDad said:
Accurate description of the real world = poor word choice. Thank god I'm not a liberal. Living in purposeful ignorance must really blow.
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A more accurate statement would replace "intelligence" with "academic achievement" and "aren't that many" with "aren't as many blacks as whites". But I won't expect you to do that - you seem more in favor of the racist side of things.
 
RiverDad said:
There just aren't that many black students who reach the upper realms of intelligence.
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OOOOOooo you could of said that a little nicer. Kinda sounds a little racist by generalizing high LSAT scores as a measure of reaching "upper realm of intelligence". More like there just not that many black students that make it the highest percentages of the LSAT scores... for inconclusive reasons. (Your not racist imo, but that even sounded sketchy to me.)
 
That's pretty much my point. Equating intelligence with LSAT scores in general isn't an accurate move.
 

I stand by the statement for it is one of the most widely studied and most widely replicated findings in social science. The intelligence disparity is robust and the variance increases as we climb the IQ ladder. LSATs are a pretty good proxy for intelligence.

Only creationists are upset by reality.

Saying things "nicer" comes across as code for "not telling the truth." That's not my style.
 

Alight, then you meant precisely what you said... i was making sure.
 
celticwar17 said:
Alight, then you meant precisely what you said... i was making sure.
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Were you seriously putting forth the hypothesis that those who scored higher on the LSAT were not measurably different in intelligence from those who scored lower and that those who scored in the highest percentiles were no different in terms of intelligence range than those who scored abysmally? Really? Is that what you were proposing?
 
Actually, a lot of people are upset by reality, no need to generalize...oh wait, that's what you do.

Fact is, standardized tests from the LSAT to regular old IQ tests are the subject of a long standing debate of how well they measure "intelligence", a word whose meaning is itself debated. Of course, the LSAT measures certain aspects and types of intelligence, but it certainly does not measure other aspects as many successful people and social scientists could probably tell you.
 

Ahh.. so is this where you bring up how standardized tests are racist? Say it isn't so... :lamo
 
Having gone to a top 10 college and good private schools my entire life. I can tell you that many intelligent people are poor test takers and many not so intelligent people are good test takers. (Of course, intelligence is subjective though). I did both good and bad on tests from year to year. I would say standardized tests measure certain types of skills including patience - which I was lacking when I did worse.
 
I noticed we lost teamosil... he still owes me a source for his "average of 141 IQ".
 
Ockham said:
Someone already did it for me....

Standardized tests and accusations of racism - Denver school improvement | Examiner.com
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Oh sure, standardized tests definitely have a cultural bias. I imagine a standardized test in the US would use different analogies and examples than one in India and if students who take the test aren't from the culture in question, they'll likely do worse. But cultural bias is not what I was talking about. I was pointing to the fact that much of the success a student has when taking a standardized tests depends on his education. In other words, someone with an excellent education is, on average, going to do better than someone with a poor education. That's just a fact.
 
"The Obama" is very partisan and immature. However I do think that I am smarter than Obama.
 
Thunder said:
did you graduate from an Ivy League Law school with highest honors?
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No, but I am a molecular biologist who works in cancer research. Not to brag, but I've got Obama beat when it comes to the sciences.
 
theplaydrive said:
Fact is, standardized tests from the LSAT to regular old IQ tests are the subject of a long standing debate of how well they measure "intelligence"
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Here's news for you:

Geology is also subject to a long standing debate and there are people who think that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The fact that lay-people uneducated in the particulars of psychometrics and intelligence are debating the issue of how reliable and valid IQ tests are as a measure of intelligence tells us as much about the question as the fact that Young Earth Creationists debate the age of the Earth tells us about the geologic "debate" on the age of the Earth.

There is no debate on IQ tests any longer within the professions that study intelligence. The professionals who deal with these issues day in and day out, in all of the nitty-gritty details, are all on board and even those who have a philosophical axe to grind can't overcome the mountains of evidence which go against their philosophy.

This whole dynamic was the subject of the 1988 book "The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy ."

Most significantly, the literate and informed public today is persuaded that the majority of experts in the field believe it is impossible to adequately define intelligence, that intelligence tests do not measure anything that is relevant to life performance... It appears from book reviews in popular journals and from newspaper and television coverage of IQ issues that such are the views of the vast majority of experts who study questions of intelligence and intelligence testing.

The purpose of their survey was to challenge what they considered to be the media's portrayal of intelligence testing. Their study had three parts:[4]

A questionnaire with 48 multiple choice questions sent to 1020 academics in 1984 (661 replies), reported in Snyderman & Rothman (1987)
An analysis of all coverage of issues related to intelligence tests in major US print and television news sources (1969–1983) conducted by 9 trained graduate students
An opinion poll of 207 journalists concerning their attitudes to intelligence and aptitude tests (119 replies); 86 editors of popular science magazines were also polled (50 replies)


Respondents on average identified themselves as slightly left of center politically, but political and social opinions accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses.

Snyderman and Rothman discovered that experts were in agreement about the nature of intelligence.[6] "On the whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be measured with some degree of accuracy." Almost all respondents picked out abstract reasoning, ability to solve problems and ability to acquire knowledge as the most important elements.

Regarding the role of heritability of intelligence almost all (94%) felt that it played a substantial role.

The role of genetics in the black-white IQ gap has been particularly controversial. The question regarding this in the survey asked "Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of black-white differences in IQ?" Amongst the 661 returned questionnaires, 14% declined to answer the question, 24% voted that there was insufficient evidence to give an answer, 1% voted that the gap was "due entirely to genetic variation", 15% voted that it "due entirely to environmental variation" and 45% voted that it was a "product of genetic and environmental variation". According to Snyderman and Rothman, this contrasts greatly with the coverage of these views as represented in the media, where the reader is led to draw the conclusion that "only a few maverick 'experts' support the view that genetic variation plays a significant role in individual or group difference, while the vast majority of experts believe that such differences are purely the result of environmental factors."​

I didn't write that the LSAT was a test which strictly measured intelligence, I wrote that it's a good enough proxy for such a test. It gets it right in the broad strokes but because it's a proxy it will get muddled in the fine strokes.
 
He's a highly intelligent person. So am I. But I don't think we're intelligent in the same areas.

There's academic intelligence, linguistic, mathematical, practical, intuitive, analytical, etc. A lot of ways to be smart. Very few people are equally intelligent in all of them. I'm certainly not, nor does it seem Obama is, although I suspect he may be a little more balanced than me.

It's hard for me to judge this because I obviously don't know him and he's over twice my age which means his areas of intelligence are better solidified and practiced than mine. But he is obviously highly academic - something I actually struggle with. He doesn't seem to be as intuitive as I am, though. He also seems to be linguistically and analytically intelligent. Probably more than me in the latter category.

Over-all, it's hard to say whether he's smarter than I am, but he is obviously more disciplined and intellectually developed than I am. In short, I don't think I'd struggle in a conversation with him, but I'd have a hard time doing a lot of the things he's done at this point in my life.
 
digsbe said:
No, but I am a molecular biologist who works in cancer research. Not to brag, but I've got Obama beat when it comes to the sciences.
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This is another reason why I think intelligence is so difficult to measure - people can be very "intelligent" in completely different areas. I've known extraordinary scientific minds who could literally not comprehend a political theory or philosophical text and I've known creatively intelligent minds who could not function in a math class. And then I've known people who could do pretty much anything. I'm clearly ranting a bit and this is not necessarily just directed to you digsbe, but intelligence is very subjective and it's expression is dependent on many things including the passion one has for a subject.
 
theplaydrive said:
Oh sure, standardized tests definitely have a cultural bias.
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There we go... you don't disappoint!

theplaydrive said:
I imagine a standardized test in the US would use different analogies and examples than one in India and if students who take the test aren't from the culture in question, they'll likely do worse.
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What culture do 2nd, 3rd generation African American's have other than American culture?

I thought that was the whole point of the standardized test - to identify the retention and educational level of the student. Isn't that the whole point?
 

Yes, actually i am... sure there are some that were not smart enough to make it higher, but i don't think that is the majority... when we are talking average and above average ranges. It really has to do with drive and whether you are a good test taker or not, whether you need more time to be efficient ( speed isn't necessarily a measure of intelligence either) and to some when they are restricted to a time limit have to downgrade their efficiency.
Drive is one of the qualities that stand out the most, not intelligence. Sure there are those random people that are lazy and don't study or do anything and manage to get perfect scores, but that's definitely not the majority. Most people have to work and study really hard... and those that don't do that as much generally won't do as well. Those that have more drive do better on intelligence test's and comprehension.
 
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